She’d fought back, of course, and then he’d left, only returning to pick up what was left of his stuff the following day when she was at work. It was just as well they hadn’t gotten to the stage of actually living together. Not that she’d ever gotten to that stage with anyone. She liked her own space. And physical affection onher terms. The idea of someone thinking they had the right to help themselves to her body made her shudder. Which is why it was doubly surprising with Kivi. That she’d been okay with that prospect, and that…
Gulp.
She’dwantedit.
And no, of course she’d never once evendreamedthat she might herself have an element of the rainbow inside her. Up until three years ago, she’d been a walking poster ad for homophobia. Not just a casual ‘eurgh, gay people’ homophobe, but a card-carrying, vitriol-spewing, pro-conversion-therapy and anti-gay-marriage bigot. It was all she’d known, since her dad had always been very vocal with that particular opinion. Not her mum, though. Never her mum, and later, not Leo either. And now of course she knew why. For approximately the millionth time, she felt a surge of shame and regret for how she’d unknowingly tortured them.
In fact, it had only been after the breakdown of that relationship with Aaron (at the start of the pandemic) that she’d come to her senses. To add insult to injury, her landlord had sold up and unceremoniously evicted her. Turning to her dad for help at first, she’d been struck by the callousness of his rejection. Her mother, on the other hand, had taken her in without hesitation.
Mourning the loss of her own relationship, she’d recognised some of the same signs of loss in her mother. At the time, she hadn’t known that Lydia had been mourning the loss of her relationship with Gilly. Having been together at uni, they’d briefly reignited their romance on a holiday in Italy, and then promptly broken it off again when they came home, six months before the pandemic. The naïve Saskia had just presumed that her mum was still upset about her divorce from Saskia’s fatherseveral years previously. Leo, meanwhile, was also feeling the aftershocks of a breakup (much more dramatic and devastating than hers), so tempers had been running short. In the middle of an explosive row, all three of them against each other in the little two-bed flat that her mum had been occupying at the time, something flipped. Her mum had dropped the bombshell – “I had agirlfriend,Saskia! I’m bi-fucking-sexual!”
The silence that had ensued had stretched on interminably. And then, quietly, Leo had said,“Me too, Mum.”
Saskia, meanwhile, had said nothing. In fact, she’d just stared at them both, with what she’d learned a few days later was a mirror image of Lydia’s own mother’s expression when she had come out to her thirty-odd years before. “I thought I was going to be turned into an ice lolly by the coldness in your eyes,” Leo had agreed reproachfully.
“You don’t need another stick up your arse,” Saskia had snarked, but from embarrassment rather than any real invective. In reality, she was fast realising thatshehad been the one with the stick up her arse. And that if she had any chance of repairing her immensely damaged relationships with her mother and twin, that stick needed extracting, fast.
It had taken a couple of agonising weeks. A fortnight or so of complete and utter honesty with herself. She’d withdrawn, hiding away and burying herself in her work. It had been around the same time that she’d decided to make a conscious effort to look after herself better. Eat without purging. Stop exercising like an addict. All of which had helped her realise what an utter… well, bitch, she’d been.
After nearly breaking down in the street on her lockdown-restricted daily walk, she’d marched straight home and broken down there instead. She’d sobbed into her mother’s arms like achild, apologising to her and to Leo over and over again. “If I’ve ruined your one shot at happiness with Gilly, I’ll never forgive myself.”
Of course, it had all ended happily. Or happily enough. Lydia and Gilly had gotten back together, and now they were on track for wedded bliss. Leo hadn’t found himself another partner, but he’d changed careers and was a million times happier as a hair stylist. And she had gone freelance, leavingChicamagazine altogether, and had striven to be a better person since then.
She still had a way to go. Her behaviour to Kivi last night – and this morning – had been proof of that. But this was new. This… attraction to Kivi.
Because that was what it was. There was no doubt about that. On top of being conventionally beautiful – petite, blonde and curvaceous – she exuded the most wonderful calming but simultaneously exuberant energy. As if her default state was bubbliness, but she kept a lid on it for the sake of professionalism. Saskia longed to reach beneath that. To access what lay beyond the shell. And not just emotionally. To touch the softness of her skin, to watch her come alive, to…
Oh, for God’s sake.
Saskia wasn’t stupid. She’d felt this for men before, and now she was feeling it for a woman. She wasn’t going to be like Dorothy in Kansas, shaking her head mystified and bleating,“Aww, shucks. Well NOW what am I going to do?”
She was going to figure out what it meant for her future, first and foremost.
Guess I’ve got some more thinking to do.
Chapter Twenty
Kivi
Kivi had expected the first meeting with Saskia since their almost-kiss to have been awkward. After all, she herself was the Queen of Awkward Interactions, and the more she got to know Saskia, the more the realised that the other woman should probably be the second-in-line. A veritable Princess of Awkward Interactions.
Wait – no, that would imply that she was your child. NOT appropriate, considering the fact that you’re physically attracted to her.
‘Physically attracted.’ That was an understatement. She… how was it that Eva had put it that morning after their almost-kiss… she ‘fancied the pants off’ the hot, intimidating journalist. So much so, she hadn’t been able to focus on the rest of her morning’s work because her body was so charged up with endorphins. It had taken a long, brisk walk with Toto to calm her down again. And that was just from standing close to her! God only knew what an actual kiss would have done. Blown the top of her head off, probably.
She didn’t need to experience it to know what a kiss with Saskia would be like. Warm, and soft, so unbelievably soft… and warm, and soft, and warm…
The oven timer beeped, as if to bring her back down to Earth.
As she pulled the individual cottage pies out of the oven and placed them on hot plates, she forced herself to accept reality. Saskia was probably straight. She certainly would never ping somebody’s gaydar. Kivi would never again make the mistake of assuming that somebody batted for her side – kissing a stranger up against the wall of a pub, years ago, and being rejected, had put her off for life. These days, if she made any moves (and she seldom did), it was only after ascertaining a woman’s Sapphic inclinations. She wasn’t the barrier-breaking whirlwind she had once been.
All of this meant that there was no real chance of kissing Saskia. If Kivi tried, she had no doubt that the beautiful redhead would reject her. An expression of disgust would melt over her face, her hands would push at Kivi’s shoulders, and she’d say something cutting, like-
“Ow! Jesus Christ!”
Kivi dropped the plate she was holding with a crash. She had been so occupied in her gloomy daydream that she’d forgotten it was red-hot. Luckily, there had been nothing on it except the side salad, but the plate itself was now in shards on the floor.
“Everything all right?” Saskia appeared in the doorway. For a split-second, Kivi pictured herself in this moment through Saskia’s eyes: dishevelled, nursing her burnt hand, and covered in salad leaves.
