Up on the Roof

by A. L. Brooks

  With that done, she crept back to her room and climbed into bed, tucking her legs under the duvet before reaching for her book.

  Madhu’s voice woke her, and she jerked her head up, realising it had dropped to her chest as she’d clearly fallen asleep reading at some point. Her neck ached, and she rubbed furiously at it to ease it before clambering out of the bed.

  “You okay, sis?” she asked, as she walked into the living room. Madhu was walking slowly across the room towards the bathroom.

  “Fine.” Her sister waved over her shoulder. “Just shouldn’t fall asleep on sofas. When I need to pee, it takes me forever to get upright and now my back is aching too.” She disappeared into the bathroom and Lena pivoted back round to her bedroom. Somewhere in amongst her make-up and spare moisturisers she was pretty sure… Yep, there it was. Massage oil.

  When she returned to the living room Madhu was filling the kettle. “I’m making myself at home, is that okay?”

  Lena grinned. “Totally. Hey, look what I found—can I interest you in a back rub?”

  Madhu glanced at the bottle in Lena’s hand and beamed. “Leelawati Shah, I will love you forever if you do that for me.”

  “So,” Madhu said a few minutes later as Lena’s hands worked a gentle massage on Madhu’s lower back. They were on Lena’s bed, Madhu laying on her side, Lena kneeling beside her. It was awkward positioning for Lena, but Madhu’s contented sighs told her it was worth it. “Tell me about this friend of Megan’s who asked you out.”

  “Ugh, there really isn’t that much to tell. She was the one that was with Megan that day she moved in. Jen’s… Well, yes, I have to admit, she’s very attractive. Taller than me, black, very cropped short hair. She sort of reminds me of that woman who was in Orange Is the New Black, you know the one I mean? Only Jen is taller.”

  Madhu turned her head slightly to stare at Lena over her shoulder. “Samira Wiley? Played Poussey?”

  Lena nodded.

  Madhu made a sort of whistling sound through her teeth. “Wow, and you turned her down? Even I think that woman’s hot.”

  “Madhu!” Lena gasped.

  “What? Is there some rule that says I can’t appreciate a hot woman just because I’m straight?”

  Lena gaped at her sister. “Er, no, I guess there isn’t. It’s… You’ve never said anything like that before.”

  Madhu shrugged. “Hey, I’m just feeling very comfortable about things now. You know, your sexuality, your life. I guess I would like to know that we can talk about stuff like this.”

  Lena didn’t think she’d ever smiled so widely; it actually made her jaw ache. “Madhu, that’s… Thank you.”

  Madhu smiled. “Shut up, or you’ll make me cry. You know my hormones are all over the place.”

  Lena laughed and tapped Madhu lightly on her bare back. “All right. Well, anyway. Jen is very attractive, but she’s also really full of herself. I can’t stand that. And it’s so weird because Megan isn’t like that at all, and I wouldn’t have thought she’d want to be friends with someone like that.”

  “There’s more to Jen than that, I’m sure. And just because you don’t like it, maybe Megan does.”

  Lena’s shoulders dropped. Yes, maybe Megan did like that. Maybe she and Jen had been involved at some point. Somehow the thought made her feel a little nauseous.

  “Hey, you okay?” Madhu asked, glancing round again.

  Lena looked down and saw that her hands had stilled their massaging motion. “Oh, yes. Fine.”

  “Uh-huh,” Madhu said, and turned back, but not before she’d given Lena another one of her penetrating stares.

  It was a little before ten when Megan came home. Lena and Madhu were watching a film on Netflix, which Lena paused to make introductions.

  “Hi, Megan. How was your day?”

  Megan smiled, and Lena’s stomach did that little flutter it had been doing every time she saw that smile recently. “It was good, thanks.”

  “So, Megan, this is Madhu, my sister.”

  Madhu made to get up, but Megan waved her back down again. “Don’t get up, it’s cool. Hi,” she said, walking around to stand in front of Madhu and shake her hand.

