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Aruna and Rebecca Pt. 01

By: LenaLena



This is an edited version. Tall_Poppy was awesome enough to help me with tackling the spelling and grammar of this piece. 

*

Chapter 1

With a thud the movers put the last box down against the wall of my new living room. I signed their papers, gave them a tip and then they left. I sighed happily when I heard them close my front door. Finally alone. No more parents, brothers, or screaming nieces. Just me, the silence and a lot of space to myself. 

I moved a box from the couch so there was place to sit and plopped down. Closing my eyes for a while, I listened to the sounds of my new home. It was slowly getting dark and I could hear other people in the building getting home and talking on the communal staircase. There were also faint noises of cars in the street and a rumble of the pipes as somebody turned on a faucet for a bath, the dishes or something else. In the apartment above me I heard somebody walking around in heels. Aaaah peace, quiet...

When I woke up it was pitch-black in the room. There was an annoying buzz in my ears and it took me a while to figure out it was the doorbell. I shot up. "I'm coming!" I stumbled through the room, badly crashing my hip against my still empty bookcase near the hallway. "Ah, bugger!" I cursed. "Stupid bookcase!" I opened the door, still rubbing the sore place on my hip. "What?" 

I looked up and saw a pretty woman with a stone dish in her hands. Uh, hi." She said with a soft voice and a stunning smile. "I'm Rebecca, your upstairs neighbour. Welcome to the building." 

"Oh, so you are the one with the heels!" I blabbed before I realized what I'd said. I felt the blood rushing to my face. "Sorry, shouldn't have said that." 

She smiled even wider and lifted her pants so I could see her shoes better. "Do you like them? They're new. I normally don't wear heels." 

I looked at them and blushed some more. "They are nice." 

She held out the dish. "Here, I hope you like lasagne." I regained my good manners and thanked her. 

"Would you like to come in?" I asked. "Most of my things aren't unpacked yet, but there's always place to sit on the couch and I have wine or fresh fruit juice in the fridge if you want." I grinned and stuck my hand out, balancing the dish on my other hand. "I'm Aruna." 

She shook it and followed me inside. "What a beautiful name." 

"It's Indian." I shrugged while switching on the light with my elbow.

"My apartment has the same layout as yours." she said as the light came on. I walked to the small kitchen and put the dish in the oven. 

"I'm going to paint it tomorrow." I explained when I saw her looking at the peeling wallpaper left by the previous occupant. "What do you want to drink? I also have tea or coffee."

"Wine is fine."

Unpacking two glasses, I saw my reflection in one of the pots on the counter and was shocked to see what a mess I was. My black hair was one big tangle, and I still had some sleep in my eyes! I quickly used my hands as comb to brush it out a bit and rubbed my eyes. Then I poured some wine in the glasses and went back to the living room. 

Rebecca stood by the open window and turned around. Her red curls shone in the street light behind her and gave her an almost magical appearance. I held my breath while I gave her one of the glasses I held. 

"Do you live here alone?" she asked, breaking the spell. 

I nodded. "For now. I plan to adopt a cat from the shelter opposite where I work." 

"I have a cat too." She answered, after taking a first sip. I went to the couch and put all the boxes on the ground. 

In the meantime the apartment started filling with a divine lasagne aroma. "Do you want to stay for dinner?" I asked. "It smells delicious!" 

She walked towards me and sat down. "OK." 

She put her glass down on the ground and helped me build a make-shift table out of a pile of big boxes. We draped a table-cloth over it and put two cushions on the ground to serve as chairs. 

I searched in the kitchen for plates and cutlery, while she emptied her glass and sat down on one of the two cushions. By the time we were ready to eat, I had even found a packet of colourful napkins to dress our improvised table. 

We didn't talk much during dinner, but I started to feel more and more at ease with her. When she went back to her own apartment almost an hour later I thought I had a really nice neighbour with whom I could perhaps even become friends. I had no idea what was still to come. 

Chapter 2

A week later when my brothers came to help me move my piano into my apartment, we bumped into her on the stairs. She'd just arrived back from shopping and sent a dazzling grin in my direction. 

"Aruna, look what I bought." She said. She stopped halfway up and pulled a pair of pink slippers out one of the many plastic bags on her arm. "From now on the clacking of my high heels won't bother you ever again." 

My brothers stared at her and I felt myself blush again. I'd actually kind of grown to like the sound as it always made me think of her. "You shouldn't have. They never bothered me." I said softly. 

"Are you coming over tomorrow?" She asked. "To see how they fit me?" 

My face grew even redder as I saw how my youngest brother Daman stared at me in disbelief for not introducing her to him. "OK." 

She giggled in the cutest way and said: "See you tomorrow then!" before she turned around and disappeared into her own apartment. 

"Who was that?!" asked Daman immediately. 

"My upstairs neighbour. Rebecca." 

I unlocked the door and let them see the place. I had given the kitchen a total makeover, painted the living-room and bedroom yellow and unpacked almost everything. To be honest, I was really proud of the result. 

I opened the windows in the front as far as they could go and looked down, where my beloved piano still stood in the body of Madesh's pick-up truck, wrapped in blankets and firmly tied down with duct tape and rope. "I am afraid that this is the only way to get the piano up." I said. "The door is too small, I already measured." 

"Luckily you live on the first floor and not on the fifth." Answered Saras laughing. He leaned out the window and spat down on to the pavement. 

"Saras don't! I still have to live here you know!" I said, elbowing him. 

He pulled my hair teasingly and spat again. "That was the last time, I promise." 

Saras was my twin brother who still lived at home with our parents and I highly suspected him of being jealous of me for moving out before him, me being a girl and all. 

Nadeem and Madesh also came to the window. "Does anyone have an idea on how to handle this?" asked Madesh, "In two hours Cynthia needs the car to pick up the kids from their swim class." 

Madesh was the only one of us who had children so far. He was also the first of my brothers to have a girlfriend as a teenager. When Cynthia became pregnant when they were both only 19, father threatened to kick Madesh out of the family if he didn't live up to his responsibilities and marry her. Nadeem is 27 and the eldest of our bunch, then came Madesh, then me and Saras, and Daman is the youngest. 

"If we put the piano on the side walk, at least we don't need the car any more." I suggested. 

"Aren't you happy now that father didn't give you that wing after all?" joked Daman while the five of us went down the stairs again. 

I laughed, but I really saw no humour in the situation. Getting the piano onto the truck had already been a hellish task. How were we ever to get the piano up, in one piece and undamaged? "If you have two ladders and strong ropes, maybe we can make some kind of pulley system and hoist it up." Nadeem suggested. 

I shook my head and stared at my open windows while I knocked the rear door of the pick-up down. "That's way too dangerous. Imagine if we drop it." I didn't even dare to think about my precious piano smashing to pieces on the pavement, or worse, if somebody would walk under it at that exact moment. 

With a lot of trouble we eventually got the piano on to the side walk and while Nadeem drove the truck back to Cynthia, the remaining four of us argued for almost 20 minutes about what would be the best and safest way to get the piano upstairs. I started to panic a little, thinking that I would have to leave my piano in the street, when suddenly Rebecca's windows opened. 

"Hey, Aruna! My uncle has a moving firm! Shall I ask him if he can lend you one of those lifts? I think my cousin Igor can operate them!" 

"I'd love that!" I yelled back. "But wait, I'm coming up!" Without minding my brothers, I left them and ran up the stairs to her apartment. 

Rebecca stood in her doorway and waited patiently until I was upstairs and caught my breath again. 

"I really have to get in shape." I panted. I saw a faint smile around her full lips and felt myself flush. Again. Jeez, what was it with me around her! Couldn't my body behave itself? 

"Are you sure about what you said?" I asked. "I don't have any money to pay him." 

"If you had money you'd have arranged a lift ages ago." she said simply. "You can pay by giving all of us a concert. Are you any good?" 

Her smile fully broke through and before I knew what I was doing I hugged her. "Thank you so much!" 

Rebecca shyly broke loose out of our hug. I didn't dare to breathe. For four delicious seconds our eyes locked into each other, before she turned hers down. She took a step back and pulled a mobile phone out of her pants pocket. "Zdravstvuite Igor! Boris tam?" 

"So that's where her accent comes from!" I thought as I walked down the stairs back to my own apartment. "She's Russian!" 

My brothers still stood outside, I could hear them through the window. "Do you want to come up? I have cold coca cola in the fridge if you want!" I called down. I put a bit of music on and some glasses on the coffee table before going back upstairs. 

Rebecca's front door was still open, but I knocked anyway. She stood in front of the window, looking outside, and turned around as soon as she heard me. "Hey, you." She said. 

I walked over and went to stand beside her. "Hey, you." I said back. I was afraid that I would blush again if I looked at her, so I looked outside, like her. 

"Your brothers resemble you." she said. 

"I know." I answered. 

"When did you start playing the piano?" She asked. 

"When I was 7. Do you have any brothers?" 

"No, I had a little sister." 

Dead, missing, or simply out of contact, that word 'had' was not a slip, but I didn't dare to ask what had happened. We kept silent for a while, on the lookout for her cousin and uncle. After what seemed a century she finally said: "There he is." 

A yellow van drove around the corner of our street with a folded ladder on its roof. On the side of the van was the company name, Vertical Movers, their logo and a phone number. She grabbed my hand and pulled me away. "Come on." 

When we made it outside, her cousin had already parked beside the piano. He was busy expanding the ladder, and hardly paid any attention when Rebecca introduced me to him. My brothers helped him to get the piano on to the loading platform of the hydraulic ladder and a mere 15 minutes later the piano finally stood in its' place in my living room. 

As promised, I played a concert for everyone. I put my hands on the keys and felt the familiar tingle course through my fingers. I only hoped that the move didn't force the piano too off-key. I waited three or four counts in which I decided what I was going to play and made myself ready for it and then I took off. 

I played one of Bach's minuets because it was relatively easy and still one of my favourites. An added bonus was that I didn't have to look for sheet music for it, as I knew all of them by heart. When it was done everyone clapped. 

I saw the admiring looks from Rebecca and became red again. I quickly hid in the next piece. When that was also finished my brothers wanted to go home. It was already 5:30. The afternoon had flown past. 

"Hey, Madesh never came back!" I suddenly noticed. 

Nadeem chuckled. "Cynthia probably didn't allow him. That boy is seriously whipped." I laughed along with my other brothers. 

"Do we take the bus then? Do you have any idea where the nearest bus stop is around here?" Asked Daman. 

Rebecca said something in Russian to Igor and he mumbled back, nodding. "Where do you have to go to?" she asked the boys. "Igor just agreed to give you a ride if you want." 

Nadeems face brightened. "Thank you very much but I live a long way from here, on the other side of town. Daman and Saras live in the city centre." 

"That's OK." laughed Igor. "But we have to leave now then." 

I shook Igor's hand, thanked him a final time, gave my brothers each a hug, and before I knew it Rebecca and I were alone again. 

"Your place has changed a lot since I last saw it." was the first thing she said. "That yellow fits here. I like it." 

"I'm glad at least somebody likes it." I said. "My brothers didn't really care." 

Rebecca shrugged. "Men." 

"The kitchen changed a lot more." I said proudly. "Do you want to see?" 

In an attempt to make the kitchen look bigger I had glued the cabinets full of broken mirror pieces and I had sprayed all the handles and the doorknob silver. I also painted the ceiling and the remaining wall surfaces a very faint light blue. "It looks almost like a mirror palace on a fair!" She exclaimed. 

"Do you like it?" I asked. 

"Like it? It's a work of art!" 

I started to blush and she giggled that cute giggle from on the stairs. "Are you blushing again?" 

Of course that made me blush even harder and that in turn made her laugh harder. 

She put her hand on my cheek and kissed me so softly that I hardly felt her lips on mine. For a few seconds I kissed back, unable to think of what I was doing, but then my brain kicked in again and I shrank back. 

"Shouldn't I have done that?" She asked, suddenly insecure. "Did I read you wrong?" I tried to smile and went back to my piano, completely freaked out. 

'For god's sake, she's a woman, you shouldn't be reacting like this. You aren't gay!' my mind screamed at my body. I knew I should answer her, or at least acknowledge that I heard her, but my body didn't listen to my commands any more. My lips wanted more, my hands wanted to touch her, stroke her, feel her, and my body wanted nothing more than to press itself against hers. What was happening to me?

"What is your favourite piece of music?" she asked, seeing my distress. 

I moved a bit to the side so she could sit next to me and straightened my back before touching the keys. "This." I said with a shaky voice before beginning to play. 

I played a few bars of Chopin, then I strung some Mozart onto it, some Tchaikovsky, and from then on I improvised the rest. By the time I stopped my face had regained its normal colour and I felt a lot calmer inside. "Do you want to stay for dinner?" I asked impulsively.

"I would love to, but I can't." she answered. 

We moved over to the couch and I poured us each another drink. We kept chatting and totally lost track of time. We only stopped when the street light outside my window came on. 

"Oh Shit!" shouted Rebecca when she saw the time, "I have to get upstairs! I hope I'm not already too late!" She looked really worried and jumped up from the couch. "I have to go!" She grabbed my shoulders and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. "See you around, OK?" 

Before I could blink she was out the door, stumbling on the stairs in her haste to get home. Her hands and lips still burned on my shoulders and cheek as I turned the TV on. 

Chapter 3

An hour later I walked into the kitchen to make some sandwiches for dinner when I faintly heard someone's argument rising above the noise from the TV. I quickly turned down the volume and listened more, concentrating hard. Who would it be? My right neighbour? My left? Or below me? 

No dammit! That was upstairs! At Rebecca's! 

I turned the TV off and listened even more intently. I tried to hear each word, but it wasn't easy. I could catch a word here and there, a name: Nick, and a whole lot of swearwords and name-calling. 

I turned the TV back on because I felt that it wasn't my business and started to make my sandwiches. I switched from channel to channel, but couldn't concentrate. As the row grew louder and louder, I became more and more concerned. I couldn't go upstairs to check because that would probably only make things worse for her. I really hoped she was OK.

After almost half an hour of name-calling, I suddenly heard smashing noises as if someone was throwing plates, and a loud bang. I jumped up and ran to the door. It couldn't get worse than this anyway. I raced upstairs and slammed my fists against the door. "Rebecca!" 

I felt a big crash into the door and immediately after that it opened and she stormed past me down the stairs into my own apartment. "Aruna! Come here! Quickly!" She screamed in a high-pitched voice. She slammed the door shut right after I entered and burst into tears. A struggling cat escaped her arms and shot under the TV cabinet. 

I was shocked to see her face. Her right eye already started to swell and her bottom lip bled. I directed her to a chair and pushed her down. "Rebecca, what happened to you?" I whispered. I sat in the chair next to her and pulled her against me, rubbing her back until she stopped crying so hard. When she only sobbed without answering, I said: "Wait here, I'll get you some ice and a towel." 

I dived in the freezer for a pack of frozen vegetables while my blood boiled. How could he do that to her? I would kill him! With my bare hands! I grabbed a clean kitchen towel and put one half under the tap before wringing it out. 

"Here." I said softly while I sat down next to her, handing over the frozen peas. "Press that against your eye. I'll try to stop your lip from bleeding with the towel." 

She looked up in my face. "There is blood on your shirt." She said. 

I looked down. "Oh." 

She smiled and grimaced. "Thanks for rescuing me." 

I took hold of her chin and started to gently dab away at the dried blood. Her lip had stopped bleeding by itself, luckily. "I was worried." I answered. "I should have knocked on your door a lot sooner, but I was afraid to make it worse." 

"I'm glad you did." she said. "You gave me a way out." 

"What happened?" I asked a second time. 

Suddenly we heard a loud banging against my door. "Becca! Don't you dare think you are safe now! I will find you when you come out! I'll be waiting right here!" Rebecca winced and I stared at the door, stunned. He had a lot of guts! 

"Go away dumb-ass!" I shouted. "Unless you want to meet the police!" 

"Did you really call the police?" Rebecca squeaked. 

"No, but I can if you want me to. I just said that so he would go away." 

She sighed with relief. "Oh, good. Please don't." 

"Bitch!" we heard through the door before he stomped up the stairs again. 

"What did you do to make him this angry?" 

Rebecca stared at the floor. "I tried to break up with her." 

"That monster above us is a woman?" I asked incredulously. 

Then it dawned on me. "And you were in a relationship and you still kissed me?" 

She quickly looked up at me. "Sorry. Please don't be mad at me too." 

"I'm not mad." 

I saw the relief in her one eye that wasn't covered with frozen peas and she continued. "I don't know what it is...when I'm around you, I just,...you're gorgeous, you know that, right? You..."

"Did you already eat?" I interrupted her. She shook her head and grimaced as if she had a big headache, probably a small concussion. "Do you want some soup?" She nodded and I stood up to make some. 

I tried not to act like it, but my mind was racing again. Whatever it was that I was feeling for her, she felt the same way! And she was gay! She was so girlie, not at all what I pictured a lesbian would be like. She wore high heels for god's sake! 


