Olivia in the Woods

Olivia leaned forward in her seat, peering over the wheel as she drove cautiously down the darkened road. Heavy rain mixed with wet, sticky snow splattered the windshield and strained her vision as she tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to avoid the potholes that violently rattled her car.

This was her first road trip alone and she had planned it meticulously the trip out had been uneventful and now she was looking forward to getting back. She would arrive in William’s Lake in time for an early dinner. She’d check into a hotel, get a good night’s sleep, and be home in Vancouver by lunch time tomorrow. She had travel snacks in her bag; a can of gasoline in the trunk; and even an emergency kit her father had insisted she take with her, none of which had been helpful when she found herself confronted by a tree lying across the width of the highway.

Her GPS had led her back the way she came and onto a dirt road that apparently reconnected with her original route further east, promising that this detour would only delay her a few minutes. Now, several hours later and long past sunset, she was regretting her decision to leave the highway.

The car lurched suddenly. Olivia bounced in seat high enough to hit her head on the roof. Something towards the front began thumping rhythmically and she felt the car wobbling in time to the noise. She brought the car to a stop and climbed out, clutching her head.

One of the front tires sagged limply. She stared at it blankly, dread creeping up into her chest. She fumbled in her pockets for her phone and pulled it out. No signal. She shivered and zipped her coat up.

“Ok,” she whispered to herself, “it’ll be ok, I can deal with this.”

Olivia was pretty sure every car had a spare tire, although she wasn’t sure where exactly hers was. She circled around to the passenger side and fished out the manual from the glove box. To her relief, there was a whole section on changing a flat tire, with pictures and everything. She scanned the instructions.

“Tire iron, jack, spare tire. Tire iron, jack, spare tire. Okay.”

She popped the trunk and opened up a hatch on the floor, revealing a jack, a spare tire, and an empty receptacle where the manual promised the tire iron would be. She blinked uncomprehendingly. It had to be there. She closed the hatch and then opened it again, staring at the empty space once more. She closed the hatch again.

Panic grew inside here again. She stumbled back to the cab, climbed in the back seat, and began frantically throwing her belongings around to search. Not on the floor, not under the seats, not in the glove box. She hopped out and checked the trunk again, and again the tire iron failed to magically appear in its rightful place.

Olivia stood for a minute, staring into the trees that pressed closely around the road. The car’s cabin light illuminated them strangely and they seemed to loom over her. She felt, suddenly, more alone than she had ever felt before. She retreated back into the safety of her car, locking the door behind her. Someone would come along eventually and she could ask them to call a tow truck for her.

The cold began to creep in. She pulled her spare coat over her small frame and curled up underneath it in the back seat.

Rowan’s truck barrelled through the dark, skimming over the rough surface of the forest service road. She was late getting back the owners of the tack & feed store had taken a long lunch and she’d decided to wait rather than make a second trip into town tomorrow. The chickens still needed putting away and the firewood bringing in, so she was anxious to be home. When the stranded car appeared suddenly around a bend, it took her nearly too long to realize what she was seeing. Hands clenched on the wheel and foot pressing her whole body into the brake, she skidded to a halt just inches from a collision.

In the back of the stricken car, Rowan saw a figure sit up and lift their arm to shield their eyes from the truck’s headlights. Then, just as suddenly as the car appeared, the figure scrambled out onto the road and began waving their arms, hopping up and down frantically.

“Stop!” A voice called out. “Please, I need help!”

Rowan turned off the ignition and stepped down from her truck, frowning at the young figure and then scanning the woods around her suspiciously.

“Hello? Where are your parents, sweetheart?” She asked gently.

The figure said nothing for a moment, cocked its head as if considering the question deeply, and then summoned up a response.

“Um, what?”

“Your… parents?” Rowan repeated. “Who’re you travelling with? Where are they?”

“I’m nineteen,” came the figure’s reply, now mirroring the confusion in Rowan’s voice. “This is my car.”

“Oh.” Rowan’s mind processed the new information. In fact, the stranger she’d taken for a child was a teenaged woman. It was harder to tell as the years went by the younger generations all looked vaguely the same these days but she could see, now, that the soft curves of womanhood weren’t entirely hidden by the stranger’s oversized raincoat.

