Begin Again | ongoing - Chapter 26: Chapter 26

When Sunny gets home at one forty-five on Monday morning, Fenfen is standing outside in a dressing gown, leaning against the wall with a cigarette held loosely between two fingers. She takes a long drag before she notices Sunny, and then exhales in the opposite direction, stubbing out the fag and flicking the butt away.
"Hey, Tenny," she says, sounding tired. Sunny checks her watch in case she's slipped through another crack in the universe because Fenfen is never usually around at this time – she's usually out, or out cold.
"Are you okay?" she asks, stifling a yawn. It was a long and quiet shift, one of those that feels endless because there's not enough going on to fill the time. "What're you doing out here?" She peers at Fenfen, trying to figure out if she looks upset, if she's been crying. In all their time as friends, she's not sure she's ever seen her cry.
"Post-shag smoke," Fenfen says. She tucks a pack of Marlboros and a lighter into her pocket and pulls her long ponytail over her shoulder. Sunny's totally discombobulated and it strikes her that it's because she so rarely sees Fenfen like this – no make-up, no going out clothes. Pyjamas and a bare face, and a man upstairs.
"Is it Luke?"
"Yeah. Ugh. It's horrible." She wrinkles her nose and fiddles with her lighter, her flip-flopped foot nudging a sodden clump of moss.
"What? The sex?"
"No! God, no, the sex is amazing. The feelings are horrible. I'm not used to actually liking a guy but, ugh, my fucking head and heart are like this is a nice guy, Fen, we really like him and want to see him more."
"That's ... good? Isn't it?"
"It's fucking strange." She kicks the moss to the gutter and almost loses her flip-flop. It's way too wet out here for flip-flops. Sunny's wearing her black work trainers and she can feel the rain seeping through the sides, even though it isn't actively raining anymore.
"You've just got to roll with it," she says. "He seems nice"—from the one semi conversation they've had, at least—"and you shouldn't run just because it's new."
As the words leave her mouth she hears how pertinent they are, how much she has needed to hear them this last week. Apparently she knows the answers to her problems, but only if she has to deal with them as other people's issues.
Fenfen sighs. She pushes away from the wall and digs a key out of her pocket. "I know, I know. And I am. Giving him a chance. This is, like, the fifth time he's stayed over."
"Whoa. You're basically married."
She harks a laugh and slings an arm around Sunny's shoulders, pressing a smoky kiss to her cheek, which she only manages because she's on the second step and Sunny's on the pavement, closing their seven-inch height difference. Sunny doesn't mind the waft of tobacco. She's used to it. Her mother's been trying to quit for thirty years, never quite managing to fully kick the habit she developed in the sixties.
"You can talk, Tenny. I was starting to think you'd ditched me for your lady friend. I've seen you more this week than I have in the last few months put together." She jams her key into the lock and twists hard. Holding the key in place, she leans against the door with her shoulder and hip and pushes hard until it pops open. It's the only way to get the door open when it's been raining, the damp swelling the door until it tries to burst out of its frame. Everyone in 3 Jupiter Court knows the ways of the tricky lock, which claims several keys each year.
"Really?"
"Yeah. I know our schedules are pretty conflicting anyway but you spend so much time with lover girl, you've practically moved in with her." She hangs back in the hallway until Sunny's by her side and she loops her arm through the crook of Sunny's elbow. "It's been nice, seeing more of you."
"Sorry, Fen. I didn't even realise."
"I don't blame you. Your girlfriend is one fine specimen." She lets out an exaggerated sigh and says, "I guess it is nice that she makes you so disgustingly happy, but it's also nice to see your sweet little face around here."
They trudge up the three flights of stairs and Fenfen picks another key off her ring to open the door to their flat, and Sunny's taken aback by the powerful scent of incense and scented candles, a couple of which are still alight.
"We wanted to set the mood," Fenfen says, almost singeing her long hair when she leans over the flames to blow them out. "You know, make it atmospheric."
"You certainly did that," Sunny says, looking around at the blanket draped over the sofa, the two empty glasses of wine, the plates piled by the sink. "This looks like a date, Fen. A romantic date. What's got into you?"
"Luke," Fenfen says with a sigh. "He seems to have got into my heart by way of my vagina."
Sunny splutters a laugh and there's a rustle from Fenfen's room. Luke comes out, all six foot two of him, with a fluffy blanket held around his waist (Sunny's fluffy blanket, which she makes a mental reminder to wash thoroughly) and a sly grin on his lips.
