Falling In Love Again

"From as early as I can remember, I never really felt very American. Pledging allegiance to the flag every morning made me cringe. I hated all the ritual posing at Huntersville High School: the macho dick-swinging contests among the boys; the preening the girls did to snare the hottest jocks to take them to the prom; the vicious urban warfare masquerading as the annual cheerleader try-outs. So I just opted out of it all and became one of the nerds. By the time I graduated I had the best set of grades in the history of the school, and all the cool kids thought I was a total dweeb. My folks assumed I'd go to college and become a doctor or a lawyer – I had a firm offer from Berkeley. But at 18 I'd had enough of studying, and I wanted to see the world; to get as far away from my hick town as humanly possible. The place was just stifling. New York was an impossible dream for kids like me, a kind of Shangri-la, so that's where I went.

"I stayed there six months, but the people were either uptight or weird, and the city just terrified me. I used to lay awake at night and listen to the police sirens, and jump every time I heard a bang, wondering if someone had just been shot. So I came over to Europe. I liked the idea of Paris, but I hated not speaking the language, and the snotty attitude of most of the people I met. Without French I was going to struggle to get a job, so I thought I'd try London instead. Straight away I made some good friends – you met a couple of them last night – and I felt so much more at home here than anywhere else I'd ever been. Londoners are a whole lot more laid back than New Yorkers, and they don't take themselves too seriously.

"After a few months I thought maybe I should do some kind of studying after all, to keep my mind in shape, so I enrolled for an evening class in social anthropology of all things. And that's where I met Ali. She'd just graduated from university, and she was helping out her old lecturer, who was presenting the class. I'd had a couple of relationships with men in the past: I lost my virginity to a married man in Huntersville just before my graduation, and I'd even lived with a guy for two months in New York. But each time I'd found myself thinking, ‘Is that really it? That's what everyone gets so excited about?' I knew there had to be something else, something better. It had just never occurred to me until I met Alison that it was girls.

"The very first night, Ali and I had coffee together in the refectory after class. After the third session I went back to her flat with her, knowing that if I did we were going to go to bed. I moved my stuff in the next day, and that's how it was for the next six years."

We were both silent for a little while after that. Then Andi asked me if I didn't miss my family back in the States. "Oh, I went home for a couple of weeks about three years ago. I asked Ali to come with me, but she wouldn't. It was great to see Mom and Dad again, of course, but the town just left me so depressed. And I saw kids I knew from high school, waiting table in the diner, working at the slaughterhouse, dull eyed and with no more ambition that to get their pay check at the end of the week. I couldn't wait to get back to cold, wet, beautiful London. My family never knew about me and Ali, about me living with her; and now they never will."

After a few moments of silence, Andi said quietly, "My parents blamed you, you know – for Ali being gay. They thought you were this awful gold-digging American bull dyke who'd come over here to seduce their sweet innocent daughter. I tried to tell them what rubbish that was, but they just didn't want to listen. They told her she'd have to choose between you and them; they never forgave her for choosing you. They told me – a grown woman – that we were cutting her out of our lives. I should have just told them to fuck themselves" – Andi never swore – "but no, I was the good, loyal daughter, who didn't have anything to do with sexual deviants, even if they were the closest person to me in the world.

"Ali and I were incredibly close when we were young, virtually inseparable. Then, when she was 14, she met a new friend, Denise, and suddenly we weren't so close anymore. They used to do their homework together. One afternoon I walked into our room, mine and Ali's, not knowing they were there. Denise was lying on Ali's bed with her skirt up around her waist and Ali's head…well, anyway, that's how I found out my sister was a lesbian. When Mum and Dad found out about you they just wouldn't believe me." After a pause, she asked, "So Ali was your only female lover, yeah? Do you think you were always that way inclined, or did you just happen to fall in love with someone who was the same sex as you?"

I shook my head. "I honestly don't know. Back home, in high school, there was one girl who was a very special friend. Maybe if I'd had the imagination to think about it I'd have pushed things with her, although I just know she would have been totally freaked out. But we simply didn't have lesbians in Huntersville – not living ones, anyway. Ali and I used to talk occasionally about the nature versus nurture thing. I was never really sure what the answer was, but she was convinced it was in her genes, that she was born to be a dyke. She had loads of lovers before me at uni – she used to tell me about them, to try and make me jealous. So how about you: she was your sister, do you think it's genetic, have you ever had deep dealings for another woman?"

