AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The word was so final even Jules heard it. Her hands dropped down so that she was holding the violin case by her side and Billie didn’t know what was happening to her. She couldn’t discern one emotion from another, she couldn’t understand why she felt burning hot and freezing cold at the same time, why her breath was coming faster, why her hands were still shaking.
Why Jules was looking at her that way.
Why she was moving.
Or why, shockingly and inevitably, she was doing the only thing she could think of to do. Why she was taking Jules’s sharp, sweet face into her hands, or why she was pulling her closer, or why she was kissing her.
For a long moment the world ceased to exist and Billie felt only Jules’s lips on her own, felt a calmness overcome her that she’d never known before, felt an absolute rightness in everything. Jules’s hand came up and her fingers tangled in Billie’s long, dark hair, and there was no sound, no music, in all the world, just two hearts beating faster and faster.
Chapter Nineteen
Jules dropped a glass and it bounced off the rubber mat behind the bar to clink on the tiles behind her.
“Shit,” she swore, as she bent to pick it up.
If she closed her eyes really hard she could still taste it, could still feel it, and the memory of the kiss left her feeling discombobulated and out of sorts. Coffee, a little, as well as the sweetness of a biscuit and a citrusy taste as well, she thought as she put the glass back in the sink.
Then there was the feeling of Billie sliding up to her, the way her body pressed into Jules’s, the way they clicked into place together until Jules’s pulse had quickened and her knees had weakened and her breath had come faster and…
And it was all a natural reaction to something that had been, whilst unexpected, really very pleasant indeed.
That thought left her feeling even more discombobulated than before.
She picked up a new glass and began pouring a pint.
Then, of course, there’d been the aftermath. The look of almost horror in Billie’s eyes when she’d drawn back, realizing what she’d done. Jules couldn’t tell if the horror was because she’d kissed Jules or because she’d kissed Jules or for some other reason altogether.
She had known that she really, really couldn’t deal with the analysis that was bound to come after such an event, so she’d done the most English thing she’d ever done in her entire life.
She’d thanked Billie politely for the coffee and said that she must rush and then she’d left, legs still wobbly and every cell in her body yelling at her to go back and finish what Billie had so unexpectedly started.
Which was ridiculous, of course.
“Am I getting that pint or not?” Dave grumbled from the end of the bar.
Jules looked down to find that the glass was overflowing. She sighed, put the glass down and grabbed another, paying attention this time as she filled it properly.
“Doesn’t do to get distracted when you’re doing something important,” Dave said wisely when she put the pint in front of him.
Probably good advice. And she was doing something important, wasn’t she? She was wooing her future wife, Alea with the bouncy hair and crinkly smile and nice eyes. So she absolutely shouldn’t get distracted at all.
The problem with that was that she was already distracted now. The idea of kissing Billie Brooke had never entered her mind before this afternoon and now it seemed to be all she could think about.
If she had thought about it before she’d have been sort of… weirded out by the whole idea, probably. Now though, now it had already happened, she was amazed at how normal it had seemed, how natural, how stomach-achingly good it had been.
Two hours ago her life had been as simple as it got. Alright, so her grandfather was probably planning the next Great Train Robbery, and her sister and best friend were busy turning the entire village orange, and she did really need to learn how to play the piano in something less than four weeks at this point. Other than that though, things had been ticking along quite nicely.
Then this had happened and suddenly Jules found that she couldn’t quite remember her own middle name, that she’d forgotten how to do long division, and that the neurons that had been devoted to those things were all far too busy thinking about the way Billie Brooke’s lips felt soft as feathers.
“If you just stand there all day eventually someone’s going to throw peanuts at you,” Amelia said.
Jules blinked and her sister was there, sitting on a barstool right in front of her. “What?”
“You’re standing there looking like you’ve seen Medusa. You know, all frozen and unmoving.”
“Oh,” said Jules. Then she frowned. “Where’s Cass?”
“Got an appointment on the other side of the village. She’ll be here later.”