Aruna and Rebecca Pt. 01



I put on a kettle of water and waited in the kitchen for it to boil. Oh god, if I had a crush on her, did that mean I was one too? A lesbian? Or maybe a bisexual? The kettle started to whistle and I took it off the fire. I poured the water in a bowl, on top of instant soup powder and took the butter from the fridge. 

Maybe I was over-analysing it. She was just a friend, just my neighbour, and my body was just acting weird. I was just imagining these feelings, I hardly knew her. A few hours ago, before that kiss, everything was fine. Right?

I carried the soup to the table and put it in front of her. "I hope you like tomato soup. I still have to meet the first person who doesn't like it. Hold on, let me get a spoon." I turned around again and also took the bread and a knife for the butter. After I gave it to her she started to eat very, very carefully. 

I took a pillow out of my bedroom and unpacked my winter down. "What are you doing?" She asked.

"I'm making you a bed on the couch. I'm not letting you go back home while she's still there." 

Rebecca shuddered and dunked a piece of bread in her soup. "I don't want to go back to her. Tomorrow I'm changing my locks. Nicky and I are so over." As if the monster upstairs wanted us to be sure she was still there, she began smashing things on the floor. "I hope I have some plates and cups left by tomorrow." Rebecca said, looking up. "Sorry to disturb your Sunday evening like this." 

I came to sit with her again. "Don't say that." I said while my hand rested on her shoulder. "That's what friends are for. Besides, aren't good neighbours supposed to take care of each other a bit?" 

I took my hand back and suddenly I didn't know what to say to her any more. 

"Could we watch some TV before going to sleep?" she asked. "I need to take my mind off it." 

"Of course." I stood up and we plopped down on the sofa. 

"What's your cat's name?" I asked as two green eyes shone out from under the TV like two tiny flash lights. 

"Rain." She answered as we flipped through channels. "I know it's a corny name, but it has a story." 

I tried to lure the cat out of his hidey-hole, but all he did was stare at me with angry green eyes. 

"Knowing Rain, he will probably only come out for food, in a few hours." She chuckled at my feeble attempts to get him interested in a shoelace. "I rescued him from the street and he's still skittish of most people. It took me almost two weeks before I could pet him, and even longer before he would sit on my lap."

I smiled and gave up trying to get the cat to play with me. "Who named him Rain?" 

"I did." She answered while managing to lose a piece of bread in her soup. She drank the last bit and put her empty cup on the coffee table in front of us. "When I found him it was raining very hard outside. It was a Sunday morning and I went out to get some bread and croissants. I was rushing because I didn't want to get too wet or cold, but on my way back I heard a very pathetic meowing. So I went looking for the sound and there he was, behind a trash can, almost fully wrapped in a plastic bag. Now he is white, but then he was grey from the dirt and his fur was all wet. I picked him up and brought him home to give him food and get him dry and clean. I was planning to take him to a shelter afterwards, but by the time I was finished he'd conquered the couch and me. So I let him stay." 

She put the last bit of bread in her mouth and swallowed. I noticed her neck was long and narrow and ended in two graceful collarbones. "He's very sweet, but he takes a long time to get used to people, and sometimes he doesn't at all. Nick could never come near him." I looked up at the ceiling and sincerely concurred with the cat. I would not let her get near me either, with that aggressive temper. 

"She wasn't always like this you know." She said, as if she could read my thoughts. "In the beginning she was great. Sweet to me, nice to others, smart, creative, beautiful. She was everything I looked for. But then she started to become jealous, and it became worse and worse. I knew I had to let her go from the first time she hit me, but she seemed to regret that so much that I forgave her."

She was getting upset again and I could see she was fighting her tears. I kept my mouth shut, realizing that she had to tell this to somebody, and if it wasn't me, it had to be somebody else. 

"But after that first time something was off between us." she continued. "The trust was gone and that made her all the more jealous. It changed her, and after a while I couldn't recognize anything from the Nicky she was at the beginning of our relationship. I tried to end it in a decent way, but..." 

She lost the battle against the tears and cried in big sobs. She didn't need to tell the rest of the story. Her black eye, the terrified cat and the still smashing noises from upstairs already did that. I lay my arm around her shoulders. I wanted to say that it was all going to be al right, but I could not guarantee it so I said nothing. 

We had already been sitting in silence for a long time when the cat sneaked warily out of his shelter. He came closer and eventually jumped on Rebecca's lap, where he nestled himself against her stomach and started to purr loudly, almost commanding to be stroked. She smiled and complied. "Crazy cat." she mumbled. 

I pulled my arm back and let the cat sniff my hand. "Do you want some tea?" 

Rebecca looked up into my face and nodded. Her face was all red and puffy, her hair was a big tangle, and her one eye was getting bluer by the minute, but I felt a tingle in my stomach. Or was it something else and my body was playing cruel tricks on my mind again? 

After the tea it was already 12 o'clock and I had work the following day, so I went to bed leaving Rebecca with the extra down and a pillow to sleep on the couch. 

As I closed my bedroom door and started to undress I wondered what she would wear to sleep tonight. I had seen her crawl under the blankets with all her clothes on, but she didn't seem the type to sleep with her clothes on to me. Maybe she just wanted to have some privacy to shed them. 

I pictured how her legs would look naked and felt the tingle in my lower abdomen again. I had to stop this. This wasn't funny any more. She was taking shelter here for god's sake, I could not think like that about her again. It wasn't decent. I would not want that if I were in her place, or would I? I pictured her dreaming about me and that aroused me even more. I sighed. "Betrayer!" I mumbled to my body. 

Chapter 4

When I woke up late the following morning because I forgot to set my alarm the previous night I could have shot myself. My watch said it was already 9:45! Frank would kill me! I quickly dressed and hurried to the bathroom. Since I was already far too late I really didn't have to hurry as my boss was probably already mad at me, but I didn't want to test him. I put some conditioner in my hair, pulled the brush through, washed my face, put a bit of make-up on and cleaned my teeth. Breakfast would have to wait until lunch, there was no time now. 

I rushed to the living room to get my handbag, jacket and keys to leave and then I saw Rebecca. My heart leaped. How could I have forgotten her? She was still asleep on the couch and her hair lay like a big orange fan around her head. She had pulled the blankets up to her chin and her feet thrust out on the other end. I smiled at the sight of her red polished toenails. 

"Rebecca?" I asked softly as I kneeled at her head. "Please wake up? I have to go."

She opened her healthy eye. "Good morning." she said with a hoarse voice. "What time is it?" 

"Almost ten." I answered with a guilty look on my face. "I'm so sorry, I overslept. I hope you won't get into trouble at your work over this." 

"Almost ten!" She shot up and grimaced. She brought her hands to her head and tried to contain her headache. "I guess it's not so bad. I can't go to work like this anyway. My head feels like I have the biggest hangover ever." 

"I don't know if Nicky is still upstairs, but you can stay here as long as you want. I'll be back around 5, but I have to go now otherwise my boss will kill me." 

Rebecca sank back into the couch. "OK. See you tonight." 

I stood up and grabbed my things. When I walked to my bicycle to unlock it, I saw her looking down at me from behind my window. I waved before I left and she waved back. 

I didn't really have my mind on the traffic when I left. I cycled down the streets on automatic pilot and despite the fact that it was already after ten and the rush hour should have been over, it was still pretty busy. I zigzagged between the cars with my mind at home, with her. 

Would she go back to her own apartment soon or would she still be there tonight? Would Nicky be gone when she went home? I hoped so. She didn't need another domestic argument. Hopefully she would go to a doctor, even if it was only to get X-rays. Her face looked very swollen and blue. What if that bitch had broken Rebecca's cheekbone or something? 

I was just picturing Rebecca with a huge cast on her head when a fat BMW behind me honked loudly. I turned around, seriously annoyed. "I have every right to use this road too, you know!" 

When I turned my head back the light had changed to green and I rode on. That's when a beige car suddenly came out of nowhere and almost collided with me. 

I ringed my bicycle bell furiously and shouted every curse and swearword I knew to the car and its driver. Only when my heart stopped beating so hard did I saw who the driver was: my boss, Frank. 

With a face like a baboon's butt I cycled the last two blocks before I hastily chained my bike to the lamppost in front of the salon. 

As soon as I opened the door I was greeted with laughter. Frank stood in the middle of a little circle of my colleagues and apparently just finished telling them what had happened and what words I used in my anger. I looked at him with lightning in my eyes, ready to strike and walked sulking to my workstation by the window at the back. There I sat down and browsed through my agenda. Luckily I didn't miss any of my regulars by turning up so late. Lilly had worked both our shifts at the same time and I was glad to take over my share of the work. 

She turned around and immediately got my first client for the day out of her cage. She was a light grey poodle called Toto who I took straight away to the bath area. The check-in board on the computer said that her owner would pick Toto up in 40 minutes, so I had to work quickly. 

I put Toto in the tub and clicked her leash in the slot so she would not escape. I turned on the hot water tab and she lapped up a bit of the water that flowed to the drain. "Aww, were you thirsty honey?" I said to the dog while I used the shower head to spray her all wet. "After I'm finished I'll give you some fresh cool water and a bit of food, OK?" The dog barked once as if to show she understood the deal and a few seconds later Lilly joined me with a big cockier spaniel in the tub next to Toto's. 

She started washing him and raised an eyebrow at me. Lilly had been my best friend since elementary school and I knew what she wanted. I shrugged and told her everything. About the argument I heard, Rebecca who had taken shelter in my apartment, about the forgotten alarm clock, the crazy traffic, and that Frank clearly ignored a red light and so I was not to blame. 

I didn't tell her about the kiss or how I felt when I thought of Rebecca, but I knew Lilly would know there was something more. Lilly and I were so close we could almost read each other's minds. I would tell her when we were more private. The salon was not that big and my other colleagues were listening in. 

Frank protested loudly about the red light and I saw Suzy and Nina smile behind their counters. 

I grumblingly rubbed Toto dry and took her back to my own workstation for the rest of her grooming. 

I honestly admit: when I drove home that evening I really hoped Rebecca would still be there. 

It would not have been practical at all, what with me smelling like wet dog and still needing to shop for dinner, but I guess hopes or wishes aren't rational or practical sometimes. 

When I parked my bicycle I immediately saw that my lights were off and hers were on. Half relieved and half disappointed I turned my key in the lock. The blankets she used lay neatly folded on one corner of the couch and there was a note on top. It was an invitation to come have dinner with her that evening, written in a beautiful curly handwriting. Yes! I would still see her tonight! 

I dropped my bag on the floor and undressed myself on the spot. I went to the bathroom and jumped in the shower. The least I could do was turning up clean. What should I wear? I pulled the hair-band out of my black locks. And what should I do with my hair? I could put it in a pony tail as I always did, or let it hang loose, but neither was very festive. Maybe I could use that gold hairpin Nadeem had given me for my birthday last year to raise it. 

As I jumped out of the shower I still pondered what I was going to wear. By the time I was ready to go to Rebecca it was already 7 o'clock. In the end I went for one of my work jeans with my favourite T-shirt, to remind myself that this was absolutely no date. I did put my hair up though. 

I knocked nervously on her door and she let me in immediately. After a hasty hello she quickly went back to the kitchen and I walked after her into the living room. 

Her hair was in a big tail on top of her head and swiped happily back and forth when she moved. In this light it was almost brown instead of the carrot red it was when I first saw her. She also wore a light blue dress that was amazing on her. It snuggled her boobs and ass neatly and I had serious trouble keeping my eyes off her. Suddenly I felt really under-dressed in my plain jeans and shirt. 

The cosy living room was pleasantly warm and she already set the table. Some nice music that I didn't recognize played from her stereo. "Please take a seat." I heard her voice from the kitchen. "It's almost done." I wondered what we were going to eat. It smelled great, but it wasn't something I recognised. 

She came in with a big cook pot and placed it on the cork mat on the table. "I made stew. I hope you like it. It's a classic in our family." She went back to the kitchen and pulled a big round bread out the oven. She placed the bread next to the cook pot and lifted the lid before she sat down. 

I poured us each a glass of wine from the bottle on the table while she scooped some stew on our plates. I saw pieces of meat and a whole lot of vegetables floating around in a watery brown sauce and it didn't look appetizing at all, but when I carefully put a spoon in my mouth I had to adjust my opinion. "This is delicious!" I said surprised. 

Rebecca laughed at the expression on my face and tore a piece of the bread. "Here, with bread it's even better." I took it from her and bit off a piece. For a while we both ate in silence, completely focused on our plates and the food we were eating. 

"Was your boss very angry this morning?" she asked when we were almost finished. 

I looked up, swallowed, and grew red again. "Um, no. He almost ran me over with his car on the street and when I finally arrived at work he had told everyone and they all laughed at me." 

"Then he was late too." She said. 

"He's the boss, he can come and go whenever he pleases." I answered smiling. 

"Is there nobody above him?" she asked. 

I shook my head. "It's his dog salon. He inherited it from his parents." 

She abruptly looked up from her plate and stared at me. "You work in a dog salon?" She asked surprised. 

I shrugged. "What's so special about that?" 

This time she was the one to get red cheeks. "Nothing." I smiled and finished my meal. "I thought you were a concert pianist." She said softly. She stood up and got the dessert from the kitchen: a big chocolate cake which made my mouth water. 

My smile disappeared at the thought. "I wish. If my family had money I would have gone to the music conservatory, but we hadn't. Piano is just a hobby." 

She cut two royal pieces of the cake and gave me one. "You play very well for a hobby. Couldn't you get a scholarship or something?" 

"No, my family isn't that poor either. I started saving, but I gave up a few months ago. There always seemed to be other unexpected expenditures." I didn't know why I was so open to her, but I didn't feel a shred of unease from it. The giving up of my dream was something I didn't dare tell anyone yet, not even Lilly. 

"But you won't stop playing, right?" she cried out. "If I could make music like that I think I would play every chance I got!" 

I brought the first bite of the cake to my mouth and was temporarily distracted from answering her. 

"If I was able to cook like this I think I would weigh 800 pounds." I answered after a while.

"I guess I gave up my dream too." Rebecca sighed. "I wanted to become a chef when I was little. I even had a place in my father's kitchens." I finished my cake and leaned back comfortably. I knew how hard it was to give up your dream, so I didn't ask further. 

"I 'm kinda glad you wanted to come over for dinner." Rebecca said with a small voice. "I was a bit afraid you wouldn't want to see me again after all that drama yesterday." 

"Absolutely not!" I cried out, a bit too enthusiastically. I abruptly held my tongue and flushed again. "I...I mean,... I hate to eat alone, and I really suck at cooking." I stammered. "And my apartment is always so silent." I added almost whispering. That last sentence made me embarrass myself even more and I gazed down to avoid seeing the look on her face. 

Rebecca started clearing the dishes and I hastily stood up to help her, almost knocking her new plates of the table. My heartbeat raced like a cheetah in my ears. Why was I such a klutz all of a sudden? She brushed a warm finger along my cheek and smiled. "Tell you what, if you teach me how to play piano, I'll teach you to cook." 

I managed to calm down a bit again. "OK." 

We put the dirty dishes in the kitchen, the small room forcing us stand very close to each other for a while. Neither of us breathed and our eyes locked into each other's again like when we were moving my piano. I wanted to kiss her again so badly, but I didn't. 

"How many times a week?" she asked eventually. 

I couldn't think straight while looking at her like this, so I looked away. "One or two times a week?" I suggested. 

I heard her take a deep breath and taking a step backwards, out of the kitchen and into the living room. "OK, you come here two nights a week to cook together, and in exchange I come to you two nights a week to play the piano together." That was a lot more than I originally had in mind, but I nodded anyway. Seeing her more could only be a good thing. 

"Do you want to come with me to the animal shelter this weekend?" I asked without thinking. "I'm going to choose a cat." 

"Yes of course!" she exclaimed. Her own cat Rain jumped on the table and began to lick a spilled puddle of the stew. Rebecca turned around and chased him off.

Chapter 5

On Wednesday Rebecca visited me for her first piano lessons. I had just come out of the shower after work when I heard the doorbell. I quickly pulled on a dressing gown and let her in. 

As she came in I walked back to the bathroom. 

"You can have something to drink if you want and pour something for me too! It's in the fridge!" I called out from behind the closed door. "I'll be ready in a sec!" I heard her walking to the kitchen and blow-dried my hair as fast as I could. After that I put some lotion in, got dressed and hurried back to the living room. 




Aruna and Rebecca Pt. 01



I already got my double piano-stool out of storage and put an easy book on the music stand. I didn't know what Rebecca already knew about music, or even if she could read notes or not, so I had fished my earliest piano book out of my old schoolbooks pile. The thing was pretty worn out, but it did have everything in it for beginners. 

I found my hairbrush and sat down on the couch, next to Rebecca who placed two glasses of orange juice on the coffee table. I separated a lock from the carpet that was supposed to be my hair and painfully pulled the brush through. "I know it looks bad, but this will not take long, I promise. If you want you can look at the book in the meantime. It's on the stand. Can you already read music?" 

She shook her head. "No. If we played music at school I always had to play the triangle because everyone thought I was so unmusical." 