Rowan looked her up and down. Her hands were pulled inside the sleeves of her coat and slender legs, clad in leggings altogether too thin for this weather, were shaking from the cold. A round face framed by brown ringlets currently displayed a look of puzzled defiance.

“Uh. I need help?” The woman gestured to her car. Rowan realized she’d been staring for too long and looked away hurriedly.

“I think I hit something,” the woman continued. “My tire’s flat. I can’t find my tire iron to put the spare one on.”

Rowan’s mind finally came back into gear.

“Oh, right. Yes,” she said quickly, turning back to her truck to hide her embarrassment. “Let me grab mine and we’ll take a look.”

Rowan rummaged around in a battered metal box and retrieved the necessary tool. She assessed the situation, made a gruff noise indicating her understanding of what to do, and set about getting the damaged wheel off the ground.

“I’m amazed you made it this far,” she remarked in between grunts of effort. “You know this isn’t a road, right?”

“It’s not? My phone said it was.”

“It’s an FSR,” Rowan explained, “an old logging road. They show up on GPS sometimes, but you shouldn’t try to drive on them.”

“You’re driving on them,” the woman countered.

“Yeah, but I live here,” Rowan laughed, “and I’m driving a truck. I can drive on them. You shouldn’t.”

Then Rowan frowned, her attention dragged back to the work at hand. With the tire now off she could see that this problem was beyond her.

“Well, that’s that, then,” she sighed, standing up and wiping at the mud she’d picked up on her knees. “You’re not going anywhere tonight, you managed to bend the axel. How far did you drive on the flat?”

“I… I didn’t think it was very long,” the woman said quietly. Rowan heard the defeat in her voice and decided not to press her with more questions.

“We can call you a tow truck,” she reassured her, “but out here the tow truck’s just Jacob from town, and he doesn’t like to come out this late. My place is a few minutes back the way you came. You can stay the night and we’ll get you out of here in the morning.”

Olivia had hesitated just for a moment before hopping into the older woman’s truck. She was a stranger, after all, but then again Olivia didn’t relish the idea of spending the night in the chilly car. Now, as the truck bounced easily along the road, she felt herself relaxing.

As Rowan casually navigated the two of them down the road, Olivia took the opportunity to study the features of her saving grace. Rowan was tall, and well built in a way that suggested she worked with her hands rather than attended the gym. Further evidence of this were the muddy overalls she wore underneath a heavy wool jacket and the toolbox at Olivia’s feet. Her features weren’t stern, exactly, but sharp, with high cheekbones and an angular jaw. Olivia couldn’t begin to guess at her age older, certainly, but probably not as old as her mom.

Olivia hadn’t met many women like Rowan, who dressed and carried herself in a way Olivia would have labelled “butch” back home, but here just seemed practical. Her high school friend group had been what she considered normal a mix of jeans and skirts that remained firmly in the realm of the conventionally feminine, with at least a little makeup except on the most relaxed of occasions.

Once, was she was 16, a girl she recognized from science class had kissed her drunkenly at a party in a bid to get attention from two older boys. It was Olivia’s first kiss and when she kissed back a little too enthusiastically the girl had slapped her suddenly across the face.

“Dyke,” she mouthed at Olivia as one of the boys pulled her onto his lap.

Stumbling away and fighting back tears, Olivia suddenly knew two things first, that she definitely liked girls, and second, that she was definitely not in a rush for anyone to find out. For the next few years, she focused on her academics rather than her growing feelings for other classmates at school.

Now, for the first time since her classmate had suggestively leaned into her, Olivia found herself transfixed by a beautiful face. She let her gaze rest on Rowan for a while, until the truck turned onto a road somehow more narrow and bumpy than the one she’d be stranded on. Their headlights illuminated a couple squat log buildings in the distance.

Rowan had to get out of the truck, once to open a gate and again to close it behind them. When they finally parked in front of the largest of the buildings, she immediately trudged into the dark towards a pen of clucking chickens.

“Go on inside,” she called behind her, “I need to look after few things before the end of the night.”

Olivia appraised the cottage. She couldn’t decide whether “ramshackle” or “true crime mystery” was a more fitting term. It was beyond simple, with firewood stacked haphazardly along one wall and a large animal skull mounted above the door. Bracing herself, she climbed the short steps onto the porch and let herself inside.

