Begin Again | ongoing - Chapter 30: Chapter 30

There is no better way to wake up on a Wednesday morning, two days off stretching ahead of her, than to the smell of coffee and the warmth soft sun pouring through the window when Viv opens the curtain. Light dapples the duvet and the coffee smell intensifies when the mattress dips where Viv is sitting on the edge with a tray on her lap. Not just coffee, but breakfast too – toast and orange juice and a bowl of fruit, and even a glass acting as a vase holding a few flower clippings.
"Wakey wakey," she says, bending over to press a kiss to Sunny's forehead.
Sunny doesn't like mornings but she could get used to this. She sits up and yawns and asks, "Breakfast in bed?"
"Nope. This is just my way of luring you to the table."
"Oh."
"I'm kidding." She scoots back to her space next to Sunny and swings her legs onto the bed, nestling the tray in the space between them. Sunny slurps her coffee more inelegantly than she intends to and bites into a crisp, buttery slice of toast with a crunch.
"Fuck, is there anything better than buttered toast?" She groans and takes another bite, butter dribbling down her chin.
Viv watches her, eyebrows raised, and says, "Sometimes you test the limit of my love."
"If your love is more tested by a buttery face than the fact that I literally forgot our entire relationship then I think that's a you problem," Sunny says. Viv laughs.
"Fair enough." She crosses her feet at the ankle and sinks back against her puffed up pillows, her shoulder against Sunny's. They are a picture of sapphic bliss, their little fingers finding each other in the dip of the duvet between their thighs.
The moment is perfect. Until the phone rings and it's all the way across the flat and Viv huffs as she gets back out of bed to answer it. Sunny focuses on her toast until her girlfriend appears in the doorway, holding the phone at full stretch, and says, "It's for you."
"For me?" She plants her palm over her chest. "Here?"
She realises after she says it that she has spent most of the past year here; she sees it in Viv's eyes. Scrambling out of bed she asks, "Who?"
"Your mum," Viv says, and Sunny doesn't ask for clarification because all will soon be clear.
"Hi, Mum."
"Honey"—that's Martha's soft voice—"I think we need to have a talk about Britney."
"Spears?" Sunny frowns.
"The kitten," Martha corrects.
"Oh, god. What's wrong? Is she all right?" Sunny's only met the cat a couple of times but she's attached to her already, the scruffy little black thing that loves nothing more than a warm lap.
"Yes, yes, she's fine, don't worry," Martha says, "but she's a playful little thing and Dingo and Ursula are starting to turn on her. I'm a little worried about the dynamic. I thought it was playfighting at first but they really seem to be laying into her."
Sunny pouts. Her shoulders sink. "You can't get rid of her."
"I don't want to," Martha says, but the tone of her voice says, that might be the only option, though. "I was wondering if you might be able to take her in?"
Hugging her knees to herself on the edge of the sofa, Sunny's frown deepens. "My landlord doesn't allow pets. I've asked before. No cats allowed and there's, like, a five hundred pound fine if he finds a pet." She doesn't need to add that she hardly has five hundred quid lying around.
Martha sighs a sad sigh. "I'll ask around and see if any of my friends are able to take her in. I'll get Sylv to ask around work, too."
Viv, leaning against the wall, whispers, "What's this about?"
Sunny lowers the phone to her chest. "Two of my parents' cats have started attacking the kitten."
"Britney?" Viv asks. Sunny nods.
"Mum's trying to find a new home for her." She must have some deeply hidden memories of the last few months with the kitten because she's welling up at the thought of her being given away; her vision goes blurry and her eyes start to leak and Viv darts over to take the phone from her.
"Martha? Hi, it's Viv again. We can take Britney. There aren't any pet rules for my flat and I'd hate for her to go to a stranger. We can come over and get her today, if that's okay?"
"Oh my god, are you serious?" Sunny springs to her feet and throws her arms around Viv, who cuddles her with one arm as she finishes up the conversation with Martha.
"Of course I'm serious." Viv kisses Sunny's temple. "Finish your toast, babe. We've got a kitten to rescue."
As Sunny stuffs the last of her toast in her mouth and loses her balance as she tries to tug on a pair of leggings, she asks, "Is this a level-up in our relationship? Getting a cat together?"
