AUTHOR'S NOTE!
This chapter picks up the action from the morning after the night before (or maybe we should refer to it as THAT night before). The story is told from both girls' POV. As always, any reviews will be very welcome and gratefully received.
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EMILY'S STORY
It must have been the noise of the bike being slowly pushed along the path that woke me up with a jolt. What else could have possibly succeeded in dragging me out of my heavenly slumber? I was having the dream of my life reliving the events of the previous day and night over and over again as if I was afraid that if I stopped thinking about them, even while asleep, I would wake up to find that they had never actually taken place at all. I wanted to hold on to those precious hours together with Naomi for dear life. I felt an overpowering need to wring every possible drop of pleasure, emotion and desire out of those images and memories which were still so fresh in my mind.
But something must have told me that I needed to wake up right at that moment or else I might regret not doing so for the rest of my life. Call it what you like – female intuition, a sixth sense perhaps or just plain old-fashioned fate. It doesn't really matter. What did matter though was that I woke up with a start, turned over expecting to see Naomi lying next to me still fast asleep and found an empty space instead. An empty space that seemed so big that you could have driven a truck through it. I could still see the indentations that her body had left behind on the blanket from where she had been sleeping. Much of the evidence that we had spent the night together out in the forest still remained – the charred remnants of the fire, the leftovers of the food we had eaten the night before, the bottle of vodka and the butt ends of the spliffs we had shared.
Everything that is except for the most important piece of proof that I hadn't just dreamt the whole thing up, that it wasn't just a grotesque piece of wishful thinking on my part. Naomi wasn't there any more! In a blind panic I sat up and looked around in all directions, frantically searching for her. Surely she can't have left me all alone in bed again and done a runner? It was bad enough when she did it the first time but not a second time, not after last night! I thought it was guys who had sex with you and then left you high and dry the following morning without a word or even a goodbye. Could she really be that cruel and heartless?
I could hear the sounds of a bicycle close by but I couldn't see Naomi. Then all of a sudden I saw her, thirty feet or so above me, pushing her bike along the path that overlooked the little copse where we had spent last night. I got up onto my feet and began calling up to her in a tone which betrayed every fibre of my disappointment and anguish that I had caught her red-handed trying to sneak away from me yet again.
'Twice! You're going to do this to me….. twice!' I was already marching up the slight incline towards her with a determined tread as I felt the anger rise up within me and burn the back of my throat. I could tell she had heard me speak but she showed no signs of stopping or turning round to face me. That didn't deter me though from continuing to harangue her for the cowardly act I had caught her carrying out.
'Naomi! No! You fucking……..stop right now!' As I eventually drew level with her on the path at the top of the incline she stopped dead and said 'What?' in a voice that spoke volumes to me. I looked right into her eyes. Normally Naomi's were the brightest and bluest of eyes that I had ever seen but they now seemed shockingly dull and lifeless and she could scarcely hold my gaze for more than a second without turning away from me and looking down at the ground.
'Don't you dare leave me in your bed again!' I said to her. I wasn't sure whether she would think I was accusing her, pleading with her or even threatening her. All of the above, I guess. Inside I was thinking 'PLEASE don't leave me, please don't walk away from me like this. Not after the most incredible night of my life! Don't do this to me. I couldn't stand it.'
But it clearly had no effect on her. All she did was to shake her head slowly, mumble 'I've got to go,' and carry on pushing her bike along the path, presumably heading back to the road and, ultimately, home. She didn't look me in the eyes properly once during this brief exchange.
I started following after her but soon came to a halt and just let my final despairing words trail after her as she walked steadfastly away from me, not once turning round or stopping.
'I know you, Naomi. I know you're lonely. I think you need someone to want you…..Well….. I do want you…. So be brave…. and want me back.'
I don't know how I managed not to burst into floods of tears as I made this last-ditch plea for her not to abandon me so callously. As she refused to turn round and come back to me my heart felt like it was being shattered into thousands of tiny pieces and my voice almost broke down completely. I nearly didn't get all the words out, so overcome was I with misery and the deepest, darkest pit of rejection. It seemed as if that night of passion we shared only a few short hours ago meant nothing to her. How could it if she was so desperate to get away from me once a new day had dawned on us?
