Chapter Twenty-Five
Kate
Is This Love? by Alison Moyet
God, her cunt.
I can’t get enough of it. I can’t get enough of her. Her dark curls. Her plump labia. Her delicate flesh. Her taste. It will never be enough.
And yet still I try to have as much of her as I can stand.
I lick and suck until my jaw aches and my neck is stiff.
I push through the discomfort, instantly soothed by her hand in my hair and her soft groans filling the linen cupboard.
I’m convinced all the clean folded sheets lining the shelves will smell of sex after this and I don’t even care. Not one bit.
“I’m going to…” Sharon stutters. Not that I need the warning. After a week of doing this every day I’m well trained to know the changes in her body as she nears climax. She holds her breath, she tenses her walls, and her moans become little grunts, stuck somewhere at the back of her throat.
I’m now also adept at knowing what she needs to get her over the edge. An extra finger in her cunt. My tongue flicking her clit as fast as I can. Long, slow thrusts that match her grinding movements.
“Oh, fuck, yes,” she pants. And she comes.
Flooding my mouth, her taste changes, becoming both saltier and sweeter – and a lot creamier.
I lap as much of it up as I can. I know I will search my teeth and gums for it later in the final hours of my shift.
When I am confident I’ve licked up every trace of her, I finally take my lips off her pussy.
“I have an idea,” she says while I’m still on my knees, wiping my hand over my mouth. “And I need your help.”
I stand up and straighten my uniform. “What’s your idea?”
“Danny wants to leave, right? But he can’t, or rather, probably shouldn’t…” I nod and she continues. “Then maybe we can bring home to him?”
“What exactly do you mean?”
“I mean, let’s give Danny one more night of freedom.”
“Freedom? From my poxy hospital?” I half-tease, half-make a point.
Sharon looks almost sheepish but it passes quickly as she rushes on to explain.
“You see, it’s ironic Danny wanting to go home because he’s hardly ever at home.
He only really uses the flat as a place to sleep, get ready and nurse hangovers.
Home to him is any number of London’s bars and pubs and clubs.
So let’s make the ward into, I don’t know, a disco. ”
“A disco?”
“Yeah, with lights and music and decorations. We can get clothes for the men to wear too. Danny’s wardrobe alone could kit out most of them.
And I’ll make drinks and some non-alcoholic punch, and we’ll open all the curtains and those who can, can get up and dance.
Those who can’t, well, maybe we can get some wheelchairs and move them around and who knows, maybe it will be such a hit you’ll do it every week. Maybe it could be like therapy and—”
“Hold on!” I raise my hands. “Take a breath.”
I fix an expectant look on Sharon and eventually she does as I ask, not before giving me a long eye-roll. I feel her exhale on my face and I try to control my composure – I’m still so fucking turned on – because what I say next is very important.
“I hear what you want to do,” I start, looking straight into Sharon’s gold-flecked brown eyes.
“And I understand why you want to do it. I’ve said myself a million times before that boosting morale and mood can be as effective as half of the drugs they’re taking and the other treatments we can administer.
But this is a hospital,” I watch as her features fall but I keep talking, “and I have certain responsibilities that I can’t ignore.
Likewise, there are certain expectations placed on me by management and the powers that be.
I can’t simply turn my ward into… into a boogie wonderland without questions being asked and possible repercussions.
” Sharon’s shoulders sink and I can’t stop myself reaching for her arms. She gives me a puzzled look, which I expect, because I’m smiling.
I’m smiling one of my craftiest, slyest smiles.
“Which is why we’re going to have to be extra careful. ”
“Extra careful?” she repeats and I hear the whisper of hope in her voice.
“Yes, if I’m going to keep management happy, the patients safe and well, and not let it interfere with the already demanding day-to-day goings-on of the ward, we’re going to have to be very careful how we go about pulling this off.”
“Pulling this off… you mean, yes, we can do this?” Her hands come up to grip my forearms too.
“Yes, we can do this. But I mean what I said. We’re going to have to be as slick as… as Lady Phantom in making this happen.”
