Forever and Always
a Lesbian Romance
Megan Jeffery
Copyright © 2019 Megan Jeffery
All rights reserved.
CHAPTER LISTING
Chapter One
1
Chapter Two
11
Chapter Three
77
Chapter Four
133
Chapter Five
177
Chapter Six
217
Chapter Seven
267
Epilogue
281
FOREVER AND ALWAYS
. .
1
Why Are You Here?
My chest was pounding when I woke up. I coughed aggressively and the motion forced me to sit up. The bed was a lot bigger now that I was alone in it. There was no longer my side and her side. All fun and romance had long gone. It was now just ‘the bed’. I was dreading the day that lay ahead of me. I scratched my neck and getting up, I stumbled to the mirror with a grumble. My hair was a mess - how fitting since my head was also just as messy. I rushed over to my phone which was charging on the bedside table but it wasn’t there. Where the hell had I put it? Something seemed amiss. I didn’t think about it and instead, decided to clear my head with some fresh air. While walking over to the window, I realised that I wasn’t in my bedroom. A huge gaping black hole ripped through the walls.
There was something that resembled a breeze but I couldn’t smell the morning air that I was accustomed to. I was back on the bed but I could not feel the soft touch of a pillow beneath my head.
Where was I? I wondered.
Everything around me suddenly had no substance. It was empty space and an endless void. A complete eternity of nothing. It was all white and there was no floor beneath me and no roof above me. I was floating. I touched my body to see if I was real. I was.
My hair was the same length but I was wearing a white gown. It flowed down to my knees. I was barefooted and cold. My body started to shake and yet, my emotions were non existent.
Had I died? I asked myself.
In that very moment, I heard a voice whisper, “yes”.
I was startled and afraid. I didn’t know what was happening. Nor did I know how someone could hear my thoughts. Suddenly, a chair appeared beneath me and rolled me forwards at the highest speed I’d ever experienced. After a few moments, I stopped and I was no longer in the void. I was placed in some kind of courtroom. Getting up out of the chair and looking around the room, I realised that there was nobody sat in the seats.
No congregation, no jury, no judge.
I shouted, “hello?”
But there was no reply.
I walked around for a little while and hurried to the door of the courtroom in order to escape. I pulled both doors and pushed them too. I was locked in. I started panicking. I turned around again to look inside the courtroom and suddenly, I felt someone’s presence but nobody appeared to me in the room.
Out of nowhere, a loud voice coming from the judge’s chair commanded, “sit down, Adri.”
I was so confused and I argued, “tell me where I am, who are you?” The voice ignored my question and repeated, “sit down, Adri.”
I did as I was told, terrified and alone.
“Adrienne, why are you here?” The voice asked.
“What? What do you mean? Where even am I?” I questioned in a hesitant voice.
It said, “you’re asking me where you are but you should know.”
I stayed silent trying to recall.
I asked, “am I here to be judged?”
“Something like that. I need you to tell me exactly why you’re here. You’re very young.” The voice responded.
I started to shed a tear and said, “I’m here because it was all too much to take…back there. I couldn’t cope on my own anymore.”
“On your own?” The voice asked.
“That’s right.” I sobbed.
“Tell me how these feelings started.” The voice requested.
I took a deep breath and said, “you really want to know why I’m here?
I’m here because…I’m here because I lost the most important thing in my life. The only jewel that gave my life purpose and the only person who ever understood me and loved me with all of her soul. I’m here because I needed to be with her and now that I know she’s not here and I’m still alone… I don’t know how to even exist. Not anymore.”
“I need you to explain everything to me from the start” the voice responded.
“Okay.” I composed myself a bit.
2
A Lifetime Burning
It was a cold winter back in 2013. I was in my first year of university in London, England. Like most students, I lived in halls of residence. I had a small room but it had everything I needed: an ensuite bathroom, a closet, a bed and a shared kitchen.
It’s worth mentioning that I was going through a difficult period of my life. When I started university, I thought I had the world at my feet. I had worked extremely hard to get into the university of my dreams and once I got the grades I needed, everything was looking up. I then moved into my college room and started living an independent life.
All was going well when I received a call from my mother mid-September. She was in tears. I asked what was wrong and she informed me regrettably that my Dad had been diagnosed with a brain tumour and he only had a small chance of survival. I remember feeling utterly destroyed.
We spent the next two months in hospital every day while hoping that he would make it. Unfortunately, he didn’t. Needless to say, I was devastated and when he died, a piece of me died with him. He was my best friend, particularly throughout my teenage years. I didn’t exactly get on very well with my mother so losing him was like losing my entire family in one person.
