Chapter 2

“Maybe I should call Dolores, she’d be up for a threesome.”

I froze up when he said that and he suddenly changed tack.

“You cunt,” I sat bolt upright, “what would you say if I suggested a threesome with Adam? How’d you like his cock up your arse? I can’t believe you’d even suggest that.”

“I was joking, babe.”

“Don’t babe me,” I got out of bed, “and you weren’t joking either,” I reached for my dressing gown, “I’m going to have a shower and I want to come back to bed alone.”

“Does this mean we’re breaking up?”

“No, it doesn’t mean we’re breaking up,” I grabbed my nightie, “I just want to be alone for the fucking night, is that all right with you?”

He threw his arms up in the air and shouted another apology that was heard by Gwen but when I got out of the shower he was gone and Gwen was sitting with her laptop. I collapsed into the couch beside her and let out a sigh.

“What’s up with him?” Gwen looked up through her large round glasses, “he just stormed out. Did you guys break up?”

“Kind of, he was watching lesbian porn and then suggested we have a threesome.”

“What? Us three?” Gwen stared at me.

“Ew,” she pushed her glasses further up her nose, “that is sick. I mean I like Dolores but I wouldn’t shag her.”

“Me neither,” I closed my eyes, “if he’d just been joking I might have just laughed but he had this look in his eye like you know?”

“Been there, got the tee shirt,” she closed the laptop, “but seriously if you want an excuse to break up with him he just gave you one and I know at least three guys at uni who would love to go out with you. They’ve seen you on my Facebook page.”

It was a tempting thought and I did consider it intermittently that next day as I waded through piles of paperwork. It must have affected my work because I made a couple of errors that Renee picked up almost right away, and when it happened a third time she propped her chin on her hand and studied me for a few moments.

“You are feeling okay?”

“I had a fight,” I mumbled, “with my boyfriend.”

“Ah,” her eyes shifted, as if that answered everything, “when I fight with a woman I punish my body with Burger King and then spend the next week sweating at the gym.”

“I’m sorry,” I offered, “I’ll try to focus more on work.”

“What did you fight about?”

I paused before telling her, after all, as much as I liked her I didn’t feel like letting her in on my love life but because I was still finding my feet and anxious to prove myself I told her about the fight and she sighed when I’d finished.

“It is a man thing,” she replied, “they have this fantasy about women having sex with each other, and I can understand that but then they want to get in between the women and join in. What they do not realise is that you do not get in between two lesbians, it always ends in tears.”

“I’m thinking of breaking up with him,” I burst out, “Gwen wants to introduce me to some of her friends from uni, all guys.”

“That might be a good idea,” she glanced at the clock on the wall, “it is lunch time and I am hungry, come, we will find somewhere to eat.”

Our regular spot in Princes Street was filled with tourists that day, but we had another one in Rose Lane that was a little more intimate although the décor is kind of tacky and the fact it is quieter added a little more atmosphere. I felt more able to open up about my relationship with Derek, which to be honest sounded about almost mutually abusive. We’d first met at T in the Park fifteen months ago and it had been love at first fuck.

“It was kind of romantic that our anniversary coincided with a music festival,” I conceded, “I mean we went to the last one and it felt good but the last few months I have the feeling that we’re just friends with benefits. He lives and works in Glasgow but twice a month he comes here to manage a store and stays at my bit.”

“Is he seeing someone else?”

“He says he’s not but I always told him we weren’t exclusive to each other. To be honest I think he is seeing other women but I’m not seeing anyone else.”

“Because it’s convenient,” I replied a moment or two later. “I have him in my life because it means I don’t have to play the dating game. He comes around twice a month, we have sex, he stays a night and then he’s gone. It’s not such a bad arrangement but I know it can’t last, it’s almost like I’ve put my love life on hold to avoid making a decision.”

“So what happens if you make a decision to leave him?”

“Now that opens up a whole new can of worms,” I propped on my palms.

She raised her eyebrows and I sighed.

“My love life was messy before I met him, I’d go home with guys I’d only known for a couple of hours. If I can thank Derek for something, he did at least keep me out of the clubs.”

“I hate the clubs,” she leaned back and flicked her hair back over her head, “it is a meat market, but when I was younger I did like them. I lost my virginity in the toilet of a club in Hamburg.”

“Who was she?” I paused, “or was it a guy?”