She nodded at the hairbrush in my hand. "Can I try it? It'll probably go easier, since you can't see the back." She didn't wait for an answer but took the thing out of my hand and carefully started to brush my hair. Sometimes I felt a little tug, but she was so gentle that it didn't hurt at all. Occasionally I felt her stroking my hair and I was just beginning to doubt if it was getting a bit too intimate to my liking when she returned the brush to me. "Here. All finished." 

I turned to face her again and thanked her. She smiled and stroked my hair a last time. "It's much softer than I imagined." 

"Shall we start the lessons?" I asked with a shaky voice. She nodded and gulped her orange juice down in one go. I went over to the piano stool and patted my hand on the spot beside me. 

We were so close our thighs touched and my heartbeat went for the 100 meter sprint again. I stretched my hands out on the keys and felt the peace returning. So it even worked if she was so close to me. What a relief. 

Rebecca looked at my hands and copied me. She had very long fingers and on one of the fingers of her right hand she wore a very fine silver ring with a little rose on it. Even her hands were beautiful. I started to wonder if there would be any part of her I didn't like. 

She cleared her throat and I woke up from my thoughts. "Huh? Oh, sorry." With red cheeks I instructed my hands to go to the book and I opened it on the first page. Rebecca grinned that amazing grin at me. 

The first few pages were mainly about good posture, but to teach her that I had to touch her and I didn't dare do that for the time being, so I kept flipping the pages until the first piece of music. 

It was really strange to teach and not to be taught instead. The memories of my own first lessons still lay fresh in my mind, even though it was years ago. 

The first piece was an ordinary scale, and I showed her where the C was and explained the concept of the groups of white and black keys and how to locate the different notes. I did a scale and demonstrated how she should move her fingers. After that I taught her the basics of reading sheet music.

I tried to touch her as little as possible, but it seemed Rebecca was determined on destroying my feeble attempts at self control. "Are my fingers right like this?" She asked innocently but with a hint of that grin on her face, "And is my posture OK? I saw that those first pages were about posture, but you went over those so quickly I didn't have the chance to get a good look at it. I couldn't really follow it." 

I moved a little away from her and looked at her critically. OK, maybe I needed to get over not daring to touch her, because otherwise she would learn the wrong things. She sat relaxed, but her back was the shape of a half moon and the stool was obviously a little too low for her. 

I gently grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back straight. "You have to try to sit with a straight back." I said in a very soft voice. "Your fingers are good, but the angle of you arms against the floor is wrong. They are supposed to be parallel, but yours make a much sharper turn." I turned the knob at the side of the stool, slowly elevating us. She had her feet over each other and I tapped her knee. "Both your feet have to be on the ground." 

She did what I asked while I admired her legs and feet. She wore another dress that ended just above her knees and her legs looked super soft. I had to restrain myself from stroking them. "That's good." I mumbled. I sat down next to her again and put my hands back on the keyboard. "Now we can play again." I said while my hands performed a little dance on the keys. I calmed a bit again. 

"How did you do that?" She asked immediately. 

I laughed. "I think we should stick to the book in the beginning. If you go too quickly you may learn the wrong things and it is much harder to unlearn things than to learn them." 

I turned the page. "We begin with the right hand." I said while I demonstrated the next piece. I took her hand and guided it to the keys. "You begin with this note." I whispered while I pushed her finger against the cold ivory. I played the whole song through her hand and after it ended we both giggled.

Our heads were really close together now and I held my breath a bit too loudly. She bowed her head even closer to mine and I followed her gaze going to my lips. I stared into her eyes and felt her mouth make contact with mine. Soft, bouncy, wet. She sucked on my upper lip and I breathed her breath into my lungs. She tasted a bit like the orange juice she drank earlier and I couldn't help but kiss her back. My left hand buried itself in her hair and my right hand stroked her back while we lost ourselves in each other. 

By now I knew what was happening to me. I knew it all too well. I was falling for her, fast and hard. Damn, why? She's a woman! I reminded myself. But my body and part of my mind didn't care any more and relished what she was doing to me. Fuck my parents and other people who would think this was wrong. It felt way too good to be wrong. How could something like this ever be a sin?

I felt her warm hand go under my shirt and took a sharp breath when she touched my bra and gave my left breast a gentle squeeze. "Too fast?" she asked while she paused. I shook my head and planted dozens of kisses on her neck. She stood up, pulling me up with her. 

We stumbled a bit and somehow we fell on the couch, landing on top of each other in a messy pile of intertwined human. Now that we had started, neither of us could stop. I tore my t-shirt of my body and threw it heedlessly behind me across the room. In the meantime, Rebecca struggled out of her dress. 

She didn't wear a bra and her breasts were fully exposed. Her nipples were almost as pink as her lips. I put my hands around them and felt them harden under my touch. Her breasts fit neatly in the cups of my hands and she moaned softly when I stroked one of my fingers over her right nipple. 

My own nipples also stood erect and brushed uncomfortably against the lace border of my bra. Rebecca reached her hands behind my back and snapped my bra open in one fluid motion. Soon it flew after my t-shirt. She looked me in the eyes and then she placed two soft kisses on both sides of my breast next to my left nipple before she sucked it in and swirled her tongue around it. I gasped loudly. 

Now she began massaging both my stomach and sides at the same time and I closed my eyes. Completely distracted, my hands fell limp next to me and stopped doing anything. Rebecca grinned and turned us around so she was on top of me. The air cooled my wet nipple and gave me goose-bumps. I opened my eyes and saw how she licked her lips and moved south. 

I breathed hard when she pressed a first squelchy kiss just above my underpants. Her warm breath on my underbelly drove me completely nuts. For a second she looked up to my face, maybe to check how I would react, and then she unbuttoned my pants. I helped her kick down my socks and squirmed out of my pants. As it fell in a crumpled heap to the floor at the other end of the couch, she hooked her thumbs in the sides of my underpants. For a split second I felt a slight panic rising in me. What if she didn't like me 'there'?

My panties passed my ankles and her red curls swiped over my feet. I giggled and pulled my feet away. Rebecca grabbed one of them and stroked her hair over it again, deliberately this time. "What a nice victim." she giggled while I twisted to get away from the tickling. She brought my foot to her face and kissed the inside of my foot which only tickled me more and then let it go. Her hands roamed over my lower legs now and her facial expression changed from teasing to serious again. 

I began to feel a chill, naked as I was, but her hands were like two little stoves slowly creeping higher and higher up my legs. She kissed both my knees and gently spread them further apart. I didn't dare move out of fear that she would quit what she was doing. My whole body quivered in anticipation. 

She looked up at me again and smiled when she saw the effect she had on me. She moved her hands from my thighs to my ass and I held my breath. I knew what she was about to do, but her warm lips on my private ones still came as a shock to me. 

"Oh, this is only the beginning, baby." she whispered. "You wait and see." 

She stuck out her tongue and gave me her first lick. I thought I would die of pleasure and groaned. 

She made a point of her tongue and started to move in small circles, ever closer and closer to my clitoris. When she arrived she kissed it softly and as she sucked it in I felt all the muscles in my body tighten in unison. She put more pressure on her licks and sucked harder and harder and made me come fast, loud and screaming. 

That didn't make her stop though. As I desperately tried to regain my breath, her hands moved from their place under my ass and stopped at the insides of my thighs, where they started stroking and massaging and very slowly pulling me open even more. A finger traced the outlines of my inner lips and even before I had recovered from my first orgasm, she made me hot for the next. 

Her fingers felt totally different to her tongue. Harder and also a bit rougher, but in a nice way. 

She pressed a finger against my entrance and I started to panic again. Should I tell her that I was still a virgin? But then she would probably stop, and that was the last thing I wanted to happen. On the other hand I was also a bit scared of the pain. 

I was just about to tell her when I felt her fingertip move inside me. Without knowing she was taking my virginity she pushed her finger all the way in and started moving in and out very, very slowly. It was a bit painful in the beginning, but absolutely great once I relaxed. 

I started to moan softly and after a while she added a second finger. Her face was now away from my vagina and she let her eyes glide over my entire body while she slowly fucked me. She came up and took my nipple in her mouth again. The combination of the two sensations was more than enough to bring me to orgasm for the second time but I kept myself from it. I was savouring the build-up too much to let myself come so soon. 

I closed my eyes and concentrated completely on my feelings. Rebecca stopped sucking my breast and brought her face up to mine. "Aruna, open your eyes baby." she whispered in my ear. I did what she asked and stared straight into her loving green eyes. "I want to see you when you come." she whispered. I smiled and gave her a passionate French kiss.

Suddenly she started fucking me faster and my breathing started to become ragged again. She roughly rubbed the fingers of her free hand over my clitoris. "Come for me baby." she whispered while she studied the expression on my face and I kept staring into her eyes. 

Her fingers glided in and out of me easier and easier and so she added a third finger. I felt deliciously full and clamped my muscles against her fingers, harder and harder. "Oh god, I'm coming!" I squeaked while I underwent the deepest orgasm that I'd ever felt. Rebecca grinned in triumph and enthusiastically kissed my entire head. 

When my orgasm ebbed away she removed her fingers out of me and put them in her mouth. "You're hot as hell when you come." she said. "And absolutely gorgeous too." I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her even closer to me. She collapsed on top of me and our bodies stuck together, breast against breast, stomach against stomach, legs in between each other's. 

I buried my face in her red curls and breathed in her scent as hard as I could. For a first time this had been wonderful and I wanted to engrave the experience in my memory. "Rebecca?" I whispered in her ear. "Shall I tell you a little secret?" 

She sat up and looked at me. "Well?" 

"This was my first time." 

She laughed softly. "I already knew that honey. I knew this whole lesbian thing was new for you from the moment I saw your face when you found out Nick is a woman and I'm a lesbian."

I shook my head. "No, that's not what I meant. I was still a virgin. Nobody ever went in before." 

Her eyes grew big as saucers. "Why didn't you tell me! I would have been more careful! Or I would have stopped!" 

I grinned. "Exactly, and I didn't want that." 

She softly kissed the tip of my nose. "I feel honoured." 

*

To all those who are still with me: 

thank you for reading on until the end of part 1

there is of course a part 2 in the making

and useful criticism is always welcome :) 



Aruna and Rebecca Pt. 02



This is an edited version. Tall_poppy was kind enough to offer her help with spelling and grammar. :) Thank you Poppy! 

To all those who are about to read this and haven't already read part 1: stories are always better if you start at the beginning. ;)Hint hint.

*

The following day I walked around on cloud 9. I drove to work whistling and entered the dog salon with a big smile on my face. 

Thursdays were always my turn to man the desk. That meant taking the phone, checking the stock on the computer and ordering new stock if we were low on something and of course also doing the check-ins. Normally I hate this part of my job, seeing as how I am far better handling the pets than their rich and mostly snobby owners, but that day nothing seemed to bother me. Not even when the notorious Mrs Binoculars walked in with her three doggies Max, Rex and Lia in tow. 

As usual she had numerous comments on how she wanted her dogs to look, and a ton of criticism about how bad their haircut had been the last time. I put all the information in her file and stubbornly kept smiling the whole time. I put Rex, Max and Lia on Frank's list for the day, and took over their leads. 

"You can pick your dogs up from 12 o clock, ma'am. The boss will take care of them personally." 

What was Rebecca doing now? She would be going back to work today for the first time since the fight with Nicky in one of the two tea-houses at the park.

Mrs Binoculars curled her mouth in a sour smirk. "Until noon then." At the door she waved her wrinkled index finger through the air in front of her face. "Don't make me have to look for another hairdresser for my babies!" 

I nodded and still kept smiling. "Of course ma'am. Have a nice morning Ma'am." After that she stuck her chin in the air and stepped outside. I opened the desk to take the dogs to the back and hummed out loud while I put the dogs in one big cage together.  

"What's going on with you?" Frank asked. 

I looked up. "Can't I be happy?" 

He laughed. "Of course you can! I was only wondering what made you so happy today. Did something happen? Did you change your opinion about the desk work?"

I saw Lilly shaking her head on the other side of the room. "Can't you see?"

"See what?" Frank asked while he raised one eyebrow. "She's not pregnant is she?" 

"Of course not!" I cried out. 

"Don't you recognize it?" asked Lilly. "Dreamy look, eternal smile, being nice to people who aren't nice to you, singing bad songs, ..." 

"She's in love!" shrieked Nina. 

I stood up and brushed the dog hair of my apron. "I am not!"

Nina chuckled as if my red cheeks were proof on their own. "Maybe not, but you have met somebody, be honest." 

I shrugged, feigning disinterest so they would leave the subject alone, hopefully. "No. Maybe. OK, yes." Embarrassed, I felt how even my neck was growing red now. This was not going so well. "It's complicated." I lied. 

My thoughts returned to Rebecca and her green eyes and delicious lips and still bruised face and I realized that actually things between me and her were everything but complicated. The only two things that could possibly be a problem for us in the future were Nicky and the fact that we were both female and Nicky was already behind us. 

Everyone continued to stare at me and I was happy to retreat back to the check-in desk. A few moments later I heard the soft bells on the door and three clients came in at the same time. From then on I had my hands full for the rest of the morning. 

At lunch, Nina took over from me and Lilly dragged me to her house, which was only two blocks away. I could have known she would not let it go so easily. "Ok. Spill." Is all she said as soon as we had left the salon. 

I felt flustered again and looked at the ground as we walked. I couldn't lie. Not to her. "Remember that story I told you on Monday about my new neighbor?" I asked. She looked at me with a strange expression on her face and I really hoped she would be OK with what I was about to tell her. I couldn't bear to lose her. She was my best and oldest friend. 

"That woman who got beat up by her partner and took shelter in your apartment, right?" 

I nodded and we crossed the street. "I didn't really tell you everything about that." 

She stared at me with an open mouth and laughed out loud. "No way, Aruna! No way!" I fell silent and we walked the remaining distance to her house. 

"So, are you going to tell me the rest or do I have to drag it out of you?" she said while she opened the door and we went inside. 

I shook my head and took my regular place at her table. "Earlier that day we kissed, and yesterday night we had sex." I confessed.

Lilly dropped herself on the chair opposite mine and stared at me with her mouth hanging open. "No way, Aruna! No way!" She repeated herself. 

I blinked a few times and bit my lip. "Yes way." I whispered. 

"Oh my dear lord! What will your family think of this!" She yelled, slapping her hands in front of her mouth. 

"Don't tell them!" I cried. "My father will go berserk!" 

Lilly stood up and grabbed the cheese from the fridge. "You are in so much trouble! Are you seriously in love with her? Is it mutual? How did it happen? How did you meet? Tell me everything from the beginning! Is she hot?" 

I grinned. "Rebecca is definitely hot." I said, thinking about her soft red curls, her elegant hands and the little rose ring. 

We made our sandwiches and started eating them. "We met almost two weeks ago, the day I moved in." I started my story. "She brought me a homemade lasagna to welcome me to the building and I invited her in to eat it with me. It was great and we talked all evening." 

I took a bite out of my sandwich and chewed. "So, what happened next?" Lilly asked with her head in her hands, her elbows on the table and a look on her face like she sometimes had when she was reading one of her many romance novels. 

"When my brothers came to move my piano to my apartment this weekend, we saw her on the stairs. She said she bought soft slippers for her feet, so the sound of the heels of her shoes wouldn't have to bother me again. My brothers and I couldn't get the piano up to my apartment and she arranged a ladder-lift. Her uncle owns a moving firm and apparently her cousin needed some more practice with it, so they were happy to help us for free. Afterwards I gave a little concert and everybody left, except her. I showed her how I transformed my kitchen and then she kissed me."

Lilly finished her sandwich and made another. "What, just like that?" 

I nodded. "It was very soft, so soft that at first I almost didn't realize I was kissing back." I took another bite out of my sandwich. "But then I did and it freaked me out big-time." 

Lilly laughed again. "I can imagine. So what happened next?" 

"Nothing. I played some more piano for her, we talked a bit and then she went home. That night she broke up with her partner and took shelter from the storm with me. The next day I was invited to have dinner at her place and found out she is a great cook, so we decided to trade lessons. She is going to teach me how to cook, and I am going to teach her to play the piano."

"Aaand?" asked Lilly impatiently, while eating her third sandwich. 

"And yesterday she had her first piano lesson." I concluded. "We sat really close on my piano stool and it just... happened. Somehow." 

"Stuff like that doesn't 'just' happen, Aruna." Lilly answered. "Come on, at least tell me the basics." She chuckled. "Seeing how your mood is today, I guess I don't have to ask if you liked it, huh?" 

I bowed my head in embarrassment and took another bite. "No, it was great. Better than great even." When I looked up I saw a strange expression on Lilly's face. "Are you disgusted with me?" I asked in a very small voice. 

"No, of course not silly!" she laughed. "What sort of friend do you think I am?"

"So you are OK with this?" I asked to be absolutely sure. "With the possibility that I might be gay?" 

She stopped laughing and briefly touched my hand with hers. " It doesn't matter what you want to call yourself or not. You will always be my best friend." 

I sighed in relief. "Good." 

"Sooo, how did you start? How did it feel? What did you do?" Lilly asked eagerly. I looked at my watch and started telling her. It was only fair since she told me everything about her first time too. 

