Pining & Loving
Emma Sterner-Radley
Contents
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Acknowledgments
1. Gwen Davies
2. Aya Lawson
3. Mocha
4. Self-Defence
5. Pining for Mocha
6. Shower Decisions
7. A Rude Knight in Shining Armour
8. Janet on the M6
9. Straight Out of Stoke
10. Wrong
11. Day Trip to Chester
12. Foreign Chester
13. Falling and Colliding
14. Susannah
15. Aya Deserves to Know
16. Talking to Susannah
17. Call Charlotte
18. Charming Susannah McVey
19. Sleepless in Stoke
20. The Cougar and Her Wild Thing
21. Down
22. Confidence
23. Eleven Centimetres of Furry Antidepressant
24. Sorry
25. Butch Bearing
26. Bright Spark
27. First Day of Boosts
28. Second and Third Boosts
29. Fourth and Fifth Boost
30. Getting Back Up Again
31. Thoughts
32. Support and Pride
33. Muscles & Mitts
34. Rock This
35. Open for Her
36. Making Her Stagger and Sway
37. Hook and Heal
38. Sweetheart
39. Handsome, Pretty, or Hot?
40. Hold Her. Kiss Her
41. Action
42. Only One Slight Touch
43. Love-Struck
44. Her Heart on Her Sleeve
45. The Millionth Session and the First Date
46. Undressing Her
47. Epilogue
About the Author
Also by Emma Sterner-Radley
Also by Emma Sterner-Radley
Also by Emma Sterner-Radley
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Firstly, thank you for purchasing Pining & Loving.
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Dedication
For Malin -
You taught me what battling mental illness looked like, explained how it felt, and fought bravely until the day it won. Throughout all of that you prepared me for my own smaller battle and made me able to write a character like Gwen.
Acknowledgments
The first thank you goes to my wife Amanda for beta-reading and making sure the story made sense to a reader without mental illness.
Huge thanks to my editor Jessica Hatch and my proofreader Cheri Fuller. You were both understanding and very open with me on this project and as always, I cannot thank you enough!
Thank you to two artists on Tumblr for answering some of my research questions: jengrayart (Jen Gray) and awanqi.
The final thanks goes to my lovely family for putting up with a writer who buries herself in her books and is thereby useless to her relatives. Also, many thanks for taking the journey with me through the ups and downs of mental illness that our family have lived through.
Caveat for readers - The mentions of The Tragedy of Lord George is not an advertisement, I’m not even a fan of it. So hey, if you want to buy me a present or bribe me for a sequel, message me to ask what scent I’d like! Or just buy me a coffee.
In memory of
Malin Sterner
1973-2011
Jag saknar dig.
Chapter One
Gwen Davies
Gwen could think of a million better ways to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon. Well, at least three. One, drinking warming tea with a dollop of macadamia honey. Two, reading a good book. Three, daydreaming about a certain older woman who set hearts and private parts ablaze with one confident wink.
Instead, Gwen was stuck here, glaring at a bland picture of a bridge over still waters. The quote, “Be not wishing and pining but thankfully content. For it is a short bridge between wanting and regret,” was written over it. Why did so many therapists have this sort of thing on their walls?
Of course, she shouldn’t judge all therapists by Edward. He was the dullest, most unimaginative one she’d ever met.
She frowned at him. Being boring wasn’t the worst thing about him. No, that had to be the fact that he insisted on wearing his socks over his jeans. Who the hell tucked their jeans into their socks? How was she meant to trust her mental stability to a man who did that? Not that she’d been all that unstable these past few years. Between therapy, antidepressants, and every trick in the mental hygiene books, she was keeping her depression to a minimum.
Or she had been.
Subtle signs of her brain chemistry getting wonky again had been creeping up in the past week. Some listlessness. More fatigue. Perhaps this period of her brain getting enough serotonin and dopamine was ending.
Still, his socks—today a white pair of tattered tennis socks—pulled over the jeans drove her even crazier than any upcoming depressive period might. She’d rather look at the clichéd motivational poster than them.
“I see you’re admiring my new wall decoration,” Edward said, interrupting her thoughts.
“Yeah. It’s, um, a pretty bridge.”
He gave her a stern look. “The bridge isn’t the significant part. The quote is. And it actually ties in with what we’re meant to be discussing today, your infatuation with this woman who comes to your café.”
Gwen tilted her head. “How does that tie in? I don’t know if she likes bridges. I guess most people like bridges. They’re harmless at worst and helpful at best. Like if you want to cross bodies of water without getting your feet wet. Don’t you hate getting wet feet?”