I did not only lose a father and a friend, I lost a sense of identity. You aren’t supposed to lose your father at that age. I coped though and I knew I had to prioritise being supportive to the rest of my family as well as balancing my education.
This level of coping lasted but a week. A new level of sorrow presented itself on the day of my father’s funeral.
I woke up at eight o’clock in the morning and headed downstairs. My mother was getting ready. Her eyes were sleepless and she had been crying all night. She was not a person, she was the shell of the woman she used to be. It destroyed me seeing her like that. There was a complete contrast between her nicely ironed black dress and the brokenness on her face. I wanted nothing more than to take the pain away for all of us.
She put her earrings in her ears and she looked away from the mirror for just a split second to face me. A measly half-smile presented itself as she tried to remain strong. I did not speak a word to her because anything that would come out would turn to tears. I got dressed and ready.
Surprisingly, I did not cry that morning. In fact, I didn’t feel any sadness, it was more an unease that made itself manifest in my heart.
At ten o’clock, the limousine waited outside. I grabbed an apple and with my mother and sisters, I got in and we began our journey. We were told that we had the opportunity to see his body before it was taken to be placed in its coffin. At first I opted against this but after some thought, I mustered up the courage to do so. My mother held my hand as we walked into the refrigerated room where his body lay.
There he was. He looked so peaceful. It’s amazing how you can forget so quickly how somebody looks like as a defence mechanism to prevent yourself from not being overwhelmed with sadness. After just one minute of looking at his body, all of the numbness and unease I felt in the morning faded and a storm cloud built in my head.
At last, all of the sadness re
leased itself and I weeped as the salty tears flooded down my cheeks. I allowed myself to feel every sentiment that my brain so desperately needed to feel. After composing myself, I placed my hand on his forehead and I said the words that my father always would say to me before leaving for work,
“I’ll see you soon, yeah?”
I remembered leaving that room at the mortician’s realising for the first time in my life the true meaning of ‘goodbye’. Goodbye no longer signified ‘see you later’ or pronouncing a certain amount of time before seeing a person again. No. Goodbye meant never going to a football game again with my Dad. Goodbye meant not having my Father to walk me down the aisle at my wedding. Goodbye meant that from now on, I would feel lost in the world, jealous at every other nineteen year old who still has their father but doesn’t appreciate every second that he breathes.
Goodbye meant there would be one empty chair at my graduation for the degree I had been working so hard to earn. Goodbye meant I would have to delete ‘Dad’ from my contacts and live with myself knowing I still have two voicemails saved of his voice. If that’s not agony, then I don’t know what agony is. But most of all, goodbye meant that I would never see him again.
So how do I explain to those who ask how I feel, that what I’m feeling is a deeper pain than any physical harm a person could do? It is as if they expect my childish vulnerability to show when I hold a strong face on the outside but deep in my soul there is a kid who is waiting for Daddy to come home. They desire for me to say that I will be fine when the world no longer feels safe and the anger builds higher with every day.
They want me to pretend that I am exactly the same me from a few years ago when in reality I’ve been stripped of my innocence and I’ve opened my eyes to the cruelty of temporal human existence.
How do I express the emptiness inside of myself knowing that I have a hole which can’t be repaired or filled by anyone else? How would they ‘get it’? How can I even begin to define myself when the biggest part of me died along with him and that’s where it will forever stay? What word can I use to tell those who simply cannot know how it feels? I don’t remember much else from that day. Looking back, I can honestly confess that it was one of the hardest days of my life. You don’t realise how much you’ve lost until it’s laying right in front of you with no possibility of coming back. The actual funeral was no easier. As we placed him beneath the ground, it occurred to me that I would never see him again. That was the end.
I believe that in that moment, my heart closed up and I lost what made me the compassionate girl I had always been prior to that tragic day. It seemed so unfair. I lost faith in everything I had held onto. A million emotions ran through my head at a speed of no less than one thousand miles an hour.
The months went by, some faster than others and in February, I had a week off from classes. My mother suggested that the three of us take a trip down to the south coast of England and rent a cottage out for the week. The thought behind this was that it would do us all some good to have some head space away from the daily routine and just to be in a more open environment. In retrospect, the change of scenery was nice and much needed.
When we arrived, all was fine. As a matter of fact, the first four days flew by. We went for long walks, enjoyed good food, and I even tried horse-riding.
The time away gave me time to reflect on my life. I was empty and felt lost but I realised that what I needed was companionship. I wanted somebody who could hold me. I saw the ways in which my sister’s partner held her and I really craved that but with a girl, obviously.