I hadn't meant to go down that road, and it honestly wasn't intended as a come-on; but it was Andi who had opened this Pandora's box. She looked momentarily startled, as if the question had never even occurred to her before. She replied quickly – a little too quickly, and too forcefully, "No, of course not, Marty and I have been together since we were 16 and I've never thought about anybody else, certainly not a woman."

There was something shifty about her eyes, and a nervous swallow, that made me doubt her words. Intrigued now, I inched a little closer to her on the couch. I asked quietly, "Come on, can you honestly say you've never had some really special female friend, so close it felt like you communicated telepathically, who you thought about every hour of the day, even when you didn't see her? Maybe someone you found yourself thinking, ‘She's so great, if only she had a dick'. No-one?"

She was silent for maybe a minute, staring into space and lightly stroking her throat with her thumb and forefinger. The action startled me – I'd watched Ali do exactly the same thing numerous times when she was thinking deeply about something. Eventually, she started, "I…" another silence of maybe ten seconds, then she shook her head emphatically and stood up, distractedly plumping up the cushions on the couch as she said, "No, absolutely not, there's never been anyone like that. Only Marty. I'm just not like you and Alison, I'm not interested in other women." I didn't believe her for a moment, but she was so clearly uncomfortable that I decided not to push it any further.

The following weekend we decided to go shopping for clothes in the West End. We had a great time, and Andi persuaded me to buy a couple of quite pretty dresses that I would never even have looked at in the past. We decided on the spur of the moment to catch a show, and saw a witty romantic comedy musical. Then I took Andi to my favourite restaurant, Café Pacifico in Covent Garden. It's a big old warehouse with lazily circling ceiling fans, huge windows that they remove on warm days, and some of the best Mexican food this side of the Rio Grande. We washed it down with strawberry margheritas and a couple of bottles of sweet dark Negro Modelo beer, then made our way home. Martin had travelled a couple of hundred miles away to see Spurs play, so we knew he wouldn't be back till late, and we sprawled on the couch giggling like naughty schoolgirls, guzzling sparkling white wine to top up the Mexican booze.

Four Weddings And A Funeral was on the TV, one of Andi's favourite movies, and not only because of the presence in it of her near-namesake Ms McDowell. I'd never seen it before, and I thought it was sweet and funny. Towards the end, after my hectic day, I was beginning to feel sleepy and, lolling sideways, I rested my head on Andi's shoulder. Engrossed in the movie, she shifted position slightly to make me more comfortable. A few minutes later, as the closing credits rolled, Andi smiled down at me. Our lips were inches apart…

I couldn't honestly say for sure who started the kiss, although I'm convinced deep down it was her. All I know is that suddenly we were snogging – a beautiful English word for the kind of kissing you might see teenagers doing in a bus shelter late at night, one long, deep kiss which somehow, at the same time, encompasses lots of little kisses. Andi eased herself back into the corner of the couch, partly pulling me on top of her, and her left arm slipped around my neck. Entirely on auto-pilot, my hand gently tugged her T-shirt out of the waistband of her jeans, and slipped beneath it, resting on her warm, soft midriff. With a mixture of delight and amazement I felt her right hand cup itself around my left boob, outside my own T-shirt. I slipped my hands around her body under the shirt, pressing my palms to her back. My fingers were actually resting on the strap of her bra, about to uncouple it, when she kind of gasped, and instead of cupping my breast her hand was pressing against my chest, pushing me off of her.

We both sat up, me hot and bewildered, Andi red in the face and gasping for air. She shook her head wildly and, between sobbing breaths, she cried, "I'm sorry, I just can't do this. I'm not, I mean, I'm not like you and Ali, I don't like girls." It was on the tip of my tongue to observe that she seemed to have liked reaming out my mouth with her own tongue seconds earlier, but she continued, "I know you want me to be Alison for you, but I can't, I'm not her, I'm me." Holding her head in her hands, she moaned. "I love my husband. I do."

