Page 24 of Pyg
12
FULLY FUNCTIONAL ADULT
A sh had seen Alice at her worst. Despite that, the intriguing doctor still wanted to spend her first work-free night since they’d met in Alice’s company.
For some reason, this incredibly generous, caring, funny… very cute doctor wanted to be Alice’s friend. As such, Alice wanted her new friend to see that she was a fully functional adult. She wanted to show her that she lived a tidy, ordered life, which only by exception involved panda-eyes, stray thongs, broken-down cars, lost phones, job quitting, and general chaos. In the short time they’d known each other, it was entirely possible Ash had got the wrong impression of her, but more likely that she’d glimpsed the real Alice because she hadn’t had a chance to put her guard up yet.
Waking early Wednesday morning, after a coffee in bed — made with fresh milk from her fully stocked fridge — Alice threw open the curtains and windows. She ached like a bitch from that workout, but sore muscles aside, now seemed like the ideal time to spring clean her flat. The space wasn’t big by any stretch, but the high ceilings needed de-cobwebbing, and everything needed dusting. She vacuumed the entire flat, bleached the kitchen, and washed the floors.
Momentary panic gripped her when she stripped the bedsheets — would Ash realise she’d changed them? And if so, would she think Alice was being presumptuous? Promiscuous, even?
Wait, if Ash made it to the bedroom and got close enough to the bedsheets to realise they’d been changed, then surely Alice had a right to be presumptuous — stop overthinking, your sheets are dirty so change them like a normal person.
Her tummy flipped at the thought of them between the covers together, but she blinked it away.
This isn’t that kind of date — friends, Alice. Just friends!
The problem was, aside from Maggie, who was under sororal obligation to be her friend, Alice didn’t have many female friends.
…Any female friends.
…Any friends.
It was partly by choice, partly by circumstance. A few had come and gone over the years — mostly gay men who were, in her experience, flaky as fuck. Just like her past relationships — fun while it lasted, but nothing had endured. Alice was okay with that; it suited her personality not to be stuck with the same people for too long. They either annoyed her or she annoyed them and so they all moved on with their lives.
Before Fran, Alice’s longest relationship had been with a jar of mayonnaise in her fridge. Of course, after a while, even that turned sour. And it wasn’t until Fran had planted the seed that Alice had hoped for anything more than the arrangement they had. Before that, the idea of waking up next to the same person day in, day out, struck her as tedious. Yet Fran’s suggestion of something more had unlocked a desire for domesticity — mornings dancing around each other in the bathroom, a smiling face to come home to at the end of a difficult day, rainy Sunday afternoons curled up on the couch, legs entangled… and the most basic yearning of all; someone to bring her a cuppa in bed without having to ask how she liked it.
And whilst Alice would miss the heat and the feeling of being desired by a woman with the gravitational pull of Francesca Dalton, she realised it wasn’t the loss of Fran specifically that stung; it was the loss of the possibilities of a future with someone.
When Alice finished scrubbing the bathroom, the bathtub beckoned. After all the exertion, her muscles were screaming for a soak and a cheeky glass of wine to help stop her over-thinking the whole Ash thing.
Alice reclined in the deep tub, where she lay for nearly an hour, inhaling the zesty scent of the steam infused with the lemongrass oil she’d added to the water. When the water went cold, she added more hot, twisting the tap on and off with her toes. She’d long since finished her wine — a glass of the nice white she’d shared with Maggie — but she couldn’t bear to leave the sanctuary of the bathroom to dash along the hallway in a towel. And besides, she didn’t want to spoil her clean floors with drip marks.
A faint knocking noise pulled Alice from her meditative state.
She wasn’t expecting anyone or anything; perhaps she’d been soaking for longer than she’d realised. Alice sat up and leaned over the side of the bath to dry her hands on a fluffy towel. As she picked up her phone to check for messages, the faint knock became an obnoxious hammering at the door. Alice tutted. Bloody delivery drivers.
If it were Maggie, she’d have called, and Ash wasn’t due for hours yet. In the time it would take to get out of the bath and dry herself, the unexpected visitor would have left, anyway.
“Just leave it outside,” Alice yelled, although it was unlikely they’d hear her through two closed doors. The banging continued. Alice groaned and re-submerged herself, relishing the hot water enveloping her entirely. As her ears filled, the hammering morphed into a distant thudding. A warbling sound filtered through the water, muffled and far-off —
“Alice! Alice!”