While we walked back to work I noticed that my mood had now changed to even better than great. 

Lilly had accepted it so easily. If she was an example of how the other people in my life would react to my news, I had nothing to worry about at all and I would be able to just focus on Rebecca and I and enjoy what was happening between us. Life was good. 

That evening I would have my first cooking lesson and I was distracted all afternoon. What would we be making? What should I wear? Would she be thinking of me now too? I really hoped she didn't regret yesterday because I almost couldn't wait to stare into those green eyes and lose myself in the sight and smell of her again. 

Chapter 7

When I went home after my shift I felt like one big lump of nerves. I tend to fall fast for people, and I had a dark suspicion that Rebecca already meant more to me than what was good for me. What if she didn't see things the same way at all? It was all so new and budding. Ok, she did bring me to two mind-blowing orgasms and I couldn't stop fantasizing about doing it back to her, but what if what we had done had ruined our fledgling friendship? How was I supposed to act towards her now? 

As the wheels of my bike rolled me closer and closer to home I almost started to dread seeing her again. The ideal image of her in my head was way to good to be true. This whole situation could only end up in disappointment and disaster. 

With a thrumming heartbeat I put the key in the lock of my door. There was a pink piece of paper on the floor and I bent to pick it up. I smiled when I unfolded it. It was her pretty handwriting, and she even sprayed a little perfume on it. How sweet. 

It opened with the words 'My dearest Aruna' and I took a deep breath before I read on. 'Yesterday was fantastic, but I understand if you need some time for yourself to process it. If you still want that cooking lesson I am expecting you at around 7 30.' 

Underneath, at the very bottom of the page, stood 'love, R.' My hands were shaking while I put the paper next to my keys on the table. Love. 

My feet took me to the piano and my hands started playing. They didn't follow any sheets or studied melodies. I didn't play with my mind, I played with my heart. Maybe it wasn't so smart to let myself get that vulnerable in such a short period of time, since it was only a few days ago that we first kissed and that she broke up with her ex, but I couldn't help it. My soul sang and that music simply had to come out.

Before I knew it, it was time. I let the melody die out in a fitting closing accord and stood up. The insides of my belly were practicing for the Olympic gymnastics, but I tried to ignore it as best as I could and quickly brushed my hair before I went up. 

She opened the door while my arm was raised. I didn't even have time to knock. For a moment we just stood there, looking at each other. 

Then she slowly stretched out her hand and pulled me in by my sweater. She pushed the door closed behind us and took my hands in hers. Again I noticed how soft they were. "I heard you play and I thought you wouldn't come." She whispered with her gaze aimed towards the ground at our feet. 

I smiled lightly and squeezed her fingers. I felt my cheeks burning for the umpteenth time. "And turn down such an enticing invitation?" I whispered back. She looked up at me and I stepped closer to kiss her. Our hands let go and wrapped around each other. 

"Which composer wrote that piece you played just now?" She asked when we managed to pry loose from each other after a long while. 

"Nobody. It was improvisation." 

"A reaction to me?" She asked cautiously. 

Even more blood went to my face. "To the note, so yes, I guess so." 

A gigantic grin broke out over Rebecca's face. "I'm going to slip more notes under your door." she decided on the spot. 

I stuck my tongue out. "How about some cooking? I'm starving here!" 

We walked hand in hand to the little kitchen and she showed me what she'd already prepared. 

"Because you said that you can't cook anything, or almost nothing, I suggest we make pasta. It's only one step above cooking an egg. Everyone must at least be able to make their own pasta." 

I saw tomatoes, paprika, onions, carrots and a lump of minced meat next to a glass jar of tomato puree and a long packet of light yellow spaghetti noodles. "Tomato sauce from scratch?" I asked shocked. "I'm going to give us both food poisoning!" 

She giggled and let go of my hand. "Of course not. We 'll just do it together, step by step, and everything will be fine." 

She scooped the vegetables into her skirt and took two knives and a big cutting board from the cabinets above the counter. "First we start by chopping everything up, but we need a bit more room for that, so I suggest we move to the dining table." 

She stepped out of the kitchen while I started to clean my hands. By the time I was ready she was almost finished with dicing the tomatoes. I put my cold hands in her neck. "Hey! I thought you would wait for me!" 

She kissed them and I massaged her shoulders a bit. Every now and then she moaned and I just started to fantasize over other ways to get her to make that sound when she grabbed my hands and stopped my movements. "Aruna baby, not that I don't enjoy what you're doing, but if you still want to eat tonight you have to stop that. Now." 

I dropped down silently on the chair next to her. She bent over and briefly kissed me. I could smell her perfume before her mouth made contact with mine. It was nice, the same smell as the invitation. 

After the kiss she put a green pepper in front of me. "Here. Chop away." 

I cut the thing open and removed the inner white parts. "How fine do you want it?" I asked while I watched how her knife shredded the carrots in a blur. "About the size of those carrot pieces?" 

She nodded and grinned, and my belly did another circus trick. I tried my best to concentrate on my pepper. 

By the time I had sliced the pepper into strips she was already done with the carrots and grabbed the onion. She sucked her longs full of air and started chopping. In no time her eyes were red and puffy and she exhaled loudly. She laughed. "I can't stand to cut onions. I read that if you held your breath it should not be so bad with the crying, but I guess it doesn't work for me." My own eyes started to tear up too, just from sitting next to it. 

When we finally finished chopping up the vegetables, she took me to the kitchen and showed me how to fry them in a little olive oil, together with the minced meat. When it was almost done she added the canned tomatoes and the other vegetables. 

I wasn't doing much of the cooking. I merely watched how she did it. She moved about her tiny kitchen with such flair and grace that I couldn't resist openly admiring her. I believe she was talking to me, giving me instructions as to what I should and shouldn't do when making the sauce, but I didn't hear her. Or I did hear, but I didn't really pay attention. God, she was a beauty. 

I wrapped my arms around her and lay my chin on her shoulderblade. She put a hand on my hand on her belly and silently finished making dinner. When she was done she turned around so we faced each other and we simply hugged for a very long time. "It has to simmer for about twenty minutes, and then we put the noodles in the water." she spoke softly. 

She pulled me by the hand to the living room and pushed me towards a chair. She straddled me and moved her head towards me to kiss again. This was not a kiss like the other ones I was used to getting from her. It was fierce, hard, almost desperate. 

I bit her lip and kissed back as hard as I dared. I roamed my hands over her thighs and let them trail under her blouse. Her abs hardened where I touched her. My mouth went to her throat and kissed just below her ear. I bit her earlobe while my hands buried themselves in her gorgeous hair. 

"I've wanted to do this all afternoon." I whispered in her ear. "You have the softest, prettiest hair in the world." 

She giggled. "Oh, so you like my hair huh? Well, I like yours too. It is so straight!" 

"I like yours because it so curly!" I laughed. "Want to trade?" 

My right hand had remained under her blouse while we spoke and now lay calmly around her middle. My thumb started stroking the little piece it could reach without moving my whole hand. 

"There is more I thought about doing this afternoon." I confessed. Luckily she could not see my face, because I could even feel a part of my chest and shoulders burning red. 

"Oh yeah? What then?" she asked with a naughty smile on her lips while she pulled away again to enjoy my facial expression and my obvious embarrassment. 

I could not become more red than I already was. I looked away and fell silent. Shit, why did I say that? Did she really expect me to speak all that aloud? To tell her? 

After a few seconds she grinned wide and released me from my suffering. She stroked the sides of my face and said: "If it's any consolation, I can't keep you out of my thoughts either." My belly did a somersault. She felt the same! 

She took my chin and turned it so she could look me straight in the eyes. "I want you. I want to fuck you, I want to eat you alive, I want to make love to you like no one ever did before." 

"Nobody ever made love to me, before yesterday." I noted. 

She giggled mischievously. "Oh honey, what we did yesterday was merely losing control. After dinner I'll show you what I mean." 

She gave me a last kiss and stood up. My lap felt very empty without her. I made a lunge for her and swung my arms around her, but she only kissed the top of my head. 

My body felt all tingly like just before you are about to step into a hot bath after a long cold day. I had never craved another person so badly before in my life. "What if I can't wait untill after dinner?" I mumbled, because my face was pressed into her belly. 

She giggled loudly and for just an instant I hated her. She was driving me insane, knew it, and was playing me like I played my piano. "We have to eat, honey. You can't make love on an empty stomach." 

I had another opinion about that, but she let me go and walked back to the kitchen to stir the pot and put water to a boil for the noodles. "So, how was your day? What did you do, besides thinking of me?" She asked. 

I stood up and placed myself in the doorway to the kitchen so I could continue to watch what she was doing. "Nothing much. I had check-in duty today. Manning the desk, answering the phones, checking-in the new arrivals, scheduling the agendas. Boring stuff like that." 

I suddenly grinned. "And at lunch I sorta came out to my best friend." 

Her body made a very abrupt turn towards me and I had to catch her from falling. "You what?'' 

"Only to Lilly, my best friend. She noticed something was up and I couldn't lie to her." I saw the expression on Rebecca's face and suddenly I felt scared. "Do you mind? Are you very angry with me? I mean, are you out? I only told Lilly and she wont tell anybody, but... Shit, I shouldn't have done that. I'm so sorry." 

She hugged me tight. "I'm not mad. I'm just shocked babe, don't look so frightened." 

I exhaled and after putting the noodles in the water she took me to the couch.

"I'm shocked because you did it so fast, so spontaneously. It took me ages and when I did my family back home didn't take it well. They went completely ape-shit. My parents screamed and yelled claiming that I had brought unforgivable shame to them. They kicked me out and prevented me from ever seeing my little sister again. Suddenly I was seen as a bad influence on her. 




Aruna and Rebecca Pt. 02



My grandparents on both sides disinherited me and from one day to the next I wasn't welcome at the homes of my aunts and uncles any longer either. Nobody wanted to talk to me, not even my so-called friends. It was in the middle of the winter, well below freezing outside and the only place I could go to was my girlfriend's house, who hadn't told her parents either and was by then even more terrified to do so. After a week of staying with her, her family found out about me because somebody told them, and they also kicked me out. I told Karina to never tell them about her and as far as I know she never did." 

"But how did you end up here, then?" I asked, squeezing her hand. I felt sorry for her, but I was also weirdly proud of her. To have lived through something like that and to come through it relatively unscathed like she had, she had to be a tough one. 

"It was still winter, so I took the train to Moscow and went to a women's shelter there. I lied and told them my family was dead and I ran away from my husband ands. From there I got myself a job gutting fish in a fish factory in the outskirts of Moscow, and after two months I moved to a minuscule apartment. I wrote Karina a letter in which I invited her to come live with me and to escape our hometown, but she wrote back that she was now married and could not go away anymore. It took me almost a year to get over her, and by then I was also through with Moscow. It was time for something new, so I borrowed a dictionary from the library, saved and scraped all my money together, sold what little I had and came here." 

"You learned this language from a dictionary?" I asked, flabbergasted. 

She shook her head. "Hell no. Also from radio, TV, talking to people on the street, and free language lessons on the internet. You can do a lot if you want it hard enough." 

"But how about your uncle then? And your cousin, Igor?" I asked. "Do they know you're gay?"

A light smile broke through. "Yes they know. They are much more open-minded than my family back home. Maybe it's because they've already lived here for so long. Igor has never even been to Russia. They are not real family though, not biological family. I dated Andrei for a while, the little brother of Igor's aunt Anuska. When we broke up I was left with a friend and a big new family." 

She laughed at the puzzled look on my face. "When I came here I thought if I would date men for a while, the lesbian in me would fade and go away. I thought it would be an easier life. I was wrong, of course." 

"Lilly took it much, much better." I said, while I stroked her hand with my thumb the way I had stroked her middle earlier. "I told her about you and what happened between us, and that I didn't really know what I was yet orientation-wise, and she told me that she would always be my best friend, no matter what box I put myself in." 

Rebecca lifted our hands and kissed them. "I already like her." 

"Good, because you'll meet her on Saturday." I said. "She's coming with us to the animal shelter." 

"I'm looking forward to it." She answered while she stood up. "Now let's go see if the food is ready." 

By the time I had set the table she had drained the spaghetti and put the food and a nice wine on the table. We devoured our dinner and before we knew it, it was 'after dinner'. Neither of us spoke while we carried our dirty plates and everything else back to the kitchen. The promise from earlier hung heavy in the air between us. 

Chapter 8

Feeling slightly nervous I returned to the couch. My panties were still wet from previous thoughts that evening and as I felt my excitement building again I started to worry that it would soak through my jeans. 

Rebecca sat down next to me and took both my hands in hers. "Do you still want to do this?" She asked. 

What sort of a question was that? "Of course." I answered. 

"Are you sure?" She asked. 

I kissed her collarbone and pushed her into a lying position. My hands roamed her body and I slowly licked her belly. It tasted a bit like how she smelled. "You will have to come up with much more than horror coming-out stories to put me off you, if that's what you mean." I murmured. 

She smiled and kissed my forehead. "Can you stay over tonight?" 

I grinned back. "Of course." 

We looked into each others eyes and scrambled up at the same time. Rebecca kissed our intertwined hands again. "Let's go to bed." she whispered. 

In her bedroom we sank down on the side of her bed. Her bedroom was almost identical to mine, even her bed was in the same spot. So while I was dreaming about her the last few nights, she lay literally above me. I wondered if she slept on the right or the left side. 

Rebecca stroked my chin and turned my face to her. "Penny for your thoughts?" I started glowing again. She crossed her arms over each other and started grinning. "Now I definitely want to know. Tell me." 

"My bed stands right under yours." I mumbled embarrassed. "And I wondered if you slept on the left or the right side of it." 

"Aha." she answered, obviously not understanding my embarrassment. "Do you want to sleep already then?" 

"No!" I almost yelled. I swallowed the word just in time. 

She grinned even wider and squeezed my hand. "I take that look as a no." 

I smiled again, suddenly bereft of my ability to speak and leant forward to kiss her. I originally meant it as a short kiss, as alternative confirmation because I couldn't seem to speak anymore, but she sucked my lip in her mouth and our tongues met. 

When we were finally able to release each other after almost 20 minutes we were both out of breath from excitement and lack of oxygen. In a mad frenzy we pulled our clothes of. Shoes, socks, sweaters and shirts flew through the air and we fell back on the bed in our attempts to simultaneously free ourselves and each other of pants as fast as possible. 

Before we knew it we were out of breath again and screaming with laughter in nothing but our underwear on the ground beside the bed. 

OK, maybe I could only see her through rose-tinted glasses, but my god she was beautiful. 

Full breasts in a black lace bra, a belly with a six-pack, arms full of cute freckles, muscular shoulders, long legs that ended in wide hips and soft buttocks, and over her whole body skin like a fairy princess. I almost felt barbaric for taking so little time the day before to admire her. 

We climbed back on the bed. "You're amazing." I whispered softly. 

This time it was her turn to get red cheeks which stood out nicely against her red curls. "You too."

I smiled. "It's nice to make you blush for once. Then I don't have to be 'it' all the time." 

My finger stroked her arm from shoulder to hand and back and I felt her warm hand on my belly. Our glances fastened back on each other and the spell between us clicked back in its' place. The rest of the world simply stopped existing. 

While I let my hands touch her wherever I could reach, she softly pushed her head in my neck. She started to plant dozens of little kisses on my shoulders and clasped herself to me. "You drive me crazy." she whispered in my ear. 

By then I was already breathing heavily, so I knew she knew she had the same effect on me. I winked at her and squeezed her butt. "Good. I wouldn't settle for less." 

She pulled herself loose and reached her hands after her back to open her bra. "No. Stop." I whispered. "I want to do it." 

I didn't know why we were whispering to each other, since no-one would have heard us even if we had spoken louder, but it made the atmosphere around us even more heated. 

I started to break into a light sweat and unclasped her bra. The first one that wasn't my own. After a bit of nervous fumbling it sprang loose and I gently pulled the straps off her shoulders. It was a pretty thing, but what they hid was far far more beautiful. I can't deny it: I stared, for a long time. 

"You can touch them if you want." she whispered even softer than before. I slowly stretched out my hand and stroked the side of her left breast with the back of my index finger. She jumped at my touch. 

I wanted to say how stunning she was, how utterly gorgeous, that I never met anyone prettier in my life, but I didn't. Words could only fall short any way. 

I brought my mouth closer and kissed her nipple. First my lips touched her and an electric current burned through me. Then I opened my lips and very gently slid my tongue over it. I felt and heard her gasp, and did it again, smiling this time. That gasp meant I had done something good and I wanted to hear the sound again. She did and that made me smile even wider. 

I pinched her other nipple while I sucked softly on the one in my mouth and now she gave me a soft moan. I was turning myself on with my actions too. My pussy throbbed. She had me so aroused just from touching her that I was sure I wasn't going to last long. 

I switched breasts and worked on the courage to go south on her. My stomach fluttered in anticipation and fear. Her moans started to get a bit louder and I realized with a shock that I was moaning too. 

I put my hands on her butt-cheeks and squeezed them for a second time. That made her gasp again. 

Just as I was about to move my hands to the front, she reached behind me and unclasped my bra. Her hands stroked back and forth over my back. 

