Twice in a Lifetime

by Clare Lydon

  Now, all she could taste was fear.

  And then Sally was shaking her head. “I can’t do this to myself again, I’ve spent half a lifetime thinking about you, wondering where you were, how you were. And now you’re sitting in front of me asking me to try again, when we live thousands of miles apart? It wouldn’t work, you’d soon get bored of the endless emails, phone calls, and travel.”

  “There’s phone sex.”

  Sally raised an eyebrow at that. “Exactly,” she replied.

  “And I wouldn’t get bored.”

  “You would.” Sally’s voice was louder now, and the couple at the next table looked over.

  Sally bent her head before she continued at a lower volume. “So you want me to say it? I’ll say it.” She took a deep breath and looked Harriet square in the face. “I don’t feel anything for you and I don’t think this can work. You might think this is what you want, but it wasn’t all those years ago, and it probably isn’t now.” Her body shook as she spoke. “It’s been really good seeing you again — and I mean that. And yes, my heart skipped a beat, but my heart isn’t the most reliable.” She paused. “There will always be a part of me that wants this to work, but it can’t — and deep down, you know that, too.”

  With that, she took another slug of her cocktail before reaching over and squeezing Harriet’s hand. Then with one last final look at her ex-lover’s face, Sally eased herself to her feet and walked unsteadily to the door.

  Harriet’s stomach lurched as she watched Sally’s figure walking through the bar’s black door and up the stairs, out into the waiting summer night.

  She couldn’t leave it like this — she wouldn’t leave it like this.

  Harriet threw $40 on the table to cover their drinks, then sprinted out of the bar and up the stairs, to where Sally was standing on the street corner, the flashing lights, people and traffic noise seeming like an intrusion into such a very personal moment.

  “Sally,” Harriet gasped, her heart pounding, her stomach churning. She didn’t know what to say, so instead she approached Sally and just went with her gut. Went with what felt right. Went with what she’d wanted to do ever since she’d laid eyes on Sally McCall.

  What she always wanted to do when it came to Sally McCall.

  Harriet took her in her arms, gave her a stare of intent, and then with a car horn blaring beside them and the summer air thick with the smell of possibility, she gently lowered her lips to Sally’s and closed the gap between, finally.

  The gap that had existed all these years.

  The gap she’d longed to close forever.

  If Harriet had been hesitant about how Sally might react, she needn’t have worried. Because as her lips slipped over Sally’s, whispering sweet nothings into her soul, Sally whimpered, and then kissed her right back, lifting Harriet’s feet high off the ground, until she was floating away.

  All the thoughts she’d had before: would they fit again? Would it be a mistake going back, trying to revitalize something that was so long ago? All those thoughts were wiped away.

  As soon as Harriet’s lips met Sally’s, her heart and soul roared with delight and all that mattered was the two of them, on this street corner, kissing again.

  Before this kiss, Harriet had thought that perhaps they were fooling themselves thinking they could go back. Perhaps what she’d been thinking about was plain crazy. But now, as their lips and tongues danced the tango and her heart drummed out their own special beat, doing anything but this was the crazy option.

  Harriet didn’t know much in that moment, other than kissing Sally again made so much sense.

  They came up for air a few seconds later, dazed, shell-shocked, like they were just coming back from some faraway place and neither of them recognized their surroundings. Then, bit by bit, reality filtered in: cars, people, lights, shops.

  A man walked by Harriet and his elbow hit her arm: the jolt was jarring, bringing her back to the present, back from the magical place they’d just been.

  And when she looked at Sally, she could see she felt it, too.

  That is, until she watched reality dawn.

  And that’s when Harriet’s stomach began to churn with fear, as Sally’s face changed from bliss to… What? Harriet wasn’t sure.

  “You see, this,” Sally said, breaking their embrace and taking a step backwards.

  Harriet’s heart almost stopped beating. Maybe this kiss had been a mistake, because she didn’t think she could take what Sally was about to say. “Sorry?”

