Begin Again | ongoing - Chapter 27: Chapter 27

"So, I think I might have had a sexual breakthrough," Sunny says as she drops onto Ravi's sofa with a flump at ten past four, that sliver of a sweet spot when he has just got back from working at the record shop and she has thirty minutes before she needs to leave for her shift at Percolatte.
"Holy shit. Did you and Viv have sex?"
"No. Not in this lifetime, anyway," she says. At Fraser's slightly confused expression, she explains. "Yes, we've had sex at some point in the fourteen months of our relationship but not in the, like, two weeks that I've been around for. If that makes sense."
"Weirdly enough, it does." He sits down on the armchair and pushes a beer across the table to Ravi. "Anyway, go on. As you were saying?"
Sunny recounts the date and how she realised she might just possibly, maybe, be falling in love with Viv (for the second time) – at which Fraser grins and makes a happy little sound, and Ravi fondly rolls his eyes because of course Sunny's in love with Viv, she'd be crazy not to be – and then she gets to last night. This morning? She can never decide if the night ends at midnight or when she goes to bed, because those are very different boundaries.
"I was feeling horny, which is rare enough," she says, the boys unfazed by her oversharing because they have shared everything since they were eighteen, "so I was like, perfect, I'll flick the bean and it'll put me to sleep, kill two birds with one stone."
"Naturally," Fraser says, nodding seriously.
"But then I was reading my smut and I kept picturing Viv," she says, her cheeks going pink at the thought. "And it wasn't a turn-off or anything. It kinda ... made it better? And then I felt slightly guilty for thinking about her while I was touching myself, but I also felt good. Really good. Is that weird?" She blurts it all out shamelessly and looks up for the boys' reactions, eyebrows raised.
"That's not weird at all," Ravi says. "At least, I don't think so. I think it's pretty normal to think of the person you're dating when you do that." He shrugs and tips his head at Fraser and says, "I'm almost always thinking of him when I have a wank."
"Um, excuse me? Only almost always?" Fraser plants a hand over his chest and feigns indignation. "I want to be the only one you wank over."
"You're the only one I've ever wanked over," Ravi says. Sunny holds up a hand when she senses the conversation veering off in a totally different direction.
"Do I tell Viv?" she asks. "This is all virgin territory for me." She sits on her hands to stop herself from fidgeting and overthinks how much eye contact she's making, tearing her gaze away from Ravi to look at the plant in the middle of the table. Unlike Delilah's botanical paradise, there is only one plant here and it always looks like it's teetering on the cusp of death, its leaves turning brown and curling in on themselves as though they're cringing away from the light, towards the dusty, dehydrated soil.
"Do you want to tell Viv?" Fraser asks.
"I don't know. It feels like a big step. You know, feeling that way about her. That doesn't come easy to me." Pulling her bottom lip between her teeth, she digs in until it hurts, trying to decipher how she feels. She's had fourteen hours to figure it out but it's still murky and she's confused and she wishes sex wasn't such a big deal to the world because it's making her overthink something that most people probably don't even think twice about.
"Babe." Ravi drapes an arm around her shoulders and pulls her closer, so she's tucked under the nook of his armpit. "I hate to say it but you're the only one who knows Viv in that way. Only you can know if you want to tell her."
"But is it a weird thing to tell someone?"
"Well." Ravi purses his lips. "Personally, if Fraser told me he jacked off thinking about me last night..." He taps his chin as he trails off, looking pensive. "I think I'd want to jump his bones right then and there."
"So it's sexy? Not weird?"
Ravi laughs and cuddles her closer. "I love you so much, Sunny Shelley. You're so cute."
"And clueless."
"Inexperienced," he corrects, "and that isn't to say that lack of experience is a problem. You've got to do what makes you happy. Don't worry about anyone else. Do what you want to do. If I were Viv, I'd be flattered, because it means that you're attracted to her."
"Which has never happened before."
Fraser sips his beer straight from the bottle and says, "Maybe you just need a bit more time to get to know someone before you can find them attractive. That's not weird. There are so many layers to sexuality and sexual attraction and I bet anyone who says they've got it all figured out is a liar, or they're so confused they don't even know they're lost."
That makes Sunny feel better. She relaxes her posture and lets out a heavy breath, taking a moment to think about what she wants, rather than what other people might expect from her. The three of them sit in a comfortable silence for a couple of minutes while she addresses her thoughts, cupping her hands to gather enough of the bouncy balls to piece together a feeling.
In a moment of gentle clarity, like the sun slowly rising through the fog, she realises that yes, she wants Viv to know. Their relationship has been through the ringer since Sunny found out about it, and the least she can do is clue her in to what's going on in her head, how fast her heart races when she thinks of her. This is one of so many firsts that are bombarding her of late and after the way she treated Viv for the first week, she figures she owes her this much. And if it's weird, well ... it'll be too late by then.
"John Stamos," Ravi says after a while, puncturing the peace.
"What?" Fraser knocks the lip of his beer against his teeth when he lets out a surprised chuckle.
"It's almost always you I think about," he explains. "Sometimes it's John Stamos."
"Oh." Fraser's bafflement turns to amusement. "Okay, I can let that slide. Understandable."
Even Sunny can understand that and she has never been attracted to a man in her life.
At bang on nine o'clock on Tuesday night, Viv turns up to Percolatte while Sunny's serving a woman in nurse scrubs with heavy bags under her eyes, who sounds desperately grateful when she thanks Sunny for her drinks. She's ordered a medium flat white in a large to-go cup and a double espresso; as she leaves, she tips the espresso into the flat white and swallows an enormous, scorching mouthful before the door has even swung shut.