"Standard queer practice." Viv ties her curls off her face with a scrunchie and pulls on a jacket, the soft and supple leather so cracked with age that it must be older than her. "There's no greater union than a lesbian and her cat."
"Well, it's just one more pussy," Sunny murmurs, brushing her hair off her face before pulling on a cap.
"By that logic, do gay guys routinely find themselves the owner of a rooster?"
With an utterly blank expression, Sunny looks up. "What?"
Viv shrugs. "Just one more cock."
A laugh barks out of Sunny so suddenly that it takes them both by surprise. "Oh my god, fuck off. That's terrible."
"You started it."
"You didn't have to finish it," she says, but she's laughing. As they leave the bedroom, she catches sight of her reflection in the mirror – her pink cheeks and her bright eyes – and she thinks how right this is.
Not even two weeks since she met her girlfriend and already she has confessed her love; already they are bringing a cat into their lives. Yes, she thinks. This is how it should be.
The April showers are back with a vengeance. More like the April downpour, the heavens opening to let loose a cacophony. Rain slams the roof of the car like pellets from a BB gun and even with the wipers going at full pelt, it's barely enough to keep the windscreen clear for long enough to see the road ahead.
"What the fuck is going on with the weather?" Sunny harrumphs as she looks out the window, though there's nothing to see through the streaked rain. She can't even choose a drop to follow down the glass because it's moving too fast, even though the car is at a standstill waiting for an interminable red light to go green.
"We had an unseasonably warm March," Viv says, impatient fingers tapping on the wheel. While she doesn't have full-blown road rage, she does have road frustration, and lights that stay red for more than two minutes are one of her pressure points. "Now the gods are punishing us."
"Which ones?"
"This has Zeus written all over it," she grumbles. Her hand is on the gearstick, ready to shift when the lights change. Sunny puts her hand over Viv's and leaves it there, feeling the twitch of muscle and bone as they take off and Viv puts the car into second gear, then third, up to fourth and then fifth when they make it onto the open road away from the gridlock of the centre of Black Sands.
The rain doesn't let up but Viv's tension does. By the time they're a couple of miles away from the town centre (Black Sands may technically be a city but it has never felt like that to Sunny), Viv's shoulders have loosened and she's humming along to the radio, some new Destiny's Child hit that Sunny hasn't heard before. It's catchy, though, and she soon finds herself humming too.
They're halfway to Sunny's parents' house when Viv pulls into a quiet petrol station behind a couple of lorries, carefully navigating deep potholes hidden by puddles of murky water. Visibility is terrible, no-one going more than thirty in a sixty.
"Don't tell me you're going for a wee in this weather," Sunny says. The only reasons she can think of for stopping fifteen minutes away from their destination is an overly full bladder, or perhaps the urge to projectile vomit.
"I don't like driving in this. It doesn't feel safe," Viv says, unbuckling her seatbelt and rolling her shoulders. "Mind if we hang out here for a bit, wait for it to ease up?"
"You're the driver, you make the rules." Sunny frees herself from her seatbelt and props her feet up on the dashboard. It's her favourite passenger position but her mother has scared her out of sitting that way, filling her head with the horrors of what would happen to her body if they crashed – she'd rather not have her chest impaled by her knees from the force of a collision or the explosion of an airbag.
Viv peers through the rain-blurred window to the little shop on the forecourt, which has the glowing sign of coffee available in the window. "Fancy a drink?"
"You want to get out of the car? When it's pissing it down?"
"For coffee?" Viv thinks for a moment. "Yes."
"I mean, if you're gonna go in anyway, then yeah, I'll have a coffee." Digging in her bag for her purse, she pulls out a crumpled fiver and presses it into Viv's hand. "And a bit of choccy too?"
Viv flips up the flimsy fabric hood of her jumper, takes the cash, and steels herself for a mad dash into the petrol station. Most of it is covered, but this rain is insane. Sunny can't remember the last time it came down like this. She can hardly see the petrol station – it's a blur of light distorted by the torrent, her vision streaked. The wind is picking up now too, the trees lining the road bending under the gale that Viv battles as she rushes into the shop. Sunny's thrown back to 1987, to the immense storm that terrified her when she was twelve. She and her parents had been down in Sussex at the time; they had witnessed the brunt of the storm. Sunny hadn't slept a wink that night, curled up in a ball of terror between her parents.
