Serena
Serena lay in bed, exhausted but unable to sleep. She lay on her right side in the dark, eyes closed, her jaw set, frown creasing her forehead.
It was 2AM and she was doing everything she could think of; deep breathing, trying to relax her body from her toes upwards, focusing on each part of herself, but each and every thought was fragmented and disjointed, broken up into pieces by thoughts of Bernie.
They had kissed! She gave a moan of despair into the pillow and shuffled down further beneath the duvet cover so that the lower half of her face disappeared.
How had it happened? She replayed the moment over and over, had she been the one to glance to Bernie's lips first? Had it been her that had inadvertently given Bernie cause to think she had wanted to be kissed?! She hesitated. Had she wanted to be kissed, she wondered?
She couldn't bring herself to answer that question. When she thought about it her head felt heavy and dull, her body tensed and she felt a shudder of panic begin to unfurl itself within the very pit of her stomach, taking her over, a painful seeping fluttering panic that stretched out into every limb and rendered her useless and incapable.
She wanted to scream. Where would their friendship go from here? Would they have a friendship left? What if they became more? She couldn't possibly make love to a woman?! She felt herself balk at the thought and a flush crept over her, warming her beneath the covers, smothering her. To make love, to Bernie...
She reached for her phone, her fingers hovering over the reply button on a recent text from Bernie.
As she held the phone it vibrated in her hand. She jumped, her whole body shivering cold before she looked. A message had appeared above the box where she was about to type.
Bernie – Can we talk?
Talk now? Tomorrow? Was she lying in bed like Serena was now, terrified and mortified all at once? Worrying herself in circles.
She sighed. Closed her eyes. Had she seen this coming? She thought back over the weeks, from the first moment she had met her. She admired her, of course she did! She respected her, she enjoyed working with her, enjoyed her friendship... but something about their friendship had always seemed special, different somehow? As though the air about them glittered and sparkled and time slowed down to the beat of a heart. The lingering touches, shoulders brushing against one another, the longer than usual glances.
She sighed.
Was she attracted to her physically? In her minds eye Bernie was smiling now, arms folded, wearing a black shirt, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows. She had always found that attractive, she realised, the sleeves rolled up, exposing her forearms – there was something about her pale skin taught over flexing tendons.
Her mind travelled higher, to the V of her shirt at her flushed throat, to her face, something about the way her hair was always ruffled and unkempt was endearing. It matched her personality.
And her face...She drew in a breath. Those wide set brown eyes, beautiful cheekbones and wide pink lips. She was attractive, she conceded, very attractive...but sexually?! She felt herself blush into the dark again. She couldn't imagine it, sex with a woman?! She wouldn't know where to start. Sex with Bernie... the thought mulled about inside her head, over and over. Could she have sex with Bernie?
Her whole body felt numb, as it does before you faint. Weak and frail and light-headed.
She thought of the kiss again, how the other woman's lips had been so soft and hot, how she had tasted, how she had smelled. It made her heart beat just that little bit faster, and a low steady ache of excitement began to burn within her.
What would they say? Their colleagues, their friends! They would expect it of Bernie, perhaps. But of herself?!
How easy it was for them to leave this life when they left work for the day, this life that could feel so present and permanent that departing from it seemed to require a tear into a different dimension.
The department was full of them, nurses, doctors, F1s... the list was endless, an endless stream of 20-somethings to 30-somethings. Would it be so outrageous if she were to behave like one of them?! Morven, Dom, even Raf and Fletch (she balked at the thought of his name, trying desperately not to recall the days events) how they had their lives and shared houses full of prints and favourite photographs of friends, ready meals and dried flowers, throw rugs and stereos. House plants, a lamp, maybe some furniture brought up by encouraging parents. They nested there like miniature grown ups, life tinged with brushfire friendships and drink-addled intimacies, gorging on knowledge and blind sexual indulgences.
No one would blink an eye if it were one of them...one of the young ones. How different life was now.
How could she be so old and still not know herself? Those private years of intense adolescent reading and music-fuelled writing in her journal had made her sure she was full of maturity—of a certain unusual, and in its way impressive, emotional self-assurance. She had an alert awareness of what people were like. And yet Bernie was still enchanting in her unknowableness; she smiled at such a ridiculous word, and then all at once her smile disappeared.
