1
GEMMA
Gemma shut the door behind her with a weary sigh and leaned against it for a moment. It hadn’t been a particularly hard day at work but combined with an unexpected late spring shower that drenched her on her walk to the tube station – and a tube train filled with hot, damp commuters trying to avoid the worst of the weather – it was proving to be pretty rubbish. The icing on the cake, however, was a message from her mother, not only summoning her home next weekend but also announcing that her grandmother had booked a box at the local opera house and that Gemma’s presence was required. That kind of request demanded her attention and also hinted at expectation and an upcoming questioning.
She dumped her work bag, toed off her soggy shoes and entered the kitchen / lounge area of her small shared flat to find her flatmate, Teagan, holding out a glass of red wine with a smile.
“I figured you could use this.”
“Oh thanks!” Gemma replied. “I definitely need this after today.” She reverently sniffed the wine before taking abig glug, smiling as the alcohol washed over her tired body and started to relax and warm her.
“Your mum phoned here before calling your mobile, so I figured you’d need a drink. Want to talk about it?” Teagan’s Australian accent, softened by years of living in the UK, soothed her. She slumped onto one of their bar stools, oblivious to the damp clothes that were sticking to her body, and sighed. Teagan had a supportive family that loved her and accepted that she and her boyfriend would get engaged, marry, and have kids in their own time, and gently supported from a distance. Gemma’s parents, on the other hand, were desperate for a grandchild and were constantly setting her up with one woman or another hoping a baby would soon follow. Gemma tried to tell them she didn’t need them to set her up with anyone. She was perfectly capable of finding a girlfriend, as her litany of exes would attest. She was just not capable of making a relationship last longer than a few weeks before it inevitably went sideways. Gemma was beginning to think that marriage and kids were beyond her, even though the thought of a loving partner and happy home life was pulling at her heartstrings.
“My grandmother is putting together a group to go to the opera, and Mum is insisting I go home for it.” Gemma explained, “There’s an opera house near where they live. It’s a huge, great thing with substantial grounds, and posh people who also own houses with substantial grounds get dressed up and go to the opera.” She took a sip of wine. “It’s so fancy, you have half the opera, then dinner, then go back for the second half.” She held her glass out for Teagan to refill and tentatively poked at the dinner Teagan was cooking.
“Don’t you dare steal any,” Teagan warned. “Brad’scoming over later for dinner and a movie. You’re welcome to join if you want?”
“Oh, I won’t barge in on movie night. I’ll grab some leftovers from yesterday and hide in my room with Netflix and the rest of this wine.” She tried not to sigh and let her envy of Teagan’s evening with her partner show on her face.
“So, how dressed up is dressed up?” Teagan asked with a quirk of her eyebrow.
“Oh, very,” Gemma replied, as she dragged out the remainder of a pizza and lobbed it in the microwave. “Tuxedos for the men, cocktail dresses for the ladies, shoes you can’t walk in but make your ass look great.”
“Sounds very fancy.” Teagan leaned against the counter and fixed her friend with a pointed look. “But I know that you not-so-secretly love getting dressed up and that you adore your grandmother, so why is this trip suddenly weighing heavy?”
“Well,” Gemma started but stopped. She wasn’t sure how much to reveal to her friend as it would mean that she would have to admit to herself what she’d been hiding from ever since her mother’s message had popped up. “Have I told you about the Davies family that we were close with growing up?” At Teagan’s nod, Gemma continued. “I think their daughter’s going to be home at the same time, and she will go with us to the opera.” Gemma sighed. “Our parents are super close. Rory and I were best friends for many years, but I haven’t seen her in about a decade. I keep up with her on Facebook and through the parents.”
“Did you guys have a fight or something?” Teagan asked.
Gemma took a big gulp of wine and sighed. “No, we slept together one night and haven’t spoken since.”
Almost a week later, Gemma was on the train heading towards her hometown and the ill-fated opera trip. She’d decided to go dressed for the night out and had a small suitcase with her. Apparently, the families had decided to really make a weekend of it and were staying at a nearby country house hotel, so she needed more than just an overnight bag. Having got rid of her ancient car last year, she had to take the train and then a taxi to the opera house. She could then catch a lift with her parents to the hotel. This meant she could have a drink, or several, at the opera, and she figured she would need them. She had been right in thinking that as well as her parents and grandmother, Rory’s parents, grandmother and Rory herself would join them. Gemma had half-heartedly tried to convince Teagan that it was absolutely not for Rory’s benefit that she wore her slinkiest black dress and killer heels, that she’d not spent ages twisting her dark hair into a sophisticated up-do to impress the other woman and that she’d not spent more time than necessary on her makeup, but Teagan wasn’t having any of it.