I let her breasts go and kissed her mouth instead. She laughed through our kiss and rolled us over. 

Now I was under her, instead of next to her. She pulled my bra off and repeated what I had just done to her, but better. Her tongue was warm and smooth and every time she sucked I felt my panties getting more soaked.

A delicious tingly feeling spread trough me. My blood seemed to boil in my veins. I started to sweat and shake. My body couldn't handle this. I wanted to say stop, warn her that she was going to make me come already, but by then it was already too late. I moaned and moaned and savored every second of it while the room spun around me. 

"What in fuck's name was that!" I laughed after she slowly brought me down from my rush.

"You had an orgasm baby." She whispered in my ear before she bit my earlobe. "The first of many." 

I pulled her even closer to me and tried to regain the courage I had mustered earlier. I kissed her cheek, her chin, her neck, her collarbone, above, on and then below her breasts and only looked up again when I landed at her belly button.

''Oh my god. Am I really doing this?" I thought. "I have no idea what to do!" I kissed the inside of her leg and her left thigh and she shifted so her legs fell a bit more open. Rebecca didn't seem to notice my insecurity because she merely smiled and tousled her hand through my hair. 

It was the first time I could see beyond the little tuft of red hair. She was very pink and very wet. 

I brought my face closer and carefully smelled her. My nose touched her hair by accident and she flinched. I put both my hands on her hips. Her legs opened up a bit further still and now I could see even more of her. 

She looked like the picture I had in my head of myself there, only with subtle differences. She looked so terribly delicate. I wanted to touch her so badly, but barely dared to do it. 

"Don't panic." I whispered, but I don't know for who I meant it more, her or me. Neither of us dared to breathe at that point. 

I moved my hand as slowly as I could and when my index finger touched one of her outer lips her body jerked again. 

"Shh." I uttered, but again I really don't know to who it was meant, myself or her. 

My finger traced the contours of her outer lips and stroked her pubic hair. I almost couldn't believe how soft it was. My mouth was so close and in the end it just happened by itself. Before I knew it I made contact with the tip of my tongue. 

Her taste reminded me vaguely of a thunderstorm at the beach. Salty from the flaring water, a tiny bit sweet from the raindrops, and a last unknown flavor: the most subtle of the three. In the storm that third would be the ozone in the air, but in this case it was the same thing I had tasted earlier on her stomach. A refreshing and familiar element although I couldn't fully put my finger on it. 

Rebecca produced a loud sigh and I hastily pulled back. I didn't hurt her, did I? "Don't stop, you are doing great!" She breathed. 

I smiled and put my tongue back where it was: at the bottom, almost at her ass. I made my tongue flat and started to explore her very slowly, licking up and then down again, careful not to miss any nook or cranny and listened to the sounds she made. 

This was lovely, no better than lovely. Amazing! Wonderful! Divine! Heavenly! I could do this all night! 

When I finally came to her clitoris, she sighed such a deep, sensual moan that I could not resist attempting to let her make that sound over and over again. Again and again I followed her inner lips to where they met, pushing against it. 

I knew I had her close to coming when she started squirming under me and her voice made soft squeaky noises to go with the heavy breathing. I gently sucked her in my mouth and rubbed my tongue from left to right over her. 

That is what did it. The squeaks stopped and in its place she arched her back and her arms fell on the mattress. I saw her feet change into pointy ballet feet. 

Just as she had done to me I tried to bring her back gently. I didn't stop licking immediately, but licked slower and slower instead, until we hardly moved any more. 

When I got up to lie next to her, we stared into each others eyes for a very long time, only stroking each others hair. It felt like we were having a whole conversation. 

After I don't know how long my eyes started to droop. I was starting to fall asleep in her arms, but she wasn't allowing that yet. She kissed the tip of my nose and pulled the blankets over us. Then she disappeared under them. 

All the sleep fog went away in the same instant she drew my underpants over my legs. "Here comes orgasm number 2." I thought as I opened up my legs for her and I felt her hot breath on me. 

I wanted to tell her that she didn't need to, that I already had the night of my life with her, but my mind was paralyzed from the moment she started. She stuck her tongue right into me and used a far more direct approach than I had used with her.

I felt all my warmth going to my vagina. The rest of my body started to show goosebumps and soon I was almost begging her to let me come.

"Patience, love." she said. She lay a hand on my stomach to calm me but it didn't work. Her other hand rubbed my clit while she slid in and out of me with her tongue. 

"How?" I managed to croak out. She giggled against me and it made me shudder in pleasure. 

The hand on my belly disappeared and moved to the insides of my thigh. I started to become short of breath. She was playing me again, but I didn't mind being her piano anymore. When I finally did come, it was with a huge smile of satisfaction on my face.  

She slowed down a bit, but never stopped. Before I realized what she had done she made me come a third time with her hand in me and a fourth time while suckling me softly. By the time I was almost ready for the fifth orgasm I was beginning to see flickers of bright light before me. My body jerked and jerked as I sank away into space. 

We awoke in each others arms the next morning to the sound of Rebecca's alarm clock. It was already 8, so I didn't have much time. We kissed and admired each other while we showered together and did a stumbling striptease in reverse before leaving for work. 

Chapter 9

It was Saturday afternoon before we saw each other again. 

Lilly and I had just come home from the pet store where we bought food, toys, cat litter, a cat toilet, and a fluffy sleeping pillow when she knocked on the door. I looked at my watch: 5 minutes to 2. She was a bit early, but then again she probably heard us come in. We had been a bit loud on the stairs.

"That's her." I said unnecessarily to Lilly. I put down what I had in my hands and took a deep breath. 

Lilly grinned. "I'm very curious." Of course that didn't easy my tense mood one bit. 

I took a second deep breath and opened the door before Lilly would make me even more nervous. This was so important. What if they didn't like each other? My best friend and my, what exactly, girlfriend? They just had to like each other, they had to. 

Rebecca looked past me and saw Lilly standing there, looking back at her. She grinned widely and pulled me to her, to kiss me full on the mouth.

"Rebecca!" I hissed, outraged. "Lilly..." 

"You said you already told her. I'm only testing her reaction." Rebecca whispered in my ear. Her warm breath made my heart beat faster again. I quickly did a step back. 

"Lilly, Rebecca. Rebecca, Lilly." I introduced them. 

I would have given a fortune to be able to read their minds at that moment. What did they think of each other? What was their first impression? Would they tell me the truth about it, even if it turned out to be not so good? What would they think of me that I had chosen both of them? What would Lilly feel about the fact that I liked Rebecca so much and vice versa? I so hoped they wouldn't act jealous towards each other. I loved both of them, but in such totally different ways I could never explain if I had to. 

"Does anyone want something to drink?" I asked with a shaky voice. 

Rebecca grabbed my hand again. "I'd love to, and then I want to see what you bought for the spoiled critter to be." 

Lilly started walking towards the kitchen. "I'll grab the drinks." she announced. "Is juice ok?" 

"Fine by me." I answered in that same shaky voice. I hated that I felt so insecure, but I couldn't help it. These were the two people I cared for the most in the world. 

Lilly disappeared in the kitchen for a little while and Rebecca used the occasion to pull me closer to her and to give me a decent kiss this time. She stroked her fingers through my hair and pushed her nose against the tip of my nose. "I've missed you." she whispered softly. 

I forgot that Lilly was in the kitchen and probably for only a short amount of time. Suddenly it didn't matter anymore either. Me, her, the moment, that's what counted. I lost myself in her again. 

"Me too." I whispered back before I sucked her lip in my mouth. That was a serious understatement, but I wasn't going to tell her that yet. Besides, that missing her whenever we were apart felt so terribly puppy-love-like. I wasn't a melodramatic teenager and never had been either, so I wasn't going to start with that now. 

Our tongues met and I swung my arms around her. We were almost glued together, but I couldn't be close enough to her. She smelled so damn good, and she was so warm and soft, and...

"Ahum." Lilly scraped her throat and Rebbeca and I flew apart. We didn't dare to look her in the face.

Lilly gave us each a glass of orange juice, laughing her ass off the whole time. "Oh wow! I wish I could take a picture of you guys now! You look like red traffic lights! Hahaha!" I looked up from the floor and could not suppress a grin of my own. 

I took Rebecca's hand and led her to the bags of the pet shop. We drank our juice while I showed her our purchases, vaguely aware that Lilly watched and judged us while we interacted with each other. 

"Ready to leave?" I asked as soon as Rebecca had seen everything. 

We left our empty glasses on the table and put our jackets on. Then we went down the stairs and outside. 

The three of us fit easily in Lilly's big station wagon. Rebecca and I sat in the back, while Lilly drove us. Once in a while I saw Lilly looking at us in the rear view mirror. I wondered what she thought.

"That's where I work." I pointed to Rebecca when we got out of the car at the animal shelter, across the street from the dog salon. "And Lilly too of course." 




Aruna and Rebecca Pt. 02



She gently squeezed my hand. "I still can't really see you as a hairdresser for dogs." She smiled at Lilly. "Do you know each other from work?" 

Lilly shook her head. "Oh no, we go back much, much longer than that. We were already best friends in kindergarten. We always sat in the same class in elementary school and did the same courses in high school so it was only natural for us to look for work together too. Finding a job for both of us at the same place wasn't so easy by the way. We were very lucky Frank would take us both. There was only one opening, but he always had a soft spot for Aruna and she wouldn't take the job without me." 

"I can't blame him." Rebecca replied. "Aruna's a real stunner." I couldn't believe she had just said that in front of someone else. "Especially when she blushes like this." She added, grinning. 

I got an even deeper color and Lilly rolled her eyes. "Right... Let's go inside before you guys start to act even more mushy." She stepped forward and big sliding doors opened up for us. 

All three of us got papers to fill in before we got to go where the pets were held. "Do we have to do this too?" Rebecca asked the clerk at the desk. "Only she is here to adopt, we are merely here to help her choose."

The clerk frowned her unabrow. "Nobody passes the red line without giving me a filled-in form first. Those are the rules." 

For a while Rebecca just stood there with her paper in her hands, undecided. Then she folded it in half and turned around, searching for something. "I have to go to the bathroom." she explained. "Go inside when you're finished, I'll find you there." In the meanwhile Lilly had already finished and gave the pen form the desk to me. It had a little chord on it so people wouldn't steal it. 

"Are you sure?" I asked Rebecca. "It's no problem at all to wait for you. We came here together." 

Rebecca shook her head and gave me a quick kiss on the mouth. "No. I''ll find you there." 

My questionnaire was a fair bit longer than that of Lilly and Rebecca because I was the one who came to adopt the cat, but it only took me a minute or three to fill it in. We waited a few minutes more, expecting Rebecca to return from the toilet so we could all go in together anyway, but she didn't come. Eventually we entered on our own after all. 

We walked through a heavy door that came out in a long hallway. On both sides were cages, cages and more cages. Dogs on the left, cats on the right, and once in a few cages other animals in- between, like rabbits, a little pig, a hamster family, two snakes and a parrot. 

The people of the shelter had done their best to make the cages as cozy as possible for the animals, but it was still crazy. How was I ever going to be able to choose? I wanted to take them all out of this horrible situation. They all deserved a good and loving home. 

I took a deep breath and regretted it at once. The air smelled like feces and disinfectant. Suddenly I felt familiar arms slipping around my waist. I turned around. Rebecca, of course. Hand in hand we walked on while Lilly followed a few steps behind us.  

"Do you already know what kind of cat you want?" Rebecca asked while she knelt at the cage of a litter of young kittens of an unknown breed. 

"No clue." I confessed. "I don't think it matters much what color the cat is." 

She smiled up at me. "That's not what I meant." she answered while she stroked the head of the mother cat through the bars. "Young, old, male, female, breed and which one or no breed,... I meant those sort of things." 

I knelt beside her and stuck my own fingers through the bars as well. "I dont want a very old cat because she might get sick and die soon, and no male cat because I read that they pee a lot on stuff to mark their territory. I don't want to break up families either, so these would be out as well. No kittens unless they are alone, or cats who have a litter." 

I saw Lilly rolling her eyes while she petted the dog across the hall. "You big softy. They are used to it. It happens to them all the time. Kittens leave their mother and she forgets about them, just like it happens with dogs and their puppies." 

I stood up and moved to the next cage. "I don't want to take those chances. No kittens. Remember Lola?" 

Lilly sighed. "Lola was already a crazy and depressed dog before she lost her puppies. Besides, her puppies didn't go to good homes, they died." 

In the end I chose a skinny calico. I can't really explain why I chose her, but she came to me when I put my hand through the cage and I instantly knew this was going to be my cat. We clicked. 

A volunteer from the shelter opened the cage for us and carried her through the heavy doors to the desk clerk. She scanned the chip of the cat, helped us put her in the carrier we brought with us, and I paid the bill. 

Lilly dropped us off at the apartment building and I invited her back in, but she drove off with the excuse that she still had to walk her dog. 

Chapter 10

And so Rebecca and I were alone again, the beautiful calico not included. I was glad I could put the basket with the cat in it on the ground when we entered my apartment. My fingers were all red from the handle and I painfully stretched my hand. 

"Now I've met your friends, I think you should meet mine, don't you think?" Rebecca said happily while I was still rubbing my hand. She was already busy putting out food and water and pouring out litter in the litter-box. 

"That was only Lilly, she is not the only friend I've got you know!" I protested softly while I tried to open the little door of the cat's cage. 

I didn't know if I wanted to meet her friends already. After a whole afternoon with Lilly, I was ready for some alone time with her again. The weekend would be over quick enough as it was. 

"Don't you want to meet them?" she asked while she put the top on the litter-box. "I promise they'll like you!" 

"That's not it." I answered softly while the cat gently poked her head out and sniffed around a bit. 

"Then what is it? My friends are just as important as yours!" 

I stared at her. "Of course they are! That isn't what I meant!" 

She crossed her arms in front of her chest. "Yeah, right. But you dont want to meet them." 

"I didn't say that!" I called out. "It's just,..." 

"What? It's just what, Aruna?" 

The cat jumped at our angry voices and retreated to the back of her cage again, but neither of us noticed the cat anymore. 

"Damn you, let me finish my sentence!"I yelled."I meant to say that I don't want to meet them tonight, OK? We just spent almost the whole day with Lilly and tomorrow it's already Sunday! Before we know it the weekend will be over and I am tired and I just want to spend some time alone with you, is that so difficult to understand!" 

Rebecca dropped her arms and her angry body language and closed the three-step gap between us. 

"Sorry." She mumbled softly. "I guess I was a bit over-enthusiastic and when you reacted so cold I made the wrong assumption."

"Cold? Wrong assumption?" I grumbled, still a bit mad. "I didn't react cold, I reacted tired, as I am tired! And you made the wrong assumption alright! What made you think I wouldn't want to meet your friends? Friends are important and you are even more important!"

I knew I was ranting again, but I couldn't stop myself anymore, even though I realized this argument was nonsense and completely pointless. "What did you think, that you're just a fuck for me? A phase? Of course I want to meet your goddamned friends, but not right now, ok?" 

My voice was getting louder and louder and Rebecca put a soft hand on my mouth to stop the words coming out. "Was that an I love you in there? Hidden between those lines?" she asked with a shaky voice. 

I fell silent immediately. Shit, I was going to save that one for a special moment, and when I was a bit less confused about all my feelings for her, when I finally would have had time to think! Why was everything between us going so damn fast?

"Well?" she added. 

"I...I guess so." I whispered. "But,... but I was going to save that one for a special moment." 

She laughed and threw her arms around me, hugging me tight. "My dearest Runy, every moment is special with you!" 

I grinned widely. "Was there an I love you in there too?" 

She kissed my neck. "Absolutely." 

"But we barely know each other." I answered before I gave myself over to her touch again. 

"Isn't that great? We have so much more to discover about each other!" she mumbled between kisses. 

"But how can we love each other this much? I have never felt this intensely so fast for anyone!" I said while my hands grabbed hers. 

She stopped kissing my neck and shoulders. "I think you already had me at 'oh so you're the one with the heels'. "

"But that was our first meeting! I looked terrible! I was just awake and I was a mess!" I protested. 

She laughed again and this time I laughed with her. "Exactly." she answered. 

*

To all those who are still with me: 

-thank you for reading on until the end of part 2

-comments and criticism are always welcome (of course)

-and I am currently working on chapters 11-15.



Aruna and Rebecca Pt. 03



Part 3

(trouble comes to paradise) 

To all those who are about to read this and haven't already read part 1 and 2: stories are always better if you start at the beginning. ;) Hint hint. 

At all the others: welcome back, I've missed you. :) 

Chapter 11 

Eventually I got to meet Rebecca's friends that weekend any way. 

We were showing each other our favorite places in the city and stopped for a drink and a much needed rest for our feet at a local bar near the river. Rebecca said she came here often because the staff was always friendly and the prices were good. 

As we walked in, somebody whistled loudly and came over to punch Rebecca in the shoulder. 

"Whoosh Becca! Is that your new flame? Why didn't you say she was such a stunner!"

I wondered how she knew Rebecca and I were an item. Was it that obvious? 