“You were right the second time,” she grimaced, “I was searching, I knew I felt differently about guys than my friends but I just wanted to try it to make sure. So, I let this guy come onto me, we danced for a while and then went into the toilets and just did it. Afterwards I knew that while it was fun because it was sex in a public place, it was not what I wanted. The next week I did the same thing with a woman at the same club and compared the two. I definitely preferred the woman to the man but even then, it took a few months before I finally accepted that I was gay.”

“So, you weren’t born that way?”

“I do not know if I was born that way or just grew up different. My parents always taught me that I could be anything I wanted and that even if I was to turn gay they would still love me. When I did come out they were happy for me.”

I have fond memories of that lunch, because although we usually had lunch together, this was the first time I actually opened up about my fucked up family. Perhaps I was just feeling a little isolated after Derek’s suggestion and the admission that it was a dead end relationship. I told her about my hippie mother who worked in a charity shop and came home to sit on the computer and play Candy Crush and Pirate Kings. My dad lives on the Costa del Sol with his new wife and they have three children and one on the way. My older sister lives in Manchester with her boyfriend. I moved out of home just to get away from mum and find my feet but all I’d found was more lost and lonely people.

I know I told her too much but it was almost alluring to unburden myself to an older woman who didn’t even interrupt, which threw me at first because I’d stop talking and wait for the inevitable answer but instead she’d ask a question that I had to answer. It felt like a whole hour but in reality it was barely half an hour and I felt almost naked at the end as we prepared to leave.

“We should do this more often,” she told me, “just sit and talk.”

“Maybe next time you can do all the talking.”

“Perhaps,” she reached for her handbag, “but all good things must end and we have to go back to work again.”

The idea didn’t come to me until we were halfway along Rose Lane.

“Perhaps we could have dinner together,” I glanced at her, “not a candlelit dinner, just something casual at home.”

“My place or yours?”

“Your place,” I replied.

“It is a date,” she shrugged.

Those four words stuck with me for the rest of the day and I know I could have chosen to think of it as just a date with a girlfriend without the obvious lesbian overtones but my world had been slowly but surely realigning to accommodate this woman. I knew I really liked her and while I kind of half admitted to myself that she was attractive I wasn’t quite at the get naked stage with her.

The date night was Friday night, which was our regular Friday gym session but she suggested we skip the session and we could always go for a run the following day.

“To work off the calories.”

Friday morning dawned and because we were going straight to her place from work I laboured over my outfit a little longer than usual. I eventually settled for a white blouse, a black leather skirt that zipped up the front, and a black tailored jacket. It had been a while since I’d worn the skirt but I was feeling just a wee bit bolder, the leather skirt seemed like a good way to express it. Besides, we were going for dinner at her place. The skirt got a few comments from my colleagues but I loved Renee’s one.

“Great skirt, you look like a rock singer.”

She was wearing a pale blue, satin blouse with generous pleats in the bodice and a placket that concealed the buttons, it was tucked into a black, satin pencil skirt and accessorised with a wide belt that had an ornate, silver belt buckle, knee-high black boots with silver buckles and zippers.

“We’re both wearing black skirts,” I smiled.

Because we were seeing each other for dinner that night, we skipped our usual sit down lunch, instead electing for a takeaway meal deal from Boots and then wandered through Debenhams and, Marks and Spencer. We didn’t buy anything but the conversation veered between fashion and the upcoming dinner and eventually she bought a salad from Marks that would complement the meal. When I mentioned that perhaps I should bring dessert she quipped that I could do that or maybe I might be the dessert.

“It’s been a long time since anyone said that to me.”

“It is a shame,” she glanced at me, “you should be dessert.”

In the end I did buy dessert, cream and strawberries, which did make her smile as we made our way out to the street. I know that mentally I was preparing myself for the night but I was still a little bit confused. I knew how to act with a man if we were going on a date but what about a woman? Who took the lead? And what happened if we both took the lead? It was one of those things I’d wrestled with last night as I lay in the bath shaving my legs. It was what I did before I saw Derek or any other man but would you shave your legs for a woman?

What was it about Renee that excited me? I glanced briefly at her that afternoon as she sat down at her desk. Was it the way she dressed? Was it her confidence? Maybe it was the fact she was foreign born and spoke two languages. In the end I had to admit I didn’t know what it was about Renee that drew me in.