‘I’m proud of you.’
‘I’m proud of me too—’
They’re interrupted then.
‘Ash?’ comes a voice. ‘I thought that was you!’
They look up, and Ash takes a beat to recognise who is talking to her. Muscular arms, deep tan, brown bob tucked behind her ears.
‘Aurora,’ the woman says. ‘Best tour guide in Sintra?’
‘Oh!’ says Ash, getting up now. Dammit. She normally prides herself on remembering people. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says, and now she’s stood, isn’t sure why. She’s not going to hug the woman, is she? Or air-kiss her.
Aurora makes the decision for them both, opening her arms so Ash knows to come forward. She offers her right side first, then her left.
‘You look different,’ Ash says. ‘In my defence. You had the shirt, before, the button-down.’
‘My professional clothes,’ Aurora nods. ‘But now I’m in my party clothes.
Ash laughs, and has to admit, Aurora suits her ‘party clothes’: wide-legged beige trousers and a cropped white T-shirt, the softness of her belly on proud display, making her radiate feminine, open energy.
‘Hey, I’m Aurora,’ she says to CJ, offering a hand.
CJ doesn’t get up, Ash notices, as she nods curtly at Aurora without taking her hand. Aurora withdraws it, glancing from CJ to Ash and back to CJ again. ‘I didn’t mean any disrespect,’ she says. ‘I just wanted to say hello.’
Disrespect? Ash doesn’t get it. What shedoesget, is that CJ could not be willing Aurora away with any more hostility, and everyone knows it. You wouldn’t need a knife to cut the tension, a simple flick of the wrist would do it.Poof.
‘Well, hello,’ smiles Ash, compensating for CJ’s rudeness. ‘Thanks for coming over. I’ll email you sometime. I’m sorry I never did.’ Why is she saying that? Ash didn’t email Aurora because Mona said Aurora was hitting on her, and Ash doesn’t fancy Aurora.
‘Yeah?’ says Aurora, another quick look at CJ, who has suddenly acquired a new fascination with the floor. ‘OK, well. Cool. Don’t leave it too long, OK?’
‘OK,’ says Ash, her smile getting even wider. Why is she even apologising for CJ this way? CJ is her own woman, nothing to do with Ash really. If she wants to be unbearable, that should be no skin off Ash’s nose. And yet. ‘Tomorrow,’ she finds herself saying, so that this whole interaction can be sweetened with some sugar.
‘Look forward to it,’ Aurora tells her, looking at Ash from under her lashes intently. Flirtatiously. Yup. There’sabsolutely no getting around it. Mona was right: Aurora is into her. And Ash is encouraging it with promises of email.
When she’s gone, Ash sits back down beside CJ and waits for her to speak. She’s curious – is CJ going to act like she wasn’t just an arse, or will she own up to it so Ash can understand? Her breathing has become more laboured as adrenaline courses through her. She’s mad. And Lisbon Ash doesn’t push down being mad, she allows herself to feel it, because being mad when somebody is unfriendly and discourteous is a reasonable reaction to have.
Ash looks at CJ, at her flawless walnut-coloured skin, the curve of her chin, the exposed skin of her neck, the bit beneath her ear. Something isn’t right. CJ seems … sad?
‘CJ?’ Ash says, softly.
CJ doesn’t speak. Her chest rises and falls with deep in- and exhalations, as if she’s counting, to regulate herself.
‘Hey,’ Ash says, reaching out to her, to the smoothness of her shoulder.
CJ shrugs her away, but when she looks up her face is plastered with a smile. A fake one. ‘I didn’t know you were still dating,’ she says.
‘I’m not.’
‘Except for her?’
Ash knits her eyebrows together. ‘She’s just this tour guide from the other week, ages ago, from when I went to Sintra. She gave me her email address.’
‘So you can go out together?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Ash, calmly. ‘Mona thought so, yes. But I’m not a lesbian, so I didn’t email her.’
‘Are you a lesbian now?’ CJ asks, and she still has half the false smile, as if the answer wouldn’t bother her.
