epilogue (of sorts)
Hi all,
It does feel odd to be back with this book, but I remember a promise I made a while ago for an epilogue that I never seemed to follow through with. Over a year ago, I started writing this and recently thought I'd publish what I had sitting around in my computer drafts. I'm ever so sorry for my lack of interaction with this account. I know I've come back and said a few times that I've been in a slump, and it's the honest truth. But I really am hoping to get back on track soon.
One thing I will say though, which may be disappointing a lot of you, is that I may not be writing lesbian themed books anymore. Age gap is still something I'm very interested in writing about and have still been planning on, but lesbian has become something that is not my place to write on anymore. My own personal life and identity has interfered slightly with my writing and set me back at a bit. I hope that explains things a little to anyone who was wondering or interested. Sorry again.
(sorry for errors)
--
Turns out, loneliness is nothing when they're together. Mio endured a few months away from Norah, house hunting with her new money whilst Norah finished her final year. She already had training and a job offer in the running, recommended by her professor. By summer, Mio had bought a cosy place outside of Vancouver that wasn't too rural but close enough to a forest that she felt near to nature. Norah came with her to property viewings beforehand, and eventually came home to her.
Three years pass, almost too quickly for the both of them, and still, they are living in the honeymoon phase in the next couple to come. Norah has a secure job as a physical education teacher in a middle school, and Mio is staying at home, doing volunteer work when she gets too bored. They'd had the conversation of whether Mio wanted to work again now that she could. Norah had suggested one lazy evening that she might want to go back into nursing, but Mio had said she was too used to staying at home then.
Each evening after work, Norah goes to the gym and comes home to Mio, who is either preparing to cook or napping in front of the television. When Norah comes in around six in the evening, Mio is leaning up and fishing about in the cupboard in a white button-up and shorts. Norah slinks up close and slips her hands around her waist slowly, letting her fingers drag as she nestles her mouth in the crook of her neck.
"God," Mio breathes gently, "you scared me."
Norah hums against her skin, inhaling her floral scent and pressing her lips down beneath the edge of her jaw. "Why are you looking so sexy all alone? Are you cooking?"
"I was going to. Are you hungry?" She asks in a very soft voice, tilting her neck up so that Norah can kiss her there.
"I am, a bit," Norah says, spinning Mio by her hips so that they are facing one another. Mio's heart is beating fast under her skin, even after five years, she's hopelessly putty in Norah's hands. She always has been.
She whimpers a little as Norah leans down into her mouth, kissing her tenderly slow, impossibly slow, making her press back. She's opening her mouth for more, but Norah is smiling and bringing her head back. She likes to play this game, make Mio whimper, make her beg. Often it's for fun, but at the same time, it's a childishly subtle check at whether Mio still wants her - even after five years.
But, of course, Mio does. She spends every day whilst Norah is at work, thinking of her, planning meals for her, lying on her pillow and falling asleep with the scent. She never thought she'd be so lovesick at forty-five, almost forty-six. But she is. Each day, she finds something new that she loves in Norah, or rediscovers something she already does. That evening it's Norah's abs. She hooks her fingers under her workout top and tugs upwards slowly, watching the shifting material reveal the toned, flat stretch of Norah's tan stomach. The skin is hard to the touch and regularly worked, and in the overhead light of the kitchen, the indents of her muscles are shadowed with dark creases. Mio rubs her hand over the muscle slowly, poking in places to feel the toughness of it. Norah entertains her exploring with a smile, lifting her arms up.
"Like it? Have I got a six pack yet?" Norah asks in amusement.
Mio hums. "Not yet. You smell like sweat though."
Norah grins and leans further into her, speaking slowly, "do I smell good? You like it?"
"You stink," Mio says with a false grimace, turning her head away.
Norah barks out a laugh, yanking her top back down. "I was at the gym!" Then she mumbles jokingly, "bitch."
"Cursing! I'm going to bed," Mio says, trying not to laugh, weaving to get around Norah. But Norah takes her hips gently, pinning her back against the kitchen counter.
"I'm sorry, sorry," she apologises, leaning in to pepper Mio's jaw with kisses.
