21. Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-One
“Honestly, women,” Hope said to Bryan. “I mean, no, I don’t mean that. That sounds very… internalised misogyny of me, you know?” Bryan didn’t know. So Hope turned to Bruno. “Believe me, when I say I understand that dating men - or non-binary people - is no joke either. People of all genders are emotional and irrational. I’m emotional and irrational. But you’d forgive me for that, wouldn’t you?” Bruno didn’t seem too sure. “Betty. Sweet Betty. Of everyone here in this room right now, I know you’d forgive me. It’s just… holy god, why did she have to kiss me like that?”
Hope had been having this conversation all Sunday afternoon, all night - lying awake in her bed - and all day at work that day. In her head, mostly, but even now, here in her living room, after a long day, no one seemed to have any answers. She’d considered calling every single one of her friends, but there seemed a solid reason not to go through it with any of them, now that Alison was a friend to them too. She’d considered Camille most of all, since she’d at least be thrilled to summon some outrage at Alison on her behalf, but honestly that wasn’t what Hope needed. What she needed, actually, was Ali. Ali who’d be wry and analytical, and say something spiky to knock her out of her bad mood. Ali, who’d be great to talk to right now, if only she wasn’t the thing Hope needed to talk about.
On cue, her phone rang: Alison’s name on her screen. She stared at it for a moment. They weren’t really phone call people, and Alison hadn’t spoken with her in more than thirty hours - not so much as a text even - since the moment she’d kissed Hope stupid and then insisted on blowing everything up.
“Hey,” she said warily, as she answered the phone.
“Hi.” Alison said back. There was a silence down the line. She heard Alison take a breath. “Would you… can you come over? We should probably talk.”
Hope hesitated. She wanted to fix this. But Alison still had that tone in her voice. That doom-and-gloom, this-is-such -a-big-deal tone.
“I can’t come over-” she started.
“Hope!” Alison cut in, sounding aggravated. “I’m not going to jump on you. I just want to talk!”
“I… got that?” Hope said slowly. Jesus Christ. “I can’t come over because I took home a litter of orphaned kittens, and they need feeding every two hours.”
There was a pause. A long beat of silence. And then absolutely nothing. Alison had hung up on her.
Hope stared at her phone in disbelief.
“What the fuck?” she whispered to Betty, petting her tiny soft ears. “Shit, sorry. I know I shouldn’t swear in front of you. You’re only a tiny baby.”
Twenty minutes later there was a knock on her door. When she opened it, there on her doorstep, one large grocery bag in hand, stood a highly annoyed looking brunette, who despite it all, still looked alarmingly kissable. Hope was pretty sure that kissing her again would be the fastest way to wipe that expression off her face, but since she valued her life, she didn’t try it.
“For fuck’s sake, Hope,” Alison said. “I’m trying to be mad at you and you’re feeding orphaned kittens?”
Hope scratched her head.
“Do you… want to come in and see them? ”
“Of course I do,” Alison said, still managing to sound irritated and Hope burst out laughing. Alison finally heard her own ridiculousness, her face cracking into a slightly nervous smile. Hope took her by the hand and pulled her into the house.
She felt off balance. The woman who’d kissed her yesterday had shown up looking fucking delicious, in that skinny dark jeans and sky-high heels combo that she always seemed to think was what people wore to be casual. Her top was some kind of soft, natural-coloured jersey cotton that looked intensely touchable and ridiculously expensive, falling off her shoulders to show her collarbones. Hope, on the other hand, was wearing a loose long-sleeved t-shirt and some tiny pink cotton pyjama shorts. She hadn’t been expecting company.
Alison placed the grocery bag on the kitchen bench and stalked her heels through to the living room, where there was a small crate set up next to the couch. The lights were low, just the soft glow of the floor lamp and the red embers in the fireplace.
Hope carefully lifted the towel cover making the bed nice and dark, and there, curled up in a little cuddle pile, were the four tiny bodies, three black and white, and one little ginger.
“They’re two weeks old,” she told Alison as they bent down together to look at them. “Their mama was a stray that someone found on the road. They think she was trying to move them to safety.”
“Their mother died?” Alison said softly .
“Yeah,” Hope told her. “That’s how they ended up with me. The person who found her realised she’d been nursing and they hunted for hours until they found her little hidden nest of babies.” Alison looked down at the tiny bundles. Hope glanced at her more closely. “Are you… crying?”
