It Started at the Beach - Chapter 7

A week later, Gigi was standing at the gate, waiting for her plane to board. She’d attracted the odd look, the odd fellow passenger or member of staff who ‘knew her from somewhere’ but they were leaving her in peace. Thank heaven.

She was in no mood to play nice, or worse, field questions regarding her break-up that had now hit the gossip columns.

She was going to Spain to see her mother. Sasha had offered to come with her, and she’d told her no. That she wanted to do it alone. That it was better that way, but like hell it was.

Truth was, she hadn’t been able to bear Sasha’s company any longer. Not with the invisible wall that had erected itself between them. Every touch brief. Every look too. Like she couldn’t bear the sight of her any more. The burn in her cheeks speaking of her shame…her regrets.

Gigi swallowed her own and gripped the handle of her carry-on like it could somehow stave off her pain. The pain of a goodbye that had been too fleeting. It had taken her all not to cry. Not to confess her love there and then.

But she knew Sasha was trying to spare her the pain of an outright conversation. The talk of an ‘us’ when there wasn’t one. And she could respect that. She didn’t have to like it though.

Maybe she should have faced her fear there and then and pressed the conversation, because hearing Sasha say, ‘I love you, but not in that way’ had to be better than the soulless, ‘Take care, and text me when you get there’ she’d received.

‘Excuse me, are you in this queue?’

She blinked the present back into focus and saw a young woman with a child on her hip puffing hair out of her eyes as she shrugged her bag higher on her shoulder.

The queue in front had all but disappeared and they were the last to board. ‘Sorry. Yes. Yes, I am.’

Only she couldn’t help feeling she was stepping further in the wrong direction.

That the woman she owed her truth to was back in Bondi…whether she wanted to hear it or not.

And maybe that was the problem. She hadn’t told her. Not once.

She’d been so busy second-guessing what Sasha wasn’t saying that she hadn’t stopped to think about what she herself wasn’t and should have been. She cursed, stopping so suddenly the woman behind walked into her back.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Gigi said, spinning around and checking both her and her child were okay before stepping out of the way and—

‘Gigi?’

That voice, that scent… She looked up and there was Sasha—Sasha!

Blonde hair tumbling around her shoulders, her mismatched clothes very much thrown on.

‘What are you…’ She stepped forward, hope that she didn’t dare focus on flickering to life in her gut. Her heart too. Audience be damned.

‘I’m sorry, Gigi. I know you said you didn’t want me to come, but I had to. We’re a pair you and me, remember. And I said I’d be there for you with your mum, just like you were there for me.’

‘But Sash…’

‘I’m not done.’ She raised a hand to cut her off, her blue eyes bright with unshed tears and so much more. But then she glanced past her, hesitating as she took in the last remaining passengers boarding at the gate.

‘Don’t worry about them.’ Gigi called her attention back to her. ‘They can’t hear you from all the way over there.’

And even if they could, Gigi couldn’t care.

‘Good, because if I don’t say this all now, I’m not sure when I’ll have the courage to again.’

Oh, God, what was she going to say?

‘You have to know, Gigi, that whatever happens from this point forth, I am your best friend. I will always be your best friend.’

‘I know that, darling. I do.’

Because she did know that. All her fears aside, she knew it as well as she knew her own soul.

‘Then promise me, that regardless of what I say next, you and me, we will always be a pair.’

‘She lifted a hand to stroke a stray wisp of blonde hair behind Sasha’s ear, cherishing the contact even as she let her hand fall back to her side. ‘Always, Sash. I promise.’

‘Good.’ She nodded and sucked in a breath, pressed her palms to her thighs. ‘Then allow me to tell you that I love you, Gigi.’

She smiled, that was better. That was a real goodbye.

‘And I love you too.’

‘No.’ Furiously, she shook her head. ‘You don’t understand. I am in love with you. I’ve been in love with you since forever, and this is why me telling you now changes nothing. Because I loved you before and I love you still and I will go on loving you in whatever capacity you want me too. But you have to know the truth. I love you, Gigi. With everything I am, I love you.’

Gigi’s eyes had widened with every word, her heart pulsing so wildly it was going to beat its way out of her chest. ‘But your girlfriends before me, they’ve looked nothing like, been nothing like me.’

She gave a shy smile. ‘Because I avoided anyone that came close. Because close could never be enough. Close could never be you, and it’s always been you, Gigi. Always.’

‘Sash, I…I…’

‘I’m sorry to interrupt, Miss, but are you boarding?’ The stewardess stepped into their orbit, apologetic but needing to know.

‘She is,’ Sasha said for her. ‘And I am too, if she’ll have me.’

‘Have you?’

‘As a friend, I want to be there for you, Gigi. No expectations, no nothing.’

‘You’ve bought a ticket?’

‘Yes.’

Gigi choked on her own tears, her own laughter too. ‘Is this really happening?’

‘Afraid so.’ Sasha gave her wonky smile. ‘I’m sorry to lay it all out there like this, but I’ve had it locked inside me for so long and when you left, I realized it was wrong. That instead of trying to get us back to how things were by pretending it had never happened, I should have been telling you the truth.’ She gave a hapless shrug. ‘You and me, we should have no secrets, and I was done keeping the biggest secret of them all.’

‘That you’re in love with me?’

She nodded, a solitary tear escaping. ‘I was scared of losing you, of pushing you away with it, but the distance between us this past week, it’s been hell. And there I was telling you to face your fears and your mum, when I couldn’t even face my own.’

Gigi reached out and swept away the damp trail on Sasha’s cheek before burying her fingers in her hair and pulling her close. ‘Since we’re dishing out secrets, here’s mine…’

She lifted her other hand into her hair, holding her steady to her gaze and her words.

‘I love you too. As a friend, yes, but also as my lover, my partner, my everything.’

And then she kissed her and felt her soul rise up and settle, a peace unlike anything she’d ever known befalling her in that one sweet touch.

‘I’m afraid I really do need to urge you both to board this plane. This is the last call for the flight. Are you joining us?’

Reluctantly, she pulled away but kept her eyes fixed in Sasha’s. The need and the love gazing back at her told her everything. ‘Yes. I believe we are.’

‘You better believe it,’ Sasha said, squeezing her hand and reaching for a carry-on case that Gigi hadn’t spied before. ‘Let’s do this, together, forever.’

‘I couldn’t have put it better myself.’