Begin Again | ongoing - Chapter 9: Chapter 9

Sunny doesn't say anything. Just walks through the gate and keeps going until she gets to the bench at the far end of the property, a good four-minute walk from the patio. Viv, to her credit, doesn't stop her. She follows wordlessly and sits next to Sunny.
"What happened since Friday?" Viv asks once they're side by side, looking out over the wild meadow beyond the boundaries of the Shelleys' garden.
"The last thing I remember before Friday is talking to Ravi about how much I wanted a girlfriend." Sunny realises the words are too blunt the moment they're out but everything she's about to say is so crazy, so unimaginable, she doesn't really know how else to start.
Viv scowls. "Is this your way of telling me we're not actually dating? Because, I don't know about you, but I've been calling you my girlfriend for a whole fucking year."
Sunny digs her fingers into her thighs and then sits on her hands, gnawing on her bottom lip. "This is my way of telling you that the last thing I remember is a conversation that happened fourteen months ago."
Silence.
Nothing but the call of a bird and the sway of leaves in the breeze.
And then: "What the fuck?"
"I freaked out on Friday because I didn't recognise you, so I went to Ravi and Delilah and then I came here because, to be honest, I'm still freaking the fuck out. Mostly on the inside now." She rubs the heel of her palm over her chest. Viv twists on the bench to face her, all colour gone from her face.
"You don't recognise me?"
Sunny meets her gaze. She has such beautiful eyes, such a beautiful face. "I know you're Vivian and that you're my girlfriend because that's what Ravi and Delilah told me. But ... no. I don't remember you."
Viv lets out a strangled cry and covers her mouth. Her eyes fill with tears and Sunny realises she has been pretty tactless with this, but she doesn't know tact. She doesn't know how to prioritise Viv's feelings – this stranger's feelings – when she can't untangle her own.
"You've lost your memory? What? How? Like, amnesia?"
"This is where it gets weird," Sunny says.
And then she launches into the whole spiel. Every little detail. If it's too much for Viv, then it's too much. There's nothing she can do about it. It's for the best if everything's out in the open. That way, they can either move forward together or call it quits. She mostly stares straight ahead as she talks, working through every emotion of the last three days, and she doesn't hold back.
From the wish and the well to the multiverse theory and the crack in time, she lets it all out in a flood of words until her throat aches and her voice weakens, and she realises it's because it's thick with tears. She's crying again. Too many fucking tears, but they come back with a vengeance every time she thinks too hard about her predicament. Her eyes are swimming and her cheeks are damp. Tears are dripping off her chin, splashing on her knees.
When she looks over at Viv, at last, after a solid twenty minutes of talking without a break, without interruption, she half expects to find her gone. But Viv is sitting right there, elbows on her knees, her face in her hands, shoulders trembling.
"Are you ... laughing?" Sunny asks. Viv looks up with wet eyes and wet cheeks.
"No, I'm not fucking laughing! What the actual flying fuck, Sunny?" She flings out her arms, careful not to hit anything but air. "This is not funny."
"I know. It's terrifying."
"It's ridiculous."
"I know."
"No, I mean, this is ridiculous. If you want to cut all ties and break up, tell me. You don't need to fabricate whatever bullshit this is because damn, Sunny, this is so cruel. Do you have any idea how fucking painful it is to hear that you'd rather tell me you don't remember our entire relationship than to be honest and say you don't love me anymore?"
This isn't going the way Sunny hoped. Not that she knows how it should go or how she expected Viv to take it, but this isn't right. She's shaking her head wildly, mouth hanging open. Shit. She has done this all wrong. "No! No, I'm being serious. I know it sounds like a really shitty joke, or, like, a bad film plot or—"
"You know what it sounds like?" Viv fixes her with a hard stare. "It sounds like we watched Big on Thursday night and it gave you an idea."
Sunny's stunned into silence. She doesn't remember watching the film with Viv, but she remembers watching it years ago with Ravi. She remembers a little kid making a wish and waking up as Tom Hanks, thrown into a world he doesn't understand because his wish wasn't precise enough.
"Oh my god," she whispers. "That's what's happened. That fucking wishing well is like that stupid fortune machine."
"Except that was a fictional film, Sunny."