“Stop trying to change the subject,” Edward said. “You know I meant the part about pining. Ever since your ex-girlfriend ended your relationship last year, you’ve appeared to obsess over this woman, pining over this stranger.”
“First of all, Sarah wasn’t just my girlfriend, she was my damn fiancée. And she ended our three-year-long engagement. Secondly, I wouldn’t say that I’m pining,” Gwen replied, her voice armoured. “Mocha inspires me to draw, and she makes me happy when I see her. Also, she’s not a stranger. I serve her every morning.”
He picked up his notepad and flipped back a few pages. “Ah, yes, she always orders a mocha?”
“Mm.”
“Which is why you call her Mocha?”
Gwen tapped her foot against the outdated carpet, keeping time with the rain against the window. “Yes. What about it?”
“Well, doesn’t the fact that you don’t know her real name make you think she’s a stranger?”
Her foot tapped faster. “No, not really. Loads of my friendships are with people online. Several of them I know as their usernames, not their given names. That doesn’t make them strangers; I know them really well.”
“Be that as it may, Gwen, my point still stands. You don’t know this woman other than the brief interactions you have with her every morning.”
He was right, of course. She didn’t know Mocha, despite seeing her every day. They would make small talk about the weather, new haircuts, current news. Sometimes, if Mocha wanted an extra shot of espresso in her drink, they mi
ght talk about how much sleep they had missed last night. That was it.
Still, something about this woman touched the very core of Gwen, not just in the sexual and physical sense, but the very core of her heart and mind. Mocha was unique. Her way of moving, talking, and even how she looked at people, as if they were the most interesting thing in the universe. She was polite but always in control, powerful but never in a cruel way. She seemed to have everything together, always knowing what to do and say. Perfect figure. Perfect speech. Perfect sense of humour. Perfect interest in, and knowledge of, the world around her. Even her clothes were perfect, down to her vintage, mocha-coloured suede coat. Yep, her signature coat matched her signature drink. She was that well put together.
Gwen stopped tapping her foot. The only way out of Edward telling her things she didn’t want to hear was to change the topic.
“Sorry if I’m testy. I’m having trouble sleeping again.”
He put his pad down. “Insomnia?”
“Some. But mainly it’s intense nightmares.”
His dull eyes lit up. “Insomnia and nightmares? That sounds like symptoms of your depression worsening. Tell me about these dreams.”
There. Topic changed. Gwen fascinated him by launching into a long tirade about dreams with sugar-spun moons and strange things lurking in labyrinthine basements. She’d always been able to chat herself out of anything she wanted to avoid. Well, except those socks over the jeans. No chat in the world could make that go away.
Chapter Two
Aya Lawson
Aya gave the punching bag another smack. She wasn’t keeping to proper form, just punching wildly, and she knew she was going to get told off for it. She might not be fighting competitively anymore, but that didn’t mean she should punch randomly like some street thug. But she was so furious. So angry at herself for ruining everything in her life. She grunted as she pounded the punching bag with such force it made her ponytail smack against her shoulder.
“Hey! What in the name of Pete do ya think you’re doing?” Bill groused. Her former coach, now mentor and friend, loomed over her with a disappointed look on his wrinkled face.
Aya lowered her arms. “No need to tell me off. I’m just… venting.”
“Well, vent without breaking my equipment, will ya?” Bill said, his accent coming out even more through his annoyance. It always stuck out in this Stoke-on-Trent gym, filled with British Midlanders, when Bill spoke like the American old-timer he was. Never mind that he had lived in England for the past two decades, his accent was still as strong as his beaten-up body.
Bill stood to his full height, which meant something as he was one of the tallest men she had ever seen – a stark contrast to how short she was. They were both built with the sort of muscle that boxing gave a fighter. They had that, and a certain grumpy air, in common. Otherwise they were opposites. Bill was an extrovert while she was an introvert. Bill liked a good chat; she was quiet. He was a pessimist, and Aya Lawson was an optimist at heart.
Or, at least, she used to be. At the moment it was hard to see anything bright on her horizon. All she saw were the jobs she was turned down for and the job interviews she didn’t even get called to, her lack of a social life; both when it came to friends and lovers, and her career as a boxer behind her.
At least that last point wasn’t due to what she’d like to call her awkwardness. Her last girlfriend, whom she’d been with sometime back in the Ice Age, had chosen to call it her social anxiety. No, the end of her career as a boxer had come when she’d taken a particularly bad blow to the head during a match. She’d been so panicked by the lingering effects and hospital stay that she quit.