  Then Sally was shaking her head more vehemently, her honeyed hair bouncing around her ears. She’d never looked more adorable.

  “This,” Sally said, taking a deep breath. “This is what I wanted to avoid, H, do you understand? I don’t want a dynamite kiss from you, because what then?” Sally’s face crumpled and she covered it with her hands.

  “But that kiss was incredible. It was off-the-scale amazing. You have to admit that?” Harriet’s tone was pleading, but she didn’t care. Surely Sally couldn’t ignore what just happened? Surely a kiss like that had to mean something?

  More shaking of the head. “It doesn’t matter, does it? I don’t live here. There’s no chance for this.” She sighed. “I’ve got to go.” And then she looked up into Harriet’s eyes, her own gaze watery but sparkling. Sparkling with a light that had just been turned on, Harriet was sure of it.

  Sally reached out a trembling hand and ran her fingers down Harriet’s cheek. “You always did this to me,” she said. “Always.” And then she turned and walked away, not looking back once.

  This time, despite everything, Harriet didn’t follow.

  She couldn’t, she was rooted to the spot, a crushing disbelief almost threatening to swallow her whole.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Sally leaned back in her new black office chair and took a sip of her coffee, just purchased from her building’s cafeteria. She glanced at her desk, neatly ordered with her notebooks, sketchpads, and her laptop. Natural light from her sixth-floor window danced around her workspace, and she could still smell the chemicals from where the cleaners had been in. She always liked the mornings: they represented a new dawn, a chance to start over.

  Having a fresh start on her workday was easy: it just took a wipe of a duster and she was ready to go. It was the fresh start Harriet was asking her to consider that was causing her sleepless nights and clogging up her waking thoughts — and there was no magic wand that would make her decision any easier.

  Sally had lived just fine without Harriet for so many years, but now they’d met again, could she carry on as if nothing had happened? She desperately wanted to think so, but reality was proving otherwise.

  It had been three weeks since she’d returned from Chicago, from that kiss, and Sally still wasn’t back to normal. Seeing Harriet had shaken her up like a snow globe, and the storm was still swirling in her heart.

  Harriet had sent her a few texts after that night, but Sally had ignored them, because she hadn’t known what to say. After a few days, the texts had stopped, but Sally was still checking her phone hourly, hoping for another.

  Because while she’d done the sensible thing — the only thing she could possibly do by walking away — the aftershocks of that kiss and what Harriet had said were still rampaging through her, making her question every decision she’d ever made.

  Harriet had wanted to try again, believing they’d bumped into each other for a reason.

  Harriet was her first, the one who’d introduced her to the rest of her life, even though it had taken her some time to realize it.

  And now she was back, asking Sally to put her faith in her. Asking Sally to trust her.

  But that was the one thing Sally couldn’t do when it came to Harriet.

  She could smile at her, she could laugh with her, she could almost forget the hurt she’d caused her.

  Almost.

  But when Harriet had asked her to give her another chance, telling her she was an adult now an
d that things had changed, Sally’s gut reaction had been protection: to batten down the hatches and not let Harriet in again, because what good could come from it?

  There was a huge part of her that wanted to say yes to Harriet, to throw caution to the wind: just being in the same room as her ex-lover made her blood heat up, her pulse sprint.

  Harriet had asked her to risk everything, to give her another chance, and Sally had gone with her head.

  However, it was her heart that was making all the noise of late, clamoring for a retrial.

  Because while her head remembered Harriet’s faults, her heart just remembered that kiss.

  And oh, what a knee-buckling, soaring kiss it had truly been.

  A kiss to stop wars, apart from the one raging in her.

  Sally took another sip from her coffee cup, glancing at her friend Taylor.

  “So did you see the way she looked at you? She was almost undressing you with her eyes. It was kinda hot.”

  Taylor was talking about the new barista in their building’s cafeteria, who seemed to have taken a shine to Sally. It was cute, but Sally was ignoring it.

  There was enough pressure on her heart, without strangers wading into the mix, too.

