by Harper Bliss
Chapter Sixteen
Gloria wondered if she was having a meltdown. Or a stroke. She’d had patients explain to her exactly what had happened to them—or what they recalled happening to them—when a blood vessel in their brain burst. This was not that. This was Gloria pulling Ash towards her. These were Gloria’s lips, willingly opening up for Ash. This was Gloria’s desire on full display.
Of course she had been curious, but this was much more than curiosity. Ash’s soft, cool lips on hers sent a shiver all the way down her spine every single time they touched. If it had been just curiosity, it would be satisfied by now. Gloria would know what it felt like to kiss another woman—to kiss Ash. She could remove that from her bucket list and consider it done. But kissing Ash was not something she wanted to stop doing anytime soon. So she pulled Ash a little closer, even though she was already pressed all the way against her. Gloria could feel the swell of Ash’s breasts against her own. She already had her hands in Ash’s perfectly styled hair. She didn’t seem to mind too much.
Gloria flicked her tongue over Ash’s lips and into her mouth and she heard a tiny groan escape her throat. What was happening to her? She certainly wasn’t under the influence of any substance—only under the influence of Ashley Cooper’s easy intoxicating charm, perhaps. It must be a psychological thing then. Or another symptom of the menopause. But none of the books Gloria had read about the menopause, none of the endless conversations she’d had about it, had ever mentioned any of this. There had never been any warning that at some point in her mid-fifties, she’d be kissing another woman in her living room. And not just any woman. This was Mary and Alan’s daughter. Oh, mother of Christ. No. No. No.
Gloria tried to pull away from Ash, but she was drawn right back to her, as if Ash’s lips had suddenly gained magnetic powers. For the life of her, Gloria couldn’t stop kissing Ash. She let one hand glide to the back of her neck, to feel Ash’s soft skin there. The touch was exquisite.
Gloria concluded it could only be a case of temporary insanity. Only a little while longer, and it would all be over. Gloria would lock it all away and it would start to belong to the very recent past, then the somewhat further past, until it blended in with so many other unexpected things that had happened in her life.
But oh, good God, what was Ash doing? She kissed the corner of Gloria’s mouth, her cheek, her lips trailing downwards. She found the sensitive skin of Gloria’s neck and kissed her there. Gloria’s tiny groan was growing louder. Her skin was hungry for this, her body so eager for another person’s touch.
She lowered her chin, denying Ash further access to her neck. It had to be off limits. Gloria’s temporary insanity would no longer be able to serve as an excuse if Ash continued doing what she was doing. If this was going to be temporary at all, and it had to be, Gloria would have to put a stop to it now.
Ash took a step back, her hands suddenly dangling uselessly beside her. Gloria hadn’t completely snapped out of the spell Ash had put her under yet, because she reached for Ash’s hand and held it in her own.
“Ash.” She shook her head. “We have to stop.”
Ash looked at the floor. She must know it too.
“I can’t be kissing you,” Gloria whispered, even though, now that she’d had a taste, it was all she wanted to do.
When Ash looked up, she appeared deflated, although a hint of hope still shimmered in her glance. Gloria didn’t have the heart to squash that last dash of hope still alive in Ash, even though she had no choice. If she’d been so dead-set on kissing a woman, why couldn’t she have chosen someone else? Why did it have to be Ash?
“You can do whatever you want, Gloria,” Ash said, but there wasn’t a lot of determination in her tone. She was a smart girl. She, too, knew that this was the last thing the two of them should be doing. And maybe Ash had been right earlier, when she’d claimed they couldn’t resist it because it was wrong. Reverse psychology, that’s what it was.
“No, I don’t think that’s true.” Gloria let go of Ash’s hand. She looked at her own empty hand.
“I’m not going to argue with you about anything like that right now.” Gloria wasn’t sure what Ash meant exactly. She would argue with her about it another time?
“It’s getting late.” Gloria put some distance between them. She felt her skin go cold as she did.