"I'm honoured," he says to Fenfen, bending down to kiss her. He's a whole foot taller than her, and he's so beefy – Sunny knows she shouldn't stare but it's hard not to when he's practically naked in front of her, showing off the firm muscles in his arms and the tight definition of his abs and, oh god, is that a bulge in the blanket? Fenfen might be going out for another post-shag smoke before the night is done.
"You might need to make an appointment with your doctor, though," Luke says, his hand on Fenfen's waist.
"Huh?"
"Anatomically speaking, there shouldn't be a direct route from your vagina to your heart. That seems, uh, medically odd?"
Fenfen laughs and pushes his chest. "I hate you," she says, but her expression and her tone don't match her words, and Sunny thinks that might be her friend's distorted way of saying I love you.
Fenfen and Luke go to their room and as Sunny's about to do the same, the phone rings, loud and shrill, and she grabs it off the wall to shut it up. Who the hell calls at two in the morning?
"Hello?"
"I'm just calling to let you know that Ionie is not a murderer. Not yet, anyway."
"Lilah! How was it?" She pulls the phone's cord as far as it will go, just about managing to stretch it to the deep armchair across the room, far more comfortable that one of the three rickety stools at the kitchen counter. That's one small bonus of living in such a small flat. Everything's in reach.
"It was ... well, it wasn't the sort of thing I'd ever choose to do on a date but it was quite fun, actually. I had a good time."
"What'd you do?"
"We played bingo." Delilah laughs and says, "Before you say anything, it was fun. It really was."
Sunny wraps an arm around her legs, her thumb finding a hole in the long sleeve of her top that she fiddles with until it stretches out and she won't be able to wear this top to work anymore. "You went to bingo? Like, that game with the numbers that old people play?"
"Yes."
"That sounds like a weird first date."
"It was unusual. That's what made it fun. Why go for dinner and drinks when you could get competitive with a bunch of old white ladies?"
"And bingo took six hours?"
"Two," Delilah says. "Then we went to the pier. I even went on the rides, Sunny."
"Oh my god. You must really like her."
"Well, no, not yet. But yes, I do find her very attractive and engaging and fun to be around."
Sunny rolls her eyes and says, "Which is Delilah-speak for yes, my dear Sunny, I have a ginormous crush. Next thing you know you're snogging on the second date."
There's silence on the other end of the line. Telling silence. The kind of silence that speaks so loud, Sunny hears every unspoken implication.
"Oh my god, you already snogged, didn't you?" She gasps, trying to keep quiet considering Fenfen's bed is about three metres away with only a thin wall separating her room from the living space.
"There may have been a kiss," Delilah says. "The rain stopped and it wasn't too cold so we bought doughnuts – those delicious greasy ones they sell on the pier – and we walked along the beach. We literally walked from one end to the other."
"That's three miles!"
"I know. And then we realised how far we'd walked and that we'd have to walk back and oh my goodness, Sunny, I thought my legs were going to fall off."
"Not to mention the fact that the end of the beach is a creepy no man's land, aka the perfect place to murder someone and dump their body in the ocean."
"Oh, don't worry, she would never be able to drag me into the sea, dead or alive. I'm easily twice her weight." She laughs and Sunny's heart soars.
Delilah has wasted so many years of her life insecure about her weight, hiding her body under loose-fitting clothes as though that will somehow trick people into thinking she must be thin under all those layers; it wasn't until a few years ago that she managed to get rid of her conviction that no-one will ever love her as a fat woman. It's crazy, really. People love her so fucking much. She is magnetic, majestic, magnificent. She devastates boys when she tells them she's a lesbian and she has queer girls marvelling at her, falling at her feet in the hopes she will look down and see them there.
"Did you only just get home?" Sunny looks out of the window to see that it's raining again, a light spitting that will no doubt become a torrent on her roof. "It's after two!"
"You can't talk, Sunny. You and Viv are the queens of ridiculously long dates." She yawns, which sets Sunny off, who is now wondering just how many ridiculously long dates she and Viv have had in order to be crowned the queens. Even though she's feeling a lot better about this life and she's trusting destiny, she still feels off balance when she hears things like that, things that make her question what she's missed.
