Chapter 31
CJ
Waking up in Ash’s room is wild. Ash isn’t beside her – she’s in the bathroom, the flush of the toilet being the thing to force open CJ’s eyes, and she’s now lying, stiff as a board, running through the last eight hours on superspeed in her head as she asks herself, am I gay?
What the fuck? Am I a lesbian? What does this mean?
No. Seriously. What does this mean? I fucked Ash. I! Fucked! Ash!
It’s not enough time. Ash is going to reappear any moment now, and CJ doesn’t know how to be, how to act, how to occupy her own skin.
Is she going to be relaxed CJ, cool CJ, peck-on-the-cheek-and-leave-quickly CJ?
Or snuggly CJ, or playful CJ, or let’s-do-it-one-more-time CJ? Dammit. She can’t decide.
She hears tooth-brushing noises, and then the running of the tap.
Last night was … otherworldly. CJ has always loved sex, found power in sex, in both the taking of pleasure and the giving of it.
But sex with Ash? It felt different. New.
Is that because she’s a woman, or because CJ’s feelings run deep?
She can’t say, because she can’t unpick one truth from the other.
Ash is a woman, and the body parts are different; how they fit together is different, in a basic physical sense.
Men are hard edges, straight lines, stubble.
There’s more of them, and they take. The penetration of them, the ploughing, CJ has welcomed this before now, but with Ash it was more like an exchange.
CJ wasn’t sure of where she ended and Ash began, of who was pleasuring who, of who was in charge and who was submissive in any given moment.
It wasn’t like that. Nobody was in charge.
There was just a mass of limbs and energy and eye contact.
Fucking hell, the eye contact. They said everything without speaking, watched each other’s faces contort into yes and more and fuck me.
CJ’s nipples harden, her body alert. They’d fallen asleep exhausted, and yes, several orgasms apiece in, but the orgasms weren’t even the point, not really, not like it has been before, with men, the destination overriding the journey.
With Ash it was all journey, all scenic route.
The bathroom door creeps open.
‘Morning.’
CJ turns. Ash is naked. Proudly so. Her leonine form pads around the bed to crawl back in under the sheet, and CJ observes her like she’s prey. There’s a bite mark on the back of her shoulder. Did CJ do that? She must have.
‘Sorry if I woke you,’ Ash says, moving a pillow to sit up against the headrest. ‘I have this thing, as soon as I wake up I have to pee, brush my teeth, wash my face and moisturise. Like, I have to get the sleep off me, if that makes sense.’ She shudders, as if even the recent memory of morning breath is enough to undo her.
‘Only day I don’t do all that is Christmas morning, because on Christmas morning I’m allowed to eat my selection box for breakfast and for some reason doing that with clean teeth feels illegal?
It has to be unbrushed teeth. Plus, you know, there’s all the little kids around, my sisters’ kids, and we’re hunting for Santa, checking the reindeers have eaten their carrots and the big man himself has left crumbs of mince pie from his midnight snack we left out.
They won’t want to have to wait for Auntie Ash’s morning routine.
So. Anyway. You’re staring at me like I’m talking too much, which I am, because I feel a bit nervous, truth told, and as we’ve long established now, when I’m nervous I babble.
Hell, even when I’m not nervous I babble.
I’m a babbler. A talker. Especially when met by total silence?
Are you OK?’ Ash grants herself permission to breathe, closes her eyes with a hint of a smile, in on the joke of herself, and then tries again. ‘CJ. Hello. How are you today?’
CJ can’t believe how beautiful she is, first thing in the morning.
How the light falls at just the right slant through the voile of the floor-to-ceiling glass door of the balcony, illuminating Ash from the side so that she subtly glows, skin glimmering and radiant, hair messily down her back, slim shoulders and pointy collarbone and elegant pianist fingers waving in front of her in jumpy, adorable gestures.
All CJ has wanted, she now realises, is this access to Ash, this ability to admire her up close and without reason.
All this time she’s stolen looks, glances, information about her, and now Ash is in her bed and the looking, the staring, is condoned, allowed.
It’s like baking a cake for guests who have been delayed, permitting yourself to slice into it only once they arrive, the gooey chocolate middle and the thick fudgy icing all the more delicious for having to wait, for being such a good, patient girl until it is time.
‘Where I come from,’ Ash presses, ‘it is customary to answer when asked a question?’
CJ blinks, shakes her head. ‘Yes,’ she says, forcing herself to speak. ‘I’m … OK. This bed is good.’ She bounces lightly, making a show of it. ‘Ten out of ten to management, this place is obviously kept in good nick.’
