Begin Again | ongoing

thirty-eight

The first time Sunny came to Lickety Split was three days after she woke up in the wrong year, when she forgot about her girlfriend and she drank too much and she fell into an existential crisis. The second time, this time, she has been in this new life for almost three weeks and she feels like a different person. Funny, really, when that's how she felt last time too. Except now it's in reverse. Now she feels like she is different to the person she was before; now she feels like she is the person everyone else has known for the last year. As though her selves have been married. Before Sunny and After Sunny.

Now she is just Sunny. Sunny with a bit of a memory problem, sure, but she's working on it. Not that the drinks are helping. The rate she's pounding the pink pussy cocktails at, she may not remember tonight by the time tomorrow rolls around, but right now, in this moment, under the flashing lights and surrounded by her friends, everything feels shiny and new and perfect.

The night is young. Embarrassingly young. It isn't even nine o'clock yet but Sunny's three cocktails deep and she forgot to eat lunch (don't tell Viv) and she is already loose on her feet, her smile loose on her lips. She's in the middle of the dancefloor, the music pounding, a song she doesn't recognize but it feels familiar all the same, and her arms are around Viv. Her girlfriend. The woman she loves. The woman she literally stepped through time for.

"I fucking love you!" Sunny shouts over the music, her hair flying in her face. Viv is a blur in front of her as they spin like a couple of kids in the playground, laughing through her curls when her scrunchie falls out and her hair flies around her. The lights are flashing in time with the heavy beat of the music, bass that throbs out of the speakers, the walls vibrating.

"I fucking love you too," Viv says, and they're in a safe space, this buzzing little pocket of queerness in the middle of Black Sands, so they kiss in the middle of the room. Sunny's sure fireworks are erupting inside her head. Bright spots of colour flashing behind her eyes; popping explosions in her ears. Her hands are in Viv's curls, holding her close. They stop spinning, an island embrace in the middle of the dance floor.

"No PDA on the dance floor," comes a deep, unfamiliar voice. Sunny blushes and spins around, only to come face to face with Ravi.

"Ravi!" she cries out, throwing herself at him and almost knocking him flat on his arse. It's been over a week since she last saw him, and that borders on criminal: Viv may be her girlfriend, but Ravi is her person. "I missed you so fucking much."

Ravi laughs and squeezes her tight. He and Fraser have only just got back from a couple of days his parents: the drink in his hand is his first. He has a lot of catching up to do if he's going to match Sunny's energy level.

"I missed you too, Sunshine," he says, back to his normal voice, raising his glass at her. "Pink pussy?"

Sunny gasps. "That's a very personal question, Mr Patel."

Ravi laughs and catches Viv's eye and says, "Maybe no more for this one for a while."

Except Viv has had three vodka lemonades and there's a sparkle in her eye that any magpie worth its salt would love to steal, and Ravi's words fly over her head as she sashays over and pulls him into a hug.

"Hey! Not without me!" Sunny cries out, wriggling into the hug so she is squashed between them. Viv kisses her left cheek. Ravi kisses her right cheek. In this moment, Sunny feels so impossibly loved that it's almost too much; she almost dissolves into a puddle of emotion again. That might be the alcohol talking.

The three-person hug soon becomes six when Fraser, Delilah and Fenfen join in on the action. They're getting funny looks from other people in the club but Sunny couldn't care less. When she ends up in the middle of the group, surrounded by her four best friends and the woman she loves (Luke and Ionie are here somewhere, too, but neither of them know Sunny well enough to join the action), she raises her hands and beams into the bright lights and dances like no-one is watching.