Chapter Text
I didn’t pick the flowers for her, but her uncertain smile as she takes them makes me think I could learn to love the feeling of her lips pressed against mine. Daffodils, from a florist I happened to pass three days ago, planting the plan next to an offhand remark about favourite colours. Naomi’s is the deep purple-green blue of the sky in the moments before darkness comes in. She sent me a picture she’d taken, and I promised to take her out for a picnic to see the stars come out. But the puerile yellows she takes from me aren’t for her. She sets about getting a vase for them, central on the scratched tidy table, so when Dee comes down for dinner she’ll see. She assures me Dee will like them very much, and I feel my shoulders lose their tension, even as something deeper in me tells me I should not be doing this.
I enter Naomi’s living space, following her ushering hand. It’s cramped, and damp, and worn, but spotlessly clean, with a kitchen nestled in one corner and the table in the other next to a sagging sofa. Doors down a dark corridor lead to three other rooms, which I know from her messages to be her and Dee’s bedrooms and the bathroom. It’s enough, as she told me too many times over text. The vase doesn’t match the flowers at all, she apologises, but it’s what she has. I make a mental note to buy her another. There are so many things I want to do for her if she’ll let me, but it was a battle to even get her to agree to this –*-- no, darling, I only fought to make you convince me to give in to my vices, to be a voice that shouted louder than my reservations, all the reasons I knew this would end badly–*–.
She’s still thanking me for the flowers, and for putting up with her home, and for agreeing to cook for her, the words looping back on themselves to fill awkward air. I tell her again that none of that matters, I’m just glad to finally meet her, it’s nothing, really, as I put my bags of ingredients on the table and she sets about showing me where I can find the utensils. Our bodies draw close in the tight space, and I feel for the first time her heat, smell the mixture of a day’s exhaustion and cheap deodorant, and I realise how right I was to push past her protests and insist she let me date her –*– as I felt myself losing the last of whatever part of me might still have been able to push you away –*–. I could grow to love this, even without Dee.
I chop crying onions on a green plastic board, adding my marks to the decade of ones already left, while I insist she sink herself into the sofa. Even after only those brief moments, I feel the loss of her hot hands reaching past mine, but she’s told me how hard the call centre works her, on top of the stress of having to look after Dee. Her rest is more important than my desire.
The conversation has been nervous and intermittent after the initial greetings and rush of practicalities. I can hear the fatigue wavering her words, and I can see this moment of peace doing more for her than any conversation could. But I can also see the embarrassment creeping in the corners of her face, the fear that she’s being lazy, that she’s letting me down. It’s far from the first spiral I’ve helped her through. I decided when I asked her to meet that I’d put in the work for her, for as long as I could. It’d be nice to share everything I’ve learned with someone else. I let my mind protest that I’m just making excuses, wait for it to settle, and pick the right words to say.
“I’m glad to see you’re taking the time to rest and recover from work, rather than burning yourself out trying to keep up conversation.”
This seems to derail the dark path her mind was straying down. I continue through her pause as she pulls her thoughts back to reality, making sure she doesn’t think she’s letting the conversation down.
“Very sensible of you to save your energy for tonight.”
For the first time, she gives me the gift of hearing her laugh, though she turns away before I get the chance to see her blush. She could be so beautiful if she let herself, and I’ll do what I can to get her there, as long as she continues to trust me enough to let me in. That’s why I need to not blow things when Dee comes down for dinner. It’s ok. I trust myself, and that’s what matters. I know I’m in control, and I’ll prove it to both of us tonight.
She settles back into soft silence. I give her little looks as I go, watching her breathing slow, the tension in her back and shoulders fade, seeing how I’ve already given her something she wouldn’t have found herself. I smile, and she smiles back. In the newly empty air, I find myself filling it with song, mumbling the words that played through my headphones those sweaty nights when I was curled up in bed with my phone, sending her spiels about anything, waiting for her to do the same, realising how much I longed for each word she gave me, hoping against all odds for a picture, getting one, seeing a glimpse of Dee’s frail hand as she walked her to school.
“I can’t believe you never sent me a voice message of you singing before.”
I put the knife down and twist my body back to look at her. Her eyes are unfocused, her body left to hang from the cushions, an accidental smile on her face, all attention on the newly quiet room. I feel myself blushing, and she laughs again, this time with a little less weight dragging it down.
“I’ve never thought about it before. I used to do it a lot, and after the vocal surgery I’ve found myself restarting the habit.” I puff up my chest. “But now I know it’s a siren song I shall have to look into what I can use this new power for.”
She’s properly giggling now, slowly rocking in her seat.
“You could’ve gotten me to agree to meet so much sooner.”
My cheeks are burning. She seizes the opportunity to catch the energy I’ve left hanging.
“You could have anyone dancing to your tune if you wanted to.”
“Someone should warn the local schools.”
My mouth is turned up wryly, the quip having escaped its clutch the moment it formed, as her smile shrivels, and the energy slips away into still air. I want to panic, to placate, to undo my misstep, but I don’t let that fear control me. I breathe for a moment, keeping my grin, steadying.
“I’m sorry. You’ve softened to me making those jokes over text, so I assumed they’d be ok here. I can stop, if you’d like.”
She’s slow, fighting to think over feelings I can name better than she. She’d claim she was scared of being heard, or of joking about something so serious. I remember the physical shock words like that used to give me. I remember thinking that, if I let myself become comfortable with these jokes, I’d let myself become comfortable with more –*-- you were only half-right, darling, but there was no way you could have known then –*–. I remember sitting in my bed, shaking my head till my neck hurt, trying to get the thoughts out of my brain. People say that jokes are the start of the slippery slope. Maybe they’re right. But I was dying, and I needed there to be another way. I have to trust that everything will still work out.