I hadn’t had affection in such a long time. In all honesty, I’d never been in a serious relationship. Mind you, I was only a kid back then so I suppose it wasn’t the most bizarre thing in the world. Nonetheless, I felt that it was time to meet someone and build something.
It was doing me no good being alone and all my myself all the time. It wasn’t just the intimacy that I desired, it was also the friendship that comes with being someone’s significant other. Whether it’s taking walks like the ones I’d just done with my family or going on dates, having cosy nights in and so on.
The evening of the fourth day, something strange occurred within me. At around seven, I was in bed and watching a movie on my laptop. All of a sudden, I began hyperventilating. I jerked out of bed and threw the covers onto the floor. My heart was pounding like a drum and my arms were trembling. I began shouting frantically and called out to my mother. There was no reply. I ran panicked and afraid into the living room, and I was sweating profusely. My chest was now not only pulsating wildly but it tightened and I felt a sharp pain on the right side.
The two dreaded words ‘heart attack’ came to my mind but I couldn’t say them. My mother rushed down the stairs since she was staying in the upstairs suite and exclaimed, “what’s going on?”
She saw me struggle as I was jittering on the floor and trembling while holding my chest trying to pull myself together but failing. My mother screamed and came to my aid immediately as she fell to the ground to hold me.
In that moment, like a shaken bottle of soda, out of nowhere, the pain stopped and my eyes poured out tears. My face was scrunched as I wept like a baby. The hyperventilating carried on as I was in hysterics. I did not know what was happening as only ten minutes ago, I was feeling absolutely normal. No emotional distress and no worries. The sudden outpour had me confused and fearful of my health. The crying last twenty minutes. My mother did not leave my side throughout it all. The sounds of heavy breathing and wailing came to a decrescendo slowly. When it did, I pulled away from my mother as she looked at me with a facial expression that I cannot describe.
Throughout my little episode, I assumed that she was concerned but as I looked back at her, she gave me a look of sympathy as if to say, “I get it”. No words were said. She kissed me on the forehead before returning up the stairs. I was left on the floor alone but I quickly arose after just a few seconds. I ran to the stair case just to catch one last glimpse of her.
When she reached the top of the stair case, she stopped. She knew that I was watching her and she looked back down at me with a tear in her eye. It is remarkable how a single tear can say a million words. Tears hold the secrets to our soul and I knew what she was saying without whispering a sound.
As we shared a stare for an instance, I felt an unsettling connection with my mother. I could feel her heart. Not physically of course, but emotionally. Growing up, she was so strong and so was my father. We were such a happy family and my mother always held a brave face. Everything was okay, all the time. No matter what tribulations we suffered as kids, she would always assure us and let us know that it was all going to be okay. Her smile would warm us and we looked up to her for it.
As a child, you see your parents as superhuman, you hold them up in the highest esteem as heroes and assume they can combat anything that comes into their midst.
But in that moment, I was no longer that child. In that one single tear that my mother shed, I grew up and became an adult. Because when you grow up, you learn that your parents are human, just like you. It sounds banal but it isn’t. It’s a realisation that can shatter your world. In the glance that my mother gave me from the top of the stairs, I saw her vulnerability, her raw human vulnerability and it was disturbing. For the first time in my life, my mother was not okay, she was broken and hurt, just like me.
As she turned to return to her room, I felt the trembling return to my arms but I tried with all of my might to control it and to not allow it to get the best of me.
I got back to my room and shut the door. I closed my laptop and put it away. I rested in bed but my eyes would not close. I did not get a wink that night. I thought and thought which led to overthinking and more anxiety and worry.
The morning light came faster than expected. It was an ironic juxtaposition. I almost couldn’t believe it when I checked the time on my phone. Inside me, the storm brew stronger, and outside, the sun was beaming bright.
&n
bsp; I stumbled out of my bed and wandered into the living room nervously. I did not want to confront my family after the events of the previously evening. It was embarrassing. Luckily, my mother had the same sentiment as she was back to being brave and smiley. I felt bad though. I know that’s not how she really felt within. I didn’t like the fact that she felt the need to conceal her true emotions.
But politely, I smiled back with, “good morning guys.”
“What happened last night?” My sister enquired.
I looked back at my mother who was looking at me. Funnily enough, it was as though we were hiding some secret when in fact, not even I know what happened.
“Oh I just had a bad dream…like a night terror.” I replied.
“Maybe it’s the coffee you had before bed. That’s why you shouldn’t drink caffeine after four, like Nana used to say!” My sister said in a comedic voice impersonating my grandma.
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