I felt as if I'd been kicked in the gut. It was a warm evening, but suddenly it was as if the temperature in that room had dropped five hundred degrees. I put a hand on Andi's arm but she shrugged me off, refused to look at me. Slowly I stood and made my way to the door, towards the stairs to my bed. I felt I had to say something though. At the door I turned, and gazed at her. "You may look a lot like Ali," I said, "but you and she are totally different people; nobody knows that better than me. If you want to know the truth, I'm not sure how much longer Ali and I would have lasted if she'd lived. But one thing I am sure of: when we were making out just now, you and me, I knew exactly who I was with, and it was Andi I wanted to make love to, not Alison." I felt my throat close and my eyes sting, and I headed out of the door and up the stairs. Never in my life had I gone from feeling so great to feeling so low.

I spent a restless night, and the following morning I got out of bed aching, tired and with red eyes from crying. I heard Andi in the kitchen and, after showering, I went downstairs pretty much expecting to be told to clear my things out before the day was over. In fact Andi, dressed for work as normal, greeted me with her usual cheerful smile and trilled, "Morning. Are you about ready to go? I've made your toast and coffee." I was stunned. I wasn't sure whether, with the help of the booze, she'd somehow banished any memory of the previous evening's events from her mind, or whether simply pretending they hadn't happened at all was her way of coping with the situation: I suspected the latter. All through the journey into work I expected her to make some reference to what had gone on, but she never did; not then, not that evening when, once again, we were alone together in front of the TV, and not in the days that followed. If she noticed that I was unusually quiet and brooding that week she showed no sign of it, which was amazing – even Martin asked me one evening if I was coming down with a cold or something.

The truth was, I felt frustrated, confused, and more than a little hurt. I was distracted at work, too. Joel felt the need to take me aside to ask if there was something on my mind. I blurted the whole thing out to him and ended up in floods of tears. Sweetie that he is, he made me a cup of coffee, closed up the gallery and whisked me off to lunch. As I sipped an expensive post-meal brandy, Joel cupped his hand over mine and told me, "You know what you need, Suki honey? To get out of that place, make a complete break with the past and forget those girls. Then you need to go to a club, find some nice young dyke, and get yourself good and laid." Deep down I knew he was right. One problem was, I didn't really like clubbing. Ali and I had been home-birds at heart, and the idea of screaming small-talk over a pumping techno beat to some complete stranger, wondering if I'd be screwing her an hour later, just didn't appeal. The main problem though was, when I really got down to it, I couldn't bear the thought that I might never see Andi again, might never get to talk to her again.

So I tried to play her game, just accept her as a friend and forget that Sunday evening had ever happened. I did my best to be as normal with her as I had previously, but it wasn't easy. On numerous occasions, after hours of closeness to Andi, I returned to my bedroom feeling hot, sweaty and close to tears, and several times I frigged myself to relieve the tension I was constantly feeling. After two weeks I just couldn't take it anymore. On Saturday morning, faced with another full day in Andi's company, I went for a long solo walk on Hampstead Heath. I must have been there for maybe six hours, and by the time I returned home – to Andi's home, not mine, not really – I had firmed up my resolve to move out. I told Andi that evening, saying I'd imposed on her and Martin for long enough. She looked as if I'd slapped her and just said, "Oh", then she was quiet for the rest of the day. We spent an uneasy evening watching TV, and she barely acknowledged me when I wished her goodnight and went to my room. I quickly packed my bags, then slipped into bed and cried myself to sleep.

Strangely, having finally made the decision I knew I had to, I had my best night's sleep in quite a while. I showered early, then sat on my bed listening until I heard Martin leave for his regular soccer game. Then I grabbed my bags and walked downstairs, leaving them in the hallway. I entered the lounge and saw Andi sitting on the couch, wearing a nightdress, dressing gown and carpet slippers. She swivelled to look at me as I entered the room, and it looked to me as if she'd been crying. I shrugged and said, "I'm off now. ‘Bye."

She made a move as if to stand, then sat back again. After a moment she asked me if I had anywhere to go. "Sure," I lied, "I've got a place sorted out". The ‘place' was actually a budget Australian backpackers' hostel in Earls Court which I hoped would have vacancies.

Andi turned away from me and sipped a cup of tea. I was about to leave when she said, so quietly I almost didn't hear her, "Please don't go." I paused, and asked her why not. Turning to face me again, fighting back tears, she squeaked, "I'd miss you. As a friend."