"I wish I was shitting you. I really wish I was shitting you. But I'm telling you, Viv, I made a wish for a girlfriend and I've woken up with you, but apparently I wasn't fucking clear enough with my wish because I don't remember meeting you or dating you and I want to." She hiccups on her words, her throat closing up. "I want to, so badly. I know it sounds stupid. I know I sound like a crazy liar and you probably think I need to be locked up but I'm not. I don't. I belong here, apparently. Talk to Delilah. She can probably explain it better than me. I don't know how I can prove it to you but you need to believe me. I fell asleep in February 1999, and now I'm here."
She's fully crying now. Her cheeks and eyes are red and her nose starts running, and she has nothing to wipe it on but the back of her hand. A sob wrenches itself out of her gut so violently that she bends double over her thighs, planting her head between her knees and folding her hands over the back of her neck. Deep breaths. Hold it together.
Easier said than done. It takes a while. She stays in that position until her lungs aren't screaming anymore and she can breathe in without shuddering, and when she looks up, Viv holds up her little finger. Her eyes are wet and her nose is red but her hand is steady.
"What?"
"You've never broken a pinky promise," Viv says, resolute. "So pinky promise me that you're not shitting me. I'll believe you, because I trust you and I love you and in all the time I've known you, I've never seen you like this. As long as you swear this is the truth."
Sunny has never moved so fast. She wraps her little finger around Viv's and says, "I promise you. I know this is a lot, trust me. But this isn't some excuse. I'm not trying to leave you. I'm trying to remember you. I need your help. We've been together for, what, a year?"
"Thirteen months."
"I missed our anniversary," Sunny muses. It's a silly thought, but she can't help speaking it out loud.
"You didn't." Viv's voice is quiet. Raw. "We had a picnic on the beach. You gave me a painting Fraser did of us. He painted that photo from our third date, when we—" She stops, realising that Sunny doesn't hold the memory she's sharing. "Fuck. You don't even remember."
"I don't remember anything from the day before I met you until Friday morning. It's a logistical nightmare and one hell of an emotional rollercoaster."
Their fingers are still looped. Viv drops her hand to the space between them but she doesn't let go.
"I'm not asking you to wrap your head around it," Sunny says, "but I'm asking you to ... I don't know. To try? To give me a chance? To help me?"
Viv nods. She looks miserable. Understandably so. A quiet sob hiccups out of her and she covers her mouth, eyes cast down.
Sunny is aware of the irony. She made that stupid wish and it came true, but the whole point was to avoid the getting to know each other part, and that's the part she's missing. Sure, she got to know Viv at some point, but that's all gone now. She's going to have to do it all over again anyway.
"We can pretend it's amnesia," she says. "That probably makes it easier."
"It'd make a lot more sense." Viv laughs weakly. "Are you sure it's not that? I mean, surely it's a lot more likely that you've lost your memory than that you've, I don't know, travelled through fucking time?"
"It's not that." Sunny isn't sure how she knows, but she knows. "You remember Thursday, right? What happened?"
Viv shrugs. "It was your day off. We went out to that little Italian place and we rented a film on the way back to my flat. We watched it in bed and fell asleep and you were still asleep when I woke up. I saw you before I went to work and you ... you were all spaced out."
That, to Sunny, was the first time they met. "So I didn't hit my head at any point?"
"No. Unless you fell out of bed and got back in without disturbing me. But I'm a light sleeper, so I highly doubt that. And look at you." Her fingertips graze Sunny's forehead, a feather light touch. Sunny gulps hard. "Not a scratch."
"What about work? Is Mack pissed off that I've missed a couple of shifts?"
"No. Even when I didn't know where you were, I figured it'd be best to placate him. I told him you had a nasty bug, really emphasised how terrible your diarrhoea and vomiting were. He was grossed out and said he didn't want to see you back before Tuesday."
"Wow. Thanks," she says, and with a titter, she adds, "And no thanks. That's gross."
"I had to come up with something other than the fact that you'd vanished on me."
That sobers the moment. Sunny tries hard not to scratch the fresh polish off her nails. Now she remembers why she rarely paints them. "Do you love her?"
"Who?"
"The other Sunny," Sunny says. "The one you're dating."
