Chapter Twenty-Eight
Kate
It Must Have Been Love by Roxette
“Come home with me,” Sharon says, breathless from her fourth orgasm in ten minutes.
“What?” I’m panting too. I swear, watching, feeling, hearing her come is just good as coming, if not better.
“Come home with me tonight. Stay over. It’s your day off tomorrow, right?”
“Yes, it is,” I say slowly so I can scramble for an excuse. “But I have to go to the laundrette and wash my uniforms, and iron them for the week.”
“You can do that at my flat,” she explains, zipping up her suit trousers and tucking the white shirt back in the waistband. “We can swing by your place and get them on the way.”
“It’s not on the way.”
“That doesn’t matter. I’ll treat us to a cab. They’ll go wherever we want them to.”
I pause again. This time I know it’s too long because Sharon’s face falls.
“Unless, you don’t want to,” she says and sidesteps me so she’s no longer in front of me.
Just before she opens the door to escape, I slam my hand against it to keep it closed.
“It’s not that,” I rush out.
“Then what is it? Because I’m not asking for your hand in marriage, even if that was possible in this country.
I’m not even asking for a relationship because I am getting the distinct impression that is not what you want.
And honestly, I’m not even sure if it’s what I want right now or rather, what I should want.
I’m simply asking for you to come home with me so we can do this,” she waves a hand around between us, “in a bed rather than in a public toilet. And also…”
She sucks in a long, deep breath and I find myself doing the same.
“And also?” I prompt when she swaps my eye contact for the floor.
“And also, I want to make you more cups of tea. And breakfast in bed. And wash your uniform for you so you don’t have to. I’ll even iron it too. I just want to look after you for twenty-four hours the way you look after everyone else.”
There’s a ringing in my ears by the time Sharon stops talking and it’s impossible to determine which of her words I’m holding onto, and which ones I want to lock away in that knot of emotions I still haven’t completely swallowed. Finally, I know which part I want to cling on to.
“Twenty-four hours?” I ask.
“What?”
“We’ll do this,” I move my hand between us the same way she did, “for twenty-four hours. We don’t make any other promises to each other.
We don’t think about the future. We just spend twenty-four hours together and keep it at that.
I’m not saying I want or need you to look after me.
I don’t need that. But I agree it would be… nice to not fuck in a toilet cubicle.”
“Yes, it would.” Sharon’s lips give me a wonky smile.
“But only for twenty-four hours, right?”
Sharon frowns but then it irons itself out. “If that’s what you want.”
I fight the urge to scream at her that I don’t know what I want, but even that feels like the wrong thing to say.
“I think it’s for the best,” I say. Again, the words feel wrong and clumsy.
Sharon’s frown reappears but this time it’s different. For a horrifying second, I think it’s the kind of creases a face gets before it breaks into sobs, but just like a moment ago, her features smooth out a second later.
“Fine,” she says, like a full stop. “Let’s go tidy up and then get out of here.”
*****
I’m more grateful than I’m prepared to admit when Sharon delivers on her promise of a taxi just over an hour later.
My legs and feet often hurt after a long shift, but today the pains are shooting up into my hips and lower back.
Those boots were murder to wear for more than a few hours and I should have changed before we started doing all the clearing up, but hindsight is a wonderfully useless thing.
Just as it will be tomorrow when our twenty-four hours are over.
But thinking about that moment threatens to taint what time we do have together. What time she and I can share before we have to face the outside world again. So I push the thought away and lean my head on her shoulder.
When we stop at my place, I make quick work of packing an overnight bag and grabbing the holdall full of my dirty uniforms. My bedsit has never looked emptier or darker or colder as I close the door on it and rush back to Sharon’s side.
I’m not surprised when I fall asleep somewhere between my flat and hers, but I wake with a start when she gently nudges me awake.
It’s so unusual for me to be asleep somewhere other than my own bed.
It had startled me so much that time when I woke up in Sharon’s bed that I’ve been trying to avoid it ever since.
But now, there’s nothing more I want than to dive under her covers, inhale her mixed spice and citrus fruit scent on the sheets and close my eyes again.
Sharon must have some sixth sense because as soon as she’s paid the driver, she takes my bags out of the taxi and nods for me to follow, which I do.
She unlocks the front door and then her flat door and finally, we’re inside.
