Seasons of Love: A Lesbian Romance Novel Read online

  “Let’s sit for a bit,” I say, and I have to keep myself from touching her, from just putting my hand on her shoulder in a friendly manner. I know it’s better not to. Not just because it could be misinterpreted, but also because I don’t trust myself around her. By the end of Joy’s stay in Portugal, the briefest of touches could so easily lead to so much more.

  We head into the lounge. “Do you want some water?” I ask.

  “No, but a glass of wine would be nice.”

  When I stare at her too long, Joy asks, “What?”

  I shake my head and fetch an open bottle I started the day before from the kitchen, pour us both a small glass and sit on the couch.

  “I’m sorry I ignored your messages. I wasn’t taking your feelings into account when I did. Only my own. That wasn’t fair,” I start, unsure of my moves on this unknown, treacherous terrain.

  “And I am sorry for making you come to dinner. It was out of my mouth before I even realised, and I certainly didn’t think it through. I was just focused on seeing you again, and then Mum ran with the idea, because why wouldn’t she?”

  “You haven’t told her anything?” I’m glad to have a glass of wine in my hands. It gives me something to do with them and I need all the courage I can get, liquid or other.

  “Of course not. I swear to you, Alice. She doesn’t have a clue.”

  “I can barely look her in the eye,” I mumble. “I feel like the worst person to have ever walked this earth.”

  “Why?” Joy challenges me. “You haven’t murdered anyone. You haven’t committed a crime. We’re not cheating on anyone. We are two consenting adults. I know you and Mum are close, but it’s not as if we’re related. We fell in love, Alice, it’s as simple as that. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.”

  Her use of the word love jars me. Am I in love? I haven’t a clue. I haven’t been in love in decades. My heart feels as if it’s in tatters. And I don’t get much sleep. And too many thoughts are spent chasing off images of Joy.

  When I don’t reply, Joy puts down her glass of wine and walks over to crouch next to me. “Is asking for one date too much? Just one evening spent in each other’s company, just to see how it makes us feel. To see if, under other circumstances, we would want to be together. One night during which we pretend I’m not your best friend’s daughter.”

  “No, Joy. I can’t. I want to, but I just can’t. It’s hard enough seeing you tonight. It brought back every single moment we spent together, and it will only make things harder in the end. I know it’s not what you want to hear, and I wish I didn’t have to speak these words, that I didn’t have to refuse because, by God, it’s hard. But it’s not right.”

  “One date is all I ask. A mere two to three hours of your life. That’s it. If you still feel the same way after that, I’ll walk away. I swear to God, Alice, I will walk away from you, but please. We had such an amazing time. It was so special, and, for the life of me, I can’t figure out why, but there’s something between us and I know you feel it, too. You can’t deny that. I just know it.” She kneels next to me, as if she’s going to beg, but instead she moves her hand from the armrest of the sofa to my thigh, and digs her fingertips into my flesh. I might as well just have been administered electric shock therapy, that’s how her touch jolts through me, all the way from my thigh, up my spine, and back down again, between my legs.

  I find myself gasping for air as I open my mouth to speak. “I—I’m not denying anything,” I stutter and she must know she has me now, must know that I’m about to be putty in her hands again.

  “Tomorrow night?” her fingers crawl to the pit of my knee, just below where my skirt has hiked up, and she strokes me there, and I feel myself go wet like a river.

  “God, you really can’t take no for an answer.” I find her hand with mine, stop it in its tracks. She’s got me so far that I’m ready to ask her to stay. And I realise that, yes, I must be falling in love, because why else would I be behaving like a clueless teenager whose behaviour is solely ruled by hormones?

  “Some things are worth fighting for.” Joy’s fingers intertwine with mine, and she brings both our hands to her mouth, and kisses me on the tip of my index finger.

  “What do you want to do on this date?” Back in the day, when Alan was courting me, it wasn’t called dating yet.

  “Go to a movie, or a play, and have dinner. We can go ice skating, or to the opera, or the library for all I care, Alice. I just want to spend time with you.”