"We got a taxi back to my flat and she came up for a while; we had a glass of wine," Delilah says, her voice a song of nonchalance. "She left about half an hour ago and there may have been a kiss on the doorstep." Sunny can hear the smile in her voice; she can picture Delilah's plump cheeks glowing and her dark eyes shining. "It was nice. It felt right."
"Sounds like a great night. Are you gonna see her again?"
"Of course," Delilah says with an are you kidding me? kind of tone. "I'm a romantic, darling, you know me. I want love and happiness and security. I want a girlfriend. I want ... well, I want what you and Viv have."
Had, Sunny thinks. Because whatever way you look at it, whatever she and Viv had before the fourteenth of April is lost to the gallows. Will have again, she thinks a moment later. Because when she closes her eyes and takes a look inside herself, poking around in her head and peeping at her heart, every fibre of her is reaching out for this pink-haired woman.
It's two thirty by the time Sunny crawls into her bed after a quick blast of a hot shower, with Viv on her mind. When she closes her eyes, Viv is there; Sunny recalls the electricity of her touch, the way her skin tingled when Viv's fingertips brushed her arm, and she is filled with a rare sensation that sets her heart racing fast and turns her cheeks into hot pink pillows. It isn't an unfamiliar feeling, but never before has it been attached to a person.
Arousal is a strange thing for Sunny. She hasn't pinned it down long enough to explore it but she knows her experience of it doesn't match what she hears about, what she reads about. When she looks at a beautiful woman she doesn't feel a pull of sexual attraction, not at first – that's something that grows, something that unfolds over time. She doesn't imagine herself in bed with every woman she develops a crush on; she doesn't really develop crushes, because how can she be attracted to someone without knowing them? It doesn't make sense to her.
When her body is infiltrated by desire, it is not usually attached to a person, but a feeling – Sunny does get horny, sometimes uncomfortably, insatiably so, but it bears no relation to people she knows. It's just an urge she has to get rid of, and she has mastered the art of an orgasm in five minutes or less. Sometimes she'll pick up one of her favourite steamy romances and skip to a bookmarked smut-filled chapter to aid her along, but she doesn't picture herself in that position when she reads a sex scene, and she hasn't pinned down the specifics of what gets her going. It just is. She tries not to question it too much because she doesn't understand her sexuality but she gets it enough to know how to get off when she needs to, and so far that's all she's needed. It's only ever been her.
But now there's Viv.
As much as she knows Viv is objectively beautiful, a goddess walking amongst mere mortals, only now does she feel that steady pulse deep beneath her skin, the slow-burning embers of her lust. It rears its head out of nowhere as she pulls on a t-shirt and bottoms and burrows under the duvet, wet and cold from her shower; she rolls onto her side and thinks about Viv, about their hug on the beach, about her smile, and she feels a tingle between her legs.
It's strange. Exciting. A bit unnerving. It's the first time in more than two decades of this life that she has thought of a person and her body has responded like that. On instinct, she reaches into the bottom drawer of the chest by her bed and pulls out an erotic novel, fingering the pages until she finds the ones she knows best – but as she reads, as her heart rate ticks higher before she has even slipped her hand under her waistband, her mind wanders to Viv. The scene is a typical raunchy, graphic sex scene between a straight couple, but the man is a blur (Sunny never cares about the men or their pleasure in the books she reads) and the woman – the woman is Viv.
It doesn't put her off.
If anything, it spurs her on until she has worked herself into a frenzy and she forgets that she and Fenfen share a wall when she comes with a bed-shaking shudder and a strangled gasp, panting as she comes down from the high. She doesn't care that she shares a wall with Fenfen, especially when she hears the tell-tale sound of Luke and her going for round two a few minutes later.
Lying there in her post-orgasmic daze, she can't organise her thoughts. It's like her mind is a box of bouncy balls that she's shaken around and tipped upside down, the balls scattering in every which way.
That was new, she thinks. Is this the sort of thing she should tell Viv? She's not well-versed in relationships; she has no idea if that's the sort of thing she should share with her girlfriend. Hi honey, just thought I should let you know that I thought about you while I masturbated last night! Ravi will probably know the answer. It's nothing that they haven't shared with each other before.
The scattered thoughts don't play on her mind for long, though, because her orgasm acts as strongly and swiftly as a sleeping pill – within minutes, her eyelids are drooping, her body sagging into the mattress. Ten minutes after her first climax in at least a month, she's out like a light with a smile on her face.