Begin Again | ongoing - Chapter 29: Chapter 29

Sunny half expects to be pushed up against the door, based on the look in Viv's eyes, and she's surprised how okay she is with that. If Viv kissed her right now, she wouldn't mind at all. But Viv goes to the kitchen and puts the kettle on, a couple of cups clanging when she manoeuvres them off the mug tree.
"This whole time, I've been terrified that we'll never find what we had before," she says. The words come out quiet, her face turned away from Sunny as she pops the lid off a blue ceramic jar, releasing the unmistakeable scent of coffee grounds. There is no instant coffee here: Viv is a percolator girl, and a precise one at that. She moves a chopping board to unveil a set of scales into which she measures eighteen grams of coffee. Sunny is fascinated by the routine, her eyes glued to Viv's hands as she pours the grounds into the coffee basket and adds water to the lower chamber.
Viv doesn't turn around until she has lit the flame on the hob and set the coffee on top, at which point she leans against the sink, hands curled over the lip of the countertop. "It's been really hard," she says. "I keep trying to tell myself that everything's fine, but it's not. It's been ... well, you know. It's been fucking weird. Ever since that day at your parents' house, I've been trying to prepare myself for all of this falling apart." She spreads her hands wide then lets them drop to her thighs.
Sunny doesn't know what to do, or if she should say anything, but she gets the sense Viv has more to say so she crosses the kitchen to perch on the table, her socked feet on a chair.
"We were going in the right direction. We were on the same page and we were so close to moving in together and then you told me that you didn't remember me and..." She trails off and there's a hitch in her breath, a shine in her eyes. Oh fuck, she's going to cry. Sunny doesn't know what to do. Other people's emotions intimidate her; her own are confusing enough.
"I've been psyching myself up for the day you tell me you can't make this work and you walk away," Viv says. Her voice wobbles and Sunny launches herself off the table because she can't just sit here and watch her girlfriend cry, even if she doesn't know how to fix that without launching into verbal diarrhoea.
"I'm making it work," she urges. "It's working. The last thing I want to do is hurt you, Viv. You deserve so much better than me but I can't stop thinking about you. I love you, even if sometimes that kind of feels like my heart is being squeezed by a gorilla 'cause I don't really know what to do with these feelings? But I'm not going anywhere."
"What you just said out there," Viv says, "hearing you say that, that made me realise that we're going to be okay." She sniffs and wipes her eyes and then laughs as she says, "That was hot."
"Really?"
"Very."
Sunny looks down at herself, in her crumpled work uniform that she wants to get out of after nine hours, her hair pulled off her face and in need of a wash; she thinks about the awkward, bumbling way she just admitted to getting off to the thought of her girlfriend. Nothing about that screams hot to her. But who is she to argue with that?
"I try," she jokes, and she steps closer to Viv until their elbows meet, and Sunny slips her arms around her waist, pulling her into a hug so intimate that their bodies seem to melt together. They are hip to hip, chest to chest, chin to shoulder, Viv's thighs sandwiched between Sunny's.
"I love you so much," Viv says, "and the thought of losing you is unbearable. I hate not spending every day with you. I hate waking up on my own." She buries her face in Sunny's neck and takes a shuddery breath. Sunny feels the damp of her girlfriend's tears on her neck.
"I want to wake up with you," she murmurs, tightening her hold on Viv. "But I do have one question."
Viv freezes. She pulls away. "What?"
"Why are you making coffee at two o'clock in the morning?"
"Because we've got a game of Monopoly to finish and if I don't have a coffee right now, I'm not sure I'll make it to the end of the game." She reaches past Sunny to open the fridge and takes out blue top milk; from a spice rack behind the kettle she plucks a pot of whole cinnamon sticks; from a drawer beneath the oven, she pulls out a small saucepan.
"What're you doing?"
"Making co— wait, you've never had the Viv special, have you?"
"Not to my recollection," Sunny says. "But it looks like it has cinnamon, so I'm sure I'll like it."
"It should probably be called the Sunny special, seeing as I invented it for you," Viv says. "You know, before we met, I never had anything but a splash of milk in my coffee. Then you came along and changed everything." Turning on another hob, she fills the pan with creamy full fat milk and drops in three cinnamon sticks, moving it over the heat as the milk comes to the boil and slowly infuses.
"The Sunny special? I like the sound of that." The words come out quiet, slipping through Sunny's smile. Warmth blossoms in her chest as she watches the love that Viv pours into every movement, slowly stirring the milk and checking the percolator.
"Because Sunny's special," she says.
"Sunny's a bit of a twat," Sunny says, "but she's trying."
"Sunny sounds like a bit of a twat right now," Viv agrees. "Viv isn't sure about the whole third person thing."
A coy grin twitches its way onto Sunny's lips as she says, "Sunny's sorry."
Viv throws a tea towel at her, which she catches and slings over her shoulder like a barmaid in a western film.
"The Monopoly board's in the drawer under the telly," Viv says. "There's a pad on the coffee table with all the details of where we left off. You get it set up and I'll make coffee and then I'll defeat you in ten rounds or less."
"Impossible."
"Fuck this fucking shit, I hate this dumb stupid capitalistic cunt of a game." Sunny scowls as she counts her cash – a pile of ones and fives – and mortgages the last of her properties, which is nowhere near enough to pay the debt she owes Viv.
"Actually, I'm pretty sure it was invented as a critique of capitalism. Now pay up," Viv crows, holding out an elegant hand for everything that Sunny owns. "I think I just won."
"I can come back from this," she growls to herself, grimacing at the sea of red in front of her. She's mortgaged up to the hilt, all of her houses and hotels sold to pay the bills from the last time she landed on Viv's property, with no wiggle room.