  “We don’t have to decide now, I guess.” I hope not because I’m about to lose use of my faculties if she keeps her mouth hovering over my finger like that.

  “If I call you tomorrow, will you pick up?” She eyes me from below.

  “I will.”

  “Good.” She thrusts herself up and stands over me, before lowering her head towards me and kissing me full on the lips. Instantly, my mouth opens, and I want more. I am at the same time angry at myself for being so weak, but, in this moment, I also very much want to believe Joy’s argument. No one gets hurt when we kiss. No earthquakes destroy the world when my tongue slips into her mouth. Just as the kiss is about to intensify, Joy pulls back. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.” She pushes herself away from me and just stands there with a crooked grin on her lips. “I’ll see myself out.”

  Just as on our last day together in Quinta, I watch the spot where she stood for a long time before I can move again.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  It’s almost indecent how, from the very beginning of our date, all I want to do is take Joy home. When she called me earlier today, and I picked up after the first ring, I invited her to my house. Not only because of what I want to do to her—and have her do to me—but also because I was paranoid about actually going out with her, to a place where we could be seen.

  “There are eight million people living in this city, Alice,” she said. “And we’re not staying in Chelsea, I can assure you.”

  At seven, I meet Joy at a wine bar in Shoreditch, a neighbourhood so unfamiliar to me, I might as well be in another city.

  “My flat is just around the corner,” she says, and this piques my interest because I’m curious to find out how Joy lives. I’m also pleased that, if we do want more privacy, we don’t have to go all the way back to Chelsea. “Welcome to my hood, Alice.” I am, naturally, also worried, because if this is Joy’s hood, as she calls it, she must know people here. “Don’t worry, none of my friends would ever set foot in this overpriced, snobbish place. We’re safe.”

  “What would you say if one of them did, though? If one of them is sneaking around with someone as well, and had decided to bring them here. How would you introduce me?” I feel giddy sitting across from her. Radiating. Eager.

  “I would say ‘I’m very pleased to present to you… my brand new cougar’.” Joy snickers, obviously finding herself very funny. “I’m not ashamed to be seen with you, just for the record. I just wanted to bring you to the most discreet bar. Afterwards, we can either pick up a curry and eat it at mine, or go to a very nice restaurant across from the park. We’ll see how things go.”

  “Right.” How things go? Once again, I’m thrown by the effect she has on me. By how she has me second-guessing my every word, my every gesture, my every emotion. Perhaps she was right and this is what being in love feels like. I’ve found that additional symptoms include waking up an hour before my alarm goes off despite interrupted sleep due to a new set of worries. My mind also tends to drift when it should be fully engaged listening to clients or even the morning news—I find myself unable to recall a single one of today’s headlines. And then there’s the spring in my step I only noticed on my way over here, not when I was running errands this afternoon.

  “What do you think of the wine, Alice?” Joy asks. It comes across not so much as a question but an invitation to gaze into her eyes, to relish this moment we have together and act as though it’s normal, all while absorbing the energy of her smile and the rel
entless sparkle in her gaze. If someone asked me to paint a picture of an infatuated woman, I’d paint what I’m looking at right now. It’s a delight to notice the twitch in the corner of her mouth, and the way she—ever so slightly—drags the tip of her tongue over her bottom lip. Joy is in full-on seduction mode, so full-on and obliterating that, after only fifteen minutes of sitting in this bar with her, I find myself not caring about any consequences. And I know it’s also because of the wine she keeps pouring generously from the bottle she ordered, but it’s by no means the main cause. This girl—woman, really—has done something to me. She has turned me inside out and unearthed desires in me I was so unaware of, that I was willing to spend the rest of my life, to go into my old age, fully ignoring them.

  “What have you done to me?” I had asked Joy for the umpteenth time when I lay gasping on top of the covers in the house in Quinta. “I’m not like this. I’m not this person lying here.”

