Never Be the Same

by M. A. Binfield

  What she mainly wanted was for them to keep talking, to keep getting to know each other, and—who was she kidding—to kiss on the beach as the sun went down. She’d spent the last ten minutes listening to Casey tell her about Brighton’s history, and it had been fascinating. But she couldn’t stop staring at Casey’s mouth as she talked. And sometimes, if she was being honest, her thoughts had not been about English monarchs and health spas.

  “After London, it’s got England’s biggest LGBTQ population. We offer a weekend tour here called Piers and Queers. It was a lot of fun to put together the itinerary for Gina. We won’t have time to see much of it, but I’ll try and pick out a couple of highlights near the center of town.” Casey smiled at her, and Olivia felt a little skip in her heart.

  “I feel privileged to have an actual tour guide for a date.” Olivia regretted the word as soon as she said it. Neither of them had called it a date. Even though she’d spent all day thinking about it that way.

  Casey looked at her with a serious expression, and Olivia waited to be corrected, to have her fantasy about this being something special brought crashing down. Casey probably took people to Brighton all the time. She certainly sounded pretty practiced talking about it.

  “I’m offended.” Casey frowned. “Last week, I was tour guide, driver, girlfriend, and bodyguard. Now I’ve been relegated to just tour guide. I knew I should have driven. You’re only impressed by me when I’m driving, fighting off unwanted admirers,” she hesitated, raising her eyebrows, “and wearing my uniform.”

  Olivia silently let out the breath she’d been holding. Casey was teasing. And when she bent to lean her head a little closer, Olivia took in another breath.

  “I feel privileged to be taking you on a date. And I’ll apologize in advance if I’m not very good at it. It’s been a while. I mean, I even forgot to tell you how great you look. And you do. Look wonderful I mean.” Casey bit her lower lip. Olivia had come to understand it was something she did when she was nervous. It was very sexy.

  “I don’t really date either.” Something about the two of them sitting so close, their hips and thighs touching—the intimacy forced by the narrow train seats—made Olivia want to tell Casey things about herself. She spoke quietly, not wanting the others in the packed train car to hear.

  “Why not?” Casey’s voice was low and her gaze earnest.

  “Just, y’know, the show. It makes things unreal. Look at Kristin. Hell, look at Billie. Acting like she likes me and then leaking stories to cause me trouble. It’s hard to trust people, to trust their intentions.” She tilted her head toward Casey, speaking in almost a whisper. “It’s not that I don’t meet women. I do—all the time. Sometimes I even meet women I like. It’s just that the job and Susie always get in the way.”

  They pulled into a station. They both looked out the window to see which one it was.

  “I met a woman on set a few months ago. She was one of the showrunners. She reminds me of you.” She held Casey’s gaze for a beat and then looked down at her hands. “She seemed so unfazed about working on the show. Plainspoken, treated everyone the same. We’d spent a bit of time talking. She seemed like she had a great approach to life and I decided I liked her. I was trying to work up the courage to ask her for a drink.” Olivia chanced another look at Casey, finding nothing but interest. “Anyway, the day I decided to do it was the day I heard her boasting in the cafeteria to one of the makeup girls about how she was being chatted up by ‘Susie’ and couldn’t wait to tell all her friends.” Olivia sat back in her chair, annoyed by the memory even now. “Even she couldn’t tell me apart from Susie and she worked on the show.”

  “That must be tough.”

  “There are so many worse problems to have—I know that—but sometimes I think that if I keep going like this, I’ll lose my own sense of who I am, of what I’m worth. And too much will pass me by.”

  “Could you stop?” Casey’s eyes held Olivia. The intensity of her gaze made Olivia feel seen in a way she never had. It was unsettling, but also wonderful. “Could you quit and do something else? Something that makes you feel less lost.” Casey moved her hands as she spoke, and Olivia was mesmerized by them. The long fingers, the strong arms. Her pulse quickened.

