It was Friday evening when a message chimed through on Calypso’s phone – an announcement that Emery’s bedroom door had tragically snapped off one of the hinges, and that, should she be available, she would ardently appreciate the help of her hands.
Though, when she went to inspect the damage, Calypso was certain it looked suspiciously like someone had kicked it in on purpose.
The original screws had bent, she noted, as Emery returned with two mugs of coffee a few minutes later. The only spares she had were flimsy and a miraculously awkward in size when paired to the screwdrivers she had on hand.
“You know,” Emery began, passing Calypso her mug. “I always thought those tiny flush hinges were a stupid choice for these doors – they’re heavy as lead.” Emery began digging through Calypso’s toolbox. “Here, try the torx, it should stop the metal from stripping -“
Her eyes flashed wide for a mere second, almost unnoticeably, as if she’d had to catch her own tongue before she slowly, sheepishly, handed Calypso the appliance in question.
Calypso raised an eyebrow. “Do you even actually need my help?”
“Of course,” She insisted. “Who doesn’t need a tall, strong, woman around to fix all their shit.”
The sarcasm was faint but even Calypso, in all her obliviousness, could pick up on it. She just rolled her eyes, and set back to work as Emery buried her grin in her coffee.
…
She stopped looking for excuses after that. Subtilty turning brazen as she chose instead to simply text Calypso the word ‘dinner?’ whenever she felt the need for company. Which would follow her arriving at her front door and either staying, or walking Calypso downstairs back to her place.
She started helping with the cooking when she’d allow. But she’d just as often glare with amusement at her attempts.
Emery seemed to have decided they were ‘seeing’ each other. And there was truth to it, but in what sense Calypso was uncertain. She’d worked out that Emery definitely didn’t have a boyfriend… or Girlfriend. A discovery that had sent her unexpectedly giddy for the few hours afterward, though she had done her best to hide it. But the feeling died pretty quickly when Emery let slip that the evenings spent with her were usually a consequence of her other friends being busy.
Calypso had been too interested in staring at her plate to notice the way Emery visibly winced immediately after admitting that, biting her tongue too late. You say the stupidest things sometimes Em , she scolded herself.
So, once the sky had turned dark and star-speckled, she’d made the decision – and it really hadn’t been a hard one, to take Calypso’s hand, and candidly lead her into her bedroom.
She hoped the bruise coloured marks they were painting on each other’s skin with desperate and digging fingernails were enough of an admission, because with the warmth and weight of Calypso’s body pressing her down into the mattress and the mouth against her neck that was making her eyes roll to the back of her head, words were suddenly becoming very, very difficult.
…
For once, the morning was warm. The gentle touch of the sun on Calypso’s face letting her know the day had long since started without them, but there was nothing glaring about the light beaming through the window.
She woke to find Emery facing away from her, the slight distance caused by comfort more than anything she needed to worry about. Her breathing falling slow and even, her hair cascading in midnight waves down her back. Her eyes following the curves before settling on the exposed patch of skin from where the bedding had gathered around her hip as she’d slept. Pausing, as her eyes traced along the unusual pattern she found there.
She was covered in flowers. White as snow against already pale skin as they followed the trail of a stem along the valley of her spine. Calypso’s fingers reached out to explore. Observing how the leaves and petals curled from a central, rigid line that looked like it had been born from something sharper than the sting of an ink needle.
She realised then that her breathing had shifted. The touch rousing her from sleep as she pulled the bedding back up around her, hiding the bare skin of her torso from Calypso’s line of sight.
“Sorry,” she apologised softly, curiosity simmered by the realisation she probably hadn’t meant for her to see that. Whatever it was.
Emery almost looked sad, shy, when she rolled over to face her, which wasn’t the greeting she’d been hoping for. “I imagine you have questions.”
She shrugged. “They’re not important, if you don’t want to talk about it.”
“No,” Emery sighed quietly. “No, it’s okay. You can ask.”
She took her hand across the sheets, entwining their fingers to see if this moment of vulnerability was something she was actually comfortable with. She didn’t pull away.
“Where did you get white-ink tattoos like that?” She asked. “The details are almost prodigious.”
She watched as she smiled, an involuntary response to the fact of everything she could have asked that had been her first question. “It was a friend actually, Marima. I asked if she’d be able to do something beautiful but subtle to cover over the scar. I was more than impressed with the garden she bloomed on my back.”
Calypso waited, her eyes held on her own that seemed more keen to look upon their joined hands than back at her. She didn’t want to press. If Emery was going to offer her an explanation it was going to be entirely her choice to do so.
“I had scoliosis as a child – crooked spine.” She took a deep breath before she continued. “It was pretty bad and only got worse as I grew, the physical therapy seemed to do little to help, so when the doctors were content that I’d stopped growing, they cut open my back and fixed me with braces and pins.”Â
Calypso squeezed Emery’s hand. Relieved that the contact encouraged a small smile to return to her face.
“The scar healed pretty well,” Emery told her, talking slow and quiet to match the tone of the morning. “But I’ve never really, um – Not many people have ever seen it before.”
Their eyes finally met, and the sincerity she discovered there couldn’t have found a rival in intimacy to anything they’d done last night. Calypsolet the emotions it created escape into a fond smile, one that she hoped was reassuring.
