by Harper Bliss
“What do you need from me?” Hera asks.
“For starters, I’d really like you to redo my kitchen,” I joke. I stroke my thumb over Hera’s palm. “I need you to talk to me. That’s all. And I know it’s hard for you, but I need you to try.”
“I will,” Hera says. “Although I’m not sure I have much more talking in me tonight.”
“For tonight,” I say, “It’s enough that you’re here.”
“I’d like to stay,” Hera says. “I’d like to just sleep in your arms.” She tilts her head and leans in. “And right now, I’d very much like to kiss you.”
“Both things can be arranged.” As her lips touch down on mine, I feel all the way into my bones, that Hera has taken the biggest hurdle already. She came back and showed a little bit more of herself to me. As our kiss deepens, the words I just spoke to her echo in my mind: for tonight, it’s enough.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Hera
I glance at my sister, my lifeline after Sam died. I don’t need to tell her everything, but I most certainly want to share certain things with her.
“I’ve met someone.” I find and hold her gaze.
“You don’t say.” Hilda winks at me.
“Don’t tell me Rocco has beaten me to it.” I expel a sigh.
“I don’t need my son to tell me when my sister has got the hots for someone.”
I shake my head. “I’ve barely spoken to you. How would you know?”
“How would I know?” Hilda feigns indignation. “I only grew up with you. I’ve only known you for all the fifty-one years of your life. You’re still my little sister. I don’t need much to put two and two together. Especially not when Rocco tells me you can’t keep away from The Pink Bean.” She slants a little in my direction. “Apparently he’s worried about you as well.”
I roll my eyes, even though Rocco’s concern touches me. “I knew it.”
“We’re family. We have no secrets. Especially if the woman you have the hots for is Rocco’s best friend and business partner. But I’m glad you’ve finally found the time to tell your one and only sister.” Hilda runs a hand through her long, wavy hair.
“It’s still early days. There really isn’t that much to tell.”
“Hey.” Hilda’s gaze softens. “I’m glad you’ve met someone. You’ve come a long way since…”
“Since Sam died.” I might as well complete her sentence. I might as well say the words that have been so hard to say for all those long, dark months.
Hilda nods. “I like Katherine,” she says. “She’s a good person, I know that much.”
“You have no objections to your sister dating someone who used to, well”—I clear my throat—“you know.” It still seems hard to say out loud, especially to my sister.
“I’ve known Katherine much longer than you have and I’ve no problem with her. She’s Rocco’s best friend and I trust my son’s judgment.”
“I should probably have done the same instead of making up my mind about her before I had a chance to get to know her.”
“You shouldn’t blame yourself for having a very human reaction,” Hera says.
“Still. It was a crappy way to behave.”
Hilda shrugs. “We all have our faults and we all make mistakes. The sooner we accept that, the happier we’ll all be.”
“That’s very philosophical of you.” I drink the wine she has poured me.
She shrugs. “When enough people die on you, you’re forced to look at life differently.” Her gaze skitters away. “Sam’s death was a blow to me as well.”
I nod. “I know.”
“She confided in me, you know. She… told me things. Things that, perhaps, weren’t always so easy to tell you.”
“About how I wasn’t always the easiest person to be around?” I can say it with a hint of a smile on my lips now.
“She certainly didn’t have to tell me that.” Hilda chuckles.
“Neither one of us were saints.”
“She loved you regardless. She accepted you, Hera. With all your idiosyncrasies and all your ambivalence about, well, certain things.”
I shake my head. Hilda may think she knew what was going on between Sam and me, and all the things we never got to smooth over, but she doesn’t know the half of it.
“And it was so hard seeing you have to go through that,” she continues. “Not just her loss, but your guilt about all the things you thought you put her through.”
“Things weren’t good between us.” I don’t think I’ve ever said those words out loud to my sister—only to Jill. It’s different speaking to Hilda about this, because she knew Sam well. They were friends. “They hadn’t been for a while.”
“I know that. As I said, Sam confided in me. More than you think.”
I briefly scan Hilda’s face. I’m not sure I want her to share with me the things my dead partner told her about me. I also strongly suspect—although, how can I truly be sure?—that Sam wouldn’t have told her the details, the crux of it all.
“I went through the change before you did, Hera. I know all about it,” Hilda says.
I huff out a nervous chuckle. “You’re my sister and I love you dearly, but I’m not sure I want to have this conversation with you.”
“We don’t have to go into specifics.” Hilda leans over the table again. “But it’s about time you forgave yourself. Sam’s never coming back to tell you that she forgives you for everything. You’re the only one who holds that power now.”
I shake my head. “I’m not sure I ever can. She died too soon, too suddenly for that. We were meant to get past that bump in our road together and her death meant we couldn’t. That we never will.” Tears sting behind my eyes. “When she died,” my throat swells, “we hadn’t spoken in days. Not had a proper conversation, anyway. I hadn’t told her I loved her for a very long time. For all I knew, we might not even have made it. If she had lived.”
“You were together for a very long time,” Hilda says. “Every marriage, every single partnership goes through the lowest of lows. It’s human nature. It’s life and life will always happen. And death, unfortunately, waits for no one.”
