Begin Again | ongoing - Chapter 11: Chapter 11

After falling asleep in an empty flat on Sunday, despite her mammoth nap, Sunny wakes up on Monday to the clattering of pots and pans and the unmistakable sound of Fenfen swearing as she drops something on her foot. Oh, the comforting sounds of life with a clumsy agent of chaos.
For a while, she lies there staring at her ceiling and trying to get her head around yesterday, now that she has properly met Viv and spent time with her. This isn't going to be easy. It's daunting and disorientating and yes, Viv is ridiculously beautiful and stupidly understanding of something that makes no fucking sense, but there is still this gaping divide between them that Sunny doesn't know how to close, because how do you catch up when there is so much missing in the middle? They exist on opposite sides of this black hole.
It struck her when Viv was talking through their first five dates that as much as she shares, no matter how many details she recounts, Sunny will never actually be able to remember their first year. She will never see that time as anything other than something that happened to someone else, someone who just so happens to be another version of herself. It's like watching a film with a protagonist who looks remarkably like her, only to be told it's her life, and she has to get with the program.
Trying to wrap her head around that is giving her a headache.
Today she is free. No work, thanks to her imaginary stomach bug, and no pressure to see Viv. Which means she has an entire day to try to find more answers about what happened to bring her here. It's been a long time since she last saw Astrid and Celeste, the owners of The Witching Well (yes, she knows she shouldn't call it that because she's pretty sure the nickname is a result of the town's misogynistic homophobia, but it did cast a pretty big fucking spell on her) but she thinks if anyone else needs to know what happened, it's them. They might not even know their front garden harbours a fission in time.
When it becomes clear that she isn't going to get back to sleep, Sunny rolls out of bed and tugs on a stretched-out salmon pink t-shirt and bright leggings over her faded sports bra and underwear that's lost its elastic. She hasn't worn a bra with underwire since she was fifteen and trying to fit in with her friends, who were far more blessed than her in the chest department. While they were trying on Bs and Cs and Ds, Sunny could barely fill a 28A. Now, she either wears a soft sports bra or nothing at all, because what's the point when she's as flat-chested as she was at thirteen? She isn't complaining – she loves having virtually no boob to speak of. Her t-shirts always fit right without stretching across her chest and she can run for the bus without having to hold anything down, unlike Delilah, who is cursed with 42F breasts and jokes that she could knock herself out if she jogs downstairs without tying down her chest.
"Morning, you sexy beast!" Fenfen says without turning round when Sunny emerges from her room. When she does at last look over her shoulder, her eyebrows shoot up to her hairline. "Oh! Sorry, Tenny. Wrong sexy beast."
"You're harbouring more sexy beasts in here?" Sunny perches on the edge of the countertop, heels thudding against the drawer below. "I'm not enough for you?"
Fenfen grins and bops her on the nose. "You, my darling, are an incredibly sexy beast. Especially with that killer hair. But you're not the sexy beast I brought back last night. I didn't even realise you were here – I haven't seen you for, like, a week. Been shacking up with lover girl?"
"I went to see my parents," she says, snagging a piece of toast Fenfen has just buttered. Fenfen just tuts and pops another couple of slices of bread into the toaster.
"I was starting to think you were trying to work up the courage to tell me you're moving out."
"Not quite," she says, remembering what Viv said. She'd been about to ask Sunny to move in with her. She wonders what she would've said. She wonders how she used to feel when she saw Viv, if her heart skipped a beat or her lips couldn't help but smile.
"Good. I'd miss you quite terribly." Fenfen rests her hand on Sunny's knee. "Are you working today?"
"Nope."
"Got any plans?"
"I have to see some lesbians about a black hole."
Fenfen pulls her eyebrows together. "Is that a medical issue? I may not be a lesbian but I can tell you if everything looks normal down there."
"Oh my god, Fen. No. I'm not talking about my vagina. You think I call it a black hole?"
Fenfen shrugs and laughs. "I've heard it called weirder things than that. A girl at school called it her honey pot. Actually, I kinda like that one. Decent advertising – welcome to the honey pot, dip a finger in and taste the sweetness!"
A squeak of a laugh escapes Sunny at the image. "Fen, Jesus."
"The black hole doesn't have the same marketing potential. Welcome to the black hole – anything you put in will disappear." She frowns. "You might not get any action if you call it that."
"My vagina is not a black hole!" Sunny shrieks, right as Fenfen's sexy beast emerges from the bedroom. Sunny may be gay as a maypole but she can appreciate that he is one hell of a sexy beast, a tall Black guy in obscenely tight boxer briefs with what looks like a fucking eighteen-pack and a quirk of a smile twitching his lips.
"I'd hope not," he says, trying not to laugh. "Black holes are ruthless beasts of the universe. I wouldn't want my dick anywhere near one."
"Good thing I'm a lesbian then."
"Good luck finding a girl who wants to lose her hand," he jokes. Sunny cringes so hard her face comes close to colour matching the strawberry jam Fenfen is spreading on her toast.