“Not that it’s quite the same,” Calypso began lightly. “But did I ever tell you about the time my leg got kicked in by a horse?”
“No,” Emery’s eyebrows raised slightly in amusement. “How did that happen?”
“I spent a few years on a ranch growing up. There was this one horse, Daisy, stubborn as shit – probably more so than I was. Anyway, one of my assigned chores was to fill her water every morning, and I guess she spontaneously decided to use me as target practice one day. My tibia shattered in three places. I was on crutches for months, got me out of doing chores though.”
Emery laughed gently. “Oh my god. What happened to the horse?”
“Nothing,” Calypso shook her head. “It had been my fault really, I accepted eventually. They even taught me to ride on her once I was given the all-clear by the doctors. We seemed to have come to a, uh – mutual understanding , by then.”
She felt more than heard Emery’s laugh that time. The reverberations tangible across the bedding as she shuffled herself closer towards her, before cautiously, tentatively, snuggling up against the warmth of her chest, her eyes fluttering shut once again. Calypso let it happen. Though she still wasn’t sure how sensible this was, or what Emery was expecting from her. But it was nice. So she didn’t try to fight against the unfamiliar familiarity of it, or the way her arm wanted so desperately to curve over her hip and around to the small of her back, pulling her closer.
Twig joined them a few minutes later, barging through the door with far more force than Calypso had been expecting, before she leaped up onto the bed and curled up beside them.
And this, Calypso thought, was far, far too cozy.
But who was she to complain?
…
She must have fallen asleep again because she suddenly found her brain jarred awake by the sound of her phone wailing at her. Emery groaned against her chest before she fumbled, bleary-eyed, to find the source of the noise. Though the sound had finally stopped when she reached it.
Chompu. Chompu had been calling.
Shit.
“What are you doing?” Emery asked with a voice that almost sounded hurt as Calypso began shoving her pants back onto her limbs. Realising too late she’d put the wrong leg on.
“I was supposed to meet a friend for lunch an hour ago.” How had she slept in so long, she never did that?
“A friend?” Emery’s forehead creased, and she would have found it adorable if she’d allowed herself a moment to notice between rushing to find the rest of her clothes.
“Chompu, she’s a journalist doing a piece on a case I’m currently working on. Helps to get public support for the clients sometimes.” Calypso explained.
“Oh,” She’d sat up now, she noticed, sheets pulled shyly over her chest as she watched her, Twig sat staring judgingly at her by Emery’s feet.
What was she doing?
“Would you, uh -” she stuttered. “Would you like to come?”
Emery blinked for a minute, surprised. “To lunch?”
“Yeah.” Calypso was well aware of the weight behind the gesture, she had no idea what Emery had told her friends about her and whatever this was between them. But neither had yet so much as even momentarily stepped inside the friendship circle of the other. She wondered if Chompu would have a heart attack. Or what would even be appropriate for Calypso to introduce Emery as.
“I’d love to,” Emery beamed.
…
Chompu, it turned out, did not have a heart attack. But she did send Calypso the look of the century when she’d decide to simply introduce the dark-haired woman after a moment of stumbling as ‘my Emery.’ She seemed to like that. But Calypso wasn’t so fond of the way the journalist immediately and incessantly began to flirt with her on Calypso’s behalf for the remainder of the day.
But they seemed to like each other, so maybe it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, she conceded.
…
It was breaking habit that Calypso hadn’t fucked anything up yet despite their shared tendency to be acrimonious at times, her brand more solemn compared to Emery’s riled sparkiness. And even more miraculous that she seemed to be doing everything humanly possible to actively avoid doing so. Which was new. And possibly alarming.
But in the peaceful moments when her head would grow heavy where it rested on Emery’s lap and the tips of her fingers would run absentmindedly through her hair, she found all sense of worry melting away.
It happened so slowly over the next few months that she barely noticed the change, but her quiet life had gradually turned into something loud and colourful. And her weekends became filled with people . Though whether that was a good thing or not was something she was still questioning.
Calypso had soon met what she hoped was all of Emery’s friends. Women that, she explained, she had shared a dorm with for the years she’d stayed at boarding school as a teenager. Emery didn’t announce they’d be arriving on the day Calypso first had to introduce herself, watching in a semi-state of shock as they barged through the door with bottles of various types of alcohol in their hands and noisy ‘hello’s to disrupt the evening. She wondered if Emery had even known. Or if she’d been just as taken aback as she was.
Understandably, she’d found them all a bit overwhelming at the start but soon noticed herself adjusting to the chaos that filled Emery’s apartment whenever they arrived in all their boisterous splendour.
It almost felt like she’d just jumped inside an episode of Friends, though she wasn’t sure what character she was supposed to be, she just hoped she wasn’t Ross.
God, she hoped she wasn’t Ross.
——————————xx—————————xx—————————-
(A/N:) btw, Isla (Eye – lah) or the kid character here is supposed to be a toddler, around 3 yrs old so just pretend the kid on the book cover looks 3-ish 😂
I wanted her to actually look her age so like 1 year old or something but it won’t really work for the story so… she’s 3
Comment