  Taylor smiled at her, her olive skin curling around her lips as she grinned up at her friend from the lower vantage point of Sally’s yellow sofa. Sally had bought it to give her somewhere to sit and think when she was dreaming up her designs.

  However, it had also turned into somewhere Taylor sat when she was providing commentary on Sally’s life, which was fairly often.

  “I did see it, but I’m a bit preoccupied with other matters of the heart.”

  Taylor raised a single eyebrow at her through jet-black hair that hung down in front of her eyes, a tribute to her former Goth days. Taylor was over 40 now, but she still favored a mainly black wardrobe in homage.

  “No, really?” she replied, her tone thick with sarcasm. “You’ve kept it so quiet.”

  Sally gave her a look.

  “The point is, you haven’t smiled much since you came back from Chicago — so maybe this barista could be your light relief? You didn’t sleep with your ex, so no big deal, right? When I said you needed some action, I meant some full-on, hot orgasmic action. Not that you should kiss a woman from your past, run away, and then spend the next few weeks spinning out about it.”

  “Oh, I must have gotten the wrong end of the stick, I thought that’s exactly what you told me to do,” Sally replied.

  Taylor rolled her eyes. “What’s her name, anyway?”

  “Who?”

  “The barista.”

  “Oh. I think her name is Kristy.”

  “Kristy and Sally — I like it, it’s got a nice ring to it.”

  “Oh, please,” Sally said, sighing. “She’s about ten years younger than me for a start. Plus, I’m in no state to be thinking about anyone else, am I?”

  Sally pictured Kristy, but then she was quickly shoved out of the way by Harriet, strolling into her mind like she did with alarming frequency these days, giving her a confident wink, then standing, staring, arms crossed, expectations high.

  “Fine,” Taylor replied, sighing. “But if you’re not going to jump on this — metaphorically speaking, of course — then could you please get in touch with the woman who appears to have run off with your heart and tell her to come and fuck you? You need to get this out of your system, pronto. And then at least you’ll know, one way or the other, won’t you?”

  “You’re such a romantic, did anyone ever tell you that?” Sally replied. “You should put that on your dating profile, sure to be a hit with the ladies.”

  “I’ve thought about it. I think the dating world would appreciate it.”

  “Fine, you win. I’ll message her and tell her to come and fuck my brains out — because that really matches up with how I left it. You know, the whole ‘she kissed me and I ran away’ scenario.”

  “Yes, but you’ve started to rethink it now, right?”

  Sally shrugged, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “I don’t know, I’m just so confused by the whole thing. I thought putting some distance between us would make it easier, bring me clarity. But if anything, every day things seem to get a little more muddy, a bit more blurred.”

  Sally wasn’t going to admit the truth to Taylor, because she’d barely admitted it to herself: that Harriet had consumed most of her waking hours since she’d got back, and had impacted her work productivity, too. When she was supposed to be coming up with new designs, she kept finding herself daydreaming, thinking about Harriet’s smile, her hand on Sally’s thigh, the way she’d looked at her with such searing intensity just before Sally had walked away.

  That look had haunted her ever since.

  If she was going to do that, maybe Sally should just meet up with her again and allow her to consume her in the flesh. It had seemed impossible three weeks ago, but perhaps it wasn’t so impossible anymore.

  “If I have to message Harriet, maybe it would be easier to sleep with Kristy.”

  Taylor held up a palm. “Oh no, you’re not doing that. You’d be fucking Kristy and thinking of Harriet. Classic lesbian error.” She paused, cocking her head. “You do know you’re too old for that, don’t you?”

  “Too old to fuck up in love. Is that a thing?”

  “If it’s not, it should be,” Taylor said, taking a sip of her coffee.

  “Yeah well, if fucking up in love is a category, I win it hands-down right now.”

  “You and half of Queens, honey.”

  Sally grinned. “I’m not a special snowflake, I get it. But I need some time to think about Harriet, about what I should do. And in the meantime, I want no hassle from you.