When she finally found the light switch behind the door, she was pleasantly surprised to find that Rowan kept a warm and tidy home, even if a little rustic. The old wood stove in one corner was a novel sight to Olivia, as was the hunting rifle mounted above a table in the back. It was small, but cozy, and Olivia found herself drawn to look at the little carvings and framed paintings of landscapes and animals that adorned nearly every free space on the walls.

Rowan eased herself inside with an armful of split firewood clutched against her chest. The young woman in her home looked over at her and blushed, stepping away from where she’d been admiring Rowan’s collection of art.

“Sorry,” Olivia mumbled, “I didn’t mean to pry. These are beautiful.”

Rowan gave her a warm smile as she kicked off her boots and made her way to the wood stove.

“Sweetheart, it’s okay! Make yourself at home.”

As she worked at firing up the stove, Rowan considered the girl’s peculiar behaviour. She had noticed Olivia staring at her on the ride back; now, the girl’s reddened expression added to Rowan’s suspicions.

Rowan had bought her remote piece of land more than a decade ago when she and Megan, her first steady girlfriend, had decided to move from the suburbs into the woods and try a more adventurous life. Megan had loved weekend camping, but after their first cold winter in a tiny, singleroom cabin, she had had enough of rural living. The relationship had been rocky for a while leading up to Megan’s decision to leave, and in the end Rowan decided she preferred this new way of living over a love that was already nearly extinguished. She bought Megan out of her half of the mortgage and stayed in the woods. Eventually, she built a second cabin for herself, this one with indoor plumbing and a bedroom. Pens for chickens, sheep, and pigs soon followed.

The one downside to Rowan’s way of living was the isolation. She had a few friends in the area she met occasionally for a drink at the pub, but the dating prospects were slim among the ranchers and retirees in her community. She had mostly grown accustomed to it, but from time to time she missed the affections of other women. Now, with this young girl blushing shyly at her, she felt old feelings stir. She wasn’t sure that Olivia had been looking at her in that way, but still, the idea crept its way into her imagination.

The fire was finally set and Rowan turned back to find Olivia seated on the couch across from her, stripping off layers. Her raincoat lay on the cushion beside her and she was midway through removing her sweater, heavy fabric pulled up over her head. Rowan took the opportunity to steal a look of her own, greedily staring at pert breasts draped loosely by a black band tshirt. She broke away and moved to the kitchen before the girl caught her, pulling down a kettle and a tin of tea.

The two women sat together for some time, Rowan inquiring politely about Olivia’s life. She was taking a gap year before university. It was technically her mom’s car, not hers. She was on her way home from a wedding the first she’d been to as an adult. As they talked, however, Rowan’s gaze remained fixed on her and she found herself becoming increasingly tonguetied, the older woman’s dark eyes tripping up her words before they could leave her mouth. The focused attention was gradually overwhelming; she could feel her face burning red.

When the two had finished their teas and Rowan announced it was time for bed, Olivia felt a wave of relief mixed with sadness. She liked Rowan’s attention and worried that she’d embarrassed herself in front of the older woman.

Rowan, for her part, enjoyed watching the girl wilt. Her shy manner and reluctance to make eye contact all but confirmed Rowan’s suspicions, who was secretly happy to see the effect she could have on such a pretty thing. However, the girl was young and in a difficult situation. She wouldn’t feel right trying anything she didn’t want to risk making Olivia feel trapped in an unfamiliar place with a stranger.

“The couch isn’t particularly comfortable, so you can sleep in my room,” she said matteroffactly. “I’ll sleep out here. I just changed the bedding, so you should be good to go. There’s clean towels in the bathroom if you want to talk a shower.”

“No, I can’t,” said Olivia hastily, “I don’t want to intrude like that. You’ve already helped me out so much. I can sleep on the couch.”

“Sweetheart, it’s fine,” Rowan insisted. “Really. You’re going to have a big day tomorrow getting your car sorted out. You need the rest.”

Olivia considered this and then nodded.

“Thank you. I think I’ll take the shower, too.”