"Long day?" Viv asks Sunny, nodding at the woman. "Or is she just starting?"
"Haven't a clue," Sunny says, setting the espresso shot glasses to one side to clean later, because Viv is far more important than her job. She beams at her. "Hello to you too. Long time no see."
It has only been three days since their date on Saturday, but it feels like an age considering Sunny's revelations in that time.
Viv cracks a grin. "Hi." She lets her bag drop from her shoulder. "I brought fish and chips and it's not even leftovers because I couldn't be bothered to cook tonight, so this is straight from the chippy." She looks over Sunny's shoulder to catch Michelle's eye and says, "Mind if I steal my girl from you for half an hour?"
"Steal away," Michelle says, waving them off. They're in for another typically quiet shift, the kind where they end up creating work for themselves just to have something to do. Yesterday Michelle decided to rearrange the way the cups and plates are stacked, only to come in for today's shift to find that during the day, Gina had put everything back where it used to be.
Sunny sheds her apron in the back room and pulls on a cardigan because it's still cold outside from a few days of rain, the heat of the coffee machines and the dishwasher and the toastie maker pleasant for once. She flops onto the sofa next to Viv, their thighs pressed together, and there it is again. That tingle. The one that feels like a fire at the base of her spine that creeps in every direction – up her back and to her groin, all the way down to her toes.
But she can't blurt it out now, here, with Michelle a few metres away. The last thing she needs is for her colleague to hear what she's been getting up to in the bedroom. So she settles for gratitude for the food and for Viv's company, biting into a fat chip that she dips in mushy peas.
"Can I come over to yours tonight?" she asks, because she knows it was a ritual they built, but it's not one she's experienced. She and Viv haven't shared the night yet and that's another big step, even if it means nothing more than sleeping in the same bed, which she does all the time with her friends. But there's no sexual tension between her and her friends. Sure, she sleeps next to Delilah all the time, but she's never masturbated thinking of her.
"I'd love that," Viv says, pausing with a chip halfway to her mouth. "There's no pressure, though. Just because it used to be a routine doesn't me—"
"I want to," Sunny says. "We've got to finish our grand Monopoly tournament."
"Oh my god, you want to do that tonight?"
"Absolutely." She stuffs too large a chip in her mouth and almost chokes. Her face is red when she swallows and tries to play it off. "We don't have work in the morning, we can stay up all night, baby."
"You'll live to regret it."
With a wrinkled nose and a casual shrug, Sunny says, "Nah. Don't think so. I'm gonna win."
"Is there a loser's forfeit?" Viv tears open a couple of salt packets and shakes them liberally over the chips before loading up her fork with a little of everything: crispy battered fish; a fat chip; a scoop of mushy peas.
"Ravi told me that the original deal was that the loser had to buy dinner but seeing as we're doing this out of order"—she gestures at the Styrofoam container she's eating out of—"we'll have to figure out something else." She wipes a dollop of mayonnaise off her chin with her thumb and smears it on her next chip, which she dunks in a puddle of vinegar.
"Considering I had to buy you dinner last time, I think it's only fair you buy me dinner this time," Viv counters.
"Except I'm not gonna lose, so..."
"Babe, you were this close to bankruptcy." She holds her fingers a fraction of a millimetre apart. "The second we whip the board out, you're going down."
"If I recall correctly, you said we were pretty even, actually. Which means it's anyone's game." Then, under her breath, she says, "Which means I'll win."
Viv pushes her with the back of her hand and even that lightest of touches sets Sunny's heart aflame. She can feel her pulse in her temple; she can hear the rush of blood in her ears as a potent blush forces its way onto her cheeks, turning them seven shades of blotchy red. At least the café's night lighting does her a favour. After nine o'clock, some of the lights are turned off and the rest are dimmed to a soft, atmospheric glow that lures people in, somewhere to while the night away.
Viv points and swallows and says, "That's the face of a person who knows they're dead wrong."
It's the face of a person in love with you, Sunny thinks. The words pop up in garish neon at the forefront of her thoughts, a giant flashing sign that dares not to be noticed, but she tries to dull it down for now. She's got three and a half hours left on her shift and she doesn't feel she's spent enough time with Viv to be feeling like this yet. Unless there's an unconscious sharing of emotions between her parallel lives; some part of her brain hangs onto whatever feelings she lost when she fell through time and all she has to do is trust it.
Trusting her own brain is easier said than done. Sometimes she's convinced she has two minds often at war with each other, fighting for her attention – which then makes her wonder what makes her her, if she considers her brain to be something capable of betraying her. That's the kind of mindfuck she can do without, so she shakes off the thought and focuses instead on her supper.
And on Viv, who is reclined on the sofa with her knees crossed, her foot grazing Sunny's calf. Viv, whose arm is draped across the back of the sofa, her fingers absently playing with the strands of Sunny's hair that have fallen out of her pathetic attempt at a ponytail. Sunny leans into the touch, inclining her head towards Viv, until the soft line of her jaw touches the back of Viv's hand and she lets her head rest there. Viv curls a straight purple lock around her fingertip and lets it go, over and over. Sunny lifts her head an infinitesimal amount, enough to raise her eyes to meet her girlfriend's gaze and fall into the depths of those coffee-bean eyes. Neither of them speak a word but they hold each other's gaze for long enough that not a word needs to be spoken.
"Loser has to give the winner a massage," Sunny says at last. The moment is broken. It cracks further when Viv laughs and pulls away, her hand returning to her wooden fork to spear another chip.
"Better start oiling up those hands then," she says. "They're about to be all over me."
Sunny swallows hard.