Begin Again | ongoing - Chapter 28: Chapter 28

They hold hands on the way to Viv's flat. It's well after one in the morning and after waiting fifteen minutes for a bus that didn't show, they decided to suck it up and walk the mile, and Sunny's glad now because it's an excuse to walk with entwined fingers, their heights a perfect match. She initiated it: after they left the main street that runs through Black Sands like an artery, she slipped her hand into Viv's to see if it felt right and it did. It does. It's late Tuesday, early Wednesday, so there aren't many people out on the cobbled lanes that string the pubs together like Christmas lights. They own the road.
Until they don't.
Sunny's first thought is that they're a target. A couple of lesbians with bright hair, holding hands in the middle of the night. One side of her brain tells her to drop Viv's hand, like that'll make it any safer, but the other side is louder, the side that tells her to hold on tighter. Viv squeezes her hand in return and eases her to the other side of the road, away from the two dark shadows approaching from the other direction.
Sunny's heart is in her throat until the black-clad pair step under a streetlight and their pale faces are illuminated, the light bouncing off white-grey hair. They are not a threat, not a pair of louts who might turn hostile. They are Astrid and Celeste, dressed in swathes of black material, Astrid using an umbrella like a cane. Viv gives them a wary look but Sunny waves when Celeste raises a hand in acknowledgement, crossing the road towards them.
"Do you know them?" Viv asks, her lips so close to Sunny's ear that she can feel warm breath against that soft patch of skin where her lobe meets her jaw.
"Yeah, they're my friends," Sunny says. She's not sure it's the right word but it's the easiest way to sum up the strange relationship she has with a couple of octogenarian lesbians. Perhaps mentors would suit better, though she hasn't seen them as much as she probably should have.
"Sunny!" Astrid beams when recognition hits. She pulls Sunny into a warm hug as though they've met more than once. Granted, it was the kind of meeting that binds people, the kind that only needs to happen once in order to form a unique kind of connection. Sunny bared her soul to these women within minutes of meeting them, so the hug feels nice. She leans into it, breathing in Astrid's scent. While Celeste is expensive perfume and posh lipstick, Astrid is cotton and lilies, a light and sweet aroma that mixes with the sea air to create the kind of fragrance that people pay richly to own as a candle.
"What're you doing out so late, darling?" Celeste asks, a hand on Sunny's elbow. It gives her a nice, safe feeling, having these elderly women looking out for her and caring about her.
"We're celebrating the witching hour," she jokes.
"That's not for another ninety minutes," Astrid says, checking her watch. Sunny refrains from pointing out that saying stuff like that is why people think she and Celeste are witches. Maybe they are. Stranger things have happened.
"My shift finished at one," she says. "We're heading home."
Astrid turns her attention to Viv, appraising her with a friendly smile. "This must be the girlfriend," she says, and Sunny's not sure if it's a figment of her imagination but she's pretty sure Astrid just winked at her.
"Yeah, this is Viv," she says. "Viv, this is Astrid and her"—she pauses then, not sure of the terminology they use—"partner, Celeste."
Neither of them object to the word so she figures it's all right. Girlfriend doesn't seem like the right word past a certain age, though Sunny's not sure if that's just her being ageist.
"Nice to meet you," Viv says, painting on a people pleasing smile.
"You two make such a beautiful couple," Astrid says, and she gives Sunny a knowing look when she adds, "It seems the universe knows what it's doing, don't you think?"
"Oh!" Viv cries out when recognition hits. She has heard the names before, though now it feels like forever ago that she and Sunny sat on the bench in the Shelleys' garden and Sunny spilled every detail of what happened to her. "You have the well, don't you?"
A twitch of a smile tugs at Celeste's lips. "I'm glad you told her."
"It would've been hard not to," Sunny says. She can't believe she ever entertained the idea of trying to keep it a secret from Viv that she had no recollection of her. How the hell would she have managed that? She can't even manage her current feelings, let alone juggling those with the ones she was supposed to already feel.
"Sunny can't lie," Viv says. Her arm slips around Sunny, her hand coming to rest on that ridiculously sensitive strip of her waist. Sunny tries not to flinch away but it's hard when she's so damn ticklish and that is just the right spot to drive her crazy. "Her poker face is, well . . . let's just say she's never won a round."
Which tells Sunny they've played poker together. Which tells her she must have learnt at some point in the last year because she sure as hell has no idea what the rules are now.
"I share your struggle," Astrid says to Sunny with a wistful sigh. "My face has a nasty habit of betraying my every feeling."
Celeste's demure smile grows and, to Viv, she says, "You may tease, but it's a wonderful quality in a lover."
"Celeste!" Astrid cries out. Sunny watches them, struggling to believe that they are more than thrice her age. It makes her smile. She wants what they have. She wants to grow old gracefully and in love, embracing her greys and her girl.
This is so surreal, she thinks. It's half past one on a Wednesday morning and she's standing in the middle of a street full of lesbians – the one she's dating and the two who are responsible, in a roundabout kind of way, for her relationship – and she feels safe.