Alice gasped and bolted upright, splashing through the surface.
“I know you’re in there. You can’t keep avoiding me like this.” Fran’s voice sounded strained and desperate.
Fuck, why is she here?
“Alice, please open the door. I just want to speak with you.”
Alice’s stomach clenched into a tight ball.
“Well, I’m not leaving. You’ll have to come out at some point.” The letterbox snapped shut.
Bollocks. Alice pulled the plug and reached for her towel. When getting to her feet, she slipped, stumbling, and grasped for something, anything — the shower curtain. The metal rings gave way as she tumbled out of the tub, twisting in the material and bashing her knee on the side of the bath. She landed with a thud on the cold floor tiles and her wrist bent painfully underneath her.
“Fucking oils,” she screamed and winced as she tried to move her arm. After drying the soles of her feet, Alice tentatively stood, blood pounding in her ears. Swelling bloomed over her knee already and she yelped when she tried to apply pressure to it.
The plughole sucked and slurped the bathwater and Fran’s hammering resumed. Alice opened the bathroom door a crack and shuddered as cool air rushed in.
“Just give me a minute,” she screamed in a tone she’d never used with Fran before, and the banging ceased.
Alice padded across the hallway to her bedroom and threw on the pink robe that hung from the back of the door. With one hand she towel-dried her curls as best she could, then released a shaky breath as she fingered her injured wrist to assess the damage. “Ow, ow, ow,” she whimpered, tears springing to her eyes.
“What on earth are you doing in there?” Fran shouted through the letterbox.
With a steadying breath, Alice unlocked the front door and stepped back at the sight of Fran. She was dressed well as always, but her face looked pallid. Makeup did nothing to conceal the dark bags encircling her eyes.
“Alice, at last. Thank goodness.” Fran smiled, revealing a smudge of dark lipstick on her front tooth. As she crossed the threshold, a deep frown wrinkled her forehead. “Oh, darling, don’t cry.”
Alice sniffed. “I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
Alice inhaled a ragged breath. “I fell out of the bath.”
“Oh, you silly thing. Lucky I’m here, isn’t it?”
Fran’s frown dissolved into a smile, and she pulled Alice into a hug.
Alice yelped as sharp pain from her wrist and knee bolted through her.
“Come on, let’s sit you down and look you over.”
Fran shepherded Alice into the lounge and sat her on the couch. She removed her light jacket, placing it over one of the dining chairs, and knelt before Alice.
“Now, tell me what hurts.” Fran’s dark eyes stared up at her.
“I banged my knee and fell onto my wrist.”
“Okay, I’ll take a look at your wrist first.”
Alice held out her right arm, and Fran took it. She touched her thumbs around the area and tried to move the joint.
Alice hissed. “Fuck, that really hurts.”
“Hmm, I don’t think it’s broken. Perhaps just sprained.” Fran softly traced her fingers up Alice’s bare forearm, then lowered her head and tenderly kissed along the same route.
Alice breathed heavily and closed her eyes.
“And you said you hurt your knee too?”
Fran pulled back the lapel of Alice’s robe and let her fingers resume their slow dance, tracing over Alice’s skin. She lowered her head and kissed Alice’s knee, before licking her way to her inner thigh.
Alice swallowed as her own body started to betray her. It would be so easy to let Fran consume her, and the ache starting to pulse between her legs would appreciate that very much. Fran’s tongue moved higher up Alice’s thigh and Alice whimpered.
“Sounds like somebody missed me,” Fran purred, heat smouldering in her eyes as she looked up from between Alice’s legs.
“Stop. I don’t want this.” Alice panted with the effort of pushing out those words.
Fran pulled back and glowered. “You actually want me to stop?”
Alice nodded and pulled her robe closed, flinching as it grazed her throbbing knee. “Why are you here?”
Fran huffed and rose to her feet. She sat next to Alice on the couch.
“I don’t understand you, Alice. Was I not giving you enough attention before? I don’t know what you want from me.”
Alice considered her for a moment, then stood and limped to the kitchen. She poured a glass of cold water and punched two ibuprofen tablets from a blister pack. She gulped down the pills and drained the water.
“I need to lie down. You can see yourself out.” Alice limped to her bedroom and crawled between her fresh sheets. She drifted, latching onto the image of Ash’s warm brown eyes, as if they were life rafts in this maelstrom.