“I just wish…” I try to push the tears back where they came from. “I wish I’d had a chance to tell her that, despite everything, I still loved her.”
“Hera.” Hilda looks me straight in the eye. “Of course she knew.”
“I certainly didn’t show her.”
“You don’t always have to show somebody you love them.” She narrows her eyes. “Trust me, Sam knew. And I know because she told me. Okay? Because I told her how bloody stubborn you could be sometimes and how you needed time to adjust to certain changes but that all of that didn’t mean that you loved her any less.”
I can’t hold back the tears now as I look at my sister and a thought that I haven’t been able to articulate shoots through my mind. A thought I could never share with my sister.
If I couldn’t allow Sam, the woman I loved more than anything and anyone—my partner who died on me before I had the chance to figure any of this out for myself—to touch me, how could I ever allow anyone else to do so again?
Chapter Thirty-Five
Kat
When I arrive at Hera’s, I have no idea what might happen. Even though she stayed over on Wednesday, her warm, naked body pressed against me throughout the night, nothing else happened and not much more was said.
We’ve spoken on the phone since, but Hera is a woman who needs to be experienced live. Half of what she wants to say, but can’t express with words, I need to read off her face and translate from her body language.
She opens the door wide and kisses me on the cheek, almost politely.
Once she has closed the door, she grins at me, and says, “Please tell me tomorrow’s Rocco’s turn to open the Pink Bean?”
I nod. “We take turns on Saturdays and I opened last week, so.” I look into Hera’s eyes and something in her glance tells me this Friday evening will be very differen
t from the last. Not because she will—miraculously—allow me to be all over her tonight, but because she appears to no longer be in the paralyzing grip of fear.
“Good.” Only then, does she pull me close. She wraps her arms around me. “I need to tell you something,” she whispers in my ear.
It’s a beautiful evening and Hera’s taken me to her back patio. She has fixed us each a grapefruit mimosa—I’ve let it slip that it’s my favorite tipple.
“I’m not very good at explaining things.” She holds up her hands. “I think that’s why I was so dead set on becoming a builder. At least in my choice of profession I could express myself with my hands.”
You’ve expressed yourself plenty with your hands already, I want to say, but I know it’s not appropriate. She wants to tell me something that is important and difficult. My attention can’t help but be sidetracked for a moment by her big strong hands, though.
She sips from her mimosa and pulls a bit of a face. “Did I put too much grapefruit juice in?” she asks.
“No. They’re perfect.”
“Okay, if you say so.”
“I do.” I send her an encouraging smile.
“When Sam…” She clears her throat and starts again. “When Sam died we were… How to put this? We were going through somewhat of a cold war period in our relationship. Things were not good. Not in our daily life and certainly not in the bedroom.” Hera stares at the liquid in her glass. I can already tell a grapefruit mimosa will never be her drink—for starters, it’s way too pink for her.
“It had been going on for a while. It’s one of the reasons I sought therapy. Even though, sadly, Jill couldn’t fix me quickly enough for Sam and me to make up before she died. For me to take that crucial first step to repair our relationship.” She snickers. “In a way, it’s kind of silly. But hindsight and all that, you know.” She drinks and pulls a face again. “I was going through menopause and it not only seriously fucked with my head, it fucked with my body as well. I tried all sorts of things. Every patch and hormone treatment you can think of, but nothing really seemed to help. I got more sullen, more depressed, ever more disgusted by my body. I grew so unbelievably uncomfortable in my skin, of course I didn’t want Sam to touch me. I stopped touching her as well. We stopped having sex altogether. Which didn’t help matters.” Hera briefly looks me in the eye, then glances away again.
“To cut a long story short. We grew more and more apart. Most nights I slept in the spare room. I didn’t know what to do with myself and with this whole menopause and midlife crisis business. It’s as though it plunged me into this big existential crisis. Things were bad. And then she died.” Hera’s voice breaks. “She was just gone.”
I wish we didn’t have this table between us. I need to stop myself from getting up and throwing my arms around her. But I can tell Hera’s not done yet. She has more to say.
“The ironic thing is that after Sam died, my doctor tried me on a new hormone replacement combo that actually worked. I started feeling better about myself.” She sighs. “Of course by then she was gone and I no longer had the chance to tell her how stupid I’d been. How disrespectful of her needs and her desires. Disrespectful of our relationship as well because I’d had actual thoughts of leaving her.” Hera wraps her fingers tightly around the delicate Champagne flute. “Try standing upright in front of your dead partner’s coffin then.” In one swift movement, she brings the flute to her lips and knocks back all of its contents. “The truly excruciating part was that it was all in my head. I got trapped in this infinite loop in my mind, because, once she was gone, all I wanted was for her to come back. But I could only see it then, when she was already dead. When it was too late.” She puts her glass down and pinches the bridge of her nose.
“Hera,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”
“She was the woman I loved and I hadn’t kissed her for weeks. How’s that for loving someone?” Hera’s voice breaks, but then she seems to regroup. She straightens her frame. She’s still staring straight ahead. As though she’s still afraid to look at me—as though what she has just told me might make me dislike her, while it only makes me grow fonder of her. Because I know this is hard for her, but she’s having the courage to show herself to me. She’s finding the words she believed were so unspeakable.
