Chapter Thirty-Four
Kivi
She was kissing Saskia.
She was kissing Saskia.
It was a million times better than she had fantasised.
Far from the cool hauteur with which Saskia conducted herself professionally, now her lips were as soft and sweet and warm as melted chocolate.
Kivi kept her caresses feather-light, fearing that she’d spook her if she became too bold, but to her surprise, Saskia was the one to thread her fingers into her hair and pull her even closer.
Toto yelped as Kivi shifted positions to kneel opposite Saskia, but she didn’t even register it through the roaring of her blood in her ears.
She and Saskia continued exploring each other until a pure lack of oxygen made them break apart.
“Um…” Kivi laughed. “Um. That was… that was incredible. Oh my God.”
“Yes,” Saskia said, looking dazed. “That was… different.”
“Different how?” Kivi said with a faint trace of alarm.
“To men. You actually… you didn’t try to initiate anything. We just kissed. And you didn’t try to take it further.”
“You’ve never had that before? Kissing in its own right, as opposed to an intro to sex?”
“I mean, probably…” Saskia licked her lips, still looking blown away. “But that was so much better. That was…”
“I know,” Kivi said, and laced her fingers through Saskia’s.
“Can we do that again?”
“You know we can.”
So they returned to it, growing more and more breathless every time they came up for air.
Saskia’s body was giving off more heat than the fire pit Kivi had been intending on lighting outside, and Kivi’s wasn’t far off.
They only parted when they heard a soft noise that came from within the room with them, and realised that they had a canine audience.
“Oh my God,” Kivi said again, but this time it was because Toto was sticking his happy face between them. His tail was wagging, and beat even harder when both women proceeded to burst out laughing.
“Can you imagine what he’s thinking?” Saskia said between peals of laughter. “I’d just love to know what’s going through his head. ‘Uh oh, looks like I have to share my mum’s attention. I must interrupt!’”
“And you thought we were the dorks,” Kivi said, giving Toto’s head a scratch.
His eyes closed in pure bliss. While he was occupied, she took the opportunity to look back up at Saskia.
Her face was flushed, she was still breathing a little heavily, and she smiled back at Kivi.
A real smile, not the polite mask she seemed to don around everybody else.
If she was a cat, she’d have been purring.
Toto eventually tired of the attention and went to the door to be let out.
When Kivi returned to the sofa, she couldn’t help but wrap her arms around Saskia.
The other woman was gradually looking less contented and more confused – and Kivi could hardly blame her.
This wasn’t exactly where she’d expected the evening to go.
“So… what does this mean?” Saskia said, mid-hug.
A sudden wave of tension engulfed Kivi’s body. It must have spread to Saskia as well, for her arms locked around her, pressing her ever closer. Kivi didn’t dare try to extricate herself from the hug for fear of breaking a bone or two.
“Um…” She swallowed hard, for her mouth had gone dry. “It doesn’t have to mean anything. If you don’t want it to. We could just put this down as one evening of madness, and part ways, and pretend it never happened.”
“I don’t want to pretend it never happened,” Saskia said, and finally let Kivi go so that they were both able to look at each other’s faces.
“Those kisses were more intimate than any of my previous relationships have ever been, cumulatively. I’d be a fool not to want more of that.
But… I’m not sure how I identify. Doesn’t that cause a barrier? ”
“Why would it?” Kivi said. “All we’ve done is kiss. You don’t have to identify as anything. And you don’t have to have it figured out straight away. You can take as long as you like, and change as many things as you want, until you’re comfortable.”
“It’s blown my mind a bit,” Saskia admitted. “Up until I met you, I’d never considered I could be anything other than straight. But what I feel for you is already so much deeper than what I felt for my previous boyfriends…”
“It sounds to me like you’re thinking of straying into relationship territory,” Kivi said nervously.
“I am.” Saskia sighed. “And it scares the bejesus out of me.” Then her face gained a slightly haunted air. “Oh God. What would my father say?” She stared at Kivi in horror.
“You don’t get on?” Kivi stroked her arm comfortingly.
“Well, no. We got on like a house on fire as I grew up. But that was when I was… the old me. That bigoted prat you thought I still was last night. I was always ‘a chip off the old block’ to him.”
“Ah.” Kivi grimaced. “Say no more.”