The older woman melts into the touch, arms looping and closing around her waist as Norah mouths her neck. It's bliss. Everyday is bliss. Nothing ever seems to get boring, their arguments are trivial and easily sorted with kissing and favours. When Norah is mad, Mio tries to make it better by washing her hair in their bath, and washing it slowly and thoroughly so that Norah will nap when she gets out. And if Mio is mad, Norah gives her space for the day and cooks the dinner, then gives her a back massage in bed. Things just work. Their first few weeks of being together, right after Norah left college, were just giddy fun. They spent most of their time together, cuddling and watching films, and not quite knowing what to do with all the time. They had been treating it like the time they had when they ran away, like they were on a time limit before they would be ripped apart. It was only when the first year passed that they both realised this is their future. They're safe. For once, they're allowed to have one another.
In the second year, they started making routines; grocery shopping days, meal plans, laundry days. It was domestic bliss! More for Norah than Mio, only because it had been so new to her. She hadn't realised in the beginning how fun domesticity could really be. But now, in their third year, she's used to living with the woman she loves. She works, goes to the gym (when she can be bothered) and comes home.
"Am I too sweaty to kiss?" Norah asks, mouth still pressed into the crook of Mio's neck.
Mio just hums, leaning into Norah's mouth and kissing her. Things are easy.
-
Norah comes home from work the next night over, skipping the gym just to see Mio. Her thoughts had been on her all day. The bus ride home had been thinking of her, and her only. But coming through the front door, Norah sees Mio curled in a blanket on the sofa in the dark. Norah flicks on the lights and Mio groans angrily.
"Switch them off!"
Norah frowns, but obliges and flicks them back off. The room is filled with darkness once again, only the white glow of the television screen as a light source. Norah drops her bag by the door and comes up to the couch, smoothing her hand over the shape of Mio's hip under the duvet. The older woman grumbles again, eyebrows furrowed in a wince of pain or annoyance. Norah crouches by her.
"What's up? What happened?" She asks coolly. She doesn't panic, knowing that Mio could very well just be upset over a film. She often did get like that.
"Period," Mio says, "my stomach hurts so much."
"What do you need, love?" Norah asks, pushing Mio's fringe back away from her forehead and feeling the warm skin beneath. "A drink? Some painkillers? A bath?"
"You're an angel, you know?" Mio says, eyes glistening as she gazes up at Norah.
Norah hums and smiles, whisking off to the kitchen to search for the painkillers and a clean glass for water. The sink is crowded slightly with stacks of cutlery and crockery. Norah makes a note to do the washing up later on in the evening, after they've eaten she'll do a big wash.
She fills a glass full of water from the tap and pops a few ice cubes in, then presses a couple of painkillers into her palm.
"Anything else? You hungry?" Norah calls back to her.
Mio sits up on the couch, letting the blanket fall around her waist. She's watching her lover whip around the kitchen for her, reaching into cupboards and fishing around, probably still tired from her work day. She's tall and lean, and seems to keep growing all the time. She keeps her hair short and above her shoulders in a layered bob cut. Mio cuts her hair every two months on a chair in the bathroom with an old towel draped around her shoulders. Mio loves that time in the year. She loves Norah's mousey hair, and her tan skin and her smile reflected in the mirror each time she glances down at her. After she left college, Mio went with her to get a piercing. At first, Norah wanted a nose piercing, right through her septum like her friend, Karim, had. But last minute, she decided she wanted the top of her ear, her helix done, and got that instead. Though it had stung immensely, she held her cool until they were in the car and she cried to Mio about how much it had hurt. But that feels like it was so long ago.
"No, thanks, but could you run me a bath, my lovely darling?" Mio asks, fluttering her lashes as if Norah would refuse her.
Norah only laughs at that, coming over with her drink and medication, then leaving for the bathroom again. The bathroom they have, they tried to make nice. They have a mirror with vanity lights above the sink and a lovely porcelain bath that they spent a lot of their house budget on. It's not exactly the same as the other, but it makes the couple happy. It fits. Because of it, Norah rarely uses the shower. Only when she is tired after workouts or the gym, or sex in the late evenings.
Norah leans over the tub, resting her palm on the porcelain edge, and turns on the hot tap. The pipes in the walls whine then settle into a rhythmic pumping that is harder to hear. Norah then pops her head around the bathroom door to speak out to Mio.
"I won't carry you."
The older woman grumbles with exaggeration, then Norah listens as she comes through the place to the bathroom. She's clutching her robe over her stomach and frowning. Norah can only laugh softly at that, opening her arms for Mio to fall into.