I felt emotionally numb as I stood transfixed to the spot, my legs incapable of moving until Naomi had completely disappeared from view. As soon as she had gone, however, the tears started to flow. Soon they were streaming down my face like a tidal wave and I just let myself go completely. I caved in and let my feelings overwhelm me as huge, gasping sobs of misery racked my body, causing me to heave violently and I almost threw up several times. I don't know exactly how long I was in this dreadful state but it felt like an entire lifetime of pain and sorrow had been encapsulated in just this one tiny window of my life.
When I had finally reached the point where I could cry no more, when there were literally no more tears left to shed I returned to our short-lived passion pit, collected up all my things and packed them away in my rucksack. I wheeled my bike to the path just as Naomi had done a short while ago, got on and started pedalling my anything but merry way along the side path which led back towards the main country road.
It was just as well that it was still very early in the morning and that there was hardly any traffic on the roads. I barely took any notice of what was going on around me, so deep in furious thought was I, so oblivious was I to my immediate surroundings. All I could think about as I retraced the route we had both taken so joyfully the day before was: 'Where did I go wrong?'
My first reaction naturally enough was that it had been all my fault. A lifetime of dominance and suppression by Katie, together with my inherent shyness and lack of self-confidence, had conditioned me into assuming that whenever anything went wrong in my life I must have brought it on myself. So obviously I must have gone too far, too fast with Naomi. She simply wasn't ready for anything physical between us - yet.
But hang on a minute, though, I thought. Surely it was her who had made the first move, not me! Okay, fair enough, it was me who had held hands with her to begin with in front of the fire after our picnic. But it was her who made the first move to kiss me, not the other way round. I remembered that distinctly. In fact I could recall the feeling of utter surprise and unexpected joy I felt when she leaned over to kiss me that first time. It wasn't like I had tried to kiss her and she had resisted only to allow me to persuade her to go through with it. At no stage when we took each other's clothes off did she stop and question whether this was what she really wanted to do.
So it couldn't have been my fault, could it? I reasoned. She may have been hesitant and unsure to begin with but once we had got down to it she had enjoyed every minute of making love just as much as I did. I was sure of that. She couldn't have faked that, I would have known, I would have sensed it if she had been putting on an act. No, her pleasure was definitely genuine, even if it had shocked and surprised her.
So what could explain her reaction this morning? How could I make any conceivable sense of that? The only explanation I could come up with was that she felt ashamed and guilty for having enjoyed it so much. But if that was so, then why even go there in the first place? I hated the idea that I might have caused her to feel ashamed of by having demonstrated how much I cared about her and wanted her physically. The thought that right now she might be hating me for having made her feel guilty for what we'd done filled me with such terror and revulsion that I nearly fell off my bike in a fit of panic.
How I actually got home in one piece I'll never know. I must have been on auto-pilot throughout the whole agonising, miserable journey and didn't quite believe it when I found I was pulling up outside my house. I crept inside and made a beeline for the bathroom which amazingly, for once, was free. I locked myself in and spent some time trying to clean up my face, wiping away the huge smudges of make-up which had formed as a result of my tearful breakdown by the lake.
A quick soak in the bath and a change of clothes made me appear a bit more presentable compared to how I must have looked when I arrived back home. Sadly all that attention to detail on the surface did nothing to repair the damage that had been done to me on the inside. I suspected it would take a lot more than a good scrub and a bit of clever make -up to heal those scars and wounds which ran far deeper - right into the very depths of my soul
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NAOMI'S STORY
When I woke up it was already light and I felt cold, despite the fact that I was more or less fully dressed in the clothes I had been wearing the day before. I sat up and looked at Emily sleeping peacefully and noiselessly next to me and I was gripped with a sudden feeling of blind panic. Memories of our night together under the stars came flooding back to me in an instant and instinctively I began asking myself some pretty searching questions.
What the fuck had I done? And perhaps, more to the point, why had I done it? Sadly I hadn't got a clue how to answer them. Not right at that moment, anyway. Maybe I would never be able to explain to myself why I had done what I did but I knew for certain that I had to get away immediately. I had to put some distance between me and Emily, I had to escape from this beautiful yet painful setting and find some personal space to breathe and think - alone. I just couldn't face the inevitably awkward conversation that would ensue, at least on my side, if I stayed until Emily woke up.