"Sure you only took me here because of the good prices and service?" I mumbled softly. Rebecca had the decency to look a bit sheepish. 

"Down girl." She said to the punching woman. "Go a bit easy on us, OK Lara?" 

Lara grinned. "OK, OK." 

We followed her to a table in the back by a window overlooking a small garden with a patio for the summer months. There were already four women sitting at it, obviously two couples. While Rebecca sat down and urged me to sit on the only remaining chair, opposite her, Lara took a chair from the table next to us. 

"Everyone, this is Aruna." Rebecca said, grinning widely. "Aruna, meet everyone." 

She winked and pointed with her hand. "Those are Maxine and Mary, and those are Mona and Rose." 

Lara put her chair next to mine and loudly cleared her throat. 

Rebecca rolled her eyes. "And that loud one next to you is Lara." 

Lara put her arm in the air to call a waiter to our table. On her left shoulder she had a tattoo with the words 'Fear is what you pay for adventure' written around a black and white picture of a parachute. 

Maxine saw me looking and said: "Lara is an adrenaline junkie. Don't worry, the rest of us are a bit more normal." 

Rebecca grinned while Lara snorted. "Pff, normal. Normal is boring. At least I try to live on the edge. More people should, it makes you feel alive." 

"Alive?"Maxine asked, "When you took me cliff diving on that date we took, I didn't feel alive. It felt like I would die of fear!" 

"Did you guys date?" Mary asked. "When?" 

"Only once, years ago." Lara answered. "I am so over cliff diving. That's for wusses." 

"What do you do now then, to feel alive?" I asked. 

"Oh, just other things." she answered vaguely, before ordering herself a new drink. 

Rebecca and I also ordered something and the waiter wrote it down on his little notebook. 

Suddenly I felt a foot on my leg. At first I was afraid that it was Lara's, but then Rebecca winked at me and I smiled. I kicked my left shoe off and joined her in my first game of footsie. Her leg was soft and warm and her foot tickled my leg while I tried to tickle hers. It was very hard to concentrate on the conversation above the table with our silent conversation going on under it. 

I was vaguely aware that Mona was saying something, but I didn't realize it was addressed to Rebecca and me until I felt them all stare at us. My cheeks started to burn again and to my delight I saw Rebecca's cheeks going red too. I loved it when that happened. 

"What? Could you repeat the question?" Rebecca asked, while her foot got away from my leg. 

I missed it instantly, but maybe it was for the best. We were in public after all.

"It wasn't a question." Rose told us with an annoyed expression on her face. "We just noticed you guys weren't listening to what we were saying, only staring at each other. So we tried to catch your attention." 

Mona, Mary, Maxine and Lara all chuckled while the waiter put our drinks on the table.

"So, Aruna, where did you meet? Rebecca wouldn't tell us anything about you. She only told us she finally broke up with Nicky and met someone new in the same day." Lara asked. "Someone better?" She added.

"Well I never plan to hit her, if that's what you mean." I answered a bit bluntly. 

I looked at Rebecca again. "You did tell them that, right?" 

She nodded. 

"So why didn't you tell them about me?" 

"You are not out yet, I wanted to protect your privacy. I didn't know how you would feel about it." 

"And Lilly then?" I asked. 

"I haven't seen them since you told Lilly." 

We were interrupted by Rose. "So, are you going to tell us how and where you met or not?" 

Rebecca smiled. "Runy is my new neighbor." she started.

I gently put my foot back on her knee while I listened to her side of our little story. I loved it when she called me Runy. She was the only one who did and it made me feel very special. 

"So, wait." Lara interrupted when Rebecca nearly finished. "You have this kind of staring in each others eyes and loosing the world in it bond, and never even dated?" 

Rebecca and I locked eyes again and smiled. "I guess not. Not official anyway." I said. 

"That's not fair! I date plenty in the hope of finding that, and you just stumble on it!" 

"What do you mean by not official?" asked Maxine, ignoring Lara. 

"I invited Rebecca to go to the animal shelter with me yesterday, because I wanted her help with choosing a cat, but my best friend Lilly was also with us." I explained.

"That's not a date." Lara agreed.

"What kind of cat did you choose?" Mona, the quieter one of the bunch, asked.

"A beautiful calico." Rebecca answered for me. "With black, yellow, orange, gray and beige in her fur." 

"Maybe you can call her Sunshine." Mona suggested. "That fits with Rain." 

I laughed and instantly decided I liked Rebecca's friends. "Great idea!" 

When I went to the bathroom half an hour later Rebecca came after me. 

I raised my eyebrows when I came out of the stall and noticed her waiting for me. 

"I am just giving them time to talk a bit without us, I think they needed that." she explained. "You are doing great." 

I pulled her in my arms and kissed her. "They are better friends than I expected." I admitted. "After Nicky..." 

"Do you want to go on a date with me?" she asked. "An official one?" 

I nodded and we kissed some more. 

"Come on, lets get going." I finally said. "The others had time enough now to gossip about us, and I have to be at my parents place for Sunday dinner at 6." 

We spent another half hour talking to Rebecca's friends before we said goodbye and walked to the bus-stop together. 

"I'll see you around, ok?" I said when we saw the bus coming around the corner. 

Without thinking I pulled her closer and kissed her full on the mouth. I think it shocked us both a bit. Kissing in front of friends was one thing, but... All day I didn't dare to take her hand in mine as we walked trough the city, and now I kissed her in front of all these fellow passengers like it was nothing? What? 

The bus stopped in front of us and the door opened with a sigh. I got on and took one of the empty places at the back. I couldn't stop smiling all the way to my parents house. 

So what if things were going a bit fast. I loved every second of it. 

Even though this was already the second time, it kept feeling weird to come on a visit in the house where you lived yourself until recently. 

I rang the doorbell and put my key in the lock. Two girls screamed in the hallway. Ah, so Madesh and Cynthia were there already, with my nieces Tamara and Kimberly. 

They pulled the heavy door open and Tamara threw herself in my arms. "Aunty Aruna! Aunty Aruna!" Kimberly turned around and ran back to the kitchen at the end of the hall. "Grandma, Aruna is here!" 

Our three dogs also ran in the hall and jumped around my legs, barking loudly. I started laughing and demonstratively put my fingers in my ears. The noise was something I didn't miss in my new home.

Cynthia called her daughters from the dining room to come help her set the table and the two ran away. Still laughing I walked into the kitchen and hung my coat over a chair. 

"Hi mom."I said cheerful, while I gave her a kiss on the top of her head. "Mmm, are those becoming samosas?" 

She nodded. "Please hang your coat up, then you can help me make some more." 

I did what she told me to and joined her in the chair opposite her to start filling and folding samosas too. I had helped her make samosas as a child so many times it had become a routine. I smiled. I told Rebecca I could not cook if my life depended on it, but maybe there was something I could teach her in the kitchen after all. 

I imagined Rebecca at this kitchen table, folding away with us and smiled even more. Maybe that would happen one day. What would my mother and Rebecca think of each other? 

"What are you dreaming about hon?" mom asked while she stood up and prepared a wok to fry the finished samosas in. 

"Oh nothing." I answered absentminded. "I started giving piano lessons." 

Mom threw the first batch of samosas in the ghee and they scorched closed with a loud hiss. "What a good idea! And, did you like it?" 

I grinned. "Definitely." 

"If you want I can do a good word for you in the community to help you find more students." she offered while the second batch of samosas slid in the wok. "If you manage it smart you can probably earn a nice second income next to your work in the salon. If you build up a good reputation you can probably even do it full time if you want." 

I laughed and shook my head. "Not so fast mom, I don't get paid for it. I do it in exchange for..." 

The twins entered the kitchen jumping up and down like two little balls in a pinball machine. "Mommy says we can have ice cream as dessert if its OK by you. Can we? Can we? Please grandma?" 

Mom scooped the last samosas out of the wok and pushed a big bowl of rice in Kimberly's hands. "Alright then. If you put this on the table. You can gather up everyone, dinner is ready." 

I fitted the samosas in neat little rows in a basket and followed the twins to the dining table in the adjoining room. I took my usual place while I waited for dad and my brothers. 

Nadeem arrived only just on time, still in suit and tie from work. The workaholic had spent the whole Sunday at the office. 

For starters we had Sambar, a sort of lentil soup, with the samosas to go with it, and as main dish fish curry with rice. Dessert was ice cream. 

It was a busy affair, the ten of us at one not so very big table. Different conversations were held right trough each other and the dogs begged unashamed for scraps from under the table. 

My apartment felt extra empty when I returned home. I sat at my piano and played well into the night. 

Chapter 12

Tuesday just before my workday was done I heard an sms coming in on my cell. 

I looked up from what I was doing and raised an eyebrow at Frank. We had a rule that you weren't supposed to answer your own phone during work hours, but because it was so slow and late, 30 minutes before closing time, I hoped he would make an exception. Somehow I just knew it was an sms from her. My curiosity to read it burned a hole in my chest. 

Frank gave me a short nod and a smile and I immediately dove in my purse to get my phone. 

I was right. 

"Hey Runy, surprise, surprise! Meet me at 7 at the bus stop in our street. Xxx R." 

I grinned my widest grin. A surprise? What kind? This had to be about our date! 

Before I even thought about if I wanted to call Rebecca in front of my colleagues, my fingers already pressed the buttons to do so. 

"Where are we going? What are we doing? What should I wear?" 

I heard her laughing and felt the usual twinkle in my belly. God, how I loved that laugh. 

"Hello to you too, and how is your day?" 

"Ok, better now that I hear your voice." Shit, did I really just said that in front of my colleagues? 

She stopped laughing. "Same here babe, same here." 

I saw Frank and the others staring at me and turned crimson again. I demonstratively turned my back at them. 

"You didn't answer my questions." I said, a bit softer than before.

"That's because I'm not going to. You have nothing to worry about babe. Show up, be your fabulous self, and let it happen to you. I 'm almost finished with the preparations. Everything will be taken care of." 

"Preparations? That sounds complicated." I fished, trying to get some more information, if only a little. 

She laughed again. "I'll see you later my Runy. I'm hanging up now. Bye." 

To my great disappointment she meant it, as she promptly finished our call. 

"A date tonight?" asked Lilly. 

I nodded. "But I don't know where or what." 

"I thought you hated surprises." Frank commented. 

"I do." I answered gloomy. 

When the dog salon closed I raced home. My longs and legs burned while I parked my bike and locked it. It was 6 o'clock. Another 60 minutes, or 3600 seconds to go. 

As I ran up the stairs I was already mentally going through my wardrobe.

I entered, fed Sunshine, gave her fresh water and some short attention, and stepped into the shower. 

What to do with my hair? What should I wear? Maybe some make-up, just in case? This was a date after all, even if it was the most unpredictable one in my life so far. 

At 6:50 I stood at the bus stop. I had no idea what to dress for, so I had opted for fancy. Better over- than under dressed. 

My hair was neatly stacked on top of my head, my legs and other regions freshly shaven, I wore my favorite and only evening gown, a deep purple one that fitted me like a glove, and my red heals underneath. People stared at me, but I tried to ignore it as much as I could. 

Exactly at 7 Rebecca came. She carried a big basket, wore a jeans, tight shoes, and even a sweater. Shit, I was overdressed. A lot. 

When she saw me she stopped walking and her mouth fell open. I grinned, The dress did it's work. 

"Wow, Runy... You look... Wow." 

I twirled around. "Do you like it?" 

She came closer and put the basket on the ground. "Like it? Of course! You look stunning!" 

I blushed. "Good. Can we now go home then, so I can change in something more suitable? I am obviously overdressed." 

Rebecca grinned. "You are a tad overdressed, yes, but I am not letting you change. Do you have any idea how beautiful you are in that?" 

"But I 'll be stared at!" I protested. "I already was!" 

"Nonsense, not where we are going. Besides, if people look at you its only because you are probably the prettiest thing they've seen all day."

Right then the bus drove around the corner of the street. Rebecca put her arm out and it stopped in front of us so we could get in. She took my hand and dragged me to the backseat. Luckily the bus wasn't really full. Only 4 other people besides the chauffeur: an elderly couple, a man of about 30, and a fat lady with a little dog on her lap. The bus left as soon as we sat down.

"So, where are you taking me?" I asked when she put the basket at her feet. "And what's in there? It looks heavy."

She stroked my face with her finger. The man stared at us and I started to blush again. 

"I'm not telling. Otherwise it won't be a surprise anymore."

"But I hate surprises!" I protested. 

She giggled. "I have a feeling you will not hate this. Lara and the others wanted me to take you dancing or to the movies or something like that, but that is far too unoriginal for you." 

The bus stopped a few times and one by one the others got out. 

"So where are we going?" I tried again. 

She merely smiled and squeezed my knee. "We 're almost there." 

"Is it at the terminus or something? Why are we going so far?" I asked while I lifted her hand to my face and kissed her little rose ring. 

"Do you know where the terminus of this bus is?" She asked. 

I shook my head. "No, I go everywhere with my bike. I usually don't take public transport." 

She grinned. "Ha! Yes, we are going to the terminal, but I wont tell you where it is." 

I looked outside for a while in the hope of extracting a hint from our surroundings, bur now we drove trough an industry terrain, past factory after factory. It probably was not going to happen around here. My curiosity became bigger and bigger by the second and her mysterious acting only made it worse. Wasn't there a way somehow in which I could force her to talk? 

I leaned against her and dropped my head on her shoulder. Her hair softly tickled my cheek. God, she smelled nice again. She put her arm over me and lay her head on mine, as if she thought I had given up, which I'd almost done. 

It was so easy to fall prey to her charm, to give myself over to her softness, to let myself drift on the flow of my feelings for her and just follow her blindly in everything she wanted from me. 

I giggled softly. That made me think of something, a small idea. " Let's see if she can resist me as badly as I her." I thought. 

Normally I would never do this, but since we were alone in the bus, apart from the driver, and since I was desperate,...

Lifting my head back up I pressed a wet kiss in her neck. 

She laughed softly and stroked my cheek again. "We are not alone here Runy, wait until later." 

"Aha," I thought, "Hint number 1. We are going somewhere where we are going to be alone. Let's see if I can pry some more lose." 

My hand crawled its way up her thigh and I started unbuttoning her pants. "The chauffeur only pays attention to the road anyway." I whispered in her ear. "Hopefully." 

"Runy! What are you doing! No!" She hissed back. 

My hand wriggled itself inside and under her underpants. "I'm not stopping until you say where we're going." I said with a wicked smile on my face. 

She didn't have a chance to protest because I plastered my mouth on hers. 

Only after a few seconds she pushed me away. Her eyes were big as saucers. 

"Did I do this?" She asked flabbergasted. 

"Do what?" I asked back, while my finger stroked her outer lips, who were also getting wet fast. 

"When I first met you, you were a good and decent girl and look at you now! You've turned into a true sex vixen! We are in public!" 

She was right. Little over a week ago this wouldn't even have sprung up in my mind. 

"I really hate surprises." I explained with a red face. "I'm desperate." 

She moaned softly when I held her clit between two fingers.

"I'm not saying anything!" she insisted. "Otherwise the magic will be gone from it."

"Are you sure?" I asked while I rubbed my fingers over each other with her clit in between. 

She moaned a little harder this time. "Yes!" she squeaked.

"Do you want me to stop?" I asked while I pause all movement of my hand.

"Yes! No!" she hissed.

I continued and she moaned again. The driver looked at his rear view mirror and gasped. I winked at him and licked Rebecca's ear for extra demonstration. 

What had gotten into me? This was going much much further than I planned! 

"You are in control." I whispered in her ear. "If you say where we're going, I'll stop." 

But she held her stand. "No! I am not saying anything!" 

"Are you sure?" I asked teasingly. "We will cause an accident this way! The bus driver is still looking at us instead of the traffic!"

My other hand disappeared under her sweater and I cupped her breast. "Tell me where we're going!" 

"No!" 

"Then there's nothing left for me to do but stop." I sighed. 

She was shaking and I supported her body with mine to prevent her from sliding completely of our bench. It hadn't taken all that long, but she was very close. 

"No!" She squeaked again. "Runy, please." She begged. She looked at me with her saddest face and I sighed. How was I supposed to resist that? 

I gave her another long lick, on her neck this time, and pinched her nipple. I didn't have much space, but my hand in her pants started to move more rapidly. She lay her head against my shoulder and it didn't take her long to orgasm. She obviously did her best to make as little sound as possible, but only managed half in it. 




Aruna and Rebecca Pt. 03



The chauffeur was now openly staring at us. "We're at the terminus, ladies. So unless you want to drive back, I have to throw you out." He grinned. "With much, much regret." He added. 

I pulled my hands out of Rebecca's clothes and we hastily dignified ourselves again while getting up. My face would be red, but this whole situation was way past getting red in the face, so strangely it wasn't. Rebecca's was though, and I milked it as much as I dared. 

I pinched her butt when we passed the head shaking bus driver and she threw lightning out of her eyes back at me. "Have a nice evening, ladies." The driver chuckled. 

The bus drove away as soon as we had gotten out and this was the first time I took the time to look around to register the salty air, the sound of seagulls, the wideness of the river. 