"Babe, you literally have nothing. You are out of the game. There is literally no way forward for you with no money and zero assets to your name." Viv places an imaginary crown atop her hair. "You may call me queen. Bow to me, Sunshine."
With a grumble, Sunny gets up off the floor (the sofa wasn't close enough to the board and she didn't want to miss a thing) and as she collects up their mugs, she gives a sarcastic bow.
"Congratulations, my queen. You win the spikiest massage of your life." Hooking the mugs over her thumbs, she curls her fingers like claws.
"Now, now, don't be a sore loser." Viv winks and says, "It sounds like you can't wait to have your hands all over me."
Sunny blushes. It's a painful kind of blush, where her face is so hot and red that it itches and she can feel her ears. She can never feel her ears. Not unless they're bright as a beacon. She turns away and washes the mugs in the sink, running her hands under cold water to cool herself down.
"I have one request," Viv says as she counts out her money at the end of the game. She pays to unmortgage Sunny's properties even though the game is over, just because she can.
"What?"
"Can I save the massage for another time? Perhaps when you're less ill-inclined towards me? Perhaps sometime other than four in the morning."
Sunny isn't ill-inclined towards Viv. Not really. She is a sore loser, but she's also tired and the game has gone on for a long time and it was clear ninety minutes ago that she was going to lose, but she'd rather crash out entirely than surrender when she still has a dollar to her name.
"It's yours whenever you want it," she says, upturning the mugs on the draining board and drying her hands on the tea towel still draped over her shoulder. She slinks back to the sofa and flops down next to Viv, tentatively lifting her legs to tuck her feet under a cushion – she isn't sure what the rules are here, if this is a no-feet-on-the-sofa kind of flat – and she rests her head on Viv's shoulder, closing her eyes when the adrenaline of the game wears off and she can feel a caffeine crash coming on.
"You smell like a Christmas candle," she murmurs.
Viv twists her head to sniff her shoulder; she pulls at the neck of her top to smell the fabric. "Must be the cinnamon," she says. She rests her head on top of Sunny's, a curl falling in Sunny's face. It brushes her nose, tickling her cheek.
"Does this count as our second date?" Sunny asks. She found out from Ravi that date number two was simple – a long, long coffee date followed by a walk around town.
"Hmm. Well, I suppose so. Yes. Not quite the same as the original but all the components are there." Viv's hand finds Sunny's thigh and rests there, a patch of warmth like a dappled spot of sun on a forest floor. "Good coffee and a walk and the company of a beautiful girl."
Sunny does not think of herself as beautiful. She feels that word is better suited to people like Viv. Cute suits her better. Adorable, maybe. The kinds of words people use for chubby-faced babies and funny cats. But it makes her feel all warm and snuggly inside.
"Date number three might have to wait a while," Viv says.
"Why?"
"Because we went to Fraser's exhibition and I don't think he has any more planned for the near future."
"I ... I don't know. I don't think so. He hasn't mentioned any," Sunny says, but she hasn't spent much time with Fraser recently and how can she know she hasn't forgotten about an upcoming show?
He needs to have an exhibition because she wants the third date. She wants to kiss Viv on the beach. It's a foreign desire that ripples through her until it's so tangled up in her organs that she doesn't know how to separate it from herself.
"Maybe I'll have to hire a space for him to show his work," she sleepily says.
"The message I'm receiving is that you'd go to great lengths to recreate our third date," Viv says with a coy smile. "Is there a specific moment you want to experience?" She trails a finger over Sunny's shoulder. Goosebumps erupt up and down her arms and when Sunny turns her head, her eyes meet Viv's, and she's locked in that intense gaze.
Sunny doesn't know what to say. The answer is, she knows, yes. Yes, I want to kiss you. But she doesn't know how to say it. She figured it'd be easier to recreate history and wait until the end of date number three, walking along the pier, to make her move. But Viv is right here; their thighs are pressed together on the sofa and Viv's arm is around her shoulders and her heart's aflame.
"I loved that you recreated our first date," Viv says, "but I don't think we need to follow history to the letter to move forward. We've been handed a blank slate, whether we like it or not. Our second first kiss doesn't have to taste like salt and vinegar and fish." She quietly laughs and leans closer, so close that Sunny can feel two heartbeats. "It could taste like cinnamon."
And that's it. That does it. Sunny leans in and closes her eyes and her heart jumps into her throat when her lips touch Viv's. It isn't for the first time, not even in this life, but this is the one Sunny will remember. Heart pounding, cinnamon and coffee fighting to be the dominant flavour that lingers, hands fumbling to find purchase somewhere, anywhere – her fingers end up on the soft curve of Viv's neck; Viv's hands have dropped to Sunny's waist.
"I don't know what I'm doing," Sunny says in a quick murmur when they pull apart and she finds herself breathless, her lungs seizing for the duration of the kiss.
"You're doing great," Viv whispers, squeezing Sunny's waist. She lifts one hand to the back of her neck, fingers raking through fine purple hair as their lips meet again and Sunny kicks herself for every moment like this that she has missed. She wants to be wrapped in Viv's arms; she wants to be devoured.
"I love you," she says. She's said it before but now she says it with urgency, like it is this burning weight she has to throw off her shoulders. "I'm in love with you. Fucking hell, Viv, I love you."
Viv cups her cheek and kisses her again; she kisses the tip of her nose and the space between her eyebrows and her cheek and the soft line of her jaw and back to her lips. "I love you too, Sunshine," she whispers, pressing her forehead to Sunny's.
They stay like that for a while, neither wanting to tear into the moment. But it's ridiculously late and despite the coffee, they're ridiculously tired, and for the first time in all the lives Sunny can remember, she gets into bed with her girlfriend.