Chapter Nineteen
F or a long moment, everything seemed to come together. Everything just seemed… right. The taste of Alli on her tongue, the feeling of Alli against her skin, the deep pounding inside her that told her just how much she wanted this.
Then Alli was jerking away. Pulling back until Bea could see her green eyes gleaming, could see the wanting in her swollen lips, the flush on her cheeks.
“Fuck,” Alli said slowly. “Fuuu-uck.”
Then she turned on her heel and stalked away down the corridor, leaving Bea leaning against the wall breathless and not quite as confused as she might have expected.
So that was it. Bea bit her lip in wonder at it all. So that was what the problem had been. A smile started to spread across her face because now she knew why she’d been acting so strangely, why Alli had this effect on her.
Her legs were still a little wobbly as she walked herself back to her bedroom. She needed to shower and get ready for work, and she needed a little time to digest all this. To decide what to do about it.
Her phone beeped just as she was grabbing a robe and preparing to go to the bathroom. She glanced down at the message, saw that it was Liz, and figured she could cut her shower short by just five minutes .
“Hi,” she said when Liz picked up the phone. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine, I didn’t expect a call, I was just checking in that everything was going okay,” Liz said. “Well, that and I’m going stir crazy with Den running after me. He even got me a little bell to ring, like he’s my servant or something.”
“He just cares,” Bea said, perching on the end of her bed. “And, um, something happened.”
“What?” Liz’s voice sounded concerned.
“I kissed a girl.” It had never occurred to her to keep it to herself.
“Did you like it?” asked Liz.
“Zero cherry chapstick, other than that, um, yes, actually, I think I did. I definitely did.”
“Katy Perry references aside, Bea, I can’t see your face, I have no idea how this is impacting you. What happened?”
So Bea told her the whole sordid story, well, most of it. The parts that counted anyway. Right up until Alli pushed her against the wall and kissed her and Bea’s breath escaped and even now, telling the story, she felt herself grow warmer.
“Jesus, Bea, why didn’t you tell me any of this?” Liz said at the end.
“Because you’re not my mother, it’s not your job to fix my mistakes, and because I didn’t think it was that much of a problem.”
“You didn’t think that being blackmailed was a problem?”
“It’s not like she’d got pictures of me robbing a bank or anything,” Bea said. “It was… a thing. An accident. I don’t know. But anyway, it’s over now, she can’t blackmail me anymore, not after kissing me like that.”
There was a second of silence on the phone. “Bea, I love you. I just… I want to know that you’re alright. After all of this stuff with Robbie, I don’t want anyone to treat you badly again. I don’t want people to walk all over you at all, but especially one who’s supposed to love you.”
“But… she doesn’t,” Bea said, smiling. “That’s the weird part. Th ere’s something about her. I can stand up for myself around her. I don’t know how it works. I just know that she doesn’t walk all over me, I don’t let it happen.”
“You let her blackmail you,” Liz put in.
“Yes, fine, I did. But mostly that was because I was worried about doing a good job and not making a bad impression in case it looked bad for you, you know, since you set me up here and all. Other than that, though, she really hasn’t taken advantage of me. Not in the way you might expect. I don’t know, Liz, I think there’s something here. Something I want to explore.”
“I’m glad you’re not having a gay crisis of conscience,” Liz said slowly. “I mean, love is love and there’s no reason you shouldn’t fall for a woman. But are you sure about this, Bea?”
“It was one kiss,” Bea said, falling back onto the bed. “One kiss, but I felt… All warm and gooey inside, I felt like someone in a romance novel. I’m not saying I’m in love with her, I’m just saying… I don’t know what I’m saying. This is new, different, it literally just happened. I… I’m curious. And there’s feelings there. Big ones. I think.”
“Big feelings,” Liz said. “About someone with anger problems? About someone who is supposed to be in therapy?”
Bea swallowed. Okay, that was a fair point. “We all have our weaknesses though, don’t we?” she said. “And opposites attract, right?”
“Attraction and relationships are two different things,” Liz warned her. “Just try not to confuse the two.”
“I’m not a child.”
Liz laughed. “I know, I know. And I’m sounding like an interfering aunt. I’m sorry. I want you to be okay, Bea. I worry about you.”
“I don’t need looking after all the time.”
There was another minute pause. “Don’t you?” Liz said finally.