The place I was in right now was so far out of my comfort zone that I knew I was bound to say or do the wrong thing. Better to quietly take my leave before I made it worse for myself – and probably Emily, too. She didn't deserve to wake up to a reluctant, terrified, confused lover. Jesus Christ! We've officially become lovers now!
Frightened by that undeniable fact way beyond anything I'd ever known or felt before, I stood up as quietly as possible so as not to wake Emily and picked up the few items of clothing that I had flung on to the ground the night before. I slipped on my sweatshirt and tiptoed with exaggerated movements over towards the bikes which were lying on the ground not too far away from where we had set up our spot for the evening. I carefully picked up my bike and started to slowly push it forward, heading for the path way up above us which overlooked the little woodland copse we had chosen as our camp.
I managed to climb all the way up the gentle slope and reach the path above us without, so I thought, disturbing Emily. Having reached the path I thought I was practically home and dry. I only had to push my bike forward maybe another fifty or sixty yards along the path and I would be out of sight and out of earshot of Emily. But I spoke too soon for suddenly the eerie stillness of the morning air was rudely and harshly punctuated by the sound of Emily's voice calling up to me from below.
'Twice! You're going to do this to me….. twice!' I could hardly breathe as I heard her words of accusation and sensed her making her way towards me up the slope. I didn't dare look round in case I caught her eye and betrayed my shame and embarrassment for running out on her yet again. I felt like my head was locked into position, like a horse that was wearing blinkers and could only see straight ahead.
'Naomi! No! You fucking……..stop right now!' She had more or less caught up with by now and as her very presence beside me forced me to turn my solemn and unsmiling face towards her she looked deep into my eyes with such bewilderment and anger that all I could say in my defence was 'What?' But I couldn't look at her for very long before averting my gaze as I couldn't bear to see the disappointment in her eyes and on her face – her disappointment in me, which, huge as it must have been, I doubted came close to matching the disappointment I felt in myself at that very moment.
'Don't you dare leave me in your bed again!' she said and I was so disgusted with myself, so flustered and tongue-tied by her justifiable accusations of cowardice and indecisiveness that all I could do was mumble semi-incoherently something about having to go. As she stood there, presumably watching me walk away from her in utter disbelief and despair I simply carried on wheeling my bike forward along the path without once turning round to look back at her. But it was what she said next, behind my back, which chilled me to the core, which stung me all over like a swarm of bees fighting to deliver the killer blow as I lay helpless under the weight of their ferocity.
'I know you, Naomi. I know you're lonely. I think you need someone to want you…..Well….. I do want you…. So be brave…. and want me back.'
Tears welled up in my eyes as I heard these words which were delivered in a voice that seemed damned near close to breaking down completely. I had to bite down hard on my lip a couple of times to stop myself from crying and I tried desperately to block out the words she was saying but they reverberated inside my head like someone was holding a megaphone to the side of my face and screaming at me through it. The further I moved away from her the more the words seemed to echo in my mind as if every step I took to move away from her merely increased my punishment and my feelings of guilt.
Within a few more seconds I knew I must have been out of her sight and so I could have easily jumped on my bike and ridden away, but for some reason I kept on pushing the bike all along the path. It was as though I had accepted the fact that I had to start punishing myself for what I had done to her and that punishment started right now with forcing myself to wheel the bike just a little bit further than was necessary.
Eventually I reached the open country lane that we had turned off from to reach Emily's hidden favourite spot and I got up on my bike and started pedalling as fast as I could down the road. Even that simple act took on a form of punishment as I cycled so furiously that my legs quickly begun to ache with the pain of this frenetic pace that I made myself go along at.
When I got home I tore upstairs to the bathroom and almost literally threw myself into the shower. I wasn't entirely sure what it was that I was trying to wipe away all traces of. Was it the smell and taste and feel of Emily on my skin? Was it my overwhelming shame at my cowardice and the images in my mind of the brutal way I had walked out on Emily once more? Or perhaps I was trying to wash away my confusion and my fears of who I might have become, or what I might be becoming. As I stood there in silence, letting the hot water rush over me, the tears that I fought so hard to hold back earlier on now began to flow. Who was I crying for? Me? Or Emily? Were they tears of self-loathing and embarrassment at the stupid thing I'd done the night before or were they tears of suffocating shame and regret at the stupid thing I'd done that very morning?