  “I signed a contract for five seasons. They can fire me, but I can’t quit—not without a very good reason.” She shook her head. “And it’s been good for me, I should be more grateful.”

  “But you hate it.”

  “Not all of it. I hate the attention, the backbiting, the endless PR. I hadn’t expected that to be so tough. But I love the acting part. I always did.” Olivia tested the truth of it in her mind and realized that Billie was ruining even that for her. The idea of spending the next six months working alongside Billie on the show made her feel miserable.

  “But the not-acting part of your job seems to be something you spend a lot of time doing.”

  “It is. But I just know there are a million things I could be doing that are much worse. It’s a great show, a great part, and even with Billie doing her best to ruin it for me, I should still be grateful.”

  “I remember being grateful that someone as smart and successful as Hannah was willing to love me. I’m pretty sure I even told myself I could do a lot worse. And for a long time I let myself mistake that feeling of gratitude for happiness.” Casey took her hand. “Don’t sell yourself short. It never ends well. And I think happiness is more than feeling grateful.”

  Casey’s words and the feel of her touch made things shift a little. Olivia knew she was right, knew she needed to find the courage to take more of what she needed for herself.

  “Did you ever come here with Hannah?”

  Casey looked surprised by the question. Olivia was too.

  “Yes.” Casey paused. “Her family live close by and we came to see them sometimes. We had some nice times here.”

  Olivia wanted Casey to be honest, but it wasn’t the answer she wanted. She didn’t want Casey to be thinking about Hannah while they were here. She thought that she wasn’t curious about Hannah, but of course she was. Casey had had a serious relationship with her, been damaged by it enough to move to another country, but they had never talked about it.

  “You guys had fish and chips and hot donuts on the pier?”

  “God no, never that. She wouldn’t eat fried food. She was a health fanatic. She promoted health and beauty products on her channel. She took it very seriously. I guess world domination requires a certain level of commitment. She couldn’t pimp vitamins and then be seen eating fatty fried foods. Bad for the brand.”

  “So that’s why she’d never had one of Estelle’s pies.”

  “Not just that.”

  Casey seemed to hesitate, and Olivia wondered if she was looking for a way to deflect her questions.

  “I only went to the café when I was working, and since Hannah didn’t ever approve of me ‘wasting my life’ doing youth work, she never came to my office. It wasn’t just that it was youth work—though she did think those kids, those families, were beyond helping—I think she resented the energy, the focus I gave it. She wanted me to put that energy into making videos with her for her channel, to turn us into this celebrity YouTube couple who catalogued every aspect of their lives. She told me it would be lucrative for us both, that I wouldn’t have to work. But I wanted to. I loved my job more than anything. She never understood that.”

  Casey rolled her shoulders. Olivia could see the tension in her body, feel it in the grip of her hand. Olivia stroked the hand with her thumb. She was happy that Casey was finally trusting her enough to talk about Hannah.

  “I can’t imagine you making lifestyle videos,” Olivia said gently.

  “I did try in the beginning. I did a couple of videos with her. But I was hopeless. And I was never comfortable with the way that she wanted to share everything about our life. I mean, it was up to Han
nah what she told people about herself, but I didn’t like the intrusion into our life together. And when the sponsorships started to happen, I absolutely didn’t want to pretend to like or use the things she’d been sent to promote. It just seemed so dishonest. I was bad-tempered and judgmental about it. But I shouldn’t have been, because a lot of people do it and it’s probably what cost me Hannah. She got sick of me not playing my part, not wanting the things she wanted, so after a while, she replaced me with someone more willing, someone who loved making the videos with her, someone who could fake all the enthusiasm I couldn’t. She just forgot to tell me that she wasn’t just replacing me on screen, she was replacing me full stop.”

  Casey sat up straighter, releasing Olivia’s hand to run her hands through her hair anxiously. Olivia could see she was fighting not to get upset.

  “It’s okay.”