"That's you, Sunny. Whatever has happened, you're still you, right? Even if the whole multiple universe thing is right, you're still Martha and Sylvia's daughter. You're still my girlfriend. There's only one Sunny Shelley."
That shuts Sunny up.
"And anyway, yes. I do love you. So fucking much." Her thumb grazes the back of Sunny's hand, sending a jolt of electricity straight to the base of her spine.
No-one has ever said those words to Sunny before. Not in that way. Not in a romantic sense.
"Do you love me enough to wade through this shitstorm with me?"
Viv lets go of her hand. Sunny goes cold. But then Viv scoots closer, and she puts her arm around her shoulders, and she rests her forehead against Sunny's.
"Yeah. Yeah, I do." Her smile is warmer this time. Her eyes are drier. "I'm going to make you remember how much you love me if it's the last thing I do," she says, "because we are dynamite, baby."
Sunny chuckles. "Dynamite, huh? That's pretty powerful."
A grin breaks out across Viv's lips, so full and pink that Sunny can't tear her eyes from them. "We are powerful. We're the power lesbians of Black Sands. Sunny and Viv against the world."
"Do I love you?" Sunny asks, and immediately wishes she could pull those words back and reshape them. "As in, like, have I told you I love you?"
Viv's grin remains. The edges soften a smidge. She squeezes Sunny's hand. "Yeah. You said it first, actually. We'd been dating for a month and you blurted it out, and then you got all panicked that it was too soon."
"Was it?"
"No. I'm pretty sure I fell in love with you after, like, a week." She lets out a long sigh and pulls on one of her curls until it springs back. "I was going to ask you to move in with me this weekend, but I think it's safe to say that'll need to go on the back burner now, huh?"
Sunny's heart does a flip. "Yeah. Sorry."
"It's okay. We've been flat-hopping for a year," she says, finding Sunny's hand again and lacing their fingers together. "What's another year, right?"
How strange this is, Sunny thinks, to be sitting here holding hands with a girl who knows everything about her. She isn't sure how to feel, but she wants to catch up and there is a lot of catching up to do.
"Are you sure you're okay with this?" she asks, waiting until Viv meets her eye.
"I don't know if I'm okay with it," she says, "because I don't fully understand, and I'm a little worried that you're sick. But I love you, Sunny. I'm not going to ditch you. Especially not in this state. Whatever the hell is going on, I'm here for it. I told you on our anniversary and I'll tell you now: I won't ever let you go, Sunny Shelley. I'm here for the long haul. Through thick and thin."
The words are a balm on Sunny's soul. "Please don't take this the wrong way," she says, "but remember that you're new to me, as far as I'm aware."
Viv glances at her, lips pressed together. "Yeah. That's going to be weird."
"I need to know that you're honest with me." She shifts in her seat and sits on her hand because this feels awkward to say out loud, her cheeks pinkening. "I know I sound stupid and I don't want to offend you but it would be, like, scarily easy for you to lie or take advantage of the fact I can't remember so I need you to swear to honesty too."
"You don't sound stupid. I'm not offended, Sunny." Viv is quiet. Her words are soft, with an undertone of fear. "That's sensible. And I promise, I won't lie. I won't take advantage. I don't want to put you off or come off as way too intense"—she laughs at that, because to her, they've been together for long enough that intensity is no issue—"but you mean the world to me. I'm not going to jeopardise our relationship."
What Sunny doesn't say is what has slowly been dawning on her throughout this whole conversation.
What if she doesn't fall in love with Viv again?
That's a terrifying thought. Because Viv so clearly loves her; they are committed to each other. What if, after all that, Sunny's thoughtless wish tears them apart because she can't claw back whatever feelings have been lost to the black hole?
That's what she's decided to call it from now on. Whether it's a freak medical event or a quirk of the multiverse or any number of things in between, Sunny is calling it the black hole because that's what it feels like. An empty void. A jump in time. Like a record scratch on a vinyl, the needle hopping over the best song.
"My parents don't know anything," she says after an elongated moment of quiet. The peaceful kind, this time, rather than tension-packed.
"Okay."
"Mum thinks something's up because I forgot she retired and I thought she was sixty-two and I can't remember going to New York, but she's put it down to overtiredness. To be fair, I did then have a six-hour nap."
