But Ash can feel it, nestled in behind her ribcage, under her sternum, that CJ would be bothered by the answer.
Ash had dared not hope.
Ash had dared not wonder.
She looks at CJ, and CJ looks back, and Ash understands, implicitly, that how she answers is going to be very, very important. She senses that CJwantsher to say she’s into women. But Ash is not. She’s not intowomen, plural. She’s into CJ, who happens to be a woman. But CJ doesn’t want her that way, and Ash knows this. CJ fled. Ash understands.
Except. The smile has fallen from CJ’s mouth, and now she holds Ash’s gaze almost mournfully, as if preparing herself already for disappointment, to be upset. So Ash is stuck. She can’t say she’s not gay, she can’t say she is, and she can’t ask CJ what she wants, because Ash isn’t sure what she needs her to say. The pair of them, they’re stuck in a limbo, a freeze-frame, a game of chicken where neither will go first and so they both lose. Ash wishes she could read CJ’s mind, get an insight into what that maddeningly blunt, beautiful, pain-in-the-ass needs in this moment, so then Ash could start to work out what she needs, too. But she can’t. She can’t read CJ’s mind and she can’t figure out what her own is trying to tell her either. Of course, if she were to simply listen to her heart it would be a lot – alot– easier.
‘No, not a lesbian,’ Ash says. ‘But like, I don’t know. I’m notnotinto women, I guess.’
A seed offered.
27
CJ
What CJ needs to do is just … say it. She needs to move her lips and let sound emanate from between them, until words can form and she can articulate to Ash exactly how she feels. Which is … confused, and jealous, and hopeful, and really goddamn scared. Basically, whatever CJ’s carefully crafted personal brand is? Everything she exists as right now is the exact opposite.
She can’t remember who suggested it was time to go, only that she and Ash stood up at roughly the same time, headed in the direction of CoLab at roughly the same time, slowed down into a dawdle at roughly. The same. Time. The air between them feels soupy, thick with the unsaid. CJ knows she has feelings, but the terrifying part now is that apparently, in the face of Ash considering a liaison with anybody else, not least another woman, she cannot hide it. But, more than that, the way Ash has been looking at her. Touching her. Laughing with her.I’m notnotinto women… They’ve been together non-stop. Sure, it could just be as friends, but it isn’t, is it? It can’t be. CJ doesn’t know any friends who spend thismuch time together, who part and then continue to text, so that it’s less about them meeting up every day and more like they haven’t been apart, at all, in weeks, because even apart they’re still talking, even when they don’t say much at all. CJ wishes Ash would say something, initiate a conversation about how they really feel. It’s agony. The truth about being in love is that death would be preferable to waiting for the other person to decide that they feel the same. The exquisite torment is inhumane. For example, now, this walk home that is so slow they are practically walking backwards, side by side, fingertips a hair’s breadth from gently brushing against one another, the very definition ofalmost. It’s horrible.
CJ wonders,should I kiss her?She tries to imagine how this would go. Last time, with Luis there, it was soft and sensual and everything she wanted it to be, so much so that she’d had to leave. But at least she had been sure Ash wanted that, that everybody was there for the same explicit purpose. Now, with the exchange of awkward, wordless half-smiles between them, CJ doesn’t feel sure of anything, save for the fact that the only thing that might be more painful than trying to kiss Ash and being refused is to never try to kiss Ash at all.
They reach CoLab. Ash looks at the ground, swallows hard, gives the impression she might finally look up at CJ and say the words CJ needs to light the fire beneath her courage. That’s all CJ needs, for Ash to say,this is real, isn’t it?CJ could take it from there. She could. But Ash doesn’t speak. She blinks fast, like trying to wash away a thought, and gives a big, dissatisfied sigh. CJ opens her mouth in the hope that words will follow. Ash senses it, eyes darting upto CJ’s mouth, and is CJ imagining it? That she looks hopeful? Expectant? Maybe that is the push! Maybe that could be enough! Yet she freezes, heart racing double time, unable to look at Ash directly, instead focusing on the wall, on the brick to the left of Ash’s head. And if Ash is now looking at her, CJ moves her gaze away sharpish when she finally meets her eye.