  “Yeah. It is. It was a long time ago, but it’s still hard to stomach. Of course, now I understand that us splitting was better for both of us.” Casey turned to her. “It’s just that sometimes I still feel humiliated by it. That she had the nerve to choose one of our friends to cheat with, that it went on for weeks without me knowing, and that I had been naive enough to believe they were just making videos together. I felt like such an idiot when I found out. And while I was busy grieving, she was busy rewriting the story of what had happened, not wanting to get blamed for the cheating. She told all our friends I was impossible to live with, that I’d driven her to seek comfort with Zoey because of my ‘unreasonable behavior.’”

  Casey stopped speaking, seeming as if she was remembering something painful.

  “I didn’t handle myself well when I found out about it, that’s true. I was angry and I was vengeful, but everything I did came after I found out about Hannah and Zoey. Not before, like she claimed. And the worst of it was that I felt like the only way I could defend myself—and let our friends know that Hannah was lying—was to tell them all the truth about how long she’d been cheating on me. And that was too embarrassing to admit to. So I let her tell her stories, have our friends, and I just left.”

  Casey couldn’t meet Olivia’s eyes. She was finding the back of her hand fascinating.

  “That’s awful, Casey. I’m sorry.” Olivia didn’t know what else to say.

  “Don’t be. It’s all water under the pier.” Casey tried to joke, but Olivia could see from the set of her jaw that talking about it was difficult. “I figure that coming here again is a good way of reminding myself that old memories are exactly that—old. And coming here with you is a chance to create some new, much better memories to replace the old ones.” Casey held her gaze, taking her hand again.

  Coming from anyone else, that would have sounded far too smooth, but from Casey it just sounded heartfelt. And Olivia couldn’t help feeling happy at the idea that they were making memories. Two people bruised by love and thrown together in the most unlikely of circumstances. She just had to make sure that the memories weren’t all she was left with when she departed for Paris.

  * * *

  “It’s nothing special. I mean, compared to the beautiful beaches you have in California, but I like it. And at night, it’s kind of magical.” Casey felt stupid for expecting Olivia to be impressed by the narrow stony beach, the quaint beachside cafés, and the old piers and bandstands. To her, Brighton was a romantic place, full of history and life. And it was a place she’d sought out whenever London was too much. But to Olivia it probably just seemed a little shabby.

  “Hey.” Olivia said the word like a gentle admonishment. “Don’t be like that. It’s wonderful.” She nudged Casey with her knee. “The Royal Pavilion was amazing, the fish and chips were awesome, and not just because we didn’t get attacked by seagulls, like you said we would. And right now, it’s special because we’re here.” Olivia offered her a sweet smile, and Casey wondered if she had any idea the effect those words had on her.

  They were sitting side by side on the beach, looking out at the dark silhouette of the old, ruined West Pier. The waves were breaking on the stones just a few meters away, and the sun was setting. Casey couldn’t have imagined a better way to end the evening.

  They had rushed around the Royal Pavilion just before it closed, then hit the amusement arcades on Palace Pier. And the fact that Olivia had a small stuffed dolphin sticking out of her bag—won by Casey on the Dolphin Derby—made her prouder than it should.

  But all evening—all week actually—she’d felt the clock ticking, and she knew she needed to say something. Olivia was going to leave in a couple of days, and if Casey was the only one feeling the depth of these feelings, she needed to know, so she could say a nice good-bye and go back to being the person she was before she came back to London, before she fell for Olivia.

  “This trip has been crazy.” Olivia broke the silence first.

  “They have worked you guys pretty hard.”

  “That wasn’t what I meant.”

  “What did you mean?” Casey pulled her knees up next to her chest and rested her head on them.

