Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
Georgia swallowed as she came back down into herself, trying to calm the racing pulse of her heart. “Not bad yourself,” she panted, eyes slipping shut as Erin pulled out of her.
Erin placed a gentle kiss on Georgia’s lips, then moved her mouth to press butterfly kisses along her jaw, the curve of her ear, the line of her hair, sweaty and damp on her forehead.
“Well,” she said, sounding annoyingly pleased with herself, though Georgia couldn’t bring herself to care. “I suppose you’ll be needing another cup of coffee, now you’ve let that one get cold.”
Georgia laughed, pulling her back for another kiss.
Coffee could wait.
***
Everybody else - everybody sensible, Erin had complained - was still inside, tucked away from the fierce wind on the beachfront.
The pebbles were dusted with specks of snow, and the end of the pier was hidden in a low, freezing sea mist. Their boots left twin tracks on the slush-covered promenade, the crash of the waves a constant beneath their chatter.
Georgia had insisted they leave the bed, and then the flat, if only to remind themselves that the world hadn’t actually stopped turning outside their bubble.
They’d walked in companionable silence at first, sharing a pair of gloves. Erin had taken the right, and Georgia the left. Their other hands they hid in their coat pockets, the ones in their gloves tangled together. It felt natural, easy.
Every so often, Erin would point out a dog running along the shoreline, its owner bundled up against the cold, hunched down into their coat, their face a ruddy red as they passed.
The dogs didn’t care that the water was only just somewhere above freezing, splashing in and out of the waves like it was the height of summer.
Erin made Georgia laugh, the warmth of it puffing up and out in clouds of billowing white.
Georgia glanced sideways at Erin, who had pulled her scarf tighter around her neck. Her hair was escaping the woollen hat in little dark wisps that clung to her cheekbones, flushed pink from the cold. Georgia imagined reaching out, tucking the strands behind her ear.
Then she imagined doing it again the next morning.
And the one after that.
They’d wake up to soft light and legs tangled together under the covers, to the noise of seagulls outside, the gentle clanking of the radiators surging into life.
Erin would cook eggs or pancakes; Georgia would insist on coffee first. Maybe they’d argue over what to watch in the evenings, Erin rolling her eyes at whatever Georgia picked.
Erin would get sucked in anyway, more invested in the scripted reality storylines than Georgia.
Maybe they’d walk this same stretch of beach every Sunday, hands brushing, the rhythm of their lives settled into something warm.
She pictured herself turning the key in Erin’s front door like it belonged to both of them. Finding Crumpet asleep on their laundry. Watching Erin fold towels with that same frown she wore when the Redford girls were running a drill wrong.
It was ridiculous, of course.
Wild, too fast.
But Georgia could see it so clearly it ached. Erin glanced at her just then and smiled, and Georgia smiled back, feeling the fantasy slip its claws a little deeper into her chest.
Georgia walked them down to a café tucked beside the old sea wall. The sign outside promised ‘the best view in Westcliffe’, though presumably it meant in the summer. Today, they couldn’t see much beyond the condensation-laden glass.
It wasn’t busy, a few pensioners nursing tea and plates of fried breakfast. A young couple argued, quietly, intensely, at the back.
Erin chose a seat by the window. While Georgia placed their order, she drew a heart on the glass, then pretended she hadn’t. Georgia slipped into the bench opposite her and watched as it slowly dripped, losing its shape and form, melting away.
“If things had gone differently,” Georgia said suddenly, putting her mug down slightly too hard on the table in front of her, sloshing tea over the rim and onto the white formica tabletop.
“If you hadn’t turned me down back then, if we’d had time afterwards to work things out. Where do you think we’d be now?”
Erin paused, her cup halfway to her lips. She set it down carefully, fingertips lingering at the rim.
“Probably nowhere,” Erin said, eyes fixed on the window. “We were young. I wasn’t ready to be out. Wasn’t ready for a relationship. Certainly nothing serious. Uni was a complete cluster fuck on that front, and you’d have been caught in that too.”
Georgia blinked. “Right.”
“I know it’s not what you want to hear,” Erin said. “I mean, there’s no way to know, is there? We might have ridden off into the sunset. We likely would have broken up in the first term, like everyone else did with their girlfriends from home. Life happened. We both made choices.”
“Sure,” Georgia said, wrapping her hands tighter around the cup. “Of course.”
She looked away, pretending to study the tide beyond the glass, pretending she hadn’t just let her heart float out onto the table between them like it was safe to do that.
Erin didn’t speak. Her foot tapped once beneath the table, a nervous rhythm Georgia recognised from the pitch. The kind that signalled Erin was thinking something she didn’t know how to say.
Georgia sipped her tea. It had cooled slightly, the sweetness turning bitter on her tongue. “Forget I asked,” she said eventually, too breezily.
“Georgia—”
“Really. It’s fine.”
She wished she hadn’t asked it. Wished she could suck the words back down into her throat.
It had been the kind of question you only asked when you were feeling soft and secure, not when you were still figuring out if the version of your heart that existed now was any less reckless than it had been ten years ago.
The door of the café creaked open. A gust of icy air swept in, sending a shiver across the back of her neck. She caught sight of the arguing couple again, the girl dabbing at her eyes, the boy hunched like he’d already lost whatever the fight had been about.
Erin checked her phone and sighed. “Can we not do this?”
Georgia raised an eyebrow. “Do what?”
“This whole thing where you’re fine, and then you feel vulnerable, and run away from it.”
Georgia almost laughed. It sounded ridiculous coming from Erin, of all people. Erin, who had tucked her feelings away like they were state secrets. The Erin of ten years ago had been a master of emotional suppression, had been so closed off she’d passed that frostiness, that distance, onto Georgia.
But the worst part? She was right.
Emotionally avoidant, Tam’s voice echoed in her head. Georgia exhaled. “I’m not running. I just… I didn’t expect that answer.”
“What answer did you expect?”
“Something more hopeful, I guess.”
Erin leant across the table, eyes serious. “I don’t know what would have happened, Georgia. But I know what’s happening now. And I’m here. I’m trying.”