  “The woman who just came so violently it seemed like the devil itself was being exorcised from her soul?” Joy lay on her belly looking at me, that ever-present grin on her face.

  “I don’t recognise myself. You must have poisoned me, put something in that wine you poured me the first day. A slow-working potion that is messing with my judgement and my brain chemistry and… basically with every cell of my being,.”

  “What can I say, Alice? You saw a pair of bare breasts and you flipped. It’s hardly my fault.”

  “It’s not that,” I said, my voice growing more serious, “it was just the sight of you and what it stood for in my mind. You’re so unbridled, so uninhibited, so completely the opposite of me, I couldn’t believe it at first. I found myself wondering: really? This is how youngsters are these days? They walk into a house, greet someone whom they haven’t seen in years, and take their top off? It stood for something I couldn’t grasp, something I couldn’t possibly wrap my head around, until I did and you struck me as so beautiful, so pure and unspoiled, so devoid of delusion and signs of what simply living your life can do to you.”

  “Well, Alice.” Joy still had that grin on her face. “I hate to break it to you but I’m neither pure, nor unspoiled, and, well, I think you were just horny.” She broke out in a giggle and hoisted herself up on her arms to kiss me on the nose and on the lips again.

  “God, you’re so disrespectful,” I said to her when we broke from the kiss.

  “And you love it,” she replied, and started making her way down between my legs again.

  “I think the wine is delicious,” I say now, while I lose the first layer of my defence. “And I also think we should skip dinner altogether.”

  “Do you now?” Joy huddles over the table conspiratorially. “Don’t you have to give me a lecture first to make yourself feel better?” There’s no malice in her voice. She’s teasing me, testing me.

  I drink my wine, my eyes still on her, and I think to myself: what if this is me? What if this is the Alice I’ve always been and I’ve wasted years hiding her? I need to get out of this bar now and find out.

  “I think you must have put the same potion in my drink again. The one that makes me cross all my boundaries, far and beyond.” My eyes stray to her neck, to the hollow of it, and how the boat neck top she’s wearing makes it stand out so that I want to press my lips to it and kiss it endlessly.

  “Well, if my potion is working then I guess I’d better take you home.” Joy puts her hand on the table, looks at it, then puts it on mine. And if it’s a test, I don’t care. I don’t pull my hand away. I let her touch me freely in this bar where no one knows me, anyway. But, at this stage, even if someone did, I wouldn’t care. I wouldn’t. “Come on,” she says, and I’d follow her to the end of the earth.

  Outside, it’s chilly for the time of year—or not, because this is late summer in London. And outside the cosy cocoon of the bar where Joy’s face was all I saw, her words were all I heard, I find myself teetering more towards the edge of where my desire and my common sense meet. I feel myself becoming a rationally thinking human being again, but I still follow her quick strides on the pavement and have her take me home. And this, more than anything, this mixture of judgement clouded by infatuation—or ‘being horny’ as Joy would surely call it—but still being well aware of what I’m doing, of not being able to plead temporary insanity, is what will get me through her door.

  Joy’s flat is quirky but big for London—or perhaps it’s different in this new-to-me area—but I truly have no interest in appraising her interior design skills. She’s the most beautiful part of it, as she lets her leather jacket carelessly slip from her shoulders and throws it over the armrest of the sofa. She eyes me for a few long, silent seconds as I just stand there, probably looking forlorn, but actually wrapped up in a lust so all-consuming, I can barely move. Never in my life, not at any moment in time—neither in Portugal, nor when I was younger—have I wanted someone more than I want Joy now. Because I’m familiar with her body already, and I know what she can do to me, and I just want more and more. More of the same, but with different variations perhaps. It doesn’t even matter, I just want to be with her. So, I don’t wait for her to come for me. My lips part, I take the few steps that separate us and bring my hands behind her neck to pull her close.

  “I’ve missed you too,” I say, at last. I should have said it last night, but then the other Alice was still in charge.