  “I meant,” Olivia mirrored Casey’s position, leaning her cheek on her knee, “that I didn’t expect to come to London and meet someone who would introduce me to steak pudding, save me from being harassed, stop me from making a fool of myself when I was drunk, kiss me in the shadow of Tower Bridge, and encourage me to quit my hugely popular TV show because it’s not making me happy. That kind of crazy. And I’m pretty sure I’d never have predicted that the last Friday night of my trip would be spent wandering along a Victorian pier, eating fish and chips with you by my side.” Olivia gazed at her and the look in her eyes made Casey feel captured and ridiculously aroused.

  “That does sound kind of crazy,” Casey said. “But my trip to London has been even more insane. I met this actress who I thought was going to be a real pain in the ass. Turns out that as well as being drop-dead gorgeous, she’s funny, smart, and easy to talk to. My mom—who hated every one of my actual girlfriends—has fallen in love with her. And insanely, this very same actress seems completely unaware of how wonderful she is.”

  Casey had never been bold, never good at taking what she wanted, but right now she wanted to lean over and kiss Olivia before it was too late and she regretted not doing it for the rest of her life.

  “Thank you.” Olivia responded so quietly that Casey almost missed it.

  They sat silently for a few moments, just looking at each other. And Casey felt like this was her chance. To do something, to say something that told Olivia how she felt. She reached across and took Olivia’s hand, holding it as if it was something precious. Olivia covered it with her own and gently stroked it with her thumb. Casey felt the muscles low down in her stomach tighten at her touch.

  “I’m glad you invited me. And I’m happy—really happy—that, in amongst all the madness of this trip, we got the chance to get to know each other.” Olivia smiled, but Casey could see something behind the smile. She watched Olivia take in a breath and let it out again.

  “And I like you, Casey. A lot. And maybe it’s a little much to say that because we’ve known each other such a short time, but if I’m honest, I don’t often feel this way, and if I don’t let you know that I’ve wanted you to kiss me for every minute of the last three hours, I’m going to kick myself all the way back to London.”

  Casey wanted to say something to reassure Olivia that it wasn’t crazy, that she felt absolutely the same way, but of course, words failed her. All she could think about was the idea of kissing Olivia and the fact that Olivia wanted her to.

  She leaned closer, tentatively brushing her lips against Olivia’s. It was the softest of kisses, but it was electrifying. She kissed Olivia again, less gently, and Olivia responded. Casey pulled Olivia to her, kissing her again, even harder, the softness, the taste of her lips, causing Casey to ache with desire. She deepened the kiss and Olivia moaned softly, reaching her own hand up int
o Casey’s hair, kissing her back with just as much wanting. Casey’s whole body responded and when Olivia parted her lips, murmuring her name into their kiss, Casey dipped her tongue inside, needing to taste her. The warm wetness of Olivia’s mouth, the feel of their tongues touching, made Casey feel like she was on fire.

  Casey turned her body and pulled Olivia between her legs. She wanted her closer, wanted their bodies to be in contact, not just their mouths. She kissed Olivia hungrily, without holding back, using the hand on her back to press their bodies together. They kissed like people who had wanted to kiss for a long time, their lips crushing against each other, their hands in each other’s hair, the kisses making them breathless. And when Casey felt Olivia’s tongue inside her own mouth, she opened herself up to it, glorying in the feel and the taste of her. She was already wet, already wanting more.

  Casey gently lowered Olivia to the ground, needing to feel her beneath her. She grazed her lips with soft kisses, taking care not to press her too hard into the stones. But when Olivia reached up for her, clasping both her hands around her neck and pulling her down into a passionate kiss, Casey let herself do what they both wanted. She kissed Olivia hard, parting her lips and tasting her again. Then she moved her mouth from Olivia’s lips to her neck, trailing kisses from below her ear to her collarbone and back again before biting down softly on the soft skin of her neck. Olivia moaned beneath her, letting out a soft curse and digging her nails into Casey’s back, pulling her even closer. Casey kissed her and grazed her hands across Olivia’s breasts, feeling Olivia arch her body toward the touch. Casey kissed her again with all the passion she was feeling, her body hot, the throbbing between her legs almost unbearable—both of them breathless and wanting.