Begin Again | on hold

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

She can't bear the 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 can't bear the thought of someone getting to know her and only then realising it wasn't worth the effort. 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.

Of course, she doesn't expect that to actually happen. But the universe works in mysterious ways. When Sunny speaks the her desire out loud one night after work, 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, because what is 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 that isn't easy. 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.

© Elle Carrigan 2023