  “Nice to meet you,” Madhu said, unsubtly giving her a once-over and making Lena blush to her roots.

  “Have you two had a good day?” Megan asked. If she was bothered by Madhu’s inspection, she didn’t show it.

  Lena nodded. “Yes, it’s been really good. It’s nice to have a whole weekend too, as we won’t get to spend that much time together for a while soon.”

  Megan glanced at Madhu’s belly. “How long now?”

  “Eight weeks. I’m ready now though—hauling this around is getting pretty boring.”

  Megan laughed, her shoulders shaking. “Yeah, I remember Karen, my sister-in-law, saying the same thing in each of her pregnancies.”

  “Oh, that’s something I meant to ask you,” Lena said. “How come I didn’t meet Karen and your nephews that time?”

  “Oh, yeah. The boys had both been invited to some kid’s birthday party that day, and Karen took them to that. She also said it probably wasn’t a good idea having those two little buggers running around my small flat. If you think I’m clumsy, you should see the carnage those two can create.”

  “They must be bad, if you’re saying that.” Lena laughed.

  Megan grinned at her. “I’m going to have a beer, you want one?”

  Lena declined and watched as Megan strode off to the kitchen area.

  “She seems really nice,” Madhu whispered.

  Lena turned to her sister and smiled. “Yes, she is. I’m very lucky, I really understand that now.”

  Madhu nodded, but there was a strange expression on her face, sort of thoughtful but more.

  “You okay?” Lena asked.

  Madhu glanced beyond Lena to where Megan was still busy in the kitchen. When she looked back at Lena, her face was even more serious. “Are you sure you’re just friends?” she asked quietly.

  Lena’s eyes widened. “What?” she hissed.

  Madhu shrugged, then smiled. “I’m just wondering. Because you look at her the way I looked at Jay when I first knew I was really interested in him.”

  Chapter 15

  Megan couldn’t put her finger on what had changed, but something had. It had seemed to start shortly after Madhu’s visit at the beginning of the month. Ever since then, Lena had withdrawn from Megan again, returning to her pattern of spending most of her time in her room, when in the two weeks leading up to Madhu’s visit, Lena had really started to seem comfortable truly sharing Megan’s flat. The one time Megan had dared to ask if Lena was okay, she’d simply nodded and said she was tired as it was very busy at work. But her eyes had flicked away as she’d said it, and Megan knew enough about body language to know it was a lie.

  Placing the 8kg dumbbells back on their stand, she wracked her brains. Had she done something to upset Lena? Often it wouldn’t take much, that was true, but she genuinely couldn’t think of a single thing she’d done wrong. Any clumsiness that had occurred at home—and strangely, that had lessened since Lena was around—she’d cleared up without Lena being any the wiser, so it couldn’t be that. Jen hadn’t been round much when Lena was home, so it wasn’t any discomfort from that situation, surely.

  Settling herself onto the leg curl machine, she set the correct weight and began her slow reps. She had an hour between clients this afternoon and was making the most of it, not having had time for her own workout at all the previous day. It was the middle of December, and she was beyond busy. Many of her clients, most of them female, were cranking up their work ethic in advance of the Christmas binge they were all clearly anticipating. It was great money for her in the lead up to the holiday season, but her own body was feeling the lack of exercise.

  As she settled in
to her rhythm, her mind drifted back to Lena. The other thing that was bothering her was that Lena hadn’t mentioned any plans for the holiday season. She knew the only family Lena had was Madhu—well, at least family who would talk to her—but there had been no talk from Lena of perhaps travelling up to see her sister over Christmas. And Lena clearly had very few friends, as she was home most evenings and weekends when she wasn’t working. Megan had started to formulate a plan to ask Lena to spend Christmas Day with Megan’s family. They were all heading to Callum’s place this year, as he’d finally finished the conservatory he’d been putting on the back of his house, and he and Karen now had just about enough room for the whole Palmer clan to descend for the day. Megan thought it might be fun for Lena to be surrounded by people that day, rather than stay home alone. Yes, obviously, Lena wasn’t Christian and therefore didn’t celebrate Christmas as a religious festival. But neither did the Palmer family—Aunty Jean excepted, and she wasn’t invited to Callum’s anyway—so it would simply be a fun day filled with food, games, and silly films on TV.