"Don't baby me," Mio mumbles against Norah's chest.
"Oh? Sorry, I'll stop then," Norah says, knowing the stubborn cycle of Mio's menstrual moods. She lets her arms slip from around her and back to her sides, but Mio doesn't shift off of her chest.
"Doesn't mean you can't hug me."
Norah smiles to herself, closing her arms back around Mio's warm body. They stand like that for a few minutes as the tub fills with hot water, steam rising and thickening the air. Norah's thinking, as she rubs Mio's lower back, about romance. She thinks often about how her first ever love also became her last. She knows that, that it'll be her last. Even though they aren't old or bored, Norah knows it'll be her last ever love. No one can fill her heart quite like Mio does; she sits there and fits very neatly in the beating shape beneath her chest. And with that thought in the steamy warm bathroom, she kisses her lover's hairline and inhales deeply.
-
A month later, Norah starts to feel something is missing. Worryingly, nauseatingly. She studies Mio in the early hours, whilst she's still asleep - the curl of her lashes, the gentle breeze of her rhythmic breath, the warmth of her sleepy cheeks. There is nothing missing in Mio; she's as perfect as Norah has always thought. The missing thing is not in her. Once Norah establishes that, she starts to look for what's missing in her.
She's happy, she's stable, she likes her job, she likes her house, she loves Canada. She starts to think that maybe it isn't something missing - it's that she misses something. Does she miss her hometown? Her dad? Does she miss Jackie? Does she miss what she'd expected to always know?
But none of those things make her heart ache or yearn. She misses them as much as she occasionally misses her old bed in her room. Like a sweet, worn memory, visited at odd moments with a nostalgic flicker of sentimentality.
Something is missing.
Or is it something that needs to come as an addition? Something she can't see?
Norah carries this feeling with her for weeks, into work and on the way home, on weekend outings, dates with friends - and even awfully during sex. Listening to the sounds of her orgasm, she would think of the absent feeling. But very quickly it disperses with her arousal.
It aches more at home than at work. But it's never misery, it's never an ache of depression. Norah feels content at home, with her lover and her bed and her bathtub. At work, she feels an ache of joy. The kids she usually teaches are getting ready to move on to high school, they're coming of an age where everything is irritating and they're feeling the kick of teenage hormones - right where it hurts. They're fun enough when they want to be, and seem to enjoy Norah's classes as much as they can. But it's the lower grade that Norah really enjoys teaching.
They're small and half bouncy, half nervous. Excited to be in 'big school'. They've got toothy smiles and naïve laughter, and they love Norah's classes. She's usually Miss Cook, but she lets them call her by her first name so that they feel special. They have silly fights and silly tears, and worry less than the older years, but get shy easily. Norah realises there that she doesn't feel something is missing, in that class. But that realisation only comes when she leaves for the end of the day and she's on her way home, sitting on the dusty seat of a public bus. She thinks of it with an analysing curiosity, staring at the smudgy stains of tiny fingers on the bus window. What is it that dulls her ache so greatly? She thinks of leaving to work in an elementary school, but she doesn't know how fun that would be. Why?
Mio is folding laundry in the bedroom when Norah comes through the door, smiling at the familiar sound of her lover's footfalls and the exhausted thump of her bag against the flooring.
"You home?" Mio calls from the bedroom, smoothing one of Norah's t-shirts against her chest.
"I'm home," Norah sighs. She trails in through the living room to the bedroom, tugging off her sweaty shirt and tossing it behind her.
Mio is still folding neatly. She opens her mouth to speak again but only a gasp leaves her throat, words slipping from her in a sharp breath as she feels Norah's lean body press up against her. Her mouth is right on Mio's ear, and her hand wandering, fingers brushing under her breast.
"I know I'm sweaty, but I need you," Norah whispers.
"Now?" Mio says in a small voice, leaning back against Norah's form.
Norah kisses the small sensitive spot below her ear. "Now."
"But... the laundry?"
"You don't want me to touch you?"
Norah's hands are hovering over Mio's breasts, waiting for confirmation.
Mio hums, which thins out into a slightly needy noise, and Norah smiles, tracing her index finger very lightly around Mio's nipple through her shirt.