  “Plus, you and Ben have to fetch my coffee from now on. I can’t face Kristy’s big puppy-dog eyes every time I go to the cafeteria. Imagine if she asks me out — you know what these Millennials are like, they’re far more forward than we ever were. I’ve got enough stress right now with Harriet and getting these card designs finished.”

  Ben was the other member of their design trio who also worked at the collective space. Together, they supported each other’s dreams, and had spent many evenings at the local bars brainstorming ideas and discussing their futures, all of which were falling into place now — the business parts at least.

  Taylor clapped her hands together. “But the work stress is exciting, right? Was it a big order?”

  “Not initially,” Sally said, leaning back in her chair. “But if the cards sell, they’ve got ten stores around New York, so who knows?” She twirled a black pen in her hand. “They might want stationery and bags too if the cards take off, so it could be big. And did I tell you my aunt’s flying in this weekend to see where she’s putting her money?”

  “The crazy drunk?” Taylor said, rubbing her hands together.

  “I’m not sure she’d be thrilled with that description. Let’s go with my maverick aunt, shall we? Although I can’t call her aunt, she hates it.”

  “My aunt is named Susan and favors knitwear, even in the summer. Trust me, there are worse things to be called than the crazy drunk.”

  “Paula is one of a kind,” Sally said. “She’s only 15 years older than me for a start, and she’s a lesbian. I mean, a cool lesbian at that.” She paused, sweeping her hand around the room. “What’s she going to think of this set-up? It’s hardly impressive.”

  “She’s going to love it! And with this new avenue opening up, this time next year, you might be the owner of an empire, and I can say I knew you once,” Taylor replied. “You will remember to buy all your wallpaper from me when that happens, right? Because I assume when it does, you’re going to have a massive house with many walls to cover.”

  Taylor’s designs were the toast of Manhattan, being featured in Elle Decor at the turn of the year. Since that article, orders had been flooding in and Taylor had just completed a major one for a large hotel chain.

  “Every wall in
my future castle will be draped with your coverings, okay?” Sally said, moving over to her design desk, cluttered with bits of gold and silver wire, along with some popular stamps she’d just received yesterday. “And now I have to kick you out so I can drink my coffee and come up with my next best-seller.”

  “You should design a card to send to Harriet, you know,” Taylor told her, getting up. “Something to work it out of your system. Something like ‘Thanks for kissing my face off, can you come back and fuck me now please’.” She grinned again, waiting for Sally’s comeback.

  She didn’t have to wait long. “Taylor?” Sally said, ushering her out the door.

  “Yes?”

  “Fuck off.”

  Taylor held up both palms, backing out of Sally’s studio. “You love me, really.” Then she paused. “And this aunt, is she single?”

  Sally raised an eyebrow. “She is. Why?”

  Taylor shrugged, looking bashful. “Well if she’s only 15 years older than you, that makes her only six years older than me.”

  “Oh no,” Sally said, folding her arms across her chest. “You’re not hitting on Paula.”

  “Why not? You said yourself she’s single and cool.” Taylor put a finger to her chest. “I’m single and cool, we could be a match made in heaven.”

  “Bye, Taylor,” Sally said, closing the door on her. “I don’t want to think about this right now.”

  Taylor raised a single eyebrow. “Just because you’re hell-bent on not getting laid, doesn’t mean the rest of us have to abide by your rules.” She laughed as Sally gave her a look. “Okay, I’m going,” she said, giving her a wink before walking down the corridor to her studio. “Text me or Ben if you need a coffee,” she shouted.

  Sally shook her head as her friend walked down the hallway, before disappearing through the double doors at the end. Sally walked back inside, shutting her studio door.

  Harriet. That was the first thought that popped into her brain, as it had been for the past three weeks. Harriet was weighing on her mind. But she needed to focus on getting these cards out pronto — she just hoped she could do that today, and not be plagued by visions of Harriet’s gorgeous smile, her pleading eyes.