“I need to catch my train.” Ash seemed to gather herself a bit more. She straightened her spine. “I’m glad we had that conversation.” One last time, she locked her gaze firmly on Gloria’s.
Gloria almost had to look away. Even though this was something they had done together, and it was only a kiss, Gloria somehow felt she had caused this. She shouldn’t have flirted with a lesbian woman. What did she expect would happen? “Let’s part on good terms, Ash, please.” She found herself taking a step closer.
“We’re on the best of terms.” Ash’s gaze softened a bit. “And you’re a mighty good kisser, Gloria.” She pulled those delicious lips of hers into a small, crooked grin. “I don’t want to be a bitch about this. I don’t want any bad feelings between us either.” She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth. The sight of it made Gloria want to kiss her all over again. “I don’t really know what to say right now because I’m not allowed to express what it is that I really want.”
“I know.” Gloria knew exactly what that felt like.
“We probably shouldn’t see each other anymore. Not deliberately, anyway.” Ash went all business-like on her. Her sudden matter-of-fact tone made Gloria’s stomach twist. “No more texting.”
“Okay.” In the back of Gloria’s mind a voice started screaming: “Not okay! Not okay at all!” She reached for Ash’s hand again and Ash didn’t pull away. Gloria took a step closer. “If I’m not going to see you again after this, then what’s stopping me from kissing you again?”
Ash’s earlier grin was back. She gave the kind of shrug that said, “Nothing at all.”
And then Gloria was kissing Ash again. This time around, she could no longer claim a temporary loss of her faculties. They had both just decided this was a very bad idea. That they should go their separate ways. And they should. Gloria knew that they should. Not a single fibre of her being wanted it, but if Gloria had learnt one thing a long time ago, it was that the heart did not always get what it wanted. She had other matters to concern herself with than the desire beating in her heart, than the thrill chasing up her spine. She had two daughters who would never approve of this. She was friends with people who could make her life in this town miserable if they found out about this. Gloria wasn’t about to give up the way she lead her life just because she enjoyed kissing Ash so much—and oh, how she did. She would just allow herself one more indulgence. One more kiss. And then it would stop. Forever.
Chapter Seventeen
Ash didn’t feel as though she had a lot to lose, but she understood that it was very different for Gloria. She knew, in her bones, why this had to end tonight. It had been a nice fantasy. It had given her a few moments of divine distraction. Right now, it was giving her goosebumps across the expanse of her entire skin, because Ash hadn’t been lying when she’d said that Gloria was a wonderful kisser. She put her hand on Gloria’s throat and, under her thumb, Gloria’s pulse beat wildly. Her own heartbeat thumped like crazy in her chest, as if to say: “If you stop, I’m not sure I will ever feel like this again.”
Gloria leaned into the kiss with her entire body. Her fingertips dug into Ash’s back. Her tongue danced inside Ash’s mouth. Whenever she pulled back to take a deeper breath, for an instant, it felt like Gloria’s lips didn’t want to part from Ash’s at all. They held on for one more delicious instant. A split second which held so much possibility, until their lips did break apart, and reality hit Ash hard in the face again.
But she would get over it. She would get on the train and not come home for a while. She’d got over far worse than kissing one of her mother’s friends. If Ash played it right, this would be only a teeny blip on h
er emotional radar.
What it had taught her, however, was that Ash was ready to leave the sulking behind. She was done grieving for her marriage. It was over. Charlotte was never coming back—and Ash didn’t want her to. But she did want this. She wanted someone to kiss, someone who would take away a day of stress with one single touch. Someone who could make her feel the way she was feeling now—the way Gloria was making her feel.
“Oh Christ.” Gloria was the one who broke all physical contact between them. As if someone had given her an invisible cue, she stepped away from Ash. “If we don’t stop now, I can no longer be held responsible for my actions.” She had a wild glare in her eyes. Ash almost reacted to it—almost. She was tempted to close the distance between them again, but she didn’t. Not because she didn’t want to, but because she had to respect Gloria’s decision. This wasn’t Ash’s call to make. They didn’t have the same amount of skin in the game.