Sharon’s eyes open wider than I think I’ve ever seen. “That’s it!”
“What’s it?”
“We’ll dress up as Lady Phantom and the Director again. We’ll be their superheroes, transforming their ward into a nightclub. Like magic!”
I wince. “Are you forgetting that Lady Phantom communicates with the dead? Isn’t that a bit…”
“Close to the bone? They don’t know that.
The chances of any of them knowing who Lady Phantom is are next to zero.
Even Danny, who I’ve bored with several Lady Phantom facts and snippets, he won’t remember what her superpower is.
Besides, he'll be so distracted with the music, the lights, the clothes, the—”
“I get it, I get it.” I push up and give Sharon a quick kiss on the tip of her nose.
I can’t help it. She’s all bursting with energy and ideas and excitement.
It’s another version of her I’m seeing and it’s another version of her I immediately, annoyingly, crave.
“If you want to dress up as Lady Phantom and the Director again, I’ll happily do it. ”
Sharon blushes. “Especially now it sort of means something else,” she says in a quieter voice.
My eyebrow arches. “What do you mean?”
“Well, we’re… you know. Together.”
Together.
It’s a simple word. And yet it echoes loudly in my mind, bouncing off the walls, causing reverberations.
“We’re… something,” I say because I know I have to fill the silence between us.
Sharon blinks twice in rapid succession and I see the exact moment she transforms. It’s like a chameleon changing its colour, swift and intentional and lightning-quick.
“I mean, I didn’t mean that we’re like, girlfriends,” she snorts. “I just meant that… actually, I don’t know what I meant. I shouldn’t have said it. It’s not like we’re going out together. On dates and stuff.”
“Sharon,” I begin, but I don’t know what to say. I should feel relieved when she keeps talking, but I don’t.
“Forget I said it,” she insists and turns slightly, a hand on the doorknob. “I got confused.”
“Sharon, stop,” I say before she leaves. “You weren’t confused. You’re right.” I swallow as if that will clear the buzzing in my ears that persists. “We are… something. It’s just, I can’t…”
“I get it,” she interrupts. “It’s not a relationship. I may be inexperienced but I know that having sex doesn’t automatically mean we’re a couple.”
It’s a shock when that statement causes more discomfort than anything.
“Things are complicated,” I say, although the words taste sour on my tongue. “I can’t really—”
“Neither can I,” she says bluntly.
“Fine.” I don’t mean to sound just as direct, but it appears our old habits die hard and something about her spunkiness breathes fire and life into mine, just like a pair of angry dragons.
“It’s not like it would be a very fair relationship, anyway,” she points out, grumpy tone going nowhere.
“What does that mean?”
“You won’t let me touch you. You won’t let me even try to make you come.”
I fold my arms and my hip juts out without my say-so. “You know that stone tops exist?”
“Stone tops?”
“Queer women who don’t like to be touched or come during sex. Women who only want to give pleasure.”
Sharon’s head pulls back. “And is that you?”
“Maybe. No. I don’t know,” I splutter. I thought I was silencing her with this detour but now I’m just making myself even more flustered. “I told you I don’t come during sex.”
“But is that a preference or just the way it’s been?”
“It’s happened before, okay? A long time ago.”
That achieves what I set out for. It silences her. But I don’t feel anything like a sense of achievement.
“When? With who?”
“Look, it doesn’t matter. Orgasms don’t define sex. I have a perfectly fine time without them.”
“I don’t want you to have a perfectly fine time when we’re together.”
“Then what do you want?” I snap.
“I want to make you feel as good as you make me feel!”
And now it’s my turn to be without words. We stare at each other for a few moments.
“I don’t want to fight,” I surprise us both by saying.
“Me neither.”
“And I don’t want us to stop.”
“Stop what?”
“These stolen minutes together. Without sounding dramatic, I sometimes wonder if they’re the only thing keeping me going right now.”
“Same,” Sharon says in a strange voice. She must notice it too because she promptly clears her throat.
