Chapter 20 #2
“You go around to my family and you stand your ground against them in the way I’ve needed to for the past thirty years.
You go and face everything I’m too scared to, and just like that, you’re fixing rifts between my mother and Sam that just flared up and fixing rifts between my mother and me that have been there for…
for… since before I was born. And you don’t even tell me.
Not trying to claim credit, not doing it to try to get me back.
Was it just because you wanted me to be happy? ”
“Well—” I hugged myself, my face prickling now. It wasn’t fair of her to say things like that while she was already crying, she was making me cry too. “It was just… the right thing to do.”
“Why—” she laughed, sniffled, wiping her cheeks. “Why on earth do you of all people want me? I swear you’re just… so much more perfect than I know how to describe.”
I stared at her for what felt like eternity, my heart pounding, before, hazily, like this was a dream, I shrugged.
“I want you because I like you. I care about you. Because… because my life is richer and fuller with you in it. Because I like long drives to the mountains with you in the passenger seat, I like how I can be myself with you and you want to see it, I like dinners with you and seeing the way you light up talking about your work like it’s the greatest thing and like you’re so excited to get back to your projects the next day.
I mean, dammit, you’re just really really special.
And I hate that you were hurt and couldn’t see that. ”
She wiped her eyes, turning to square her shoulders with me, and she took a half-step closer to me that had my heart drop out.
“Hurt… it’s… it’s not like that,” she said.
“I’m tired of doing this. Of hiding behind the fact that I was hurt.
I’m happy for the past to be the past. I want to change the future.
I—I don’t know—what I’m doing. But I’m talking to my mother again, and I’m not scared of her like I was.
It’ll take time, but I think it’s… changing.
We just had dinner with Kevin and Sam, and I can see her making an effort to make it work.
All of that changed because somebody was brave and stepped forward to say something, to do something.
I…” She swallowed hard. “I’m going to be honest. I don’t know why you would choose this, after everything it’s been so far.
But, god, Bridget, I’m going to keep missing you forever if I just go like this and we don’t…
and if I don’t at least try. The last time I came to you with an audacious request I thought I had no right to make, it got me this home that turned my life around. So I guess maybe I can try again.”
“Victoria…” I swallowed, my mind going a mile a minute. She put a hand on my arm, and I’d missed it so badly I wanted to cry just from that.
“I know I’ve screwed this up every step of the way. But if you give me another chance… I promise I’ll do everything I can. I’m scared to death to admit it, but I want to be with you. I want to see what we can be and what we can do together.”
“Oh my god, Victoria, you’re going to make me cry,” I said, already crying. She laughed, looking down.
“I know this is terrible timing. If you need time… I don’t know. We can go like this and I’ll go back to Seattle and we can have a long-distance relationship. I’d be okay with that, if you wanted. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to have a chance with you.”
“Victoria—”
“Or if you want, we can just take time—”
“Victoria!”
She stood up taller, eyes wide. “Yes?”
I put a finger over her lips. “I don’t want time,” I said softly. “I just want you to want me like I want you.”
“Bridget…” I saw her breath catch.
“I know I’m probably a lot!” I said. “I know it’s a little weird.
I’ve got online friends who are going to keep telling you about their…
sexploits, if they’re not having those sexploits while talking to you.
There’s a million people out there who have seen just about every part of me there is to see, and I’m going to keep moaning into a computer microphone so that a bunch of strangers can come while listening to it.
You’ve got all these stuck-up proper family members who are going to have opinions on my, uh, multimedia content creation.
I know it’s not the best girlfriend pitch in the world, but oh, my god, I just like you so much and I want to be with you, and I don’t want you to go to Seattle.
I want you to stay right here, and I want to keep having dinner together after our workdays, want to keep taking you for surprise trips out, want to keep talking to my friends about you, and I want to keep kissing you and, I mean, yeah, I’ll be honest, a lot more than kissing.
I just want… I mean, if you want to take a chance on me, I want to take a chance on us. ”
She let out a soft breath, looking at me like I was the whole world, and I thought I’d cry, she was so beautiful.
Took a step closer to me, put her hand on my cheek, and I felt my pulse racing, faster and faster, enough I thought I’d pass out.
“I mean… what can I say?” she whispered. “You won me over on Christmas.”
“I didn’t even like Christmas,” I laughed.
“I know,” she laughed, too. “That’s what makes it even more impressive. Is it really okay…?”
“I didn’t sign on another lease yet. We can renew here.
You can apply back to the old office, or you could just stay here and keep looking for other jobs.
And if you want to go somewhere else—if you want to go see all the things you can do and all the things you can be—then you can do that, too.
And I’ll support you. I mean, I can be anywhere I want to.
I can take my work with me anywhere. The only place I care about is what’s closest to you.
I’m… rambling, because I’m very nervous.
You’re so beautiful. Did you know that?”
She laughed, shaking her head, a light gleaming in her eyes. “No,” she said. “Honestly, I don’t believe I ever did.”
“Well. Here I am telling you.”
“I think maybe I can believe it coming from you.” She kissed me.
That is—Victoria Jameson kissed me. She kissed me. That is to say—holy shit.
She sank softly into me, wrapping her arms around me, pulling me into her, and when her lips found mine, I felt like my heart would explode—I caught her up in my arms, kissing her back with my heart soaring, and I kissed her, and I kissed her and I kissed her and nothing else mattered because this was happening, right here and now.
Not as a quick fuck to explore and experiment with, but as her girlfriend.
“I missed that,” she whispered, quivering slightly as she hovered with her lips ghosting mine. I shuddered at the sensation.
“Me too.”
“I thought… when we left my mother’s house at Christmas, and I kissed you there… I thought maybe we could keep…”
“I’ve also felt like you were my girlfriend since then.”
“I guess that is what I was getting at,” she said with a nervous laugh. “I’m warning you now I’m still going to… self-sabotage. It’s something I’m working on. But not by leaving you. The last thing I want to do is hurt you in the process. That’s a promise.”
I swallowed, and I nodded, tears making my eyes prickle. “We can even keep the squares painting.”
She rested her forehead against mine. “They’re rectangles, darling.”
I laughed. “Can I take your shirt off?”
“Oh—”
“I’m so pent-up, I’ve been yearning for you for all this time and my vagina is still feeling a little sore from a live show that didn’t go too well, but I want to adore you until sunrise and then sleep for like four hours and then pick up right where we left off until I’m finally sated.”
“Wow.”
“You know, if you want to. I could wait until tomorrow. But I’ll be extra whiny tomorrow if you do.”
She laughed, pressing a quick kiss to my lips, slipping her hands under my skirt, feeling my thighs, and—you know, maybe I was actually fine to go for a round myself.
“I already told you, you can get what you want from me,” she whispered.
“I mean, seeing how much it’s inspired you…
I’m a little bit proud of being part of that. ”
I bit my lip through the biggest smile, feeling my hands up under her shirt, touching the soft, smooth skin I’d missed. My girlfriend. Damn, though. “You should be,” I said. “I can tell you right now you’re going to give me a lot of inspiration.”