Things had changed so quickly between them that she barely knew what to think any more, let alone what to expect when she arrived at work in the morning.
But then things changed all the time - abruptly, unpredictably, and often for no good reason. But knowing that didn't do you that much good, apparently.
Bernie
She sat on the edge of the bed in the dark, just a dark shape against an even darker background.
Her phone was next to her, blank in the night, and though she gazed at the shadow of her hands between her knees, out of the corner of her eye she could see the moon reflected in the screen, and she couldn't help but wish that it would light up with a reply from Serena. Anything...even if she was angry, or upset, confused...anything would be better than this, this...
She threw her head back, eyes closed, hair tickling the back of her neck. She was naked in the sticky heat of the room and yet she felt cold, as if she were in shock. She was exhausted, and yet she couldn't sleep. She had always found that emotional exhaustion crippled her far more than physical exertion.
How could she have done something so ridiculous! She let her head fall back down and let out a laugh of bitter embarrassment. If she had ruined their friendship she would never forgive herself. Serena meant so much to her. So much...more than she had realised.
It was like a war zone in her own head, just blowing, blinding sand and rubble and IEDs.
How had this happened? She was halfway through her life, and as far as she could tell, the real lesson of the past wasn't that she had made mistakes, but that she hadn't made nearly enough of them. She imagined herself lying on her deathbed in forty or fifty years, congratulating herself on the fact that she had never had sex in an aeroplane, or patting herself on the back for all those years of involuntary celibacy. If recent experience was any guide, she would probably be lying in that hospital bed with her body full of tubes, sneaking glances at the beautiful doctor tending to her needs, wishing that she hadn't been such a coward. Wishing she'd taken more risks, made more mistakes, and accumulated more regrets. Just wishing she'd lived when she had the chance.
So what was she supposed to do now? Profess her love for Serena? Because she did love Serena, didn't she? She couldn't help but smile at the mere thought of it...her.
She'd never admitted it to herself before. She'd felt it, the slow burn of it, but she'd never dared name it.
These past few months seemed to have taken place on quicksand. She had seemed to have aged in a decade in these months of this sliding, wavery feeling of falling in love.
She had spent enough time in earthquake country and knew the dangers of building on landfill. That was, it seemed, the best description of the situation, construction on landfill. What was there to count on in any of it? What structure would remain, founded on that?
She seemed to have spent week upon week just staring, gazing at Serena. Falling in love at first sight. So she had to stare. That's what you do when you're falling in love at first sight. You go into soft focus, nothing else matters.
She felt weak for the first time in years. Battered down by the divorce, Alex...and now this! After all, what was adult life but one moment of weakness piled on top of another? Most people just fell in line like obedient little children, doing exactly what society expected of them at any given moment, all the while pretending that they'd actually made some sort of choice.
Had it been a choice to kiss Serena? She didn't think so. Kissing her just then felt perfectly normal and completely self-explanatory, the only possible course of action. And once you've broken through that invisible barrier that separates one person from another, you're connected forever, whether you liked it or not.
And hadn't Serena kissed her back! There had been that moment of hesitation, just a tiny moment when Serena had pulled back with the most beautiful expression on her face that Bernie had ever seen. Her lips were parted, her cheeks flushed pink, her brown eyes wide. And then she had kissed her back. Even now, Bernie could still feel the tug of the other woman's fingers against her arms, pulling her closer, closer...how she had kissed her with everything she had, with a surprising hunger and desperation that she never would have imagined before.
She wanted her, in a simple, primitive way. She wanted Serena, all of Serena, her smile, her dry wit, her laugh...she wanted to become a part of her.
After all, that was why people get involved with other people, wasn't it? Not just for their bodies, but for everything else, too – their dreams and their scars and their stories.
She just wanted Serena, for as long as they both should live.
-.-
Thank you so much for the lovely reviews on the first chapter. I hope this doesn't disappoint. I will continue if you'd like to see more :) reviews welcome as always! xxx