“Hera.” I can’t stop myself any longer. I get up. I need to touch her. I need to make her feel some warmth. I crouch in front of her and put my hands on her knees. “I’m sure Sam understood, if not all, then at least part of what you were going through. Isn’t that what the people we love do? They know us better than we know ourselves and they understand us, through the good and the bad.”
“I treated her so appallingly that, after she died, I vowed to never enter into a relationship again. I think the coping mechanism I developed when I was at my worst, the complete shutdown of any physical intimacy, has become so ingrained in my mind that I don’t know how to get past it now. Even when my body is clearly telling me it wants more.” Hera looks down at me. Her mouth is set in a downward grimace. I just want to kiss it off her. I want to see a smile on her face again as soon as possible. But I can’t kiss her yet. I can only make my intentions known by gently squeezing her knee.
“I can understand how awful Sam dying like that must have been for you. She was still so young and you were going through that rough patch, but Hera, you’re still alive. You’re not dead. You need to find a way to live your life without punishing yourself.”
“Turns out that’s bloody hard to do.” Hera looks me in the eye. Her face has softened although I can still see the struggle in it. The battle between wanting to chastise herself eternally for being what she considers a below-par partner and what meeting me has awakened in her.
“I dare to disagree.” I push myself up because this crouch is getting quite uncomfortable. I hold out my hand to her. “It certainly doesn’t have to be as hard as you’re making it.”
She takes my hand but doesn’t get up.
“How about, just for tonight, we go about things a little differently?” I may not have a great relationship track record, but I do have some experience in making people let their guard down. “How about…” I give her hand a tug and she lets me pull her up.
“You’re surprisingly strong.” Hera grins at me as we come face to face. “How about what?”
“How about we go inside and we approach this from the opposite direction?”
“Can you be a bit less cryptic, please?” She grins at me.
“I know you’re scared. And I know you have an endless stream of thoughts running through your head. But I also know, for an absolute, indisputable fact, that you want me. Why don’t you let me show you just a tiny glimpse of how things can be between us and we take things from there? Who knows, maybe we can silence some of those voices in your head for good.” I inch closer to her. “All due respect to Sam, for your loss, and what you went through, but I’m not Sam. I’m Katherine. My more extravagant friends sometimes call me K.Jo. And I’m here for you, because, guess what, Hera Walker?” I bring my lips to her ear. “I think I’m falling in love with you.”
She lets go of my hands and curls her arms around me, holding me close.
“I think I might be falling in love with you too.” Hera mumbles her words, but I hear them loud and clear. They reverberate in my ear for a long time after.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Hera
Kat leads me inside my own house. Maybe we should have met at her place, where there aren’t so many pictures of Sam strewn across the lounge.
But I let Katherine take the lead. I need to let her. I know what will happen if I take it from her. My brain will start short-circuiting again and I will thwart all her wonderful, thoughtful intentions.
Even though I invited Katherine over to have a much-needed chat, I think I’ve said all I can say for one night. I’ve said more than I have said to anyone—apart from Jill—in a very long time.
Last night’s conversation with Hilda had me tossing and turning for a while, her words rummaging through my head, keeping me awake, until I found some small comfort in the fact that Sam could, at least, talk to Hilda, while I shut myself off from her. While I was trying to explain something to Jill that I would only truly come to understand after Sam died.
I needed time and I didn’t know we wouldn’t have the time. But I realize that I couldn’t know this then. It was impossible for me to know that Sam’s time was up when I rebuffed her advances for the umpteenth time, saying, “Later.” I wasn’t to know that, for the two of us, there was no more later.
Hilda was right. I’m the only one who can forgive myself for that. And just maybe, Katherine leading me up the stairs of my own house the way she’s doing now, can help me with that. Because one thing’s for sure: I need a little help. Frankly, I need all the help I can get. Because I’m still alive, even though, for the longest time, it felt like a crucial part of me had died with Sam.
Kat stops in front of my bedroom door.
“I’m not going to do one single thing you don’t want me to do,” she says solemnly. “But do know that every single thing I do, I’ll want to do with all my heart.”
She stands in front of me the way I’ve come to know her. So tall and charismatic and impossible to ignore. For a split second, it occurs to me how foolish I was to walk away from her last Sunday. A woman like this. The exact same sentiment applied to Sam when I had thoughts about leaving her, while all I ever really wanted was to be with her. Even though I didn’t know how to do it, how to break through that wall. I had no clue how to demolish the thought patterns I had carefully constructed to save myself from some upcoming pain—while the most excruciating pain was already tearing me apart. Tearing us apart.
It’s for Sam that I nod at Katherine. It’s for Sam that, today, I decide to trust Kat and her great big heart—because Hilda was right about that as well. It’s for Sam that I’m letting Katherine in. I’ll never get the chance to do that with Sam anymore. But Sam is dead and I’m alive. And here I stand, gazing into Kat’s dark eyes.