  “I can tell,” Joy says. “Oh, how I can tell.” And I don’t know if she’s referring to the state I’m in now, or if I gave myself away so easily last night. It doesn’t matter. All that matters are her lips on mine, her tongue darting into my mouth, her hands in my hair, tugging at my clothes, unzipping the pair of jeans I never wear but thought I should wear today, for this date. For this trial. “If you still feel the same way after that, I’ll walk away,” Joy said last night and the very thought of her doing so feels like a punch to the gut.

  “Am I a dirty old woman now?” I asked Joy in Portugal. By then I knew to expect a snarky response, but she surprised me.

  “You’re not old, Alice. And there’s nothing dirty about what we’re doing. It’s all in your head.”

  Here and now, in Joy’s flat, I don’t feel old or dirty. I feel alive, as if injected with a brand new life force. I feel twenty years younger than my driver’s license says. And I just let go, I let myself be carried by the wave of lust that rides through my veins, by the energy I get back from Joy when we kiss and kiss, and become naked in a matter of minutes. And it’s frantic how we jumble towards her bedroom, and topple onto the bed, but at least we make it there before I fall apart completely. Only streetlight illuminates the room, but when I open my eyes for more than a fraction in between wild, lustful kisses, I notice a mirror to my right, one to my left, and one in front of me as well. Before I can even think ‘good grief’ or ‘what on earth?’ Joy is on top of me, her legs spread wide, her hot, hot sex on my stomach. I haven’t seen her naked, beautiful breasts for far too long, I think instead, and grab them, gently at first, but from the very second we set foot in this flat, we both knew this is not a time for gentleness—this is a time for taking, for stealing from one another what we both so desperately, so achingly need.

  Joy throws her head back, exposing her neck, as I knead her breasts, roll her nipples between my fingers, until I bring a hand down and think, yes, I want to see her come like this. I want her to sit on top of me, and I want to examine every inch of her I’m able to see in the semi-darkness of her room, the traffic swishing outside, bouts of laughter rising up to the first-floor window.

  But, before my finger even makes it all the way down, I feel Joy’s hand on my inner thigh, her fingers crawling closer. With her arm behind her, she leans her body to her right—the hand with which she’s going to fuck me.

  My finger is on her clitoris now, circling around, feeling her wetness, slipping inside only the littlest bit, until I can’t stop myself any longer and the urge to be inside her is too big. And the very act of entering
her, of feeling her there, of reaching this pinnacle of intimacy, coincides—although I’m sure it’s not a coincidence—with her finger reaching my clitoris, and I’m on fire. My blood has caught fire and my skin is burning and all oxygen is being drained from my lungs. I try to keep my eyes open, try to take in the sensual bucking of her body, the swaying of her breasts, the ripple of her belly. But then she slips her finger inside me as deep as she can in the position she’s in, slides it out, and rubs my clitoris with the copious wetness she has found in me. She repeats this, again and again, and my eyes fall shut in a growing sensation of ecstasy, and I keep thrusting my own fingers into her, searching for that spot that I already know drives her crazy.

  The explosion is soft and hard at the same time, warm and liquid, demanding, obliterating.

  “Oh Christ,” I holler, not caring how loud. Joy said in Quinta that the volume of my moans increased with the number of orgasms I’ve had. “Keep this up and you’ll be breaking the sound barrier soon,” she joked. But this is years of denied pleasure burrowing its way out of me, more than a decade of being untouched. This was never going to be silent once I allowed myself to really let go. “Oh God, Joy.”

  When I come to, my fingers are still buried inside her, but Joy’s hands are in her hair now, her breasts jutting out, and she’s riding me, taking control, her breathing coming quicker, and I give her everything I have. I give her my love, my doubts, my trepidations, my insecurities. I channel it all in what I’m doing to her. Lay myself bare for her while I look at her body surrendering and I’ve never seen anything more beautiful in my life. And, in that moment, I know with dead certainty, that I will not walk away. To do so would be to deny myself life itself. This new life she has given me. I’m not going back to the old Alice McAllister. I couldn’t if I tried.