"Can I?" Norah asks softly. She's ghosting her lips over Mio's neck, feeling her body sinking further back against her.
There's a pause before Mio utters a small, "please."
Then Norah takes her consent and melts into it. She holds Mio's body against her, groping her breasts through her shirt, listening to her gasps and her mumbling at the feel of Norah's thin hands.
Norah thinks that if she were a man, she'd be filled with the overwhelming urge to breed. Just at the sight of Mio's shapely body and her breathy whines and the heat from her skin. She wishes that she could as she smooths her hands down over Mio's hips, slowly descending to a point where she can slip her hands between her legs. Mio's body shivers at that, thighs relaxing and parting gently, allowing for Norah's fingers to explore. It's warm down there, between her thighs. The touches make soft noises come from Mio's throat. Norah wants to ask if she'd been thinking of it, being touched. Norah feels like she's coming home from years overseas with her hands on her lover's body. She can feel it all night.
So she does.
Hours onward, they're lying in bed, foreheads and collars shiny with sweat, sheets covering their breasts. Norah is thinking, so loudly that Mio can't soundly nod off to sleep. She's half waiting for Norah to decide whether she's going to talk about what's bothering her. But no words come from her side of the bed for a bit. Mio feels herself beginning to doze lightly, listening to Norah's steady breathing. Just until she hears her lover speak into the dark,
"I think I want a baby."
Mio pauses, letting the words sink into her mind properly, then looks over at Norah with furrowed brows. "You think?"
"No. Yes," Norah says finally, "I do, I think I want a baby."
Mio is speechless for a moment. She can't find the words to reply to Norah. She doesn't even know what she wants to say.
"But this is a two person thing," Norah whispers.
"Aren't I too old to be a mom again?" Mio asks solemnly. "I already have a daughter who only half likes me."
"You are and would be a lovely mom. But I need to know if this is what's missing," Norah says softly.
Mio smooths her palm gently over Norah's tummy, feeling it as if there is already a baby inside. She's gazing down at her navel, thumbing it slowly, imagining the stretch and swell of a baby bump on her sweetheart's body. She says in a small voice, "our baby... would you want to get pregnant?"
Norah thinks and tries to picture the huge bump on her, then being a P.E teacher. Then the looming thought of maternity leave and morning sickness. "I don't think so. I would, if you wanted me to, but I don't know how good a P.E teacher I'd be after childbirth. I don't know." She explains.
Mio hugs into Norah, nuzzling her head against her breasts. "I can't get pregnant again, I had my tubes tied after Jackie."
Jackie. How would she feel? Norah can't help but think it.
"You're thinking a lot. Let's sleep on it, okay? Can you do that?" Mio asks, stroking Norah's arm soothingly.
Norah just rolls over, flicks off the light and huddles back up to her partner. Lights out, don't think.
The next morning, Norah feels the missing feeling has moulded into something more of a different feeling. Now thinking of one of the possibilities of what's 'missing', she only wants to talk about the possible baby. It's all that occupies her mind, all throughout the day. She wakes, lying in bed alone, an indent the shape of Mio is pressed into the mattress beside her. The loneliness gives her a little time to think, about the baby, about the future, about pregnancy, about life.
She knows neither of them will get pregnant. Mio can't and she thinks her career will become useless. But for Mio, she can do anything. She would really consider it. Though, she doesn't want to wait too long, she doesn't want to leave it and miss such a period of baby-craving.
Again, she imagines her stomach bloated with the swell of a child, a baby, a product of her love, growing in her womb. It would be nice, wonderful even, but it had never appealed to her before. So why now? Is she afraid to have something of such responsibility living in her? Is this even 'the thing'? The thought for a moment gives her a cool sweat on the back of her neck. Maybe that's fear. But Norah doesn't want to be scared, she wants to be brave, and most of all, she doesn't want Mio to know of her fear. What would that do besides make her look small, immature, unready? She wants her lover to accept her as a mother, as someone not so frightened of her own body and responsibility.
She knows inside that Mio will respect that, that she'll always love and understand her. She's spent the last few years just doing that. She's sacrificed everything in her life for her, so selfless - all for the opportunity to love and be loved. And that's what she got. Those actions, those sacrifices, guaranteed her love for life, leaving everything that represented pain and oppression behind her, coated in the dust of time, cobwebbed with indifference. Maybe not indifference - ignorance, avoidance? All Norah knows is that they don't talk about it. Not regularly. They haven't in almost a year; nothing about Twin, about Mr. Reed, about Jackie, sometimes not even about Norah's dad, who called a few times a year (Christmas and birthdays). But those sacrifices meant that these things have to be left behind, and Norah never thinks of it being any other way. She doesn't even think of going back.
