Emily

I opened my eyes and blinked away the blur of early morning weariness from them. I was warm, which felt like the first time in years. I was comfortable. Gradually the morning bodily ritual of waking up all my senses began. Lying on my side, on a bed, under a soft quilt, facing a strange wall. A wall with pictures on it of people I didn't recognise. A woman in her 40's with what looked horrifyingly like a multi patterned yellow kaftan on, holding a baby and smiling goofily at the camera. Another of a small yellow haired girl of about 4, sitting on a sink, looking pensively down at her feet. Yet another shot of a crowd of what looked like University students, grinning proudly in their hired black graduation gowns, a flurry of mortar boards frozen in the air above them.

Not my bedroom then, my brain slowly admitted. Not my bed. Comfortable as I was, I had to turn over. Which resulted in me coming face to face with another person in the oh so comfortable bed. So... suddenly Iwasn't quite so comfortable.

A pair of intense blue eyes stared at me. A halo of tousled fair hair (now I knew who that little girl in the picture was) surrounded a beautiful face. A face that was serious and frankly a bit scary.

"Morning" she said quietly "Sleep well Emily?"

The brief period of other worldliness I'd been 'enjoying' came to a shuddering stop. Naomi...and I was in her bed, literally inches from her.

For a moment, my throat closed up, I had no idea what to say to the woman who had in turn enraptured, rejected and now saved me. Saved me from more than just a night on a freezing cold doorstep, but had taken me inside, hugged me, washed my tear stained face and then tucked me into the seductive embrace of this soft bed. A woman who had refused to let me talk at all. OK, my teeth had been chattering so much when she found me, I wouldn't have made much sense anyway, but even when she had washed my face, taken off my clothes (Oh, God...I thought...she's seen me naked...or at least in my underwear) and put me in HER bed for the night., she just put a cool finger on my lips when I tried to explain and shook her head firmly.

"Not tonight Emily" she said firmly.

I remember thinking she looked a bit worse for wear too last night. Her eyes were bright and wide, the black pupils almost covering iridescent blue irises. Her make up was smeared. Not her lipstick...which I vividly remember being grateful for, even in my distress...but she definitely looked like someone who had been out and painted the whole town with two coats of crimson gloss.

But I definitely didn't remember her getting into bed with me. Not that I had any right at all to object. I was the runaway, the vagrant, turning up on her doorstep. I was the one who had walked out of here hours before, cowardly fleeing because she happened to have slept with the same guy who my sister had once (OK, probably several times) I was the one who had left my husband (the jolt of guilt I got at THAT little gem made me wince, even as she stared at me steadily).

So I settled for a nervous nod. I had slept well. Better than I had for months actually.

"You can tell me what and how much you like" she said in a whisper "Or not...it's up to you Em"

The nickname was nice, I thought. But she must have a million questions, and I owed it to her to at least answer some of them.

"I'm sorr..." I started, but she shushed me almost impatiently.

"Not important...you came back" she said with a small smile. "I thought you were gone for good"

"Couldn't..." I said hoarsely "...I tried to phone you, but your phone was switched off?"

She nodded, slipping her hand flat under her head and moved an inch closer to me on her pillow Our heads were so close I could count the individual eyelashes over her eyes. Long, dark lashes. Beautiful lashes.

I blinked, mainly to give myself time to think. What did I say? I''d spent yesterday phoning her over and over after reading that text, all the time trying to avoid JJ's increasingly desperate attempts to find out why I was crying. I sat in our lounge, sobbing like a fool while my poor husband fussed around me, trying tea, handkerchiefs and finally vodka to pacify me. In the end, when I got no answer at all from Naomi, I threw my phone onto the couch and wiped my eyes with the white cotton square JJ had offered me. My heart was aching at the knowledge that I had to hurt him now...a lot. And that it might all be for nothing anyway. That text had scared me so much, it was so final, so...hard.

He just sat there quietly while I told him what was in my heart. I loved him...I just wasn't in love with him. I realised while I was saying it, that the clichéd "It's not you, it's me" line was slim reward for his constant devotion and love. He'd done nothing wrong. Just fell in love with a girl who couldn't love him back in the way he deserved. Couldn't love any man back. Because I'm gay. Have always been gay, and always will be, and now...now I'd met someone who'd lifted the grey veil which had been over my eyes since adolescence. Someone who turned my grey world into vivid, swirling colour.

"I knew" he said finally, after I'd sobbed out yet another limp apology, sitting there squeezing tears from a now soaked handkerchief.

"W..what?" I said, mouth hanging open in disbelief "But...but you never..."

"Of course not...I love you Emily...I've always loved you, right from when we were at school. I just knew there was something missing, something important. Last night...when we...when you... that was the first time, wasn't it...the first time you actually felt..."