"Sounds like Martha," Viv says with a chuckle. "What is it with doctors and never prescribing their family with anything more than water and sleep?"
"At least she doesn't suspect that I'm a time traveller."
She says it so gravely that, after a beat, they both laugh. And it's the kind of laughter that infects itself over and over, and when Sunny looks at this girl she doesn't know, she sees a glint in her eye and it cracks her up all over again. She laughs at nothing and everything until her sides hurt and her cheeks ache, and there are tears rolling down her cheeks again but they're good tears, and she can't believe her luck, that Viv is so open and willing to go on this journey with her.
"Your friends know, right? You told Delilah and the boys?"
"Yeah, they know. Ravi was pretty confused but Delilah took it very well. She didn't even question it, just launched straight into the physics of the universe."
"The world needs more Delilahs," Viv says.
"How well do you know her?"
"The three of us go out sometimes. Sometimes she comes over to watch a film with us. I like spending time with your friends. They're really good people."
"Do I know your friends?"
Viv shrugs and says, "Well, I'd only lived here a week when we first met. You're the first friend I made here, so there's a lot of overlap there. I'm friendly with your coworkers at Percolatte and most of the people at The Book Nook, and I keep in touch with a couple of people from back home, but I've always been a bit of a social floater."
"Where'd you move from?" There's an accent there that doesn't belong to Black Sands, but Sunny is as shit at placing accents as she is at geography. She can just about place London on a map.
"Just outside of Bristol." At Sunny's blank look, Viv says, "If you stand on the Black Sands Pier and walk south-south-west for about a hundred and ninety miles, you'd get there. With very sore feet. I wanted a change of scenery and to live by the sea, so I ended up here."
Her arm finds its way around Sunny's shoulder again, her fingers combing through Sunny's hair until she realises how tender she's being and her hand freezes. She pulls it away like she's been stung. "Sorry, I—"
"It's okay. It feels nice."
Viv's hand returns, her fingers slipping through silky lilac strands, and Sunny closes her eyes. Sunlight pours down on them, light and warm, like the sensation in her chest now that she has told Viv the truth.
"When did we kiss for the first time?"
"After our third date," Viv says, right off the bat. "You took me to one of Fraser's exhibitions and afterwards, we got fish and chips on the beach – we had no idea Fraser, Ravi and Delilah had followed us until we were standing at the end of the pier and I kissed you." Her grin grows at the memory that Sunny desperately wishes she shared. "There was this flash and we thought it was dry lightning, but it was Delilah taking a picture of us."
"Is that the picture I got Fraser to paint for our anniversary?"
"The very one."
"Where is it?"
"Hanging above my bed, pride of place."
"I think I was too discombobulated to notice on Friday," Sunny says, trying to remember Viv's room, but she was so confused and scared that she didn't log what everything looked like, just that it was unfamiliar.
"I can show you later, if you want to come back with me?"
They've come to a fork in the road of how this is going to go. Sunny takes a moment to consider her options. Does she take it slow, reintroducing herself to Viv bit by bit? Or does she go all in and spend as much time with her as possible? Is there an inbetween?
"There's no pressure." Viv's voice is soft. "You dictate the pace, okay?"
"I want to see it," Sunny says at last. Viv smiles.
They stay on the bench until the heat cools off, the clouds knitting together to keep the sun out. As they're walking back to the house, where Martha and Sylvia have no doubt been impatiently awaiting their return and the results of whatever talk the girls have had, Sunny pulls Viv to a stop.
"I need to warn you – when Mum asked about you I still didn't really know who you were so I had to tell her that I felt like we were living by different timelines and I wasn't sure we wanted the same things."
Viv laughs and pulls her curls out of her face, securing them in an explosive bun with a scrunchie from around her wrist. It changes her face, highlighting her heavy brows and her thick lashes and the pinkish rim around her eyes, the remainder of her tears. "Okay."
"So as far as they need to know, we've had a long chat and we're on the same page, and we're still very much together."
"Sounds like the truth to me."
Sunny thinks over what she just said, thumbs tucked in the pockets of her shorts. "Huh. Yeah. I guess it is." She takes off her cap and runs her hand through her hair before planting the cap back in the same position. "Okay, let's do this."