“Leo hasn’t come out to him. Hasn’t needed to.” Saskia pursed her lips. “Having said that, I don’t see why I’d have any reason to do so either.”
“You wouldn’t see us being a long-term thing? If, after further discussion, we did decide to make a go of it?” Kivi was struck by how much that actually hurt.
“What? No! That’s not what I meant. I mean that I rarely speak to my father, much less see him.
I’ve not seen him since before the pandemic – so that’s…
nearly four years. The scales fell from my eyes, where he is concerned, when I went to him after I got evicted.
The start of the pandemic. I called and texted, asking for help, asking if I could move in with him.
But he was too far balls-deep in his latest vixen to care.
” Her mouth twisted bitterly. “So I suppose I needn’t give a fuck about what he thinks. ”
“That’s the spirit,” Kivi said. “But there really is no pressure to come out. You could simply be ‘Kivi’s girlfriend’, if it came to that. And I highly doubt you’d have any problems fighting off any nosey people who inquire as to the exact label of your sexuality.”
“That’s true,” Saskia said, brightening up a little.
She actually looked rather excited, presumably at the thought of ripping someone to shreds if they overstepped the boundary.
Kivi shouldn’t have found that hot, but she did.
She kissed Saskia again, and now Saskia kissed her back, feverishly, attacking her almost.
“I would never force you to be my girlfriend.” Kivi broke away and pursed her lips unhappily. “If that’s not what you want. But I think we could be good together.”
“How?” Saskia said. “Long-term? We live three hundred miles apart.”
“That is true. Uh… ever considered relocating?” She laughed, but Saskia’s face remained serious.
“The only place I’ve ever seriously considered permanently relocating to is Sheffield.
” Saskia bit her lip. “I went to university there, and it’s always been a really happy place for me.
But… I was thinking, literally just now while we were watching the film…
I don’t want to leave here. I can see myself living here.
You know how Judy Garland was singing about an idyllic place?
Beyond the rainbow that she kept banging on about? ”
Kivi immediately started warbling the song’s outro, and Saskia laughed.
“Yes, I know what you mean,” Kivi confirmed, laughing too.
“That’s how I feel about this place,” Saskia confessed. “Cornwall. Miltree. With you.”
Wow. That simple declaration brought tears to Kivi’s eyes. Saskia noticed them too, and they both laughed again.
“You know we’re making enormous leaps here, don’t you?” Kivi said, in an attempt to reattach their feet to the ground. “We just had our first kiss fifteen minutes ago, and now we’re talking about having a relationship and you moving three-hundred miles south!”
“What can I say?” Saskia shrugged with a hint of a smirk. “Go big or go home, that’s my motto. I’ll call the U-Haul truck, you go down to the rescue centre to get us three cats...”
“Be serious,” Kivi said, even through her chuckles.
“I am serious.” Kivi had to marvel at how quickly Saskia’s demeanour could change. “I know we’re rushing. But the alternative is ‘just a fling’… and you don’t seem the type of person to do romance with a use-by date.”
“I’m not,” Kivi admitted, and Saskia shrugged as if to say ‘there you are then’.
The energy between them stopped crackling and fizzing, instead returning to the usual temperate stillness.
But Kivi was tired of that. Tired of watching good things pass her by without having the courage to reach for them.
Eva was very much of the ‘grab life by the balls and live it to the full’ persuasion.
Perhaps it was time she gave it a go. Be more like her sister.
“You’re a very good kisser, though,” Saskia said, touching her lips with another tiny smirk. “For what it’s worth.”
“So are you,” Kivi said, fanning herself. “I’ve never used the phrase ‘hot damn’, but this situation kind of warrants it.”
“Makes you sound kind of Ameri-”
Kivi cut off whatever Saskia was about to say by leaning forward and pressing their lips together again.
And again, and again. Enough to make her head swirl, and hopefully to derail the banal bullshit that Saskia was sure to use in order to halt the deep conversation.
The other woman allowed it for a moment, then pulled back.
“No,” she said. “I can’t kiss you any more. I’ll just get addicted.”
“Would that really be so bad?”
“I can’t become addicted to you!” Saskia snapped. “If I get addicted to you, it’ll hurt all the more when I have to leave here.”
“Wouldn’t that be worth the pain?” Kivi dared to suggest. “Doesn’t that put you in the mind of Winnie-the-Pooh?”