  The trouble was, Lena had been so distant from her, she hadn’t had the courage to broach the subject. The last thing she wanted was to upset Lena even more. The longer they spent together, albeit in fits and starts around their differing working hours, the more she liked Lena and the more she cared about her. She finished a curl, dropped the weights down, and sat back. Cared about Lena? Yes, actually, she supposed she did.

  She inhaled deeply and thought back over the past few weeks, wondering when it had all shifted for her. They’d got into a lovely rhythm together at home, almost without it being spoken about. Lena would happily make meals for them, even if they couldn’t eat them together—Megan had lost count of the number of evenings she’d arrived home from work to find something delicious in a Tupperware container in the fridge. Usually, she realised with a smile, with a cute Post-it note on it in Lena’s meticulous handwriting, explaining exactly what it was and how long it needed to be reheated.

  Megan, in return, did all their laundry, so that it was washed in the morning and close to being fully air dried when Lena got home from work. Lena had baulked at the concept at first, not happy with the idea of Megan handling her dirty clothes, especially her underwear. They’d soon worked out a scheme whereby Lena placed everything into one of those mesh wash bags, and so the whole thing got dumped in the machine as is, without Megan having to touch anything.

  Megan chuckled at the memory of them discussing that situation, and Lena’s blushing face as they’d done so. It was the first time she’d seen Lena blush as deep as she herself could. She moved over to the cross-trainer and programmed in a fifteen-minute hill climb. As her arms pumped the handle bars and her thighs strained slightly against the simulated hill climb, her brain sent her a multitude of images of her gorgeous flatmate. She closed her eyes momentarily and groaned inwardly. She knew what was happening, and she couldn’t seem to stop it. It was hopeless—no one as serious, intelligent, complex, and challenging as Lena would be interested in a simple lump like herself. She needed to get past this crush and instead value the gentle friendship she’d found with Lena.

  She would, however, ask her about Christmas, because that’s what a friend would do, right?

  “You want me to spend Christmas Day with your family?” Lena looked puzzled, and at the same time shocked, and it caused her face to scrunch up in a way so adorable it was all Megan could do to stop herself from cupping Lena’s face in her hands. She shoved them in her pockets to resist the temptation.

  “Well,” Megan said, shrugging, wondering if she really had misjudged this after all, “I guess I assumed… Well, you haven’t mentioned any plans, and I know the only person you’d see otherwise would be Madhu, and—”

  Lena’s confused face transformed instantly into one of anger, and Megan knew she’d said the wrong thing.

  “I don’t need your pity,” Lena snapped. “I’m quite happy spending the day on my own. Unless you don’t want me to be here that day either in which case I will make other plans.” She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at Megan.

  “Lena, no, that’s not at all what I meant.” She exhaled and pulled her hands from her pockets to run them through her hair, which she was wearing loose for the evening. Something indefinable flittered across Lena’s face as she did so. “It wasn’t that I thought you needed saving, or something. I thought it would nice for you to spend the day with a bunch of people who have a bit of a laugh, eat too much, and play silly games. I just—” she looked down and scuffed one foot against the floor “—wanted you to have some fun over Christmas, because I know how shitty your family, except Madhu of course, has been to you these last few years. And Dorothy said—”

  “Wait!” Lena threw up a hand. “Dorothy said something?” Her eyes were wide in confusion.