This is not as bad as the great storm of 1987. But it could go in that direction. She shudders at the thought and wishes Viv hadn't left the car. She wishes they'd set off earlier, wishes her mother had called earlier. They could have already been there; they could be waiting out the weather in the comfort of the kitchen in her childhood home, with proper coffee – not whatever bitter shit the machine in the shop will spit out – and good company and warm food.
Viv doesn't take long. She darts back to the car a couple of minutes later with a couple of cardboard cups in her hands, thrusting one at Sunny the second she's back in the car.
"Fucking hell, it's disgusting out there."
"Probably about as disgusting as whatever's in here," Sunny jokes, looking down at her petrol station coffee.
"It won't have a patch on the Sunny special," Viv says, "but it's hot and caffeinated so who am I to complain?" She empties her pockets – a few sugar sachets, a handful of packets of cocoa powder to sprinkle on top, and a couple of bars of Dairy Milk – and pops off the lid of her cup to shake a little sugar in, unwrapping her chocolate to use it to stir the coffee.
"Fucking genius," Sunny mutters in awe, copying exactly what her girlfriend just did, sucking the warm, melted end of her chocolate and rolling her eyes in delight.
The rain falls so hard it sounds like it's denting the roof of the car. Viv turns the music up to drown out the noise, and she turns up the heat to conquer the cold that comes with the shitty weather. (You Drive Me) Crazy comes on the radio and Sunny almost spills her drink in excitement as she starts to bop along, singing along with Britney – off key and out of tune, but who cares? The beauty of car karaoke is that talent doesn't factor. She does spill her drink a little when she tries to do an air guitar solo near the end.
"Whoa! Down, girl," Viv says, catching her elbow and taking her coffee off her. "Damn, I keep forgetting how hardcore into Britney you are."
"I literally named my cat after her. Our cat. The cat waiting for us at the end of this storm."
"Little Britty the kitty." Viv chuckles to herself and pounds the last of her coffee, grimacing at that final mouthful, where the silt and grounds have sunk to make for a pretty disgusting last sip.
"Such a pretty little kitty," Sunny says, starting to get antsy as she remembers the purpose of the trip. Can the rain clear already? She has a cat to rescue, damn it. "Sorry for dragging you into this."
"What d'you mean? I offered," Viv says. "You think I was gonna let your mum give Britney away when I have a perfectly good flat and a landlord who doesn't give a shit about pets?"
"Why haven't we done this before?"
"What, get a cat together?"
"Yeah." She takes her coffee off Viv and sips it slowly. It's fucking disgusting, but she's going to finish the whole thing because the weather is making her all chilly.
Viv's lips twitch. "Well, I figured it'd make more sense to get my girlfriend to move in with me before introducing a shared pet," she says. "It was only a matter of time. Trust me, it was on the cards. Now we're just ... accelerating the process." Realising what she's said, Viv quickly backtracks and says, "Not that I'm asking you to move in or anything. Baby steps, I know."
There it is again. The question of living together.
It seems kind of inevitable, Sunny thinks. Like, she's not about to pack it in, and she doesn't want to put too much pressure on this relationship but Viv's the one. Right?
"It's on the table," Sunny says, biting into her chocolate bar. Viv's eyes widen.
"Really? Seriously?"
"If my cat is going to be living with you, I'm basically going to be living with you, let's be honest."
"Oh, so you're only in it for the cat?" Viv folds her arms. "I see how it is."
"I'm afraid so. The ridiculously hot girlfriend is an added bonus, sure, but a little fluffy kitten? Sorry, but that's the real selling point."
Viv elbows her. Sunny squeaks and sloshes yet more coffee over the lip of the cup.
"For god's sake, woman, finish your drink! You're a damn liability!" Viv cries, throwing a cheap paper napkin at her.
Sunny does as she's told. She drinks every last drop and as she swallows the last mouthful, her eyes drift to Viv and they look at each other for a long moment. The rain drowns out the sound of Sunny's heartbeat; she cannot hear it in her ears though she can feel the steady thrum in the pads of her fingertips when she presses them together.