“What?” Saskia spluttered. “Winnie-the-Pooh?”
“How lucky we are,” Kivi quoted, “to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
“A. A. Milne never actually said that.” Saskia gulped. “It’s not in any of the books. Prime example of the Woozle effect. The Woozle effect actually does come from the Winnie-the-Pooh books, but the quote doesn’t, and I wrote an entire article on this very thing-”
“What does that have to do with the issue at hand, Saskia?”
“Nothing!” Saskia wrung her hands. “I ramble sometimes when I’m nervous and my guard is down.”
“Why are you nervous?”
“Because I want something more with you and I’ve never wanted this before and it goes against everything I’ve ever wanted and ever thought I was going to have-”
“Okay, calm down,” Kivi murmured, pulling Saskia into a hug because she looked as if she was about to start hyperventilating.
Saskia succumbed to the affection. “I’d like that too.
An attempt at a relationship. Even if it ends when you leave.
I just think that we’ve both earned a little fun, don’t you?
Isn’t it okay to live in the present, now and again, and leave the future as a bridge to burn when we come to it? ”
“A malaphor,” Saskia muttered.
“A what now?”
“Sorry.” Saskia cleared her throat. “A malaphor. A blend of two idioms. Which is what you just did. It doesn’t have any bearing on the situation. It’s just… another case of no brain-to-mouth filter.”
“You get like that when you’re disarmed, don’t you?”
“However did you notice?” Saskia blushed, and it was about the most adorable thing Kivi had ever seen.
“I notice a lot about you.”
“If we do have this thing… you know I’m a bristly person, don’t you? And I’ve got baggage. You’ve already seen that baggage.”
“Don’t we all?” Kivi said. “You know about mine, and as of last night, I know about yours. Unless there’s any more?”
“None as profound as that,” Saskia sighed. “My… eating thing.”
“Disorder,” Kivi said, and took her hand. “I really do think it’s an eating disorder, Saskia.”
“Eating disorder, then,” Saskia said, and her eyes widened, as if it was the first time she’d ever used that phrase in connection with herself. From what Kivi had gleaned about her over the last twenty-four hours, she was willing to bet that it was. “Doesn’t that scare you off?”
“What? No, not in the slightest. It’s just a part of who you are.”
Saskia stared at Kivi, naked vulnerability painted on her face. Slowly, Kivi leaned forward, and brushed her lips over Saskia’s again.
“I think we could make it work,” she said. “Or at least try. It’s got to be worth the short-term happiness, at the very least. If you… if you want to try too?”
“I do,” Saskia admitted, and Kivi’s heart felt like a flurry of fluttering feathers.
“Want to give it a shot?” Kivi smiled. “Something more solid? A bit deeper? And just see how it goes up until you have to go home?”
“Okay,” Saskia said, and chuckled as Kivi peppered her face with more tiny kisses. “Am I in for a constant attack of Kivi kisses?”
“Yep,” Kivi managed. “Problem with that?”
“No,” Saskia gasped as Kivi moved down to attack her neck.
“Good,” Kivi said, continuing the onslaught. Then, after a moment, she pulled back. The last thing she wanted to do was push Saskia before she was ready.
“Want to take it further?” Saskia said, apparently surprising them both by the way her eyes widened again.
“Do… do you?” Kivi said, her voice disappointingly unsteady. Various parts of her body were clamouring for attention, but she pushed them away in order to focus on Saskia.
Saskia looked away, as if she couldn’t bear to make eye contact with Kivi. “Very much,” she whispered.
“I’m game if you are,” Kivi whispered. Then she winced.
“That sounds like you’re offering me a cup of tea!” Saskia said, a mirror of the words that had popped into Kivi’s head.
They stared at each other for a moment, before descending into giggles.
“Of all things to come out of my mouth,” Kivi groaned. “Maybe I’m the one with no brain-to-mouth filter.”
“I’ve certainly heard smoother come-ons,” Saskia chuckled.
“I know,” Kivi replied, covering her eyes with her hand for a second in embarrassment. “Did it put you off?”
Saskia shot her a look, and it nearly took Kivi’s breath away, it was so sharp and laser-focused.
“Not in the least,” Saskia murmured.
Kivi kissed her again. Her body, by now, was humming all over, and there was only so long she would be able to resist before she actually combusted.
“Come on. Let’s go.”