Small Expectations

"No, I guess you wouldn't," sighed Woz sadly. "You must think I'm a real slut, don't you? Fucking men for money and all."

Wendy nodded. She had thought enough about Woz's illicit source of income over the last few days to develop her opinions.

"What surprises me most," she said as diplomatically as she could, "is that you can continue to have sex when your pregnancy is so advanced."

Woz grinned cheekily. "Yeah! You'd a thought I'd go off it or summink. 'Snot quite like that. I mean I probably wouldn't do it so much if I didn't need the money. The payments on the telly don't come cheap! But I sorta like it just as much in a way. I didn't think I would. And I charge the punters extra. They actually like doing it when you're pregnant. Funny, in't it? If you're fat all the time, it sorta turns the punters off. Fat cows do crap trade! But if you're fat 'cos you're about to pop, well, it's like an extra premium or summink. I just don't really understand men. But bless them. They pay the bloody bills, don't they?"

Wendy smiled, only half-comprehending what she'd heard. She'd never thought of ever doing anything for any other reason than choice. Financial necessity was not something that she'd ever had to worry about.

"Shall we sit in the living room, Woz? My legs are really aching!"

"Yeah, sure, Wen! I make a fucking useless host, don't I?"

"'Hostess'," Wendy corrected automatically, but grateful just to get away from the cramped space she'd been squeezed into in the kitchen, between the fridge and the kettle, just by the window with its view onto a rat-infested garbage disposal unit outside.

Wendy's visits to Woz became much more regular occasions. Although the poverty of the council flat horrified her, and the surrounding area appalled her even more, the time Wendy spent alone in her own much more spacious apartment, even surrounded by the comforts of her much more expensive and luxurious furnishing, somehow didn't compare to the pleasures of companionship she felt when she was sitting with Woz, on the ragged, worn sofa, under the dusty glow of the electric lights and accompanied by the constant background murmur of Kiss FM or BBC Radio One. What it was she enjoyed about her time with Woz, Wendy wasn't sure. Perhaps it was nothing more than the pleasure of the company of someone who wouldn't and didn't condemn her predicament in the subtle unspoken way that her other more affluent friends had done, and which had made it so difficult for her to enjoy spending time with them. Perhaps it was because she was also pregnant and understood better than most exactly how she felt, at least in the physical and hormonal sense. Or perhaps there was something more to Woz that Wendy liked.

"Who's this girl you've got so many pictures of?" Wendy asked, glancing idly at a photograph just above the stereo player.

"You mean Tray?"

"If that's her name. Is she your sister?"

"Why'd you say that? Do I look like her?"

"No, not really," admitted Wendy. In fact, the girl was quite short, slightly plump, with cropped black hair, wearing a green tee shirt. "She just doesn't look like one of what I'd imagine your friends might look like."

"No. S'pose not!"

Woz sighed and fiddled with the sleeve of a Chemical Brothers CD. She bent her head down as if in thought, and then, as if she'd made some kind of decision, she abruptly raised up her head.

"She doesn't look like a friend 'cos that's not what she was."

"What do you mean, Woz?" wondered Wendy, whose mind was really on other things. She'd only mentioned the photograph because their previous conversation about nightclubs had run dry.

"You won't think me funny, will you Wen? She wasn't my friend, 'cos she was my lover. We were sort of lovers for ages."

"Lover?" wondered Wendy. "Does that mean she's a lesbian? And are you one, too?" This didn't bother Wendy too much. Several of her friends from university were gay or bi, and she'd never been that troubled by it.

"Well, she's one. I'm not really. I like blokes, too. But I loved her, Wen. I loved her more than anyone I'd ever known. And it wasn't 'cos she was a girl. It was 'cos she was Tray. D'you know't I mean?"

"I suppose so," said Wendy, but not really meaning it. Although she'd often had sex with men, and had even had a few steadies, she'd never really loved them as such. It had never really bothered her, either. Part of her had never really been engaged in any of the sexual or romantic liaisons that had passed through her life.

"She left me for another woman. She said she was fed up of me fucking about with blokes as well. She said I'd have to make my mind up what I was about and be serious about things. By which she meant, being serious about her. And I didn't care too much at first. I just fucked around a lot more. But I've sort of got to miss her more and more, you know. It's fucking weird."

Then Woz burst into tears, and this time it was Wendy who had to daub away the tears as her friend sobbed and sobbed, with a face expressing more abject misery than Wendy ever imagined a face could.

