Begin Again | on hold

introduction

Sunny Shelley wants a girlfriend, but she doesn't want to date.

She can't bear the thought of those awkward stages of getting to know someone only to find, after investing too much time, that they won't work out. She can't bear to let herself fall for a girl only to find out she's straight. She is painfully envious of the couples in her life: her best friends, Ravi and Fraser, who have been together since university; her mothers, who have been in love for more than forty years. Love is all Sunny wants, but it's not easy being a lesbian in 1999. If she could just wake up one day and be in a relationship, all those stages skipped, that would be ideal. No painful first dates, just a fully-fledged relationship with someone who already loves her exactly as she is, messy brain and all.

Of course, she doesn't expect that to actually happen. But the universe works in mysterious ways. When Sunny tells Ravi her wish one night, at the exact moment that she trips and loses her bus fare down the wishing well she walks past every day, she thinks nothing of it - until she wakes up in a strange flat with a woman she doesn't recognise. A woman who, according to her friends, has been her girlfriend for over a year.

Only when she has everything she asked for does Sunny realise that maybe she asked the wrong question. What's the point of waking up a year into a relationship if she has no memory of it? It isn't easy. It's pretty fucking scary, actually, and she wants more than anything to go back to the nineties. But this is the wish she made, and she might just have to get used to this new life. Which means doing the one thing she wanted to avoid.

Sunny has a girlfriend. Now she has to get to know her. 

* * *

If you have found me through my other account, you may recognise this story as I posted several chapters back in 2021 but I never got around to finishing it. Now it's almost done, and I am so proud of this story. It's not your typical romance - I describe it as One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston meets Tom Hanks's Big. It's full of queerness and friendship and an unconventional twist on romance. 

Just a note to say: Sunny has ADHD, but as this book is set in 1999 and 2000 (and even now it's so hard for women to be understood/diagnosed) she doesn't have the words for it. But rest assured, she is neurodivergent as fuck.

© Elle Carrigan 2023