I nodded, my head down in shame. I thought I'd been clever enough to fool him. All those nights of faked ecstasy.

"But why...if you knew Jay...why did you...?" I mumbled, knowing the answer but needing to hear it.

"Because I thought if I could...if we could just...after a few years, you might...grow to love me the way I love you" he said, his voice hushed and desperately sad. I thought my heart would actually stop, I felt so wretched.

"I'm so sorry Jay" I sobbed " I never meant to hurt you"

"I know" he sighed "But you have...but we couldn't go on much longer living this lie could we Em?"

I shook my head. Why was he being so reasonable about this? Most guys would be raging by now, calling me every filthy name they could think of. I know I hadn't actually committed adultery yet...not physically. But in my head I had. And it burned.

He let me walk out of the flat. We never actually discussed separation, but the practicalities hardly mattered now. I had left him, even if my clothes hung in our wardrobe still and my smiling face (forced, like everything since) looked out from the poster sized wedding photo on the hall wall. I wandered around the cold streets for a good few hours, not caring about the curious glances I was getting from the people passing me on the pavement. I found myself outside Naomi's apartment block without knowing how I got there and a nice elderly gentleman in a blue great coat let me in. He didn't even ask who I was visiting. I guess my tear stained face and hunched posture told him everything he needed to know.

And then, after knocking uselessly for several minutes, I waited...and waited. It got colder, and darker and eventually the street door downstairs stopped banging open and shut. I didn't even know why I had come. She was out, God knows where, but I knew I had to make things right between us. Even if she was determined to break it off, whatever it was. I had to know for certain. So I waited.

I must have drifted off, despite the bitter cold, because when I heard soft footsteps on the stairs, I started awake. I knew I must look a sight, but what else was there to do? I could hardly count on my sister or mother for moral support. If JJ had told them about what had happened, I was pretty sure the posse would be out already, a thick knotted rope dangling from my mothers hand next to the wanted poster. Lynching was the least of my worries.

But when she looked down at me sitting on her cold doorstep. I knew I wouldn't actually have to sleep on the street. After the initial shock of seeing me, she was all business.

And now I was in her bed, in a borrowed tee shirt, looking at her pretty face as she studied mine.

I started to tell her all the things I had described, but she stopped me by reaching out and stroking my face gently.

"You know...I had imagined this...you here, in my bed...but under slightly different circumstances. I just need to know one thing Emily?" she said softly.

"What?" I said almost in a whisper.

"Are you here because you want to be...I mean really want to be...or is this just the only place you could think of?"

It was a fair question. In one way I didn't have many options. OK, I had my purse and enough money in the bank and on my credit cards to have booked into any one of the seaside hotels which are dotted around town. This time of year, there are beds galore free. I could have booked into one and left the messy details till morning. But I knew I wanted to be here...whatever here meant. Maybe she wouldn't want me like this. The sort of baggage I come with is heavy for anyone to carry. Broken marriage, occasionally violent harpy of a sister, gorgon of a mother. It wouldn't be easy. But she needed to know the truth.

"I wanted to be here. I wanted to be with you. Everything else...my marriage, JJ, Cook...is just background noise. I don't know if we will have a future..." I said steadily "...but if we could have, I don't want to die not knowing"

Her smile then lit up the room like a burst of summer sun,

"Then that's all I need to know" she said happily " Now...I think I deserve a reward for rescuing this little damsel in distress. I think a kiss is in order?"

Now I smiled happily and moved closer. I wasn't ready for anything hot and heavy, but a kiss was just what the doctor ordered. I slid into her arms and it was like God had made us to fit together, like perfectly carved matching figurines. Her body pressed against me enough to make my fear of anything 'further' waver quite a bit, but when her lips closed over mine and her soft hair brushed my face, I simply whimpered with pleasure. Like the first kiss we had shared, it went on and on. I think there was a bit of moaning from both sides at one point or another, but when she finally pulled back, with just that Naomi trademark gentle brush of lips to end it, I was dizzy with excitement. I think if she had pushed me then for more...contact, I wouldn't have resisted at all. It's not as if I hadn't dreamed of something like this often enough in the past, was it? In bed with a beautiful, willing girl, one small piece of material away from being gloriously naked together. But she must have read my mind.

"Wow..." she breathed..."I think we need to get up now Emily Fitch...otherwise I might just lose control and show you how much I DO want my reward"

"And I would probably enjoy that a lot" I said, smiling back "But you're right...we need to talk, and...I haven't had anything to eat since yesterday morning...?"

She giggled and poked me with her fingers in the ribs, making me squirm out of her grip.

"Oi" she complained, "No one said anything about bed AND board missy"

So reluctantly I prised myself out of my safe little cocoon and followed her into her kitchen. The rumour that I followed her pert behind with my eyes all the way there is entirely false.