And Bea knew she meant it in a caring way, knew that she wasn’t being patronized too, but at the same time she didn’t want to be the kind of person that needed looking after. She wanted to be independent and strong. Like… like Alli .
“I’ve got this,” she said to Liz quite calmly. “I know what I’m doing.”
“Okay,” Liz said. “But I’m here if you need me. Always.”
Bea hung up the phone and wondered if she should have told Liz all that. But then, she hadn’t been able to help it, she’d been bursting with the news. She still was. She could still feel Alli on her lips.
Alli.
She hadn’t exactly sounded thrilled about what had happened. That long, drawn-out ‘fuck’ hadn’t sounded like someone who wanted more.
Well too bad. For once, Bea was determined to get what she wanted out of life. If Alli needed a little persuasion to see what this thing was, then Bea was going to persuade her.
She went off to shower and to think of a plan for what she was going to say to Alli the next time she found her.
THE TINY STAFFROOM was full by the time Bea pushed her way in to make some coffee. And the air was abuzz with chatter.
“Luke’s mad as a snake,” Josh was saying.
“Well, he would be, wouldn’t he?” Celine said. “The two of them were doing whatever it was they were doing.”
Which made Bea think about sex and then about Alli and then… her mouth got weirdly dry.
“You don’t know where she might have gone, do you?” Celine asked, turning to Bea. “Daria, we’re talking about.” Like there was someone else who’d disappeared in the night.
“Not a clue,” Bea said cheerfully.
“Well, I heard that she’d come into some money,” sniffed Celine.
Bea blushed, thinking of Alli’s money, thinking that Alli had been desperate enough to pay the woman to try and get out of here. Which was stupid. Stupid because Alli so clearly needed to be here. Stupid because Bea wanted her to stay.
“Glad that someone’s got some money,” Josh grumbled .
Bea suddenly thought about the figures she’d seen on Luke’s desk.
How much money was this place making, she wondered.
It couldn’t be that much. No, it shouldn’t be that much. And yet… She paused, coffeepot in hand. And yet something just wasn’t right. Something about the numbers she’d seen on Luke’s desk. Something about the way the programmers talked in group therapy. Something just didn’t add up.
It was like a mosaic with one tile just a little out of kilter.
“You alright over there, Bea?” Josh called.
“Yes,” she said quickly. “Fine. Anyone want coffee?”
No one did. They were all too busy wondering what had happened to Daria, and Bea certainly wasn’t going to tell them. She wasn’t going to say that Daria had taken money from a client and then gone.
“I’d stay out of Luke’s way,” Josh was saying.
“We should stop gossiping,” said Lex, finally piping up.
“You’re the psychologist,” Josh said. “What do you think went on there?”
“I think it’s none of our business.”
Bea looked at her and she thought how out of her depth Lex looked. Like she was a child pretending to be an adult. Like she really shouldn’t be in charge of a program like this.
And then there was Josh. Lovely but with a prison record.
And Celine who… who could cook like an angel and yet was making buffet meals for a cut-rate anger retreat.
And Daria. A meditation teacher capable of fleecing a woman out of thousands and disappearing.
And finally, finally, Luke. Suspiciously handsome and more angry than his clients and just a little scary.
“You’re no fun,” Josh was complaining to Lex. “You’ve got no psychological insights at all?”
“I’ve got professional standards,” Lex said, standing up. “And I won’t speculate about things I know nothing about. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
She left and then Celine went to start cleaning up the kitchen and Josh followed to start sweeping the hall. And Bea was left alone.
She felt like she’d had an entire week in just a couple of hours. So much had changed in just a short time.
Maybe she shouldn’t feel this way, maybe she should be more careful, maybe Liz had a point. Yet Bea couldn’t help but think that something instrumental had happened, something that made her life better and more interesting and more complicated all at the same time.
Alli was beautiful, there was that. But there was more. Alli was angry. Alli was occasionally frightening. She was also not the big, bad, scary wolf she pretended to be, Bea was quite sure of that.
She was quite sure that there were depths to Alli that she couldn’t even begin to understand. She was also sure that something about Alli changed the way she behaved. Something about her made Bea herself more spiky, more confident, more able to snap back. Something about Alli gave her strength.
She sighed and got up, it was time to go to work. And at some point during the day, she was going to have to confront Alli.
She just hoped that Alli wasn’t going to be unreasonable about all this.