She flicks a few lights on and her living space glows with a buttery yellow hue.
“Cup of tea?” she asks.
I yawn before I can answer her.
“Or not, then,” she smiles.
“I just…” I wobble on my feet and reach for the kitchen counter to steady myself. My body is so sore.
“Let’s take those boots off, Lady Phantom,” Sharon says and in two seconds she’s on one knee in front of me.
We took our masks off long ago, but I regret it now.
I’d like to see her in her full get-up as the Director, bending down to take off Lady Phantom’s boots.
Because of course I’ve had countless fantasies about what their dynamic could be like in and out of the bedroom.
As she slides my boots off my feet, I sigh with pure relief. When my toes and the soles of my feet flatten on her wooden floor, I could cry.
“Better?” Sharon asks, still reading my mind.
“So much better,” I look down at her, enjoying the view far too much. So much so, I extend my hand and cup her warm cheek.
She blinks up at me. “Don’t look at me like that,” she says in little more than a whisper.
“Like what?”
“Like… well, I don’t know. I can’t tell if you want to fuck me until I cry, or curl up by my side and sleep for a week.”
“Both,” I say, my voice raspy. “I want to do both.”
“Why don’t we try sleeping first?” she says and slowly gets up. I see it then too. Her own fatigue. She has worked so hard all week and from the numerous boxes of cakes and biscuits she made, I doubt she had much sleep last night. We both need rest much more than orgasms tonight.
But we still have tomorrow.
Just tomorrow.
*****
It’s like torture when I climb into Sharon’s bed after a quick shower and raid of her T-shirt drawer – it’s a Blondie T-shirt I choose tonight – and I realise it’s infinitely more comfortable than the pull-out bed I have at home.
I’m not surprised, but it feels like another way the universe wants to taunt me.
My eyes are already closing when Sharon comes in with a cup of tea and a plate of what I now know is chocolate babka, made with her grandmother’s recipe. She must have had some left over after she made a huge batch for the disco.
“Your uniforms are in the washing machine,” she says. “Oh, shit. Did I wake you?” She stops at the door.
“No,” I sit up a little. I am deathly tired, but I don’t know when, or even if, somebody will make me a cup of tea in bed ever again. I want to enjoy this.
Sharon hands me the mug when I reach out to take it.
“And this won’t keep you up?”
I snort. “A gallon of caffeine and a vial of Methamphetamine wouldn’t keep me awake tonight.”
Sharon smiles at me as she places the plate on my lap, on top of the duvet. She then walks to the chest of drawers and pulls out a set of men’s pyjamas. She glances at me sheepishly before bringing a hand to the buttons on her shirt. When I catch her eye, she pauses.
“Don’t you dare be shy about showing me that beautiful body,” I warn her.
Her hands fall back down by her sides. “It’s not beautiful.”
“Are you pushing my buttons on purpose?” I put the tea down on the bedside table, ready for a fight, but much to my surprise Sharon turns around and sits on the end of the bed, her back to me. Her shoulders sink and her head hangs low.
“Sharon?” I shuffle closer to her in the bed. “What is it?”
“Well, there must be a reason you don’t want to be with me in like, public or a real relationship, or whatever.”
The knot in my throat swells. “Is that really what you think? That I’m not rushing into a relationship with you because you’re fat?”
I see her flinch when I say that last word, but then she turns her head and her face is nothing but sadness. “Well, if it’s not that, what is it?”
Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit.
“Come undress and sit up here,” I say and I take full advantage of the time it takes for Sharon to do just that to gather my thoughts and wonder where exactly I can loosen the knot in my throat without it all unravelling, without me all unravelling.
But then Sharon pulls the pyjamas on. The trousers cling to her butt and her thighs, and the top stretches across her chest. How could she ever think that this body I love to worship would ever be a reason I would not want to be with her?
I find her hand before I start to talk.
“Do you remember when I told you how I got divorced because my husband didn’t like me working as an AIDS nurse?”
Sharon nods, her eyes on our joined hands. My thumb has started stroking her skin like it has a mind of its own. “You also said he didn’t like you being bisexual.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Well, you never asked me why I married him in the first place.”
She looks up at me, a little stunned. “I assume because you loved him. And you wanted to.”
A thin laugh forces its way out of my throat. Did I love Tao? Did I really love him?