The other two things, however—the non-existent social life and her current lack of a job—came down to the fact that Aya couldn’t open her mouth without saying something people found weird, offensive, or that they didn’t understand. Sometimes she wondered if it was a self-fulfilling prophecy that she ended up saying the most random stuff. She often found herself trying so hard to find the right things to say, trying to find something to say that made her sound smart, funny, or interesting. Or, at the very least, kind and polite.
Whatever the cause was, the terrible consequences still showed up in every failed job interview she had endured over the last three months and on every disastrous date she’d slogged through for the last four years. Most times, she didn’t even get to the date stage. Take, for example, every time she tried to talk to the gorgeous blonde in the gym’s self-defence class. Sometimes Aya would help the instructor, pitching in when she was ill or by acting the ‘attacker’ so the instructor could show where kicks, blows, and shoves should land. This meant Aya had seen quite a lot of the blonde and had gotten many chances to talk to her after class. Yet, every time she tried, she’d either start stuttering and have to leave or not be able to get a single syllable out of her useless mouth.
Bill snapped his fingers. “Hey, daydreamer. You awake? Why are you just standing there staring at my punching bag?”
“Sorry, I have a lot on my mind,” she mumbled.
He put his huge hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Yeah, well, box or let someone else have a go at the bag, will ya? I don’t keep the doors to this place open for people to stand around and stare, kid.”
He walked off and Aya smiled after him. Kid. She’d turned twenty-seven last month. Still, she figured she would always be a child in Bill’s eyes. She had come to his boxing gym, Muscles & Mitts, when she was fifteen. Her dad had caught her punching one of their sofa cushions after a confrontation with some school bullies. He sent her to her room, and when she was allowed out again, he and her mum told her to go with her father’s co-worker to a local boxing gym. They had no idea what that entailed or that she would love it so much that she’d pursue as a career. In fact, part of her wondered if they saw her frustration but didn’t know what to do about it, so they wanted her and her noise out of the house. Her parents loved her but never understood her. Or seemed very comfortable in her presence.
Either way, her dad’s workmate had taken her to Muscles & Mitts. She had stared up at the words on a simple sign on the top half of a pebble-dashed building with a nail salon on the first floor. Aya remembered wondering what winter gloves had to do with muscles and then, that very evening, learning what a pair of punching mitts were. It was hard not to when Bill had rushed over, given this surly, little black-haired and equally black-eyed teenager the onceover, and then bellowed, “Yes! Finally, someone who isn’t a huge testosterone-fuelled meat bag wanting to be tough. You, kid, I can work with!”
And he had. He had been her coach, suffering through every strenuous workout and every action-packed match with her, unlike her parents, who never came to anything. Sadly, though, Bill couldn’t help her now. Aya had mediocre grades from a lacklustre school, no special qualities that fit in work applications, and no charisma to use on employers. All she could do was box. And say the wrong thing.
Bill couldn’t help her figure out how to charm women either, though that wasn’t to say he hadn’t tried a few times. After all, what had brought him here was falling in love with an Englishwoman. However, these days, dating took more than having an exotic American accent and offering to make a lady the best milkshake she’d ever tried with the secret ingredient of marshmallow fluff. Aya was pretty sure that wasn’t going to work for her.
She gave the punching bag another echoingly loud thwack.
Chapter Three
Mocha
Coffee4You was a dingy café close to Stoke library. It was also where Gwen had been working for the last few years.
On good days, she liked her job well enough. It gave her a chance to talk to people and keep the demons in her mind at bay by staying busy. Moreover, it helped that the couple who owned it were understanding when she needed some time off or to take a break to go to therapy. When she was kind to herself, she understood that this was because she took initiative, worked hard, and gladly took extra shifts whenever she was ab
le. It didn’t hurt that the customers loved her sense of humour.
On bad days, though, she wondered how long she’d be able to keep up with the pace without taking too many sick days. Also, on bad days she wondered what was wrong with people. Like the person in front of her now, who always tried to pay with a grocery store loyalty card and blamed it getting declined on magnetic disturbances in the air. The sad part was that he wasn’t strangest customer she had served today. That pride of place went to the woman wearing a shower cap and screaming at her for not selling carrots.
The man mumbling about magnetic disturbances finally located a five-pound note and paid with that. Gwen gave a sigh of relief.
He left with his oatcake, his takeaway mug, his change, and, of course, his loyalty card, holding the door open for another customer as he did so. Gwen somehow knew who the other customer would be before she saw her. Mocha. The older woman strode toward the counter with confident steps and a winning smile. She moved with such speed that her coat billowed behind her. Her long hair followed suit, turning her smooth tresses into a veil.
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