“No,” said Alison, who was definitely crying.
“Oh, honey,” Hope couldn’t help it. She tugged Alison into her arms, right there where they knelt. Alison pressed her face into Hope’s shoulder for a few seconds and Hope held her, a surprised smile on her face. Alison was kind of a disaster, as it turned out, emotions leaking out everywhere and Hope quite suddenly loved it.
“Ugh,” Alison pulled back. She wiped a finger under each eye to catch her leaked mascara. She was still in her damn heels, there in Hope’s living room. “Listen, you try having a baby, even twenty-three years ago and not crying when you hear about tiny babies losing their mother.”
Hope wanted to hug her all over again, immediately, the very second she let her go. Alison could do icy so fucking well. And then there was this side of her: Alison, someone’s mama; Alison, crying over orphaned kittens; Alison, for whom a kiss was a really big deal. Damnit. Hope melted.
“Ali,” she said softly. “I’m sorry. ”
They were still kneeling, next to the box of sleeping kittens. They were so close, their bodies angling towards each other. Hope’s heart was beating a little too fast as Alison looked at her, her eyes still damp from her kitten-tears. Hope quickly thought better of this whole moment and got to her feet. She reached down to pull Alison up and Alison actually let her.
Hope led her to the couch and they sat, side by side. The fire was glowing softly in the low light - not too warm for the kittens - and they both stared into the flickering embers.
“I’m the one who should be sorry,” Alison said, into the quiet of the room. “I didn’t mean for it to come out the way I said it.”
“You mean the thing where you called me a cool hipster who sleeps with all her friends?”
Alison winced.
“Yeah, that. I’m sorry.”
“You’re just jealous,” Hope said. “I am cool, and my friends are really hot.”
Alison smiled, just like Hope had intended. Then she hesitated .
“You don’t actually sleep with all your friends,” she clarified.
“Well, I haven’t slept with you, ” Hope said and Alison turned a satisfying shade of pink. She shot Hope a faintly frustrated look and Hope smiled, unrepentant. “No,” she said. “Obviously I don’t sleep with all my friends. Not those friends, the ones you mean. Some friends though.”
“It’s none of my business,” Alison said, briskly, conveniently after she’d extracted the information that she’d wanted and Hope sighed. This whole thing was a mess.
“Ali,” she said. “That kiss…” She swallowed. “I don’t even know what to say.”
“I didn’t ask consent,” Alison said. Her lashes had lowered and Hope couldn’t see her eyes but she could see the tension in every line of her body.
“Ali, please. We both know how much I wanted that-”
“I was rough with you-” Her voice was low and cracking.
“Yeah. It was the hottest fucking kiss I’ve ever had,” Hope blurted. Alison’s breath stuttered out. She turned her body, finally, and stared at Hope. Hope knew her face had gotten flaming hot because this was the opposite of chill. Goddamnit. Well. Here they were. She took a breath, her fingernails sinking into the bare skin above her knee as she tried to explain. “The way you grabbed me, the way you just… bent me to your will and took exactly what you wanted-” She had to stop and breathe for a second.
“ Hope-” whispered Alison.
“No, let me just-” Hope was suddenly not okay right now. “Look,” she said heatedly. “I’ve never lied about the fact I think you’re hot. And I promised you, that first time we went to dinner that I’d never hit on you, because you said so specifically , that you would not be able to date me. And I won’t hit on you, Ali, because I heard you and I respect you-”
“I appreciate that,” Alison said. She chewed on her lip, her eye contact fleeting. “And then I gave you incredibly mixed signals because I kissed you.”
“Yes,” said Hope impatiently. “Absolutely. But no, that’s not my point. My point is that I’m good with boundaries - unless someone is actively stripping my fucking clothes off -” she said pointedly and Alison nodded tightly. “But Ali… I think about it. I have thought about it,” she confessed. “About you. About me and you. Because you’re sexy, and you’re right there, in my life, being hot all the time. And I have good boundaries but I’m a fucking human and I think about it.”
Alison was breathing faster, her chest beneath those collarbones, rising and falling rapidly .
“I think about it too-”
“Ali, this is my confession time!” Hope put her fingers in her ears to ward off the words. “It doesn’t help for me to hear that, by the way.”