Ash raises her eyebrows. ‘Feedback on the night: bed was comfy,’ she says.
She sounds disappointed. CJ needs to give her more.
But where can CJ even start? If she tries to explain she’ll burst into tears.
She can feel them, now, forcing their way up her throat, and it’s all exactly like she said to Ash last night when she was stood outside her door and begging to be let in: if this is all just for one night, that’s OK for CJ.
She’d rather have one night with Ash in her last few weeks here than never do this, never be with her this way.
The cake she made is finite, of course. They can enjoy it together.
Maybe it happens once or twice more, even, they could bake together, or however the fuck the metaphor can be laboured over any more.
The point is: in the cold light of day, CJ can’t kid herself that a taste is enough.
She can’t say goodbye to Ash. She just can’t.
Last night just proved that CJ is head over goddamn heels for this woman, and yeah, OK, she might be gay.
Does it matter? Gay for Ash or gay for every woman, all CJ can focus on is that she’s losing Ash before she’s ever properly had her.
She’s leaving! It all feels, to CJ, like ever such a big mess.
And Ash is here wearing it all so lightly, so easily.
Easier to be the one leaving than the one left, CJ supposes.
‘You’re not OK, are you?’ Ash says, and CJ looks away, focuses on the white of the bed linen just beyond Ash’s arm, bites down on her lip, tells herself, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.
‘Oh my god,’ Ash says, suddenly climbing out of bed and pulling open a drawer with force. As she fishes through various laces and silks – throwing them up and down, mad, angry, furious, she says, ‘I don’t know why I expected you to be any different. Honestly. Shame on me, right?’
CJ wants to open her mouth, wants to speak, but she cannot, and she hates herself for it.
‘After everything, CJ, after all you know about me, all we’ve been through these past two months, how close we’ve got …’ Ash pulls on a thong, finds a bra. ‘Jesus, I mean, after everything I know about you, what I’ve learned …’
She finds a T-shirt, some linen shorts, angrily pulls back her hair into a ponytail.
‘I know you play your cards close to your chest. I know you don’t do commitment.
It’s all you’ve fucking talked about, how detached you are, how self-sufficient.
I’m an idiot for thinking you’d come to need me, somehow, that you’d actually let me into your heart.
’ She stops, like an idea has only just come to her.
‘Shit. I really am my own worst enemy, aren’t I?
Turns out, it doesn’t matter if it’s a man or a woman, I’m still needy, still project feelings that aren’t really there, still expect too much.
You’ve never once said you have feelings for me.
’ She issues a little laugh, high and mean.
‘Ha! It’s true! I invented that! OK. So.
’ She sits down on one of the small armchairs, pulls on some trainer socks and then her shoes.
‘Fair play. I hold up my hands, I take responsibility. I didn’t know what I thought, what I felt, until we were actually having sex.
If that’s what you can even call it. I can’t actually believe that you’ve never been with a woman before, because you made me …
’ Ash trails off, closes her eyes and shakes her head and goes to finish the sentence before changing her mind.
She storms into the bathroom and CJ dares to sit up in bed as Ash clatters and clangs.
‘I just want, one day, for once in my life, to be chosen.’
She’s reappeared at the bathroom door. She looks directly at CJ, and it crushes CJ to note the sadness in her eyes, the dejectedness.
CJ wants to say, ‘Me! I choose you!’ She cannot, though.
It’s dangerous, opens a can of worms that CJ won’t be able to protect herself from.
Words stick in her throat. Ash wants to be chosen, but CJ wants to be told it’s safe to choose, that she won’t be left, abandoned, like her mother abandoned her.
How can somebody do that? Leave their child?
What did CJ do that means she deserved to be left?
‘I don’t blame you,’ Ash decides. ‘You’ve always told me who you are.’
Adult CJ is in love, but the six-year-old inside of her is paralysed and wants saving, not to do the saving.
She is mute. Ash closes a duffel bag, the one CJ suddenly realises she’s just been putting half her clothes into, pulls it onto her shoulder and surveys the room with finality.
‘For what it’s worth,’ she continues, ‘last night was really special to me. I don’t think I’ve ever had sex with somebody like that in my life.
So. Thank you. I’m going to Porto early.
Because. Because I’m done with all this.
Just …’ She waves a hand. ‘You understand.’
Ash heads for the door. CJ knows this is her last chance, that if she lets Ash go without explaining herself, without finding the words to say how she feels, even though she’s terrified, on the verge of sobbing, of breaking down, Ash will change.
Harden. They won’t ever go back to how things were.
CJ knows that. And still she watches as Ash turns the doorknob, steps outside, and then closes the door behind her.