A little later, they took Lucy’s car, and drove to a park. It was the same afternoon, earlier than they should be finishing work, but neither seemed able to wait, and both had been able to slip away. It was quiet, where they ended up. It was the late afternoon, and the park was empty. No-one else was around.
Lucy stopped the car, and switched off the engine, and then they sat there, with the windows closed, looking at the open space in front of them.
It was just a park, with playing fields and mown grass and some trees. An everyday park, a boring park, and Lucy wasn’t even completely sure where they were. She had just driven towards a green square on her GPS without thinking beyond that.
They should have gone to a beach, she decided belatedly. Or to one of the clifftops in the eastern suburbs that overlooked the sea. Preferably during a storm. They should have gone somewhere scenic and interesting, somewhere appropriate for an important conversation like this, about wanting and consequences and what they ought to do next. Instead, they were sitting in a park, in a car, stopped in an arbitrary space in a row of painted-on parking spaces in an asphalt parking area next to a toilet block. There were some trees in the distance, and houses all around. They were somewhere, and that was all Lucy knew.
They sat for a while. There wasn’t very much to look at. The park was empty, in the middle of the afternoon.
“So we kissed,” Lucy said, eventually.
“Yes we did.”
“I want to again,” Lucy said. “I think.”
Erica looked over. “We can. If you want to.”
“You don’t mind?”
Erica shook her head.
“You don’t mind how it’s complicated?” Lucy said. “That I’m… everything that I am.”
“I don’t mind. But do you?”
“You don’t?”
Erica shook her head.
“You should,” Lucy said
“Maybe. But I don’t.”
“I’m with someone.”
“Yeah. And you’re my boss too. So?”
“It might go wrong.”
“Probably. But when you think about it, pretty much every time you kiss someone that’s true. I mean, kisses hardly ever lead to happy ever after, do they. Usually you get a proddy tongue and too much dribble and then you never see each other again.”
Lucy was a little surprised by that. “Well, I suppose so,” she said.
“I just mean, if the chance of things going wrong was a reason not to kiss, then people would never kiss.”
“Yeah, but…” Lucy said then stopped. She thought for a while and decided she really didn’t know what the but was.
“It’s just kissing,” Erica said.
“I suppose.”
“Kissing’s pretty harmless.”
“Not really,” Lucy said.
Erica shrugged.
“And anyway,” Lucy said. “It won’t stay as just kissing, will it? If we start now. If we do again. It won’t just be kissing, not always.”
Erica sounded as thought she was smiling. “I suppose not,” she said.
There was another silence. Erica was staring at Lucy, and Lucy was looking straight ahead, through the windscreen, pretending she hadn’t noticed Erica’s stare. She was pretending, but she could feel Erica’s eyes on her, and see Erica out the corner of her eye, too, and as firmly as she watched the neatly-cut grass in front of her, Erica didn’t seem to be looking away.
So in the end Lucy turned and looked at Erica.
Erica looked at her for a moment, and then put her hand out, gently, and touched Lucy’s cheek. They looked at each other a little more, and then Erica leaned over towards Lucy.
“We shouldn’t,” Lucy said.
Erica kept leaning.
“We can’t,” Lucy said.
“I know,” Erica said, and kissed her.
“Oh,” Lucy said, surprised, and kissed back.
YOU ARE READING
Losing Everything
RomanceLucy loses everything that matters to her, her partner and job and business and all her money. She loses everything, and in doing so she reconnects with an old friend, Erica, and begins to fall for her instead. And as she does, she realizes that e...