That's the way it is. For her to be able to come home and be held and kissed and loved, that's the way it is.
When Norah comes home that evening, skipping the gym, Mio is sitting, almost expectantly, on the couch. She's smiling. Norah's body breathes and relaxes. She drops her bag by the shoe rack and folds into Mio's arms, her body kneeling at the foot of the couch, head lolling into her partner's lap.
"Oh, I missed you today," Norah sighs softly, hands smoothing up the sides of Mio's thighs and finding her hips. "I miss you everyday, but today especially."
Mio laughs breathily, "I missed you."
They both were silent for a moment. Mio's hands were in Norah's hair, threading the strands through her fingers, and Norah was still feeling at Mio's hips. They were both thinking the same thing, and had a habit of doing that. You know me best, Norah thinks in her softest thinking voice. Mio kisses her head, You love me best.
"Are you still thinking?" Mio asks.
Norah nods against her partner's lap.
"Do you really think that's what's missing?" Then Mio audibly backpedals, "why didn't you even tell me anything was missing?"
"I don't know," Norah mumbles, "I thought I could figure it out alone."
"Don't do that, never do that."
"I'm sorry."
"You think maybe you want us to have a bigger place? A better car?" Mio suggests, fingers still gently weaved into Norah's hair.
The younger woman thinks only for a moment then says no, then thinks and says no definitively again. Everything seems to feel so uncertain to her at that moment, she's second guessing every idea she has and every idea Mio suggests.
"Don't you think a baby is too soon? You don't even sound definite." Mio says, speaking warmly. Norah feels her voice under her skin, where it thins out into her blood.
"I'm not, but no idea I have feels that way... Would you even want a baby?" Norah lifts her head for a moment to look into Mio's heart-shaped face.
"Of course I would... but when I'm someone else to you, okay?" Mio smiles knowingly. Almost like she's figured it out on her own and is teasing Norah slightly for her overactive mind.
Someone else to me? Norah thinks. Someone else to me.
"You've gotten cryptic from being with me."
"Haven't we always spoken to each other like that?" Mio says in a small voice.
"Well we don't have to anymore."
Mio laughs. "You know what I mean."
Norah lifts her head out of the older woman's lap again, eyebrows furrowed. "Do I?"
"You know what I mean."
Norah's eyebrows relax. Mio's face is glowing as the cogs turn in her lover's head. She thinks for a moment that she hasn't seen Norah concentrate this hard in months. Maybe years.
"I know what you mean," Norah says in one breath, rushing the sentence out past her lips. Mio looks excited, her cheeks and lips can't contain the smile springing to her. She's getting a little red around her nose.
Norah sits up on her knees properly, making sure her face is much closer to Mio's. They're breathing the same breath, one head movement away from a kiss. Norah takes Mio's hand in hers, feels around her fingers, learns the shape of them again without her eyes. For the past few years, her ring finger has been empty, the tan line that lay striped beneath it fading with each month. Now, in this moment, there's nothing there.
"If I asked you, would you marry me?" Norah asks, fingers linked with her partner. Tightly.
Mio laughs softly. Her eyes are wet and shining brilliantly under their white ceiling light. "Ask me."
"Will you marry me then?" It's been awhile since Norah's heart has been so hard. The feeling is so overwhelmingly romantic that she thinks of herself back in her eighteen-year-old self, naïve and heart swelling with love. Their first kiss, their first time, the confession, the running away--all of those events had the same heartbeat as she was experiencing now. Fast, consuming, dizzying.
"Of course I will," Mio's voice is all thin and wobbly.
Norah wants to see if she's crying, as she feels she will, but Mio leans down all too quickly and kisses her. Their mouths are so hot. Norah thinks her heartbeat will travel through her lips and match Mio's.
This is what was missing. This.
Norah pulls back from her lover's mouth but keeps their forehead pressed against one another. "I love you, I do."
They don't say it often, but when the words leave their lips, it means more than anyone would imagine.
"I love you, Norah."