"I never talk about it with anyone, you know, Wen. You're the first, ever. None of my girlfriends'll talk about it. They just think it's good that I don't hang around with a dyke no more. And the blokes. They just think it's kinky and all. But you, Wen. I can talk about it with you. You're different!"

It certainly pleased Wendy that Woz had such a high regard for her that she could entrust her confidence. And she sat and listened for hours while Woz spilt out the story of her love for Tracey, and how she'd not really properly appreciated it at the time. It was well into the evening when Wendy eventually called the taxi to take her back home.

It was inevitable really that Woz's confession would fundamentally change Wendy's feelings towards her friend. But as they innocently kissed each other goodbye while the taxi purred away outside Woz's flat, the only hint of the change was a strangely wild look in Woz's eyes. Wendy knew exactly what it meant, but she pretended not to notice and somehow dismissed it from the forefront of her mind.

But when she visited Woz the following day, bringing with her a cake she'd bought at Marks & Spencer, she saw that her friend had been thinking much harder about their conversation than she had.

She sat opposite Wendy, her brow troubled and furrowed, dressed rather more smartly than she usually did, although her dress sense was still a bad match with the bulge of her pregnancy. Her hands were clasped together between her knees and her eyes were both seeking out Wendy's own and glancing shyly away.

"What's wrong, Woz?" Wendy wondered.

"You know we were talking about Tray 'n' all, yesterday, Wen?"

"Yes."

"And what I felt towards her. And how I'd never felt like it with anyone 'cept her before. And how there's never been no one like her."

"I remember."

"Well, that weren't strictly true. 'Cos since I known you I've been feeling a bit like I did with Tray. I just didn't sorta see it as the same thing."

Wendy blinked. Woz was confessing her love for her. Somehow, it didn't shock her. Perhaps in the back of her mind she'd been expecting it. And she wasn't certain what she felt. Not displeased, that was for sure.

"Are you saying that you feel the same for me as you did for Tracey?"

Woz nodded sadly. She lifted herself up from the sofa, her huge distended belly grotesquely ahead of her.

"Yeah! That's it! That's exactly it! You won't think I'm weird, will you? I mean, we can continue as friends, can't we? I'd mean, I'd hate it to be otherwise."

Wendy stood up in front of Woz, their bellies very nearly touching.

"I don't see how we can continue to be friends now, Woz," she said.

"Oh! Wendy!" sighed Woz, a genuine tear of distress seeping out of her eye.

Then from somewhere inside her, Wendy behaved more positively than she imagined she ever would, more positively than on any of those other times she'd consented with a man, her expectations of whatever she could get from sex being normally so very small. She leaned over, with some effort over the massive bellies, and kissed Woz on the lips.

"That's because we can be lovers now!" Wendy reassured her friend.

And indeed so they were.

It was awkward, of course. Even the business of locking their lips together was made more hazardous by the mass of stomach between them. But Wendy felt more pleasure, more erotic delight, than she had ever imagined possible. Far more than she'd ever had before with a man. And just as much excitement, in a way, as the day she'd lost her inhibitions so foolishly at the party where she'd been impregnated.

The clothes came off with just as much gracelessness as every other action, but when finally the two girls were on the bed, naked and exploring each other with their tongues and fingers, it seemed right and predestined. There was even more pleasure gained just from the fact that the one partner was as pregnant as the other. Wendy thought that her advanced state would have diminished her desires, and perhaps this was true in some sense, but her desire for Woz was so strong that it defeated any hormonal adjustment. She'd never applied her tongue to a vagina or its vulva before, and had never before suspected that there was so much complex detail in something she herself possessed. But as the smells of Woz's arousal regaled Wendy's nostrils, it just felt right. Just as it also felt right as Woz licked and tongued and poked Wendy's own vagina, using the skills she'd surely gained from her love affair with Tracey.

As the two girls collapsed after more hours of pleasure than Wendy had ever had in a single session before, interrupted briefly when Woz turned away a prospective male client, Wendy contemplated, as she put an arm around her lover, how things might be in the future. Their babies were due so soon. And they would need nurturing. But now there would be two people to care for two babies, perhaps helping each other. And as Wendy trailed her fingers over the huge belly beside her, she wondered what it would be like to make love with Woz when she was restored to her original size.

That was a pleasure, Wendy decided, that would be worth waiting for.