  Megan swallowed hard. She hadn’t meant to let that slip. “Er, yeah. Um, she said something about some woman who’d treated you badly.” When Lena said nothing, Megan continued, “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. I didn’t mean to. I, well, we’ve been getting on so well since you moved in, I guess I wanted to include you in some stuff. I-I’m sorry, forget I asked.” Her shoulders slumped as she turned away from Lena’s inscrutable face. Well, it had been worth a try. She only hoped it hadn’t made anything worse between—

  “Chris. Her name was Chris.” Lena’s voice was quiet behind her, and Megan took her time turning back round to face her so as not to spook her out of continuing to tell her story. Lena met her gaze and sighed. “We were together for nearly two years. She lived here for most of that. She…she cheated on me. I didn’t find out until two months after it started.”

  “Oh, Lena. I’m so sorry.”

  Lena shrugged. “It was horrible, but it’s over. She moved out back in April.” She smiled wanly. “I knew Dorothy never liked her, but I didn’t realise Dorothy knew so much about what was going on.”

  “Were you in love with her?” Megan moved to perch on the arm of the sofa and was pleased when Lena leaned in against the back of it not too far away.

  “Who, Dorothy?” Lena asked with a smirk, and Megan laughed. Lena sighed again. “Yes, I was in love with Chris. Or at least I thought I was at the time. She was my first proper girlfriend. I’d had one, um, fling before her with a woman in Bolton. Kind of my coming out, I suppose. I think your first proper relationship always feels like ‘the one’, doesn’t it? You think it can’t possibly end.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Well, looking back I know it wasn’t perfect. I think I was so caught up in being in a real relationship with a woman I didn’t look too hard at all the things that were wrong.”

  “Yeah, been there.”

  “Yes?”

  “Julie. We were together two years too. God, she was hard work. I had to walk away in the end but it took me a long time to get to that decision because, like you, I was all wrapped up in the newness of being in a ‘proper’—” she made air quotes as she said it “—relationship. Amazing what you can convince yourself of if you try.”

  Lena smiled, and relaxed her arms. “Yes, that’s true.” She huffed out a breath. “If that offer of Christmas Day is still open, I’d… Well, I’d really like to accept.”

  Megan shot upright, her mouth dropping open in shock. “You would?”

  Lena chuckled. “Yes, I really would.”

  “Cool.” And there was that smile again, the one that made her jaw ache.

  Having lived in the top-floor flat all the time she had been at number seven, Jackson Road, Lena had always had another flat as a buffer between herself and Dorothy’s music, be that her organ-playing or anything she chose to play on her music system. Sometimes Lena had been vaguely aware of the noise, but it had never disturbed her.

  On the morning of December 25, however, Lena discovered that living on the floor above Dorothy exposed a person to significantly
higher levels of noise. At eight a.m. precisely, Lena catapulted upright in her bed as Johnny Mathis’s voice boomed out below her, crooning—at a volume usually reserved for live concerts at the O2 Arena—the saccharine lyrics of “When a Child is Born”. Upon stumbling into the living room, she bumped smack into Megan who was exiting her room at exactly the same moment. They rebounded off each other and just managed to steady themselves before they landed on their backsides.

  “What the—?” Megan looked dishevelled and wild-eyed, and strangely alluring all at the same time. Lena blinked rapidly, her brain trying to process the multiple stimuli of the aural intrusion from below with the wonderful visual before her. Megan’s T-shirt, which had “Resistance Is Futile” inscribed across it, was rumpled and had ridden up to reveal a glimpse of a pale, flat abdomen. Her shorts were loose but very short, and the big, muscly thighs they presented to Lena’s sleep-deprived brain nearly had her short-circuiting. It was most definitely far too early on Christmas morning to be having such confusing thoughts as these.

  “Dorothy,” she managed to stammer out. “Music.”

  Megan glanced around then down at the floor. “Right. Okay.” She pushed her hands through her messed up hair, and Lena only just bit back a small groan. This was starting to become a nuisance, this…crush, or whatever it was. She’d been successfully pushing it to the back of her mind for a while now, but—and perhaps it was because she’d been startled awake so rapidly—her normal resistance was indeed proving futile.

  They each took turns making use of the bathroom and met back in the kitchen area.