Gemma had told Teagan everything about her relationship with Rory and had found it to be a cathartic experience sharing it with someone, finally. After ten years of holding her secret close, she had laid everything out to Teagan and felt a weight lifting off her as she did so. Rory was two years older than Gemma and had been in the upper fifth at school when Gemma started as a first year. At that point, Teagan ranted about private schools, how years were labelled, and why posh people couldn’t do things the same as everyone else, until Gemma explained that Upper Fifth was year 11, First year was year 9 making Rory 15 and Gemma 13 when she had started at her new school. Gemma had been very nervous about starting at the big school, but her father’s best friend’s daughter was a prefect and from day one Rory had looked out for Gemma.
The families were close and, as the girls got on so well, they spent weekends and holidays together. They should have felt like sisters, but Gemma could never feel that way about Rory. When Rory started her last year of school, she came out publicly as gay and got her first girlfriend. Far from making her a social pariah as she had feared, it made her part of the golden couple at school. Gemma developed a big crush on her friend but couldn’t do anything about it. She was a lowly fifth year, and Rory was an upper sixth, school prefect, best scholar, and star of the hockey team, who was going out with the best-looking girl in the school. Gemma decided that in order to keep her friend, she had to keep the secret of her feelings to herself, so she hugged her secret close to her, just like she hugged her pillow at night, dreaming it was Rory holding her.
Rory left for university, and Gemma was heartbroken. She still saw her on family holidays and when Rory was at home during school holidays, but those were becoming fewer now that Rory had a life and friends at university. Rory quickly adapted to life at uni, and Gemma had felt like the annoying youngster left at home whilst Rory was living life and having fun.
Just after Gemma herself had left school and was about to start at university, a mutual friend had a huge house party for her birthday, and Rory came back for it. Rory had been there on her own and just as beautiful as Gemma remembered. They’d reconnected quickly and before long, drinks and giggles led to flirting, which led to kissing, which led to a night Gemma could never forget. Unfortunately, the best night of her life was followed by the worst morning. Not only had she got her first hangover but also her first note left next to the bed explaining that Rory had to get back touniversity for exams and to a girlfriend she hadn’t told Gemma about the night before.
Gemma looked at her reflection in the train window as it sped towards Larchester. She should hate Rory for her actions, but she found she couldn’t. Rory had been her first love, her first female sexual partner, and no one in the years since had come close to her in comparison. Gemma pulled a can of gin and tonic from her bag and opened it, downing half in one go before realising that her hands were shaking. She hadn’t seen Rory since that night, but in a moment of drunken weakness a year ago, following another short relationship breaking down, she had found her on Facebook. Rory had just turned thirty and was just as stunning as Gemma remembered, her smiling face shining from every pixel of every picture on her profile. Gemma had felt an unusual wave of warmth wash over her as she looked into Rory’s beautiful face, only to have her hopes of a reconciliation dashed at the phrase “Aurora Davies is engaged to Darcy Williams” that was plastered across her profile. That phrase seemed to mock Gemma, but unable to stop herself, Gemma had looked at all their engagement pictures. Each one radiated love and contentment, Rory’s stunning and swarthy good looks a perfect match for Darcy’s feminine features, perfect figure and bouncy blond curls.
Gemma had slammed her laptop shut in disgust at the hurt coursing through her and had got very drunk with Teagan and Brad, swearing off women for all of two weeks until she inevitably found another woman to warm her bed and who she fucked into submission trying to eradicate the memories of Rory’s fingers on her skin. She hadn’t told Teagan, but the night that she’d had the message from her mother summoning her home, she had dived into Facebook again to search for pictures of Rory. Fuelled by re-heatedpizza and cheap wine, she had scoured Rory’s posts, noting that they all seemed to be posed and formal rather than the fun, flirty ones Gemma had on her Instagram. Gemma was amazed to see that Rory was much more girly than she remembered. At school, Rory was a tomboy, and Gemma could still remember burying her fingers in Rory’s short brown hair as she rode her fingers to oblivion. This femme version of Rory was, hopefully, less of a challenge to her heart and libido.