They head upstairs, and CJ suddenly thinks,but I don’t even live here.She’s come into CoLab without thinking, followed Ash without thinking, is going up the stairs to Ash’s studio. Is she walking her home, or …? She feels the seconds rushing by, seconds she will never get back, seconds she is desperate to stop at any cost. She’d push her fingers up to the gap in the giant timer of the world if she could, use the force of her whole body to stem the grains of sand trickling through the hourglass so time could pause, so she could fucking gather herself, sort herself the fuck out.
Is she going to do this? She’s going to do this.
‘This is me,’ Ash says, somewhat unnecessarily. She puts her key in the lock, pushing the door wide open. It hangs, Ash taking a step into the room and then turning, slowly, to look at CJ.
But CJ can’t do it, can’t cross over the threshold herself, and so they look at each other, an expression on Ash’s face that CJ cannot read until it smudges into sadness, maybe regret, and then the door is closed and Ash is inside. In the dark of the hallway, the door shutting behind her, CJ is on the other side, alone.
28
Ash
Ash wants to cry. CJ is a coward, and Ash deserves more than a coward. All CJ had to do just then was kiss her! Ash could not have given the invitation more obviously! What a fucking idiot! She leans against the back of her door. Half turns as if she might open it again. Doesn’t. Turns back and then shakes her head, shakes herself out of this, into her new-found bravery, unlocks the bloody door and looks down the hall to … Nothing. Nobody. CJ has gone. Anyway, what was she going to do?BegCJ to make a move? Ash can’t even decide if that is what she wants. They’re friends. Pals! Homies! And maybe being attracted to CJ, being able to appreciate her beauty, her fucking hotness, is just a clue that Ash is not entirely straight, like she’s started to think. The universe has put Aurora in her path, hasn’t she? Feeling some type of way about CJ could simply be the first step in exploring her sexuality in a wider way. This could be what all of this has been for – the love of her life could be a woman. A realisation she might never havehad in Bristol, and now she’s here, in Portugal, hanging on to the door handle, undecided if she should head down the corridor in search of CJ, or give up.
29
CJ
CJ turns the corner and finds she cannot walk any further. She stands still, body weight falling to one side so that she’s leaning against the wall of the hallway. She takes a deep breath. Steadies herself, freezes when she hears the click of a door open, stupidly, for half a second, hopes it is Ash coming to find her. It isn’t. There’s another click, and then nothing. Shit, shit, shit. She’s ruining everything! If Ash was so easily able to walk away … well. That speaks for itself, doesn’t it? It isn’t worth the risk. Isn’t worth the shame, the rejection. She sinks down, crouching, head in her hands. Eyes closed.Breathe, you idiot, breathe.She thinks of Jorge, his angelic, cherub-like face. She has everything she needs in this life. Her child is enough. It’s an embarrassment of riches, to have his love, to be able to love him. That she hasn’t felt this way about another person in years, in a decade, a decade and a half … urgh! It doesn’t matter! She was in love once before, and look how that turned out! Nobody can fill the void of what her mother left behind, it doesn’t take Freud himself to point that out. She’s worked so hard for everything she has. So, so hard. She cannot justgive that away on a maybe from Ash, on the hint of a chance.Breathe, you idiot, breathe.She gets up. Looks back to the corner she came from. Takes a step. Because what if? The most dangerous thought a person could have, that. What if.
Breathe, you idiot, breathe.
30
Ash
Ash crouches down, slumping onto the floor of her room. Her chest rises and falls as she breathes deeply. She closes her eyes. Notes the swirling doubt in the pit of her stomach. She told herself she wouldn’t chase love any more. She’s enough as she is, and so if CJ doesn’t want to stake her claim by planting her flag and saying how she actually fucking feels, Ash isn’t going to coach her through it just so she can feel like she has been chosen. She talks herself through slowly, reluctantly, choosing herself, until she gets up, gingerly heads to the bathroom, peeling off her clothes and slipping off her shoes to turn on the scalding water of the shower, to let it all wash away: every thought of CJ, like being baptised anew. She lathers her hair, lets the soapsuds run down her slick, naked body, down into the plughole, until she is clean, and calm, and ready for sleep.
As she turns off the water and grabs a towel, Ash becomes cognisant of voices. She wraps a smaller towel around her wet hair, straining to hear, and opens the bathroom door toget a better read of what’s happening. Then she realises, it isn’t voices, plural, it is just one voice.
‘And so there you have it, OK? I’m an idiot.’
‘CJ?’ Ash says, confused. She hears CJ take a sharp intake of breath.