"Just for the record," she says, "my vagina is not a black hole and I do not call it that. Okay? I don't want to hear that on the rumour mill."
The sexy beast (Sunny's not sure what he's called, and the name fits just fine in the meantime) goes to the bathroom and once the door's shut, Fenfen asks, "In which case, what on earth do you mean about seeing some lesbians about a black hole?"
"I fell through a crack in time outside Astrid and Celeste's house so I want to see if they know how I can get back to my real universe."
Fenfen stares. Then she laughs. "You're a weird little bean, Tenny. I love you so fucking much."
No questions. No concern. It's refreshing. Sunny grins. She loves how unseriously Fenfen takes everything, gliding through life having a good time and refusing to question anything that would jeopardise that.
"What's the sexy beast's name?"
"Luke. He's fucking hot, right?"
"Right. Very sexy."
Fenfen raises her hands and looks to the ceiling as though praying. "Even the lesbians agree! His sexiness breaks the boundaries of sexuality."
"Are you going to see him again?"
She shrugs. "Eh. See how it goes."
An amused smile plays on Sunny's lips. Fenfen is not a serial dater. She doesn't date at all, in fact. Her style is to play the field as wide as possible, trying out every eligible man Black Sands has to offer – and, to her dismay, a couple of ineligible men. Not much upsets Fenfen, but it devastates her every time she learns someone she slept with has a partner. In the past she has also expressed dismay that she isn't sexually attracted to women – and she has tried, several times – because her hook-up pool is limited by her sexuality.
"Any plans other than your black hole issue?" she asks, crunching her toast. It doesn't escape Sunny's notice that Fenfen has only made breakfast for herself. Presumably Luke will be out of the flat once he's relieved himself and found his clothes. They almost never hang around in the morning.
"Not really." She leans across the counter to the bread bin that has only ever housed cereal bars and tears into one. At some point she needs to go through her room and identify anything that belongs to the black hole, and familiarise herself with it – music, books, art, everything. There can't be too much, she reckons, because it's not like she's made of money. "Tidying, I guess."
The look on Fenfen's face is one of pure horror. She grabs the phone off the wall, getting tangled in the cord, and pretends to dial 999. "Hey, could I get an ambulance? Yeah, my terminally messy scatterbrained gnat of a flatmate just said she wants to tidy so she clearly has a catastrophic brain injury." She slams the phone down and says, "Seriously, Tenny, you want to tidy? You sure you don't want to come and check out Lickety Split with me instead?"
"What the hell is that?"
"New bar in town, right on the beach front. There's nothing to say it's a lesbian bar but considering I've heard several of my lady-loving friends refer to it as Licky Slit, I think it's probably gonna become a lesbian bar. You told me to tell you when I find one and I think this is your best shot."
Sunny ponders the offer. She may not be one for drinking and she may not find much enjoyment in loud, crowded places, but the thought of letting her hair down with her friend sounds pretty appealing. "Okay. Yeah. Let's try it out."
"Awesome!" Fenfen claps her hands together. Luke emerges from the bathroom, fully dressed (Sunny doesn't want to think too hard about why all his clothes were in there) and gives her a cool wink and a cheeky smile.
"See you around?" he says, his jacket folded over one arm.
"I've got your number," Fenfen says, running a hand through her hair. Despite its length – inching past her bum now – it never seems to tangle. She gives him a coy wave using only her fingers and when he's gone, she snaps back to Sunny as though Luke was never here. It's remarkable really, Sunny thinks. Fenfen seems to get anyone she wants, and her heart never gets damaged in the process. She's the one breaking hearts, with the cocksure energy of an overconfident man.
"Can I invite the boys?" Sunny asks.
"Sure. The more the merrier." With a wicked grin, Fenfen pokes Sunny's chin and says, "I can't wait to get you drunk, babydoll."
"That won't happen," she says drily. Alcohol is expensive and she hates getting a headache and she hates vomiting even more, and she hasn't mastered the art of getting drunk without those side effects hitting her the next day. One tragic time at university, she and her friends started drinking at lunchtime and after a nap that was supposed to rejuvenate her, Sunny had woken up at ten p.m. with a hangover.
"Oh, trust me. It will. Just wait until you're surrounded by all of Black Sands' finest lesbians and they keep buying you drinks because you look like an adorable little baby gay."
"Hey. I'm not a baby gay." She folds her arms and scrunches her forehead but it doesn't help her argument, because although she's five foot nine, she has a young face. Her twenty-four years could easily pass for seventeen. "I came out to my parents when I was twelve."
Fenfen pinches her cheek and coos. Sunny drops off the counter, standing to her full height next to her diminutive friend. Somehow, in every picture of Fenfen, she looks like she should be at least five foot eight, but she barely scrapes five two and next to Sunny, she looks almost disproportionately tiny.
"If I don't see you before then," she says, "I'll be at Lickety Split at eight. We'll get drinks, dance a bit, see what happens, okay?"
"Okey-dokey."
"Bring your girls and your gays. We'll have a ball."