"The sea! We are at the sea!"

I saw the basket at Rebecca's feet and suddenly it dawned on me, at last. "Picnicking!" I called out. "We're going picnicking on the beach!" 

Rebecca's face was slowly losing her red color and she grinned broadly. "Picnicking at the beach, at sunset." 

I threw my arms around her. "Super! You rock!" 

Rebecca shrugged, as if it was no big deal at all. "It was the most romantic first date I could come up with." She said. "You deserve the best." 

I pulled her closer and gave her a long kiss. "I already have the best." I told her. "You are too good, you are ruining me for everyone else." 

The wind picked up and blew under the skirt of my dress as we entered the beach. I did a Marilyn Monroe and we both laughed. 

We found a nice spot with our backs against the dunes, and Rebecca started unpacking her basket. She thought of everything: there was a blanket, glasses, cutlery, plates, wine, and of course, food. Salad, little blocks of cheese, grilled chicken, garlic buns, quiche, even a blueberry pie with whipped cream. 

We sat down on the blanket and leaned in on each other against the wall of sand while we ate and talked and watched how the blue sky started to turn into other colors. 

As the sun set slowly behind the horizon we talked less and less. We lay in each others arms and simply enjoyed each other. Once in a while there were other people on the beach, mostly people with their dog or runners, but once it got dark even those disappeared. 

She turned around to face me and pushed the pick-nick stuff aside. "Time to return what you did to me in the bus."

I immediately sat up again. "What? Here? No way!" 

"You don't want me?" she asked softly.

"Of course not! I always want you!" I cried out. 

She laughed. "So what's the problem? You will do it in a bus practically in front of that bus driver, but not here? Why not? Are there too many fish to watch? We are all alone here baby, nothing can happen."

I watched how she started to get out of her clothes on by one. Shoes, socks, sweater, pants,...

"Would I dare to do this if I thought someone was watching?" She asked innocently while the wind produced marvelous goose bumps on her belly as she pulled her t-shirt over her head. "Or this?" She added while she dropped the t-shirt and reached behind her to unstrap her bra. 

Her nipples were as hard as I had ever seen them. I surrendered and stretched out my arm to touch her. She was too beautiful for this world. She looked like a goddess. 

She pulled me to her and we kissed. Soft, smooth, warm, instant turn on. Magic. 

The city and its lights were behind the dunes, the ocean stretched out endlessly at our feet, and above us millions of stars shone upon us. Rebecca was right, we were alone here. It felt like we were alone in the world. 

"This is officially the best first date ever." I whispered in her ear while the wind blew her soft hair in my face. "You have no idea how much I love it." 

She giggled because my warm breath tickled her and I nibbled her earlobe. 

I had a lot less clothes on than Rebecca, so I was out of them in no time. 

At first it was a bit strange to be naked outside, but Rebecca managed to distract me soon enough. Her warm hands were all over me, turning my brain into jelly, and everywhere her hands went, her lips followed. 

I put my hands on her hips and tried to pull her even closer. We fell backwards on the pick-nick blanket. I kissed her head and stroked her hair while she made love to my collarbone and later to my breasts. 

I moved my hand to her belly and smiled when I saw her abs harden. I pushed her a bit away from me and in one fluent motion I sat on top of her. My wetness made a smear on her thigh and she tried to get up. Her breast were now right in front of me and I closed the small gap. 

She felt a bit cold and I opened my mouth to warm her up with my tongue. She pushed her breasts up and I took more in my mouth. Her nipple felt like a little scoop of ice-cream on my tongue, almost like a drop of hail. She made a soft squeak when my warmth made contact with her cold. 

Without looking I pushed all the stuff off of the pick-nick blanket. Then I wrapped it around us. 

"My beach goddess may not suffer the cold." I murmured softly while I rubbed her underarms and kissed her bellybutton. I could already smell her sex and moved my nose to the source. 

She giggled again. "Your what?" 

"My beach goddess." I answered calmly. 

Strange, normally I would have turned beet red, but not anymore. It didn't embarrass me anymore as it used to do, maybe I was getting used to admitting how much she affected me. 

I stuck my tongue out and licked the tip of her vagina, on the line where her pubic hair stopped. Mmm, the taste matched the scent. 

She softly pulled me back up to her face by my hair. "If I am a beach goddess, then what are you?" 

"Just Aruna of course." I grinned. "YOUR Aruna." 

She moaned when I wrapped my arms around her back to massage her. 

"MY Runy." she repeated softly. Then she bent forward and pinched my nipple before sucking it in her mouth. 

"I love it when you call me that." I whispered while her hands slid down over my body. 

"Runy." she repeated again, a bit muffled by my breast. "Runy, Runy, Runy, Runy." 

Her voice and the swirling of her tongue over my nipple distracted me so efficiently that I jumped when she put a finger in me. How could I haven't noticed her hand was there already? 

"Sorry, I didn't hurt you did I? You are so wet!" 

I shook my head. "No. No hurt. Definitely not hurt." I managed to croak out. 

She grinned and added a second finger while her other hand began to circle my clit.

Oh my god, this was...

Chapter 13

"Ahum, ladies?" 

Rebecca and I froze, hearts beating out of our chests. 

"Can you stop what you are doing and put your clothes back on please? I'm afraid that we have to arrest you for indecent conduit in the public space." 

We turned our heads very very slowly to our left and saw to our horror two cops, patiently waiting to process us. Oh, please, please, don't let them be real, I prayed silently in my head. 

Rebecca looked into my eyes, whispered something in Russian, and took of. Naked, into the dunes behind us.

The police officers cursed and one of them took after her, panting and shouting to the second one that he had to stay with me to prevent me from escaping too. 

I sat up and scrambled the pick-nick blanket to my chin, covering as much of my body as possible, to shocked to run. What had just happened? Did she really just left me here alone? With a man, naked? She would come back as soon as she saw that I didn't run after her, right? 

The officer bent forward and picked some clothes out of the sand, which he threw at me. "Please put some clothes on, miss, we don't have all night." 

I fished my dress and underpants out of the sand next to me and tried to put them on under the blanket, so the cop would not see even more of my naked body. 

The sand itched and scratched and to make matters worse, he kept staring at me. I didn't know if he was allowed to do that, but I wasn't in an arguing mood. I was terrified that he would touch me, and I just wished my hardest that my father would not find out about this whole thing. 

"I think I know you from somewhere." he said when I was dressed again. 

I pulled Rebecca's sweater over my thin dress. It smelled like her every time I moved in it and I started to get worried, and angry. 

Where was she? She 'd better come back! Why did she run in the first place? Didn't she realize she made us both a lot more vulnerable to those men by running away? The one who ran after her better not lay a hand on her! Why did she leave me here all alone! 

The cop who stayed helped me to put all our stuff back in the basket and fold up the blanket. 

Then I picked up all the rest of Rebecca's clothes and shook the sand out of them, something I had better done to my own clothes before putting them back on. I carefully laid them on the basket. 

An awkward silence spread out between him and me as we waited for his buddy and my girlfriend to return. I tried not to show it, but that earlier comment of his had me really worried. My father worked as a desk clerk at the police station in the center of town and I started to get a suspicious feeling that these guys were from there too. 

After what seemed like hours but was actually about 10 minutes, the second police man came back, panting and wheezing and clutching his side. "I lost her, dammit! She ran too fast!" 

"So what are we supposed to do now?" asked the other cop. "Do we leave her there? What about this one?" 

"You could always let me go?" I suggested bravely. "I promise this was the first and last time that I will have sex in a public place, ever, and I will make sure it was my girlfriends last time too. I swear." 

They both looked at me and shook their heads. "Sorry miss, no can do." 

For a split second I thought about running too, but I think my emotions were a bit obvious on my face because the still panting cop quickly handcuffed me. "Oh no young lady, I am not going after you too." 

They dragged me to the police car and pushed me in the backseat. All of our stuff except for Rebecca's clothes were dumped in the trunk. I had insisted that those would be left behind. She obviously could not go home naked. 

So, what's your name?" they asked after reading me my rights and repeating what I was being arrested for. 

"Aruna Rimbarka." I mumbled embarrassed. I saw the number of their precinct on the car, so I knew for certain by then that they were from the same station as my father. 

"I knew I knew you!" cried the cop who had stayed with me. 

Then he turned white. "Oh no! Your father is going to kill us for arresting you! Especially for something like this!" 

I managed to produce a sheepish grin. "You think he is going to kill You? Then what will he do to me?" 

The police officer behind the wheel, the one who chased Rebecca, started the car. "We'd better get it over with. I already called it in, so there is no going back now." 

We had a silent drive back to the center of town. I really hoped my father wasn't on duty tonight, but with my luck he probably was. 

I still had Rebecca's big sweater on and huddled myself deeper in it as we entered the parking lot of the police station. This was not going to be pleasant. 

They parked and opened the door for me. I took a deep breath and let myself be taken inside. 

I had been here before when I was little, on bring your kids to work day, but it seemed much less inviting from this point of view, as the arrested one. 

As I had feared my father was indeed on duty. He was furious, let's leave it at that, and luckily not only at me. 

Less than an hour later Lilly picked me up to drive me home. They had not taken my fingerprints, or asked me all of the embarrassing questions I had expected, or even put the arrest in the system. My father made sure it was as if the whole thing had never occurred. 

"What happened?" Lilly wanted to know as soon as we were alone in her car. "Your father sounded like he was about to murder you." 

"Rebecca and I got caught making love on the beach." I mumbled. 

I didn't want to talk about it, It was too embarrassing, and the more I thought about it the more betrayed I felt by Rebecca. Why did she leave me alone? I could not wrap my head around it. 

Luckily Lilly understood without any explanation. 

"Do you want me to come upstairs with you?" She asked when we arrived and saw light burning behind Rebecca's windows. I opened the car door and got out. 

"No thanks." I said with clenched teeth. "I'm going straight to bed, I want to forget this evening as soon as possible." 

So she got home, did she? I shouldn't have left those clothes. I should have let her go home naked. Then she would have at least bore her part of the shame of it all. 

"And Rebecca?" Lilly asked carefully. 

"Rebecca can go fuck herself!" I blurted out. "She left me! If that is how she wants to play it, I am leaving her too!" 

Lilly made odd warning gestures with her eyes and my hands turned into fists beside me. "She is behind me isn't she?" I asked. Lilly simply nodded. 

I slowly turned around. 

Rebecca looked like a mess. She obviously had been crying. It broke my heart but I managed to make a stone of it anyway. "I don't want to talk to you." I fumed before getting back in the car. "Lilly drive. Please." 

"Runy, no..." Rebecca begged. "Please let me explain. I love you. Please!" 

I wrung my hands in each other until they hurt. "You left me!" I said trough teeth that started to hurt from all the clenching. "I was naked, and you left me alone! I thought you got scared and would come back but you didn't! They took me to my fathers precinct! MY FATHERS PRECINCT!" 

Rebecca's face drained of all color and that strangely calmed me a bit again. "Just drive." I ordered as I pulled the car door closed. 

By the end of the street I was sobbing my socks of. 

"Are you sure you don't want me to turn around?" Lilly asked quietly. "You two obviously have stuff to work out." 

"Not tonight. This date went from the best and most romantic to the worst and most traumatic ever. My father knows I am gay now! What a way to come out! I just want to sleep and forget it. Please." I begged. "I'll deal with it tomorrow, I promise." 

Lilly looked worried, but agreed anyway.

Of course it all came tumbling back in my head in the morning, but by then I was at least a bit more rested. The time, although it was only a few hours, had allowed me to take a bit more distance from it. 

I could look at it from the bright side too now: I didn't have to worry anymore about coming out to my family. The worst was probably over now. Ok, my father was really mad, and had said all kinds of hateful things that hurt a lot, but maybe if he got used to it, he would probably realize sooner or later that I was still Aruna, his only daughter. My father and I had always been best buds, he would have to accept me eventually. The shame would wore off, hopefully, for both of us. 

And alright, I had not forgiven Rebecca yet, but I could not deny that I still loved her. She ran from me, but she must have had a good reason, right? Didn't I owe it to her to at least let her explain? 

Frank let me leave early from work that day. I was so distracted by my thoughts about Rebecca that I could not do my job properly. As soon as he took my appointment of 4o clock over, by sighing deeply and taking the struggling wet dog from my arms where I held it already for a good 5 minutes, I grabbed my purse and left for home. I would have to do overtime another day, but I would deal with that then. 

Chapter 14

I was really nervous when I knocked on Rebecca's door. Sweaty palms, racing heart, mouth like a desert, I experienced the lot. That is the only explanation I can give for what I did. It was only late afternoon and I didn't fully expected her to be home, but I just had to try. 

When she opened the door and stood there seemingly stunned, I handled on instinct. I pulled her close into a hug, sniffed at her hair and apologized. "I'm so sorry about what I said yesterday. Please forgive me?"

First she hugged me back, really tight, but as she registered what I said she started laughing. It began with a simple giggle, turning into a chuckle what then grew to be a full laugh and finally ended in a deep belly laugh. "Me forgive You? Are you serious? Of course!" She panted, clutching her sides. Her laugh was by then so contagious that I started laughing too. 

When the laughter finally died down, she took my face between her hands and pressed her lips to mine. "You have no idea how happy you make me by turning up here. I love you so much. Will you forgive ME for what I did? I am so sorry for running and leaving you. I panicked, and that is no good explanation, but..." 

"Of course I forgive you." I interrupted. I didn't need any further explanation. She had me at 'I love you so much' and 'I am so sorry'. Maybe she ran because she was afraid of cops, maybe they were much scarier people where she came from, maybe she ran because she thought I would follow her and spare us both the embarrassment, maybe she ran for another reason,... I didn't care any more. 

Somehow we stumbled inside, landing on her carpet. 

We kissed and groped everywhere we could reach.

For a long time, or it could have been mere seconds, the only sounds we made were soft moans, the slopping of kisses and now and again a grunt of frustration. We were both dying to please the other one first in a desperate attempt to say sorry with a deeper meaning than just words, but we didn't work well together. 

As I tried to reach her sensitive spots, she tried to reach mine, which mostly ended up in both of us in a tangle, neither getting where we wanted our hands and mouths to go. At one point we managed to get in to a position where I was kissing her left ankle, because that was the closest to reach, and she was kissing the inside of my knee. 

I think we got the idea at the same time, because we looked each other in the eye, smiled and moved on. From her ankle I placed three kisses on her shin, licked along her knee and thigh, and paused just below her bellybutton. Meanwhile she had maneuvered herself also with her face between my legs. 

We were both on our side, totally relaxed, and started licking together. It was amazing, I've never felt closer to anybody as then to her. 

If I would have to compare 69 to anything, an echo would come closest. As I sucked softly on her clit, I felt her doing it to me a second later, and when she put first her tongue and then her finger inside me, I followed her. 

For a long time we teased each other back and forth. Kissing, licking, biting, sucking. More pressure, less pressure, faster movements, slower movements,... Love is music and we were dancing on the beat until our pussy's throbbed along with it. 

Needles to say when we finally came we did it together and it was utter bliss. Definitely worthy of an encore, which we had, a few times in a row. 

When we got hungry we dressed and went out. We walked hand in hand to the restaurant. I didn't care who saw us and what conclusions they would make, I was not letting her go. 

We chose a table at the back of the restaurant and talked about nothing and everything the whole evening. Our second date was less romantic and more mainstream than our first, I admit, but since we were still glowing from the spectacular love we made, and since our first date ended rather disastrous, it felt a lot better. 

On our way out I was just marveling at the fact that this was only our second date and our second week, because it felt like I already knew and loved her my whole life, when we ran into her.

Nicky. 

I didn't recognize her, but I saw how she looked at our intertwined hands and how Rebecca went pale all of a sudden. 




Aruna and Rebecca Pt. 03



"So this is her, is she?" Nicky spat. "The one who stole you from me!" 

"No, Nicky. I got to know her after we split up. She lives under me, she's the new tenant." Rebecca tried to explain. "I know you don't believe me, but I never cheated on you." 

I thought about our first kiss, but kept my mouth shut. 

"Didn't take you long to get over me then, eh?" Nicky said. "You're right, I don't believe you, but I forgive you for the cheating. After all there a lot of fish in the sea, some even prettier than me. But her? Why?" 

Rebecca squeezed my hand. "It's none of your business anymore Nicky. We are finished, I moved on, and I suggest you do the same. I never want to see you again." 

Nicky snorted a laugh. "Moved on? Ha! She's only your pathetic rebound! Don't come back when you're finished with her. I wouldn't want you after you had that ugly paki." 

Rebecca opened her mouth to speak, but I beat her to it. "First, I am Indian, not Pakistani, and second, she is never coming back to you. She is mine now, and I'll treat her so right that she will never even think about you again. Now stay the fuck away from her, you fucking lunatic, or I'll send my brothers after you." 

It was the first time that I ever attempted to sound threatening, and it didn't work as planned, because Nicky and Rebecca both stared at me, and then Nicky started laughing. "Stay away from her, huh? Well, I can make sure of that. I promise I will never see her again, or she me for that matter." 

Rebecca pulled my arm and guided us outside. 

