Begin Again | ongoing - Chapter 21: Chapter 21

Sunny makes it to work bang on time – okay, with a minute to go before she's late – only to see, as she's tugging on an apron and scraping her hair off her face, Celeste sitting at one of the tables, slowly turning the pages of a thick paperback. She hasn't spotted Sunny yet but Sunny spotting Celeste has put her off her game and she knocks a bottle of caramel syrup off the counter as Mack's reaching for it.
"Whoa girl, steady on," he says, like she's a horse. Grabbing the syrup and squirting a generous drizzle on the macchiato he's making, he adds it and a frothy hot chocolate to a tray that a stony-faced middle-aged woman carries off to a table where a couple of primary school kids are fighting.
"Sorry. How's it been today?"
"Same old, same old," Mack says. "Listen, I've gotta run – anniversary dinner with the wife – and Gina was supposed to cover me until eight but she just called, she can't come in. I'm afraid you and Michelle are gonna be alone – that all right?"
Sunny shrugs. "Sounds like it'll have to be."
"Well ... yeah, kind of. Sorry, Sunny. You'll be okay, the two of you, right?"
"We're always alone from eight 'til one," Sunny says. "It's only an extra three hours. It'll be fine."
"Fab. I can always rely on you, kid," he says, and Sunny makes a mental note to say no once in a while. She doesn't want to be too dependable. That's a sure-fire way to be taken advantage of. "Right. See you tomorrow?"
"See you, Mack. Happy anniversary," she says, and her voice carries across a quiet moment in the coffee shop. Celeste hears it and turns around, her expression shifting when she clocks Sunny. Something in her face makes it clear that she's there for Sunny, not for a vanilla latte or an almond croissant.
"Cheers!" Mack sheds his apron and claps Sunny on the shoulder as he leaves, and Sunny's actually quite glad it'll be just her and Michelle. Not because the third pair of hands isn't needed – it can get busy between five and eight, when people finish work and school and crave a sweet fix – but because he's the boss, and as lovely as he is, she feels his watchful eye on her whenever they share a shift. With only Michelle to keep an eye on her, though she's pretty sure she's more senior than Michelle now, Sunny can relax a little more, and address the silver-haired woman sitting in the window.
There's no-one waiting to be served and nothing that needs to be desperately done – cleaning can wait until later, when there aren't so many feet in the way – so Sunny gives a nod to Michelle and she heads over to Celeste and sees that she was right: Celeste doesn't have a drink, no empty plate in front of her. She's been waiting.
"Sunny," Celeste says, and there's a breath of relief in those two syllables.
"Hi, Celeste," Sunny says. She perches on the arm of the sofa next to her. "Are you all right? Can I get you something to drink?"
"We've been worried about you," Celeste says. The book in her hand is closed now, the pages folded over her thumb in place of a bookmark. She opens it only to dogear the page and slip the novel into her bag. Sunny's surprised by that – Celeste seems like the type to value perfection, and perfectionists tend not to deface their books.
"Worried about me? Why?"
"You didn't exactly leave us on the best note," she says, folding her hands in her lap. "We feared you may do something foolish so we've been trying to track you down. Astrid eventually came across someone who said there's a girl with purple hair who works here."
"So you've been, what, hanging around waiting for me?" Sunny self-consciously touches her hair. It's not quite long enough to comfortably twirl around her finger so she tugs on the same lock, over and over.
"Precisely."
She is not like her wife, who is soft-bodied and soft-voiced, her lips graced by the gentlest smiles. No, Celeste is hard. The point of her chin and the jut of her elbows form the sharp corners of an isosceles triangle; she is acute angles and the prickly spines of a cactus, from the tension of her flawless bun to the clipped consonants of her accent. It doesn't belong to Black Sands, where letters get lost along the way but the message still gets where it needs to go. Celeste utilises every letter of the alphabet, her voice as crisp and clear as a sheet of ice. Where Astrid is a soothing lullaby, Celeste is a cutting denouncement.
But her expression changes. It loses its edge. Her eyes are no longer glaciers but puddles. Her lips are not pressed in a painfully thin line. "I needed to check on you, Sunny. I know that our conversation didn't go how you wanted it to go, and I realise we didn't act with the greatest tact with what we told you and how we said it."
"Yeah, it could've gone better. Hearing about those other girls..." She trails off, shuddering at the thought of Margaret and Isabel and the time, the lives, they lost. "That was pretty traumatic."
"And I'm sorry for that. We are sorry."
"Thank you." She keeps one eye on the door, ready to get back to work the moment a customer comes in, but town looks pretty quiet outside for now. The shops are shut now until the weekend, the bars not yet open.