She realised far too late that she probably should have only had one can of gin on the train, rather than the three she had downed, as she tried to walk in her ridiculous heels towards the taxi rank at the station with her clutch bag in one hand, dragging her small suitcase behind her. She figured that if she was going to face Rory and her fiancée, then she would look sexy and unobtainable and tease Rory with what she was missing, and what she could have had if she’d only stayed in bed that fateful morning ten years ago. As the taxi pulled up to the drop-off point at the opera house, Gemma looked around for her mother. She paid the taxi driver and stood on the pavement for a moment when a tall, dark-haired figure in a black evening suit sauntered towards her. Gemma felt her breath hitch and was grateful for the sunglasses covering her eyes so she could appraise the figure of the woman who had been haunting her dreams for far too long. As her heart flipped and her stomach filled with butterflies, she realised that she absolutely should have had more gin on the train.
“Hello!” Rory’s voice was slightly deeper than Gemma remembered but just as cultured – and poured over her like melted chocolate. “Grandmother sent me to scoop you up and show you where we’re sitting.”
She reached out a hand and effortlessly took Gemma’ssuitcase from her. “Would you like to take my arm?” Rory offered, “It’s been raining for the last few days, although mercifully it’s cleared up, but it’s still a bit soft underfoot in places.”
Gemma drank in the sight of Rory before her. In her heart and mind, she had been preparing for Rory in a dress, perhaps in clingy evening trousers, but Rory in a suit, with her hair twisted up into a tight bun and those warm brown eyes gazing at her was a sight nothing could have prepared her for. Rory was the perfect example of androgynous chic, and Gemma could feel her stomach flip, not only at the sight but also at the memory of what they had done together the last time they had been in the same room. She had told Teagan that she was not still attracted to Rory, that Rory was in her past. That was crap. She was still 100% attracted to Rory. She had told herself on the train that she was dressing to teach Rory a lesson, to show her what she was missing. To upstage her English rose of a perfect fiancée, but the fact was that she was still, after ten years of not seeing this woman, so attracted to her it hurt and if Rory crooked her finger, she would be in bed with her in a trice. The tarmac of the drop-off area morphed into a flagstone path that led to the gardens. Her heels clicked as they walked. Gemma was happy to let Rory take her wheeled suitcase and concentrated on negotiating the uneven path in her high heels. For now, they were in the shade of the hedges that lined the path, and Gemma tried not to sink into Rory as her body was crying out for her to do. She had no idea that her reaction to this woman would be so visceral. She had to remind herself that Rory was engaged and that in only a few moments, Gemma would be face to face with the woman who had captured Rory’s heart.
Before long, they turned off the path and were into thegardens proper. The scent of the flowers from the borders was almost overwhelming and reminded Gemma of summer days in her grandmother’s garden, playing and hanging out with Rory when they were teenagers. She took one look at the grass and decided to take Rory’s proffered arm for support. Her heels may make her ass look incredible, but they were not sensible for soft grass that had been rained on for several days. More than once, Gemma had to steady herself and felt Rory’s bicep tense under her jacket. Rory had always kept herself fit and was athletic as a child, and that, it seemed, had extended into adulthood. Gemma tried to keep her features neutral as Rory chatted gently about nothing of consequence and tried to walk straight, her heels and the three gins in quick succession on an empty stomach not helping in that regard.
She turned to look at Rory, but just then the wind shifted, and she got a whiff of Rory’s perfume up her nose and her body reacted immediately. It was the same scent that she’d been wearing the night they spent together, the same scent that haunted Gemma’s dreams and the same scent that now twisted her body into a new state of arousal. She tried to ignore the feelings coursing through her and concentrated on setting her features, and the onslaught of the combined Armstrong/Davies family interrogation. Despite Gemma not seeing Rory for so many years, their parents had remained good friends, oblivious to what had happened with their daughters, and she had seen Rory’s parents many times as she’d visited her own family, the last time only to be besieged with pictures of Rory and Darcy’s perfect engagement. She grimaced internally and tried to work out if she’d had too much or not enough alcohol to deal with this.
2