Still, it was hard for Ash to walk away. She took a breath and, for a split second, thought that she might have already found what she hadn’t even started looking for yet. Someone new who made her feel like she was fully alive again, like everything was possible. Gloria had made her feel like that.
But it couldn’t be Gloria. Ash had to take a moment to let that settle in again, because as she looked at Gloria standing there, her hair unruly and her lipstick smudged, the physical evidence of their attraction so glaringly obvious, it was so hard to walk away.
Ash had walked away before, but this was different. Leaving behind something that was already dead was a relief compared to walking out on something so exciting, so illicitly thrilling. Why did Gloria have to look so scrumptious? The top button of her blouse had come undone. Her neck had felt so delicate when Ash had kissed it earlier. For a few seconds, before she had rebuffed Ash’s further advances, Gloria had tilted her head back, had allowed full access to the glorious curve of her neck, and Ash had wanted to spend hours exploring Gloria’s skin, getting acquainted with what she liked and disliked.
“Ash,” Gloria said. “You should really go now.”
Ash nodded. “Yeah.” She reached for Gloria—she wanted to kiss her one last time—but Gloria stepped aside, leaving the path to the door wide open.
Ash grabbed her stuff and walked to the door. She looked behind one last time. Gloria was looking away, as though she couldn’t bear the sight of Ash leaving.
“Goodbye, Gloria,” Ash said, her voice unravelling, like she was doing on the inside. She hurried outside. She looked around for any familiar cars, but the street was quiet. It was Sunday evening and a soft rain had started to fall. Most people were cocooning inside with their loved ones. Ash pictured Adrian and Lizzie and her nephews huddled over a board game under the gentle light of a lamp.
A few minutes ago, she’d been kissing Gloria. She’d been over the moon—under Gloria’s spell. Now, she was walking away from it all and a heaviness descended on her shoulders. It coiled in the pit of her stomach. She braced herself against the rain, which started to come down harder.
What was Gloria thinking right now? Was she relieved that Ash had left? What had she meant that if they didn’t stop, she could no longer be held responsible for her actions? Did she want Ash that much? Did she want to go further? Did she want to do any of the things that Ash didn’t even allow herself to consider? Although, of course, in an unguarded moment here and there, she had allowed herself to consider them. She had pictured Gloria naked in front of her—and what she would do to her if she were. She had allowed herself to dream of waking up next to a smiling Gloria, her hair all wild like her smile could be, after a night of doing to her exactly as she pleased.
But in the distance the station loomed, lit up in the falling darkness. Ash would walk into its glowing light, take that train, and not look back.
Chapter Eighteen
After Ash had left, Gloria’s glance had fallen on a picture of George. Maybe that was exactly what she needed right now—to be reminded of the woman that she was before she kissed Ash. She picked up the frame and held the picture close to her face. But however close she held it, George would never be there again. He was not coming back to talk some sense into her. She would have to do that all by herself.
Or could she talk to Sindhu about this? Fiona was out of the question, Gloria concluded, but Sindhu might be understanding. She might even mock Gloria to the point that she would start to understand how foolish she had been for even giving into the desire to kiss Ash in the first place.
She put down the picture frame and looked at the photo of her two daughters next to it. They came home using words like ‘woke’ and ‘lit’ and Gloria tried to keep up with this new vocabulary as best she could—she always did her best for her children—but she couldn’t expect the same from them. She couldn’t expect an eighteen-year-old and a twenty-one-year-old to be so ‘woke’ and so ‘lit’ to understand why their mother was kissing another woman. Or could she? Gloria tried to imagine telling them—but telling them what? So far, there really was nothing to tell. Yet, it was the prospect of having to tell her daughters that was holding her back the most. That had stopped her from letting Ash kiss her again and again.