"How are you doing?" Celeste lifts her hand, hovering between them like she wants to touch Sunny, to hold her hand or pat her knee, but she can't decide what to do and lets it drop again. Sunny wonders if she isn't so much cold and reserved as she is awkward and unsure; the chilly demeanour is a mask to hide behind.
"I'm all right. Better now, actually. A lot better."
That brings out a smile. "Oh, good. I'm so glad to hear that. Have you talked to your ... is she your girlfriend?"
"Yeah. Yes, I have." Sunny sits on her hands and almost loses herself inside her own head, thinking about how tomorrow's going to go. "I've decided to lean into what happened because there's a reason for everything, right?"
"Quite possibly," Celeste says in muted agreement.
"I'm here for a reason. I'm with Viv for a reason, and I might not ever find out why all this happened but it doesn't matter. I've got to just, you know, go with the flow."
"Yes. Absolutely." Celeste breathes out, slow and steady. "I'm so relieved to hear you say that, Sunny. It must be easy to get upset over the time you've lost but each moment lost to fear only sacrifices yet more time you can't get back."
"I figured that out, with the help of my friends," Sunny says. "Viv knows what happened and she's supportive. I told her that we need to take it back to the start so we're redoing our first date tomorrow."
"Oh, how sweet. That sounds wonderful, Sunny. I can't tell you how glad I am that you're making this work for you, my dear. Perseverance is ever so important in times like this."
That only makes Sunny think of Margaret, who tried to persevere and couldn't. Her smile takes a dive.
"Astrid and I were thinking," Celeste says as the door opens and someone comes in, snatching Sunny's attention. She's about to get up to serve them when Michelle appears and slips behind the counter with a smile and asks how she can help.
"Sorry, what were you saying?" Sunny turns back to Celeste.
"We would love to stay in touch with you, Sunny. Perhaps, once you and Viv are more settled, the two of you could come over for supper one day?"
"Yeah, sure. That'd be nice," Sunny says, because what else can you say to that? She's not exactly going to turn down the offer of supper from a woman with a wormhole in her garden. Also, she quite likes Celeste and Astrid. They're growing on her.
"We may be far apart in age," Celeste says, "but friendship and support is key between people like us."
"People who know about the black hole?" Sunny asks. Celeste's veneer cracks. A smile shines through.
"Lesbians, darling. Astrid and I would love to get to know you and your girlfriend."
"Oh." A laugh bursts out of her. Michelle looks over at the sudden noise. "Sorry. Yes! Yeah, that would be nice."
"Wonderful." Celeste takes out her book again and when Sunny thinks she's ending the conversation by getting lost in a story, she tears out a blank page from the end of the book and uncaps a pen from a pocket in her flowing tunic. "This is our number." She scrawls six digits and taps them with an elegantly shaped, unpainted nail. "When you feel it's right, give us a call – or pop in, you know where we live"—Sunny chuckles at that because yes, she is all too aware—"and we can set something up."
"Awesome. Thanks, Celeste. Thanks for checking in." After a moment's thought, she tears the piece of paper in half and writes her own number down. "That's me, if you ever want to check up on me without quizzing half of Black Sands and hanging out in a coffee shop on the offchance I'll show up."
Celeste laughs and it's a strangely beautiful sound. "Thank you, Sunny."
"Just beware, I share that phone with a wonderful yet vulgar friend who doesn't know about my whole ... situation."
"Okay. I understand." A smile plays at the corners of her lips as she stands. Sunny stands too, and they are mere inches apart, and when Celeste opens her arms, Sunny hugs her. She smells like incense and tea leaves, not too dissimilar to Delilah, and despite the lines and angles that make up her body, she gives a good hug. A grandmotherly hug. The kind that says nothing can go wrong with me in your life, darling. Sunny has no memory of any of her grandparents (they're all dead now; two were dead before her birth and the other two were hardly a part of her life before they died in 1986) and she wants Astrid and Celeste to take those spots. Her honorary grandmothers.
"I look forward to knowing you more, Sunny," Celeste says. She kisses Sunny's cheek as she pulls away and pulls a shawl over her shoulders. "Goodbye."
"Bye, Celeste. Thanks again." She waves Celeste off and when she returns to her job, checking stock and cleaning the espresso machine that grumbles and grinds twenty-four hours a day, she has a feeling that everything is going to be okay.
She has three more people in her life than she did last week. She is surrounded by so much love.
Her face must be showing it because Michelle eyes her suspiciously and says, "You good, Sunshine? You're looking a little too happy to be working a short-staffed Friday shift."
"Am I not allowed to be happy?"
Michelle narrows her eyes, and then breaks into a laugh. "Oh, I take it you fixed things with your lady?"
Sunny grins. "I think so. I hope so. I'm working on it."
"Good for you." Michelle pats Sunny between the shoulder blades and presses a battered box of little paper sachets into her hands. "Now take this and go refill the sugar, sugar."