“Okay.” Alison nodded. She toyed with the end of her long gleaming ponytail. “I’m sorry. Please continue telling me about how you fantasise about me.”
Hope gave her a sharp look and Ali looked guileless, a small smirk finally appearing, breaking the rising tension and Hope rolled her eyes and let herself laugh, just for a second. This whole fucking thing was insane.
“I’ve imagined you in all kinds of ways,” Hope said and Alison’s teeth nearly went through her lip. “But in my imagination, you’re always kind of… tentative. Because from the only things I know about you in that department, I figure you’ve been kind of… straight? At least in the, um, physical application of that term?”
Alison laughed shortly. She nodded. Hope shook her head, slowly, in wonder.
“You’re fucking gorgeous,” she said, “so I can see where you might get a touch of confidence from. But Ali… the woman that kissed me yesterday? That demanding, hot, dominant lover,” she shivered even as she said the words, “ that’s who’s been hiding inside that elegant demeanour? ”
Alison was very still. Her eyes were on Hope’s lap, where Hope’s fingers were still fidgeting and squeezing at her own flesh, all that tension with nowhere to go. She seemed mesmerised by Hope’s fingers on her bare thighs, and Hope tried to stop, wanting desperately to hear what Alison had to say.
“I don’t really know,” Alison finally confessed. “I’ve never been like that before. You’re the third person I’ve ever kissed. And the first woman.”
“Mm,” said Hope. She’d figured it was something like that, but it hadn’t felt that way. “Were you… like that with your husband?” she asked cautiously. Alison burst out a sharp laugh.
“No, ” she denied. She looked at Hope for a long moment, something flaring in her grey eyes.
“Tell me,” Hope said.
“I met him at twenty-one,” Alison said. “He was older. Married. My professor, actually.”
“That’s hot,” Hope said. “Except for the twenty-one part,” she screwed up her face as she rethought her words. “And the married bit and the fact that we know he’s an asshole. ”
“Right,” Alison said. “The power differential went the other way,” she said, succinctly. Hope looked at her. Something, somewhere, was starting to click.
“He was dominant,” she said. “Over you.”
“Of course. He married me at twenty-two. He was thirty-nine. Why do older men like younger women?”
“Power.”
“Obviously.”
“Did you… like it?” Hope was trying to picture this. Alison as a younger woman. A man who liked power.
“For a while,” she said. “It’s not what you’re thinking.”
“It wasn’t a whole BDSM thing.”
“Um, no, not exactly,” said Alison, blinking rapidly. “It was just… very clear. Whose job was whose.”
“And your job? ”
“I mean… to take it,” she said. “To get fucked. There was a passivity to it. I just had to be available, receptive, that was my entire role.” She hesitated again, and Hope was transfixed. This was as open as Alison had ever been with her, and she could feel they were on the edge of something.
“Tell me,” she said again.
“I met this woman,” Alison said. “I was probably your age. We worked together, at my law firm.”
“And?” Hope felt unreasonably turned on.
“Nothing happened,” Alison said. “Because I’m loyal. Monogamous. And I’m not a cheater.”
“But?”
“I wanted her.”
“What was she like?”
“Pretty,” Alison said quietly. “Feminine. Kind of… small.”
Hope couldn’t help her smile .
“Blonde?”
Alison shook her head slightly, her lower lip quirking.
“Of course.”
Hope didn’t climb into her lap right then and there to kiss her, but it was touch and go. She smiled again.
“She sounds hot.”
“She was.”
“I’m jealous.”
“You should be. I thought about her a lot.”
“Thought about her how?” Hope’s breath was getting short. She knew she was wet. She wasn’t sure where the hell they’d be at the end of this conversation, but she knew the only way out was through.
“Well, I wasn’t passive,” Alison said wryly. “And,” her eyes met Hope’s, “I wasn’t the one getting fucked. ”
Hope whimpered. Alison’s eyes went dark.
“Alison,” Hope whispered. “I can’t hit on you. Because I promised. And I keep my promises.” Her mouth was dry.
“I know,” Alison said. “You’re being so good.”
Hope stopped breathing. Alison knew exactly what she was doing to her, she could see it in her eyes.
“ Ali …” the word wasn’t anything more than that. Just Alison’s name. And then she stopped. Because she would keep her promise. And if she said one more word, that word was going to be please.