I climbed out of the shower, dried myself quickly and returned to my bedroom to get dressed for college. As I got dressed, I stood in front of my mirror and took a long, hard look at myself. What did I see? In all honesty, a very confused and scared young woman who was feeling so far out of her depth that the ground felt like it was giving way beneath her feet. So what did I know with any certainty?
Well, first of all, I really, really liked Emily. In fact I could honestly say that I enjoyed spending time with her more than anyone else I knew, indeed more than anyone else I had met in the last five or ten years. Would I be happy if I hung out with her and really saw nobody else at all? Yes! BUT DID THAT MEAN I FANCIED HER?!!
I mean, for fuck's sake, WE HAD JUST SPENT THE WHOLE OF THE PREVIOUS EVENING MAKING LOVE TO EACH OTHER! Surely that was proof enough that I fancied her, just like I knew Emily fancied me.
BUT I'M NOT GAY! I've never thought that way about any girl in my life! Or was it more truthful to say that I'd never felt that way about any other PERSON before in my life? After all, none of the guys I'd been with previously meant anything to me, did they? Could I think of one guy who'd I'd enjoyed being with as much as Emily? No, not one.
So why does the idea of having these incredible feelings for another girl scare the shit out of me so much? Because I wasn't prepared for them? Was it merely the fact that I didn't have any guidelines to work from, that I had no experiences on which to draw that made me feel so confused and uncertain about the feelings I had developed for Emily? Perhaps I'm making too big a deal of it? Yeah, I slept with a girl. So what?
Are you kidding?! It's the biggest fucking deal of my life!
And was it the best sex I'd ever had in my life? Yep. Only by a country mile, though. Shit, Emily made me tingle and tremble in places in my body I didn't even know I had! What guy would even find those places, let alone know what the fuck to do once he had, more by luck than judgement, stumbled across them? Did I want her to do it all over again? You fucking bet I did!
So if I loved every minute of last night, if I wanted to do it all over again anytime soon, how come I feel so guilty about it, how come I'm terrified of looking her in the face again? Why is life so fucking complicated and confusing? Why can't things just be nice and straightforward and simple? Where can I turn to for help about how I'm feeling?
The instant I posed myself that last question I knew the answer. As hard as it might be to accept it, there was only one person I could even contemplate turning to for help and advice. My mother. The same mother I hardly spoke to nowadays, the mother who frustrated and irritated the shit out of me every single day with all her caring, do-goodying crap, the woman who had turned what was once our peaceful home into some sickening parody of a 1970's style hippy commune. Yep, her. She was the only one who might be capable of understanding and helping me without bursting out laughing or feeling the need to summon the local exorcist to save me from eternal damnation.
I swallowed hard, breathed a few heavy sighs and dragged myself tearfully over to her bedroom, knocking on the door first before letting myself in. What I saw was not what I expected to see in a million years. Mum was in bed alright, but so was Kieran, my politics teacher, the guy who had tried to comfort me by kissing me, only the other day at college, out of some mistaken belief that I had wanted him to. I couldn't believe my eyes. There was nowhere safe for me to hide in my house any more. My house? Jesus, it had long since stopped being my house any more. I felt like a complete stranger in it. Everyone else in the world seemed to feel far more at home in it than I ever did.
I walked out of the room and kept on walking all the way out of the house, pursued hotly by a demented and gobsmacked Kieran, still butt-naked and covering his modesty with his hands. He was apologising desperately for what I 'd just barged in on, saying he had come round to see me the previous night to apologise for the incident at school, that he and Mum had got talking, that he was lonely, blah, blah, blah! Yeah and naturally he shagged my Mum after he'd realised that a shag was out of the question with me! I'd heard enough pathetic excuses from guys in my time to not want to listen to a word more. I told him to fuck off, got on my bike and shot off down the road, feeling utterly frustrated that I hadn't got to speak to Mum about my feelings for Emily and totally pissed off that my home life had now gone beyond a joke.
