Begin Again | ongoing

twenty-eight

Sunny half expects to be pushed up against the door, based on the look in Viv's eyes, and she's surprised how okay she is with that. If Viv kissed her right now, she wouldn't mind at all. But Viv goes to the kitchen and puts the kettle on, a couple of cups clanging when she manoeuvres them off the mug tree.

"This whole time, I've been terrified that we'll never find what we had before," she says. The words come out quiet, her face turned away from Sunny as she pops the lid off a blue ceramic jar, releasing the unmistakeable scent of coffee grounds. There is no instant coffee here: Viv is a percolator girl, and a precise one at that. She moves a chopping board to unveil a set of scales into which she measures eighteen grams of coffee. Sunny is fascinated by the routine, her eyes glued to Viv's hands as she pours the grounds into the coffee basket and adds water to the lower chamber.

Viv doesn't turn around until she has lit the flame on the hob and set the coffee on top, at which point she leans against the sink, hands curled over the lip of the countertop. "It's been really hard," she says. "I keep trying to tell myself that everything's fine, but it's not. It's been ... well, you know. It's been fucking weird. Ever since that day at your parents' house, I've been trying to prepare myself for all of this falling apart." She spreads her hands wide then lets them drop to her thighs.

Sunny doesn't know what to do, or if she should say anything, but she gets the sense Viv has more to say so she crosses the kitchen to perch on the table, her socked feet on a chair.

"We were going in the right direction. We were on the same page and we were so close to moving in together and then you told me that you didn't remember me and..." She trails off and there's a hitch in her breath, a shine in her eyes. Oh fuck, she's going to cry. Sunny doesn't know what to do. Other people's emotions intimidate her; her own are confusing enough.

"I've been psyching myself up for the day you tell me you can't make this work and you walk away," Viv says. Her voice wobbles and Sunny launches herself off the table because she can't just sit here and watch her girlfriend cry, even if she doesn't know how to fix that without launching into verbal diarrhoea.

"I'm making it work," she urges. "It's working. The last thing I want to do is hurt you, Viv. You deserve so much better than me but I can't stop thinking about you. I love you, even if sometimes that kind of feels like my heart is being squeezed by a gorilla 'cause I don't really know what to do with these feelings? But I'm not going anywhere."

"What you just said out there," Viv says, "hearing you say that, that made me realise that we're going to be okay." She sniffs and wipes her eyes and then laughs as she says, "That was hot."

"Really?"

"Very."

Sunny looks down at herself, in her crumpled work uniform that she wants to get out of after nine hours, her hair pulled off her face and in need of a wash; she thinks about the awkward, bumbling way she just admitted to getting off to the thought of her girlfriend. Nothing about that screams hot to her. But who is she to argue with that?

"I try," she jokes, and she steps closer to Viv until their elbows meet, and Sunny slips her arms around her waist, pulling her into a hug so intimate that their bodies seem to melt together. They are hip to hip, chest to chest, chin to shoulder, Viv's thighs sandwiched between Sunny's.

"I love you so much," Viv says, "and the thought of losing you is unbearable. I hate not spending every day with you. I hate waking up on my own." She buries her face in Sunny's neck and takes a shuddery breath. Sunny feels the damp of her girlfriend's tears on her neck.

"I want to wake up with you," she murmurs, tightening her hold on Viv. "But I do have one question."

Viv freezes. She pulls away. "What?"