Gloria replaced the photo and brought a finger to her lips, to the spot where, only minutes ago, Ash’s lips had touched hers. The sheer exquisiteness of it had taken her by surprise. The way something had sparked deep inside of her. Gloria had expected to feel something, of course. A small flare of longing, or perhaps not even longing. More something along the lines she’d felt when she’d kissed the last man she’d been on a date with. His name was Robert and he had kissed Gloria, and what Gloria remembered most of all was how it had felt to want to be kissed. When Robert had pressed his lips against hers, she knew what he wanted: her. She hadn’t felt the same desire for him, although being kissed by him had been pleasant enough.
With Ash, it was different. Yes, Ash’s desire for her was impossible to ignore, but what had coursed through her more than anything else, was how much she wanted Ash. How the softness of her kiss, so light and tender at first, had woken her own desire. That had been the biggest surprise of all. It was probably the shock of that, that had made Gloria pull away in the end, that had made her ask Ash to leave.
Right now, she was of half a mind to run after Ash. To dash through the rain to the train station and demand that Ash come back home with her. But then what? They could keep it a secret for a while. But what about after that? When the secret had run its course? Ash would always be Mary and Alan’s daughter. Gloria had two daughters of her own and the mere memory of them with their first boyfriends still made her feel a little uneasy. It was a visceral, parental anxiety that she hoped would go away once her daughters found their place in life, and someone to walk with them on their path.
Ash was much older, but Gloria had an inkling that such parental protectiveness never really went away. She remembered Alan at the party last week and how he had spoken about Ash, how much worry she’d picked up in his voice.
Simply put, it was all much too complicated. Gloria had made the right decision when she’d asked Ash to go. It was better to leave it at that. She’d always have the memory of the kiss. That was something. It erased the previous memory of her last kiss, the one with Robert. It obliterated the very last remnant of it. Ash’s kiss had been superior in every conceivable way. How she’d put her hand against Gloria’s throat. It made her swallow hard just thinking about it. She put her hand where Ash’s hand had been. She felt her pulse pick up speed. Because there was also the undeniable fact that Ash was a woman. Gloria wasn’t so sure she would be able to wait until Sindhu and Fiona came by tomorrow to talk about this. She was already planning to ask Sindhu if she could stop by earlier, but how would she make it through the next twenty-four hours with all but Ash on her mind? Without being able to properly process this?
But she would wait. She would deal with it. Because if she couldn’t even deal with the next twenty-four hours of keeping her fe
elings inside, how on earth would she cope with cutting Ash out of her life completely, forever?
She checked her watch. On Sundays, there were only two trains going to London every hour. Had Ash made the previous one or was she stuck in the station, waiting another half hour for the next one? Gloria pictured her on the train, on her way home, moving further away from Gloria.
She glanced at the picture of George again. She tried to imagine him saying something to her but he’d been gone for so long, it was sometimes hard to properly recall what his voice sounded like. She could easily remember exact things he’d said like often-used phrases and the way he spoke to the girls, but new words were much harder to attribute to him. She shook her head at the frame and walked away. She went into the kitchen to clean up the plates and other things that were left scattered on the table, abandoned because they’d started kissing.
Chapter Nineteen
“I know exactly what you need,” Lewis said.
Ash gave him a sceptical look. No one on earth could possibly know what she needed right now. Yes, she had just told him about kissing Gloria, but that didn’t change much about Lewis’s knowledge of the situation. Besides, Ash knew Lewis and she knew what he would say next. She held up her hand. “No. Whatever it is you’re going to say, I especially don’t need that.”
“So. Bloody. Judgemental.” Lewis shook his head. “You’re not even giving me a chance.”
Ash sucked on the paper straw in her gin and tonic. The blasted thing was going to mush already, but at least she could drink all the alcohol she wanted now. “Fine. If you have to say it, say it. But I’m not you, nor am I one of your gay-boy friends. What I need differs greatly from what you might need in my situation.”
