But right now, lying in their bed with Becca's hand in hers and the taste of her wife still on her lips, it wasn't scary at all.
"I love you," Ellie said. "Whatever tonight was, whatever this is, I love you."
Becca rolled onto her side and kissed Ellie softly on the mouth. "I love you too. More than anything." She settled her head onto Ellie's shoulder, her breath warm against Ellie's skin. "Whatever this is."
They lay there quietly, tangled together, and Ellie listened to Becca's breathing slow and deepen as she drifted towards sleep. But Ellie didn't sleep. Not yet. She lay staring at the ceiling with both hands resting on Becca's back and replayed the whole night from the beginning… the bar, the woman, the walk, the bed. Every time she got to the part where Becca saidher name is Sarashe felt that same jolt, that same insane arousal, and she knew with a certainty that went beyond thought that something had changed between them tonight, some tectonic plate deep in the foundation of their marriage, and she wasn't scared.
She was exhilarated.
Chapter 3
They'd met in the dining hall at Stanford on the third day of freshman year, which Becca always said was fate but Ellie reckoned was simply because she needed pasta.
The pasta bar was Ellie's thing. She'd found it on day one and had been back every meal since, partly because the food was good and partly because she was eighteen, far from home for the first time, and it was comfortingly familiar. She was stood loading up a bowl of spaghetti when someone reached past her for the parmesan. “Sorry, can I just…” and Ellie turned to see Becca for the first time.
She’d told Becca once, years later, that the first thing she’d noticed was her eyes. That wasn’t strictly true… the first thing she’d noticed was her own body and her own mind doing something they’d never done before, a kind of hyperaware skip of excitement, and her immediate thought wasn’t about Becca’s eyes, it was quite simplyoh no.
Because Ellie had known she was gay since she was fourteen but had never done anything about it beyond quietly panicking in her bedroom in Portland, and suddenly here was this beautiful girl with brown eyes she could get lost in and a shy smile that made her melt. She realised right then that her careful plan to figure herself out slowly at college, to slowly reconcile her sexuality to her public persona, was in serious jeopardy.
Becca, for her part, had noticed Ellie right away too. She’d told Ellie later that she’d noticed her the day before, across the quad, and had spent twenty-four hours trying to work out if the cute girl with the dark hair and the serious expression was gay or simply from the Pacific Northwest, two things that could easily be confused at a distance.
They'd eaten dinner together that night and every night after for the rest of the week, then the week after that, and by the end of the first month they were inseparable friends… studying together, eating together, staying up until three in the morning talking about everything and nothing. Like thousands of other eighteen-year-olds finding their feet at college, but there was an undercurrent that neither would have recognised.
Their first kiss happened on a bench by the Oval on an October Tuesday night. Becca kissed Ellie, not the other way around, because Ellie would have waited another six months from sheer, terrified indecision and Becca could see that. It was clumsy, quick, and after they sat looking at each other in stunned silence, their friendship changed forever.
“That was ok, right?” Becca asked.
“Do it again.”
Becca did, and they never looked back… by spring they were sayingI love youand by the end of freshman year Ellie couldn't remember what her life had felt like before Becca was in it, nor did she want to.
That was seven years ago. They’d been together all through Stanford, through Ellie’s computer science degree and Becca’s psychology major, through Becca’s masters and Ellie’s first job at a start up in the Bay Area that worked her hard but at least paid off after a while. They’d got engaged at twenty-two, married at twenty-three in a ceremony in Becca’s parents’ backyard in Connecticut that made just about everyone cry, and moved to Austin a year ago when Ellie got an offer from one of the big tech companies that was making the migration south.
The necklaces they both wore came from their first anniversary. Nineteen, broke and wildly in love, Ellie had found a jeweller near campus who made simple gold chains with a tiny pendant… nothing fancy, nothing expensive, but Ellie had bought two identical necklaces and given one to Becca on the exact date of their first kiss.
Becca denied to this day that she’d cried, but she had. Ellie had too, also denied. They’d put them on each other that night and neither had taken them off since save to sleep. They’d dulled slightly over the years, the chains had been replaced twice, but they were the most important possessions either of them owned, more even than their wedding rings.
***
Austin had suited them. Inevitably it had taken them a few months to find their feet, leaving behind friends and thefamiliarity of the Bay Area. But by now, a year in, it felt like theirs. Their apartment downtown had more space than they needed, two bedrooms, the open plan living area, the floor-to-ceiling windows. They even had a small balcony where Becca kept some plants and Ellie kept meaning to put some chairs.
Ellie's job was demanding but she was good at it, a product engineer working on systems that she couldn't easily explain at parties but that paid her enough that they didn't worry about money. She liked the work, enjoyed the problem-solving, got a lot of satisfaction from building something that worked. It was a different kind of creativity to Becca's but it scratched the same itch.
Becca's practice was growing. She worked three days a week at a group practice in the city, seeing her own clients under supervision as she accumulated the hours she needed to be fully licensed, and was starting to pick up private referrals on top of that. Ellie thought that she seemed born to be a therapist… she listened, she noticed, she asked the question you didn’t know needed asking. Her clients seemed to love her, as did her supervisors, and Ellie loved seeing her come home at the end of the day buzzing from how she’d helped untangle something that had seemed impossible.
Their routines were comfortable. Coffee together before Ellie left for the office, a run along Lady Bird Lake on mornings when they both had time, takeout on the sofa on Fridays watching whatever series they were into, friends over on weekends, brunch at their regular place on South Congress, even though the wait was always too long, because the migas were always worth it.
They were happy.
Not in an uncomplicated way, because no couple who'd been together since they were eighteen was uncomplicated, but in a real way, a way that had survived the ordinary stresses that wear at relationships and come out stronger each time. They argued occasionally, of course, the usual things, but they made up quickly because neither of them could stand being at odds with the other for long. They had sex regularly and it was good, genuinely good, the sort of deep familiarity that meant they knew exactly how to make each other feel incredible.
All of which was why what had happened that Friday night was so confusing.
***
They didn't talk about it the next morning. They talked about everything else over coffee, anything but that, neither of them quite ready to pull the thread in the sober light of a Saturday.
It was there though, absolutely, sitting just beneath their Saturday morning routine. She caught Becca looking at her across the kitchen with an expression she didn’t recognise. She caught herself looking at Becca while she did yoga in the living room, watching her body move through the poses, and thinking not about how beautiful she was, although she always though that, but about someone else thinking it. Someone else watching her. Someone else touching her.
