Danika lies awake for what seems like a long time after Kim has left. Her finger taps on her lips. The buzz of that almost-kiss still thrums in her veins.
Now she’s alone in what is actually averyuncomfortable sofa bed—the mattress too thin, the springs uneven, and her head is lower than her feet—she replays the almost-kiss. Did she instigate it?
No. Not directly.
Did Kim instigate it?
No to that too. Not directly.
Both of them went for the platonic cheek-kiss, and then it got awkward.
Kim obviously no more wants to kiss Danika than Danika wants to kiss Kim.
Except she does.
She licks her lips.Okay. She didn’t expect to be admitting that tonight, not even to herself. She examines her response from every angle, mentally circling it like a seagull around the Arts Centre spire.
Is she attracted to Kim? She must be to want to kiss her like that.
Does she want to kiss Kim? Yes, but…it’s not that simple.
Is it because Kim is a woman? Duh, no. That’s never worried her. She’s just never wanted to kiss a woman before.
Only Kim.
So what’s the problem?
Right. How naïve she is to think it’s just one problem. There are so many potential issues and problems with kissing Kim.
The girls. Danika and Kim are building their relationship around the girls being sisters. Cami and Bella come first here. That’s the first reason.
The second, well, she is still grieving. There’s still a hard nugget of sadness for Chris’s death, and now there’s an extra, complicated layer as she navigates the rearrangement of what she’d thought was true. And Kim is grieving the same events, but in the opposite order.
It would be messy to kiss and walk away. Awkward.
What if they didn’t walk away from each other? What if they found they wanted more kisses?
Wanted sex.
Wanted a relationship?
What then?
What?
She presses her knuckles to her forehead. How would the girls take it?
And the big one. It’s just plain weird to be contemplatingsomethingwith her dead husband’s partner.
Danika turns over on the lumpy bed and hugs the pillow.
Doesn’t mean she doesn’t want it though.
She hears Kim humming in the kitchen a little before seven. Danika rises, dresses in the casual shorts and t-shirt she brought with her, and goes for a pee before making her way to the kitchen.
Before falling asleep, she’d resolved to treat Kim as usual: friendly, casual. No awkwardness. No mention of the almost-kiss.
“Hi, sleep well?” Kim, barefoot, her wild hair in a rambunctious ponytail this morning, turns to her. “Please don’t be polite. If the bed is as bad as I think, the more votes to take it to the tip, the better.”
