With a finger I drew a line down her breastbone and across the small curve of her belly. I watched her little nipples harden. I put my head next to hers on the pillow, my hand on her hip. The air was full of unanswered questions.
“And now it’s cold,” I said.
“Come here.” She put a hand on my neck and her fingers found their way to the dent at the base of my skull. A slight pressure in the weight of her hand, an invitation or not. My choice. I moved my hips toward hers. Our eyes held, our faces almost touching.
It was me who closed the space, me who put my lips on hers, and her lips that softened, then opened, the tip of her tongue finding mine. All of me shuddered.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Words whispered in the dark. I put my hand to her breast, felt the perfect shape of it, so light and warm and round. Beneath my palm I could feel the nub of her nipple, a little nipple, so much smaller than mine, something amazing.
She moved her hand on to the small of my back, her hand warm, stroking, her fingers making light circles on my skin. For ages she drew circles on my skin, I on hers. Then it was me who rolled on to my back, my legs that opened, and her fingers that moved downward, opening me, exploring.
Words breathed rather than spoken, like cirrus clouds, tiny puffs of air.
There
Don’t stop
You
Then an opening of warm, infinite spaces inside me. Soft-edged shapes that bloomed in my mind like giant peonies, undulating, moving, each one blossoming from the center of the one that came before, on and on, then everything opening, rising, filling, emptying, and flooding, until I arched my back and gripped her wrist Stop.
My breath, holding, then releasing, then holding.
My eyes shut.
And then opening again, and there was Robyn, still there, still real, still looking at me with such tenderness and wonder that I wanted to cry. My beautiful friend Robyn. My good friend Robyn.
Robyn, who could make everything okay.
I think, perhaps, I slept more deeply than I ever had before that night, my arms around her, my head buried in her neck. Robyn must have too, because with a jolt I realized I could hear the morning wake-up call. That meant our housemistress, Mrs. Turner, was at that very moment walking along the corridor, knocking briefly on doors before swiftly opening them, delivering a cheery greeting into each of the rooms, Good morning, good morning. We were naked. We were both in the same bed and we’d both overslept.
Robyn heard it too. She hesitated for one brief second before leaping out of the covers. She threw a duvet over me while scrambling for her abandoned pajamas. Moments later our door opened.
“Morning, girls. How was your night?”
“Great thanks, yep, really good, actually.”
“But it’s so chilly in here.” Mrs. Turner looked down at me where I lay with the duvet pulled up to my chin, “Poor Willa’s frozen.” She moved across the room to try to shove the window shut. Robyn stood in the middle of the room, dragging her fingers through disheveled hair. Fingers that smelt of me, I thought. In Robyn’s hair.
“No run this morning, Robyn? It’s not like you to still be in bed at this hour.”
“Too icy, miss.” Robyn widened her eyes and grinned at me behind Mrs. Turner’s back. “It’s more inviting inside.”
Mrs. Turner gave up on the window. She looked at me and smiled, tipping her head on one side, and, softening her voice, said, “And how are you, sweetheart?”
“I’m all good, thanks.” I smiled. Mrs. Turner smiled. She moved to the door. Then she stopped. She turned round. She looked from me to Robyn and back again, a puzzle in her eyes.
“Have you two swapped beds?”
***
Laika was missing. Laika was missing and I missed her with a raw, incomprehensible grief that sat inside my every cell. And yet the truth is, I would count the next eighteen months as some of the happiest of my entire life.
It was a world that existed entirely inside that room, and if I could go back and relive every single moment of it again, I would. I still do. But now I only ever remember it in snapshots.
Once, laughing. The sound burst from me one morning and was so strange and unexpected I immediately clapped a hand over my mouth. I hadn’t known that I could ever laugh like that again. But there it was.
And music. Singing, dancing to Robyn’s ridiculously retro tastes, “You’re Simply the Best,” “Always on My Mind,” “Don’t You Want Me, Baby?”
Celebrating our birthdays within a month of each other, both of us turning seventeen.
Robyn’s tender kisses. The curve of her clavicles. The nubs of her spine. The small of her back. The stretch of skin over her hips. The tip of her tongue. How much I wanted her. The way she made me come.
She must have guessed things, I suppose, but she never let on. I think she was too good, too kind ever to ask. Or perhaps she was scared of making things worse. But she must have guessed something. I know she must have, because she was always there for me, holding me, talking to me, when I woke from dreams in which I was pushing through rivers of thickening concrete, forever trying to reach a half-submerged shape. Never getting there, crying out. Night after night after night.
And, once, this: Robyn talking about something, lying on her side, facing me, her voice rippling with laughter, teasing, her fingers dancing over my skin, her hand playful, then her tickling fingers jabbing into the skin of my ribs and my instant No. The command flew from me fast and hard and unbidden; my voice loud, edged with panic. Just as fast I grabbed her wrist with my hand. We froze like that, me holding Robyn’s hand in the air, my eyes fixed on hers. I wasn’t smiling.
Robyn looked at me, her smile fading. I opened my hand and let go of her wrist. Slowly Robyn put down her hand, keeping her eyes on mine.
“Whoa,” she said. “Sorry.”
I started to speak. “Sorry—” I stopped. “Don’t tickle me. Anything, just—not that.”
“Okay,” she said.