“No, no, it’s ok, I just,” her breathing is rapid, “it caught me off guard hearing it said, instead of just letters on a screen.”
I opt not to comment on the relative utility of the latter to a hypothetical courtroom –*– a shame, I now think that would have been quite the quip –*–. I give her time, enough to regain control of her breathing, but not so long as to let thoughts overwhelm her. I know there’s more to it than what she just said, but it’s too early to risk everything pushing her more than I already have. For now, the best option is an easy path back to comfort.
“Of course! Now, you were talking about how I could have you dancing to my tune?”
She’s off-balance, and I send her into a moment of wordless blushing, and the rhythm of conversation resumes. Now she has some energy, she’s much more forward than I was expecting, given her reticence on the matter of our shared sexuality, and she’s every bit as funny as she was over text. Frequent compliments are also regular fare for her, and I use the excuse of the steadily assembling food to hide my brightest blushes –*– oh is that what you were doing, darling? –*–.
The topic turns to books, and movies, as it often does for us. We both find ourselves lost, each in turn, in elaborate explanations of shows the other has never seen and would never watch, that we could never bring ourselves to recommend, but that stuck in our brain, and with time to spread, formed fractal associations, emotions, meanings, that we’ve never before had the chance to share.
The dish is in the oven, and I collapse next to her.The fabric pulls me much further down than would be comfortable, and I add a new sofa to the list of gifts to give her one day, while I use my exaggerated descent to fall against her side. I am struck again by the grounding presence of her heat, keenly aware of how my body curves against hers, her large soft breast under my shoulder. She pulls back for just a second, before parsing my implicit permission, and adding to her warmth her weight, pushing eagerly against my chest.
I am taller than her, and she ends up curled up against me, hair tickling the edge of my much less impressive breasts –*– you’ll catch up soon, darling, but my decade of treatment gives me a headstart –*–. I reach my arm behind her head as much out of my own comfort as to be affectionate, and let myself feel for the first time how long my own day has been. Cooking is a joy, an art, and a gift, but it still leaves me drained. I don’t even notice my thoughts have not drifted back to Dee until her voice crashes into my peace.
“Is dinner ready yet?”
It’s a high whine, carried from her room at the far end of the house, and before I’ve gotten a grip on the feelings filling me Naomi is already shouting back.
“Thirty minutes.”
Her reply is rote, drained of conscious effort by years of routine. I am still clinging to the fading glimpse, the fragment of her daughter I now have, the split second of sensory bliss. The tone suggested as much uncertainty as impatience, rhythms thrown off by the strange woman in her house –*– and that dinner was taking longer than usual –*–. Hopefully not a stranger for too much longer. Naomi is turning back to me, an apology on her lips for us not getting to have our first date to ourselves. I tactfully don’t mention how much I prefer this outcome.
For the next half hour, I cannot get that four word call out of my head. I try to focus on the dynamic of the conversation, to lose myself again in the careful management of flowing feelings. For new things, she’s frozen, incapable of stepping outside the boundary prescribed by the words I have not yet said. But the moment I give voice to those fancies of thought I can read as clear as my own, she surges to fill the new space I’ve given her. Contact becomes caressed hair becomes face pressed against soft neck as we build towards an end we know will be interrupted.
The sound of a door opening and light footsteps against uncertain floorboards slots itself against the disembodied hand and that mouthless cry, a wire frame I craft even as I am seconds from seeing it fully filled in. The lasagne is still not quite done, and we didn’t call her –*– I timed thirty minutes exactly myself, mummy! –*–. There is no time to process or percolate, only rising raw tight anticipation that feels worryingly outside my control.
Her legs appear from behind the hall wall and stop, crossed awkwardly, infuriatingly covered by thick white tights until they disappear at the curve of the knee behind a grey school dress, too loose to suggest the shape of her chest, until at her neck not even four feet from the floor her pale smooth skin finally emerges. Fidgeting hands pull straight dark hair out of her slim mouth, a flash of white teeth as she unsticks the final strands and places them behind her ears, revealing eyes whose colour I can’t make out from this distance. I fill in the gap with the brown of her mother’s for now. She is not the perfect girl of my fantasies, but the tactility of reality makes her hotter than I could ever have pictured.
She stares at me, unwilling to enter the space I have made unfamiliar, the remains of an expectant expression still fading as thoughts of dinner leave her. It’s not that she wasn’t warned I would be here, but children are taught to be wary of strangers, and I know I look stranger than most, even compared to her mum, whose shorter, slimmer build carries a natural femininity I never will –*– and I was worried I’d mess something up and mum would be mad at me –*–. I feel Naomi tense a little –*– I was terrified, darling, of what you might be about to do, about what a mistake I must have made. You must have been really quite distracted indeed not to notice just how scared I was –*– but I’ve rehearsed this moment enough times to know what I need to say. I extend my hand.
“Hello. I’m Aisling, but everyone calls me Ash. Your mum invited me over for a date. You must be Deirdre?”
As if my arm extends the whole length of the room she is pulled forward on shaky steps until she’s close enough to take my offered hand. I am given two more pieces of her. Her eyes are mottled hazel, and her skin is soft, and cool, unlike Naomi’s fire, and I fit all her fingers inside mine as I curl my hand closed. I think about pulling her on top of me, wrapping my arms around her, pressing my face into her, reaching under her dress, taking her right there. I wait for her reply, and the thought stays seated.
“Hello Ash. It’s nice to meet you. Everyone just calls me Dee. Did you buy those flowers? They’re really nice.”
I release my hand.
“Yes, I did. It’s nice to meet you too.”