When Olivia had finished her shower, she emerged wrapped in a towel, clutching her neatly folded clothes. Rowan watched hungrily as she crossed the cabin to the bedroom, letting herself steal a final glimpse at the soft shape of this girl just entering the beginning of her adulthood. When Olivia turned at the doorway to say goodnight, Rowan didn’t stop herself from staring, and when the towelclad figure asked one last time if she was sure she was okay with the sleeping arrangements, she let her desire make a gamble.

“I’m sure. You need a good night’s sleep, so you’ll take the bed. I’ll sleep out here…” She paused, and then:

“Unless you want the company.”

Rowan tried to make the offer sound plausibly enough like a joke to leave Olivia an out. The girl turned crimson and mouthed silently for a moment, her words taking their time to form.

“Um. If the couch is so uncomfortable, maybe you shouldn’t sleep out there.”

The sight of Olivia trembling in front of Rowan stirred something in her. She rose from the couch, holding back a smile as she made her way slowly but purposefully over to the towelclad girl.

Olivia shrunk back as the older woman approached, looking up hesitantly to meet her gaze. Rowan reached out as she drew near and cradled the girl’s face with a gentle hand, running her fingers over the slender line of her jaw. Time stopped for a moment as they looked deep into each other’s eyes. As Rowan leaned in and brushed her lips over Olivia’s, she wrapped her other arm around the girl’s waist and felt her go slack, a brief and quiet murmur escaping from the little thing as Rowan pressed against her. She wanted Olivia, more than she’d wanted anything for a long time, and she knew for certain now that the girl wanted her too.

The two women broke away from the kiss and Rowan looked down at the girl’s wideeyed expression, considering her. Her shy demeanour and passive, yielding behaviour made Rowan wonder how much experience Olivia had with other girls. She lacked the confidence Rowan remembered in Megan, but now that they were close, Olivia was making up for it with raw, unfiltered needing.

Rowan kissed her again, deeper, and drew her hand around the girl’s head to twist her fingers through Olivia’s showerwet hair. She drew a whimper from the little thing as she tightened her grip and locked the two of them together. She was hungry heat burned in her chest and she felt her own legs trembling, now. The towel that stood between her and Olivia’s naked form tempted her, but she held back the urge to strip it away immediately. Instead, she ran a hand roughly up the girl’s hips, grabbing handfuls of her through the covering. She found the soft shape of Olivia’s breasts and squeezed hard enough to elicit a gasp.

“You like this, don’t you,” Rowan whispered.

It was more a statement than a question. Olivia’s fervent nodding and mumbled assent were the last push Rowan needed to take her fully. The girl was still clutching her towel around herself and Olivia now pried her arms away, revealing a naked, porcelain body Rowan had been picturing in her mind’s eye since the two of them had arrived at the cabin.

Olivia had the form of youth slim, yet soft, in a way that suggested no effort had been spent maintaining her figure. Small, pink nipples adorned the pert mounds that had barely filled Rowan’s hand. A small crop of neatly trimmed hair between curved hips tantalized her imagination.

Rowan caught Olivia’s eye and basked in the girl’s expectant gaze. It had been too long since she’d felt wanted no, needed like this. For a moment, she wondered what this shy creature would let her get away with, speculating that Olivia might offer her shy consent to almost anything. But she pushed those thoughts away the girl deserved nothing but tenderness in this moment. She settled for holding Olivia by both arms, pressing them tightly against the girl’s sides as kissed the side of her neck, the soft curve of her shoulder, and finally bent down to take a breast in her mouth.

Rowan felt Olivia tense in her hands, gratifying her as she teased her tongue around the girl’s nipple. She could feel her own body responding. Heat and wetness between her legs urged her to continue her exploration. She moved to the other breast and nipped at Olivia gently, pleased by the sharp gasp this brought forth from the girl.

When Rowan had her fill of teasing, she gave Olivia a gentle push towards the bed.

“Sit,” she instructed, twitching the buttons of her shirt open and shrugging the garment off.

Olivia did as she was told, perching hesitantly on the edge of the bed and staring up at the older woman. She was beginning to relax, her mind finally catching up to the reality of the situation.

Olivia’s attention had, until now, been drawn to the girls she knew from school young, feminine, small much like herself. Women like Rowan hadn’t entered her conception until today. Nothing about the situation she found herself in was at all similar to how she imagined her first experience with intimacy would unfold, but now that she was here, it felt right.

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