I felt myself sigh. "Andi, I'm sorry, it's just not enough." I almost went and sat beside her on the couch, but I felt that would be a mistake, weakening my resolve even further than she already had. I tried to explain. "Andi, I've fallen in love with you. Not you the woman who looks like Alison; you, the sweet, gentle, funny lady whose house I share, whose got so many qualities I never saw in Ali. I didn't mean it to happen, and I'm sorry it did, but I can't help that now. Going away from you is gonna tear me apart; but honestly, staying here is killing me."

She turned away again, and her shoulders heaved. It looked as if she was going to start sobbing, and I didn't think I could take that. But as I turned to leave again, she stood up and walked quickly over to me. I expected maybe a handshake, just conceivably a slapped face. I didn't expect what actually happened: she gripped my face tightly between her hands and kissed me hard on the lips, sliding her tongue deep into my mouth! I stood like a dork, my hands hanging by my side, as Andi hugged me and laid her head on my chest. "Oh God, I love you too Suki. So much it terrifies me. I couldn't stand it if you leave, please don't." When she kissed me again I was ready. Our arms tightly around each other, our tongues intertwining, she pressed her soft, warm body against mine as I leaned back against the doorframe.

I had a slight nagging fear that Andi might lose her nerve and pull back again, but at that moment I felt more horny than I could remember in an age, and I was going to take things as far as I could as fast as I could. Pushing her dressing gown quite roughly off her shoulders, I attached my lips to her left boob through the flimsy nylon nightdress and flicked her nipple with my tongue. She gasped, "Oh God," and pressed her hands to the back of my head. Then she murmured, "Not here – let's go to bed."

The ten seconds it took us to get from the lounge to the bedroom – not mine, but the one Andi shared with her husband every night – were the longest of my life. All the way up there, as I dragged her by the hand, I worried that she might change her mind. I needn't have bothered. The moment we were in the room she ditched the nightdress and slipped under the duvet, pulling it up around her neck in a curiously shy move given what we were about to do. Seconds later a pair of cotton panties followed the nightdress onto the floor. She watched me with huge eyes as I tore my clothes off and climbed in beside her.

As I settled into the bed Andi hugged me tightly and, as I wrapped my arms around her, I felt her trembling, like an abandoned fawn. For maybe twenty minutes I just held her in my arms, shushing softly into her ear and sharing tender kisses with her as I let her get used to the feel of a naked woman lying beside her for the first time. I remembered how that felt: breasts to breasts, nipples rubbing against nipples, belly to belly, smooth legs mingling together. That first time it's quite an experience. We didn't speak, just kissed, then Andi cupped a hand tentatively around my naked breast, and I felt her other hand stroking my butt. I took that as my cue to move on, and started kissing my way down her body. I kissed each eyelid, then nibbled her earlobes and ran my tongue around the contours of her ears – she really liked that. I kissed the tip of her nose, took her lower lip between my teeth and gently massaged it, kissed the point of her chin. Then I ran my lips around her throat. Already her hips were beginning to lift off the bed in arousal, but I wanted to take my time, to enjoy this as much as I wanted Andi, my lover, to enjoy it.

I traced my tongue down her chest, between her breasts, then licked a figure of eight around them, causing her to gasp sharply. I kissed her on the cheek and stroked her hair for a minute or two then went back to her chest, sucking a tit into my mouth and teasing her small, hard nipple with my teeth. Her breast felt bigger in my mouth than Ali's had, her skin much softer and more pampered. As I kissed and licked her breasts turn and turn about, swapping my mouth and one hand over, Andi, her eyes fixed on my face, started panting with short deep breaths, and her fingers tangled in my hair. She shuddered as I stroked my fingers across her belly, then slipped them down into her pubes. I'm shaved clean down there, but Andi's coarse black hair was neatly trimmed, and felt like a soft Brillo pad against my palm. Still sucking on her boobs, I eased a finger into her, pressing softly against her clit. She squeaked and bucked hard, and I momentarily lost my position, my finger slipping deep inside her pussy. I kept it there, added another one and flicked her clit with my thumb. Now Andi's eyes rolled back in her head and, her hips moving in rhythm with my hand, she began whispering her own private litany: "oh fuck, oh shit, oh Christ, ooohGodohGodohGod, oh Jeeesus."