“Can we just keep going, as we were?” It feels like I’m asking for too much or asking for something that isn’t mine. But I’ve never been one to stay in my lane.
Sharon nods her agreement although I’d rather have had a verbal confirmation. But I’ll take it.
“Besides, we have to work together now,” I say.
Her expression turns quizzical.
“We have magic to make!” I reach for her hands and suppress the sigh of relief I want to expel. Her skin is so soft and warm and plump and it feels like a gift that I get to touch it.
“Magic?”
“Your disco night.”
I can’t stop my smile when she squeezes my hands. “Our disco night.”
*****
I don’t get a day off in the week that follows. Orla is off sick, Carmelita was already scheduled to go away for the week and the last thing I was going to do was call her back. So I push through.
In many ways, it’s easier than usual. Sharon may have suggested the disco night for the patients – or ‘the boys’, as she has affectionately started calling them – but organising it in secret is giving me the perfect distraction from my exhaustion.
That and stealing more secret moments with Sharon at the end of visiting hours.
We haven’t spoken again about our… status.
And she doesn’t ask me any more questions about why I refuse to have her touch me when we do press our bodies together.
It should come as a relief but instead it becomes a third partner in our trysts together.
The pink elephant in the room. So oppressive that sometimes it feels like a weight on my shoulders, or worse, pressing down on my chest, threatening to minimise the joy I feel as I make Sharon come as many times as I can in the few minutes we share together.
But still I don’t mention it. And neither does she.
Instead, we talk about Saturday night.
We pass shopping lists and notes on the ward, and at night, just before bed, we speak on the phone, discussing catering and decorations and the music and lighting systems. Sharon has spared no expense or effort sourcing all the above single-handedly, and I have provided space to store items without alerting management.
I will tell them we’re having an event for the patients.
But I’m going to wait until Friday afternoon when they’re all about to clock off.
By the time reports of what actually happened get back to them on Monday morning, the disco will have happened.
Even if there are consequences, I doubt they will threaten my job. They need me too much.
Besides, Sharon is unstoppable. I can see exactly why she’s good at her job.
She never takes no for an answer. When four DJs refuse to come to the ward, she is undeterred and calls four more.
She juggles multiple things at once. She doesn’t get flustered about setbacks or hard work – she even fixes a tear in the ward’s lino on Wednesday afternoon so ‘the dance floor is perfect’ – and she seems to become more energetic, more enthusiastic as the week goes on, despite how busy she is because she’s still bringing in sweet treats for the patients and spending all of visiting hours with Danny or some of ‘the boys’.
Danny. In between our conversations about the disco, we also talk about Danny.
Danny who has lost more sight in his left eye despite the anti-virals.
Danny who struggles to get out of bed on his bad days, and still only manages one meal on his good ones.
Danny who slept for twenty out of twenty-four hours yesterday.
Danny who Sharon fears may not enjoy the disco night as we planned.
That is what she says, but I know buried in her worries is another question. A question she dares not ask. A question I dare not answer.
“What if he just sleeps through it?” she asks as we stash another box of clothes and accessories in the linen cupboard. As well as borrowing from Danny’s closet, Sharon has raided most of the charity shops in West London for feather boas, sequinned tops and colourful silk scarves.
“He won’t,” I respond as I open another box and count the number of paper cups and plates we have. I did a count when it arrived but having something to do as we have this conversation feels imperative. Cowardly, but imperative.
“Maybe he subconsciously knows we’re up to something. Maybe that’s why he slept so much yesterday. Maybe he knows that tomorrow night he needs all the energy he can muster.”
I look up at Sharon then and reward her optimism with a smile. But she doesn’t return it.
Standing and crossing the small space to stand directly in front of her, I find her hands. “Don’t underestimate him.” It’s all I can say. I have nothing else. Nothing else I want her to hear. She’s too excited, too happily busy with purpose, I don’t want to take it all away from her.
“I just want it to be… perfect,” she says.
“It is,” I say, kissing the tip of her nose. But what I really mean is, ‘you are’, and it kills me.