"We might be here a while," Viv murmurs after a few seconds, pushing one hand through those explosive curls. She turns off the engine and reaches under her seat to pull the lever that scoots the seat all the way back, maximising leg room. Lifting her hips, she digs in the pocket of her jeans and pulls out a chunky little Nokia.
"Damn, you're fancy," Sunny says, eyes wide. "You've got a mobile phone?"
"Less fancy and more ... increasingly necessary," Viv says. "I've been trying to get you to buy one for, like, a whole fucking year. You're remarkably stubborn."
"It's one more thing I've got to learn," Sunny says. "Plus, who wants to be reachable all the time?" Her nose wrinkles at the thought that anyone can call at any time and expect her to pick up. "My answering machine is my friend. If people want to talk to me, they can leave a message and I'll decide if I want to call them back."
Viv pouts. "My backwards little baby." She stretches out those long legs and crosses them at the ankle, slouching back in her seat. "Sooner or later you're gonna have to get with the times."
"I choose later." Sunny scoots her seat back too and rolls her cheek against the headrest.
"Well, I choose to let your parents know that we haven't been washed away in the storm and we're going to be a bit late." She deftly taps out Sunny's mother's number on the rubbery keys – off by heart, which doesn't escape Sunny's notice – and holds the phone to her ear.
Sunny looks out of the window and zones out as her girlfriend talks to her mother. She slips off her shoes and pulls her socked feet onto the seat, tips her empty cup back in case there's one last drop of coffee inside (there is, and it's disgusting), and watches as people pull in to fill up and tug coats over their heads to avoid the worst of the rain. Her thoughts jump around with abandon, twitching from her parents and the weather to Ravi and Fraser; from Delilah's astrology to the witchiness of Astrid and Celeste. She thinks about supper on Wednesday and what she should wear to their house, and her brain leaps and bounds until she is suddenly planning out how to – eventually, someday, maybe sooner than she thought – tell Fenfen that she's going to move in with Viv.
"Martha's made a cake," Viv says when she hangs up and stuffs her phone back into her pocket.
"Chocolate or Victoria sponge?" Sunny picks at the paper lip of her cup, unfurling the tightly folded rim.
"Lemon drizzle."
"Ooh. What're we waiting for? Get your foot on the pedal!"
Viv raises her eyebrows, then pointedly looks out of the windscreen. "I'm waiting for it not to feel like I'm on the bloody Titanic every time I look out the window."
"That's incredibly insensitive. More than fifteen hundred people died."
"And if they were alive today, they'd tell me not to drive until the rain stops, so zip it." She presses her finger to Sunny's lips. Heat rushes to Sunny's cheeks, and she purses her lips to kiss Viv's finger. She's not sure why. It seems like the right thing to do in the moment – and it is, because now Viv's grinning and oh god, she wants to kiss that grin right off her face.
So she does. She launches herself across the gap between their seats, the handbrake jabbing her hip, and she awkwardly presses her lips to Viv's, and Viv laughs at the sudden – and aggressive – kiss. The angle is poorly judged and they both nearly break their noses when they collide, but neither pull away.
"What was that for?" Viv asks, her cheeks a deep and pretty shade of dusky pink beneath her dusted freckles.
"I felt like kissing you." Sunny rubs the tip of her nose. "I feel like I should act on that kind of impulse seeing as we've got a lot of lost time to make up for."
"That sounds like a wonderful plan to me." Her smile grows, pushing dimples deep into her cheeks. The second kiss is less rushed, less painful. Viv cups Sunny's cheeks in her hands; Sunny closes her eyes and tries to remember how to breathe when her lips are pressed to Viv's. It doesn't come naturally to her, until all of a sudden it does. She follows Viv's lead and finds her rhythm.
When they part, the windows have fogged up and the crashing rain has ceased. It no longer sounds like a stampede of freshly pedicured gazelles on the roof of the car. More like a leaky tap. When Viv twists the key and flicks on the wipers, the windscreen isn't immediately obscured. Beyond the trees, there's a sliver of sun and blue-ish sky peeking through a slice in the clouds.
"Buckle up, baby." Viv jams her empty cup into a cupholder filled with old coppers and a couple of pay and display tickets and pulls out of the petrol station, while Sunny is still trying to get her breathing under control. "Britney's waiting for her new mothers."
time to rescue a cat!