"We should have supper sometime," she blurts out, remembering what Celeste said when she came to Percolatte the other day. She wants to bring it up before someone else does and makes it clear that she never mentioned it to Viv. Not because she doesn't want to, of course, but because they're still finding their feet. This is still brand new to her.
"Absolutely," Viv says, much to Sunny's relief.
"Oh, that would be wonderful," Celeste says. She, unlike Astrid, has a perfect poker face – there isn't the slightest hint that this was her idea first. "That would be far more appropriate than communing in the streets in the middle of the night."
"How about next Wednesday? That's the only time we're both free," Sunny says. She looks to Viv, to give her a get-out clause in case she isn't feeling it. "Are you free next week?"
"It's good for me."
"We'd love that." Astrid beams, dimpling her plump cheeks. "You should come over to ours, I'll make a fish pie. Do you eat fish? Celeste is a pescatarian so we don't eat meat in the house, I'm afraid."
It's impossible not to smile at this bumbling old woman with her mad curls and her soft enthusiasm.
"I love fish pie," Viv says.
Sunny nods. "Me too."
"Shall we say seven?"
"We'll be there."
"How wonderful," Celeste says. "Now, you girls get home. It's no time for pretty young things like you to be out and about in the dark."
As they go their separate ways, Sunny wonders what on earth they are doing out at this time, but it's too late. Astrid and Celeste have turned a corner already.
"I like them," Viv says. They reach the end of the road and take a left towards Seville Crescent. "They seem a bit nutty. Well, Astrid does, at least. Celeste is ... regal."
"They're our future," Sunny jokes. "You can be the elegant and regal one and I'll be the short nutty one."
"You're five foot nine, Sunny."
"I'm shorter than you."
"Only by an inch!"
"It's all relative."
Viv tuts and rolls her eyes and then looks at Sunny and says, "So you think we'll still be together in our eighties?"
"I hope so," Sunny says. It comes out so cavalier because what she's thinking is that it would be an extraordinary waste of the universe's resources to thrust her into a relationship that won't even last. This has to be the real deal; this has to be the one. Because if this isn't, if she and Viv break up, then she will be back to square one. This will have all been for naught.
But when the words leave her lips, she realises they sound bigger than that. They sound like the promise of forever.
And that doesn't scare her. Not really.
They're still half a mile from Viv's flat. Their hands are still clasped. They're walking fast; they'll be inside soon, and that will be a better place to have this conversation, but Sunny finds the words spilling out before she has analysed each one.
"You're gonna have to bear with me on this one because I know it'll be strange to hear, seeing as to you I've already said this before, probably, but this is all fresh to me," she says, looking straight ahead as she walks, swinging her hand with Viv's. "This has all been so unconventional for me and super fucking weird but I have never felt about anyone the way I feel about you, which is crazy because it hasn't even been two weeks but also, like, it's obviously been longer? But it hasn't." She lets out a frustrated groan and shakes her head because she knows she isn't making sense, but Viv doesn't push her. She's patient, giving Sunny the space she needs to figure out what she's saying.
"I've never fallen in love before so it's weird and new and sometimes it feels like what I imagine a heart attack feels like?" Sunny laughs at herself and sighs. "It's intense. Big. Scary. Exciting." She squeezes Viv's hand and says, "I thought about you when I, uh, touched myself the other day," she says. "That's new. And I'm not sure it's even the sort of thing I should tell you because you'll probably find it weird, but—"
"It's not weird," Viv says, speaking for the first time in a few minutes. "Nothing you've just said is weird in any way, Sunny. It's ... relieving. You ... did you say you've never fallen in love before? As in, you're falling now?"
Sunny thinks back over what she's just said. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm falling in love with you."
"And you think about me."
"All the time."
"In bed. Alone."
"Mmhmm. Sorry if that's too much information."
"It isn't."
They reach Seville Crescent. Viv gets her keys out and as she jangles them, searching for the right one (why she has so many keys, Sunny has no idea why but right now she doesn't particularly care), she says, "I think I'd like a bit more information actually."
"Really?" Sunny's standing on the step below, widening their height difference.
"Yeah. I need to hear this." Viv opens the door and they trail up two flights.
"So it's not weird that I thought about you?" Sunny asks, using the handrail to tug herself up the stairs. At the top, Viv unlocks her flat and turns around, standing in the doorway.
"I think about you too," she says, a casual shoulder leaning against the door frame, her legs crossed at the ankle. There's a light on in the flat behind her, shining through her curls to give her an angelic glow. Sunny's knees go weak. She has to steady herself against the wall. "Tell me," Viv says. There's a heat in her eyes, like this is all she has wanted.
And maybe it is. Because this, at last, is confirmation that her girlfriend likes her. That she loves her. That all has not been lost to the time vortex.
So, standing there in the hallway, Sunny tells her every moment of what happened when she got home from Sunday's shift. It's awkward at first, talking about her arousal and the smutty book she was reading, but the hunger in Viv's eyes compels her, so she leans into her furiously blushing cheeks and tries to hold eye contact as she says exactly what she felt.
What she did.
When she's done, Viv takes her hand and pulls her into the flat.