"Is she that crazy, or am I just that low of a threat?" I finally dared to ask when we walked the corner and back into our own street. 

Rebecca's hand let go of mine while she searched for her house keys. "I think a bit of both, but don't worry, in your case it's part of your charm." 

We went inside, started kissing and forgot all about Nicky and the incident. 

Of course we should have know she wouldn't just leave it at that. 

Chapter 15

The following morning right before I left for work I checked my mailbox and found a card from the crazy ex in it. 

It had no stamp, so she posted it herself. 

The text read: "I promise Rebecca and I will never meet again. Kisses, N." 

On the front there was a picture of an old police car and two cops arresting a criminal. 

I threw it in the trash straight away, partly because it was from Nicky, and I wanted nothing to do with her, and partly because it gave me a very uncomfortable feeling, as if something really bad was about to happen. But what could she do to us? I loved Rebecca and she loved me. 

I convinced myself that nothing could tear us apart, ran upstairs again to give her a last kiss, and then left for work, for real this time. Of course Nicky did knew a way to hurt us, and what she did changed our lives forever. 

When I got home that evening I was greeted by Rain, Rebecca's cat. 

She stroked against my legs a few times before I picked her up. "What are you doing here in the hallway?" I asked, scratching behind her ear. At that point I didn't think anything of it. Rain probably escaped that morning as Rebecca left her apartment. 

But when I came upstairs and saw that her door stood wide open, I knew something was wrong. First I thought of burglars, but when I went inside, with a very loud beating heart I admit, there was nothing missing or out of place. 

"Maybe she accidentally left her door open." I thought naive. 

I fed the cat and pulled my cellphone out of my bag to call her. It immediately went to voice-mail, which was also odd. 

"Maybe she turned of her cell phone because she is working." I told myself to ease my first feelings of worry. 

I knew better though. It was half past 6 already, she would have been done by now. Normally she got home around 5:30 or 6 at the latest. 

I tried to distract myself with some TV while I waited for her to get home, but when it got later and later my initial worry grew and grew. I think I must have left about a dozen messages on her phone before I started looking for numbers of her friends and family. 

In this age of smart phones almost nobody I know has a paper address book and Rebecca was no exception to this, but after a long and thorough search I finally found an old agenda in the bottom of her bookcase. Igor's number was in it, and Nicky's. The agenda was 3 years old, it must have been from the time they started dating each other. 

Hoping Igor still had the same number, I dialed it. 

"Hello." He said.

"Hello, is this Igor?" 

"Yes,who are you?" 

"Aruna." 

I paused. What was I supposed to tell him without sounding extremely controlling of Rebecca? "Uhm,.. You don't know me. I live in the apartment under Rebecca." I started. "You helped me with moving my piano." 

"Oh yes!" Igor exclaimed. "Rebecca's new special friend!" 

I smiled briefly at how he called me her 'special' friend. 

"So, what's up? Why do you call me?" He asked. 

My smile disappeared as I tried to explain what was going on. 

"I don't know where she is either." He said after I finished. "Have you tried calling her friends yet?" 

"I don't have their numbers." I answered. 

"I will call them, and then I will call you back. Don't worry, together we will find her." 

He sounded so sure of himself that I immediately felt better and less worried. "Ok. Thank you so much." 

"I will call you in half an hour." He said, before hanging up.

Those 30 minutes were the longest of my life. As time ticked away I imagined worse and worse scenario's. Rebecca stuck in an elevator with almost no air left, in an accident, wounded and in hospital, dead and in hospital,...

When Igor called me back and told me nobody knew where she was the little hope I had left disappeared as snow before the sun. She must have been dead, otherwise she would have contacted me by now. It was already 11:30 for Christ sake! 

"Do we need to start calling the hospitals?" I asked with a shaky voice. I didn't want to hear yes for an answer, but what I got was even worse. 

"I think we need to call Nicky first." He said. 

Only then did I remember the card from that morning and new hope arose in my chest. Not dead, just back to her ex. Anger and jealousy welled up right beside the new hope. 

"I will call you right back." I answered Igor with a monotone voice. 

My hands shook while I dialed her number.

"Hey, with Nick." 

"If Rebecca is with you, you can tell her to go fuck herself!" I yelled in her ear. 

Nicky laughed. "I guess this is the new girlfriend. Aruna, wasn't it?" 

I was fuming, unable to utter a single sound.

"Didn't you get my card? Rebecca is not with me. I made sure I can keep my promise of never seeing her again, or she me for that matter. Not even running into each other somewhere. She is probably halfway back to Russia by now. I called immigration and told them where she lived." 

My mouth fell open and I had to sit down. "You what?!" 

She laughed some more. "Oh, and could you be a dear and tell that sorry bunch she calls her family that they will also come knocking on their door in the near future?" 

Still giggling, she hung up.

I couldn't, wouldn't, believe it. No. Away from me forever. Illegal. Not her.

"But that's probably why she ran from those cops a few days ago." a little voice in my head whispered. "And why she wouldn't leave contact info at the animal shelter." 

Shaking all over I called Igor again.

"Was she illegal?" I asked very softly. 

"Yes." came the answer.

"What will they do to her if immigration gets her?" 

I heard Igor gasp. "Send her back. They got her before, but she escaped. This time they wont wait."

"That cunt called them." Is all I said before my world crashed down around me. "You and your family can expect them too." 

*

To all those who are still with me: 

-thank you for reading on until the end of part 3

-comments and criticism are always very very welcome :)

-and don't worry: I am currently working on chapters 16-20, in which everything will get all right again. (Hopefully they will not take as long to write as these.)



Aruna and Rebecca Pt. 04



Part 4

(Going after her) 

To all those who are about to read this: 

This part of the story is mainly plot, and almost no sex. I warned you. I also think you should first read the other parts before this one if you want to appreciate it. 

Part 5 begins with a sex scene, but is no where near finished. I promise I will not wait two years this time though. I was planning to post them together, but my fiancée thought I should post these 6 chapters now, so that readers should not wait even longer.(It probably helps that she is one of those waiting readers and that I can't say no to her.)

And Last, I want to apologise to all the people who were waiting for this part for so long. Life seriously got in the way. 2 ex-girlfriends, two moves, buying a 130 year old house, half of a renovation, finding my true love, one kid and another planned soon, and recently wedding plans have eaten up my time to write. Not to mention my fulltime day job of course. 

*

Chapter 16

After that phone call with Igor I called everyone I thought of that could possibly help. The police, immigrations, even missing persons, all in vain. 

I didn't sleep that night, or what was left of that night. Instead I crawled under a huge pile of all the blankets I owned, shivering from the shock, and cried, and cried, and cried. Both Rain and Sunshine tried to comfort me by laying on top and right next to me, spinning loudly in my ear, but I barely noticed. 

When it finally got light, I reached for the phone. I took a few deep breaths, forced myself to stop crying for a second and let it ring. 

"Daddy?" Shit, I could already hear my voice breaking. "Are you still mad at me? I need your help." 

"Of course honey! Are you all right?"

"Yes." I lied. "I'm fine." 

"Then what is it? Why do you call so early in the morning? Do you need me to pick you up? Where are you?" 

"No, daddy. I'm home." 

Shit, there were the tears again. I hated that I had to ask him this, but he was my last and only hope. 

"Daddy, that thing you did for me, when I was arrested and you fixed it. Can you do that for my friend too? Immigration has her and they will send her back to Russia if we can't get her out on time." 

"You know I can't do that Aruna, even if I knew somebody in immigrations, which I don't. What I did for you was way out of line. It could have cost me my job." 

"But I need her dad." I sobbed. "I love her. I don't think I can live without her." 

"I am really sorry Aruna, but I can't do anything about it."

It was silent for a few moments, and then he added: "Maybe it is even better that they send her back. If she was illegal she couldn't have had a very happy life here, and without her you can start to look for a proper partner." 

I could not believe my ears. He did not just say that. 

"If she had been a man, you wouldn't have said it was better that they send her back! You have no idea what she went through over there! If things were different I would fly after her, marry her, and get her back here, where her friends, her job and her life is. Where she belongs! I love her, she loves me. I don't want anyone else." 

I heard him sigh, always a sign he was annoyed by something or someone. "Aruna, she is not a proper partner, she is another woman. You can't have a real relationship with another woman, can't marry her, and she can't give you children. I am not going to argue with you this early in the morning." 

"Fine." I snapped. "Then we are done talking." 

I hung up even more desperate than when I picked up the phone. I just sat there, with the phone in my hand, and stared at the wall in front of me. What else could I do to get her back? The police didn't work, my father didn't work, immigrations laughed in my face, missing persons wouldn't help me either because she wasn't missing,... I lost her. 

The phone rang a few times, but since I didn't want to speak to my father in this state, I didn't pick up. Only when the doorbell rang and kept ringing, I arose from my place on the floor in front of the sofa. 

It was Lilly, and she was pissed. Great, another person that was mad at me. Just what I needed to make my misery complete. 

"Why didn't you go to work this morning? And why didn't you answer your phone? Everyone is worried sick!" 

I just stared at her. Work? Oh yes. Work. The salon, my clients, the dogs. 

"Shit, Aruna, what's going on? Are you ill? You look like hell!" 

"I'm not ill." I said. "I wish it was that simple though. Come in." 

"Why didn't you answer your phone?" She asked again when she entered my living room and saw the mess that was my couch. "What happened?" 

I plopped back down and stroked the cats in a futile attempt to stay calm and to not start shivering or crying again. "They took her." 

Lilly folded the blankets from the couch up and put the pile on the floor as she sat beside me. "Who took who?" 

"Immigrations took Rebecca." I whispered. "Her ex told them where she lived and now I'm never going to see her again. I didn't even know she was illegal." 

Lilly pulled me towards her and put her arm around me. "Is that why there are two cats here instead of one?" 

I nodded, leaned into her and told everything that happened from the moment I came home. 

"Oh Aruna,..." Was all she said after I finished. 

I didn't need any more words. Two words and I felt she knew what this meant for me, what Rebecca truly meant to me, even though we were only together for barely two weeks. 

I stopped trying so hard to keep my limbs under control and my body started shivering again. Lilly hugged me even closer and fished her phone out of her purse. She dialed a number and started speaking. 

"Hey Frank? ... Yeah, she's all right. No accidents or anything, but there is a crisis. Can I take this afternoon off? I'm afraid to leave her alone. ... No, nothing you should worry about. ... No, you can't help but thanks for the offer. ...Immigrations took her girlfriend. ... No, I don't think she will. ... Ok, bye." 

My eyes started drooping because of the lack of sleep and the heavy emotions that finally began to take their toll, but she shook me awake. 

"You can't fall asleep Aruna. You are in shock and I don't think it's safe. Fight it honey, you're coming with me." 

"No, I don't want to leave. Where are we going anyway?" 

"To the doctor and then to my place. Here everything must remind you of her, and I am not letting you out of my sight." 

"No Lilly, I don't want to go. I'll be fine." I said, but she persisted and I didn't have the energy any more to argue. She took me to her car. 

"I don't want to go to the doctor. Please Lilly, they don't fix broken hearts." I pleaded one last time. "It'll be expensive, time consuming and all for nothing. I just want to sleep and forget. Please..." 

"Ok, then we are going to my home, but you're not going to sleep until I know it is safe for you to do so." 

"I promise." I answered, but of course I was fast asleep by the time we arrived at her place. 

When I woke up it was early Saturday morning and as I lay in a foreign bed my first thought was that it was Rebecca who was laying beside me. I rolled over and grabbed her boob, still with my eyes closed. "Babe, you wouldn't believe how bad my dream was." 

"Aruna! What the hell!" Lilly sputtered against my kiss on her mouth. She pushed my hands away and sat up. 

My eyes flew open. It hadn't been a dream. Oh no. No. 

"I thought you were her." I explained, heartbroken all over again. "Why were you sleeping beside me?" 

"I looked it up, emotional shock is not deadly, but you looked so cold and lonely in my bed. You were shivering really hard and I wanted to warm you up." 

"So you crawled in bed with me, even though you know that I am gay now?" 

"You would never do anything that would jeopardize our friendship. Besides, you know I'm not, and you are clearly in love with another. Nothing changed between us so I didn't see the harm in it. We used to sleep together in the same bed all the time when we were in high school." 

"You are a great friend." I said, while I closed my eyes again. 

"Breakfast?" she asked cheerful, as if this was indeed one of our many sleepovers as teens. 

"No, not for me." I answered. "I'm not hungry." 

I pulled the blankets over my head and tried to block the world out. When was the last time I ate with Rebecca? Oh yes, Thursday morning. Already two full days ago. 

I stayed in that bed for almost a week, while I wallowed in memories and Lilly called my parents to tell them I wouldn't be coming to dinner that first Sunday evening, went to work without me that following week, forced me to eat at least something each day, took care of Rain and Sunshine, and slept on her couch. 

But even the best, most fantastic friends run out of patience one day, and Lilly's ran out by the next Friday evening. 

"Right, time to get up Aruna. I've run a bath for you, you smell. I also told Frank that you would come to work again on Monday, and called your parents that you are coming to the weekly dinner this Sunday." 

I moaned. "But that's still two whole days away. Can't I stay here until then? I'm not ready to face the world." 

Lilly sighed loudly and pulled the blankets off me. "No. You need a bath, now." 

Silently I stood up and stretched. My body felt weak after a whole week of barely eating and only getting up to go to the toilet. 

"Come on." Lilly encouraged. " It'll do you good, and after your bath we are going to do a movie marathon and eat all the chocolate and cheese in the world. I know it's terrible that Rebecca is no longer here, but it is not the end of the world and you need to start moving on and getting over her."

"Or at least pretend to." I mumbled before I took the towel of her and disappeared in to the bathroom. 

"That's the spirit!" Lilly answered. "What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger!" 

"But what if it is still killing you every second, every breath?" I asked myself while I stepped in the bath. Why didn't she called or texted me, not even once? I had my phone right next to me the whole time. Even if she didn't have her phone anymore, she could have looked up my number, or emailed me. Why didn't I hear from her? Had I meant that little to her? 

I washed my face, body and hair, brushed my neglected teeth twice and did whatever Lilly asked of me the whole weekend. She was right. Time to attempt to get over her. I had a feeling it was going to be a slow and painful process. 

Chapter 17

That Sunday evening I stood on my parents doorstep and rang the bell. 

It was strange being there. Everything felt different now, even the things I used to do without her. I also started to see all the things we would miss out on experiencing together. All those firsts we never had. I had hoped once to bring her here someday, for example. Now that was never going to happen. 

I thought of Lara, one of Rebecca's friends, and the tattoo on her arm that said 'Fear is the price we pay for adventure' and had to take a deep breath. If fear is the price we pay for adventure, grief is the price we pay for love, I thought.

My nieces opened the door almost exactly the same way as they did the last time I visited. Overenthusiastic, with the dogs barking around our legs, jumping up and down and acting loud and very in-your-face. "Grandma! Grandma! Aunty Runa is here!" they yelled while I took another deep breath and stepped inside. 

"Runa, not Runy." Flashed trough my head. "Nobody will ever call me that again." 

I felt my eyes watering up again. Shit, I had to hold it together. I had to keep those kinds of thoughts for home, for when I was alone and had the luxury to cry about the emotions that came along with them. I was being pathetic, but I couldn't help it. 

I took another big breath. "Calm down!" I ordered myself. "Try not to think of her and you will be fine." 

But not thinking of her was hard. Very hard. I tried to pretend that I was the same Aruna from a month ago, the one from before I met her, but that was all it was, pretending. It didn't feel right, like I was lying to everyone, most of all to myself. The evening went by in a slow blur. I was there, but I wasn't really. 

Until my parents' special guest arrived. The table had been set for one extra, in the place next to mine, but I had thought it was for a friend of my brothers. 

At first I didn't notice the real reason why he was invited. He was a fairly normal looking guy of about my age. A rookie at my fathers precinct. He talked chitchat during the whole meal with the rest of my family and came across as a sympathetic man. 

But then my mother started to push piano-lessons on him, lessons I should teach of course, and he seemed a bit overly enthusiastic, even after I said I stopped giving those. 

I could not imaging teaching anyone else besides Rebecca, but my parents kept hammering on that I should give it one more try. Because last time it was a success, right? So why quit so soon? Of course they didn't know that was more on Rebecca and our chemistry together than on me or teaching her to play the piano. 

Everyone went on with their conversation while I fell silent again, losing myself in the memory of that first lesson with her. I had to call myself to order again. Not here. Not now.

Then, while Tamara was getting the dessert out of the kitchen, it happened. The thing that made it all crystal clear. Why he was invited although none of my brothers even knew him, why my parents kept pushing those stupid lessons on me and why they placed him right next to me. 

He laid his hand on my thigh. 

It was the simplest of gestures, but it spoke a million words. I immediately pulled back, pushing my chair over in the movement. "Get your hands of me!" 

Everyone looked up, shock on their faces. 

"But I thought,..." He muttered.

"You thought wrong!" I shrieked.

Tamara dropped the dessert in her hands on her way to the table and it fell on the floor in a big splatter, but I couldn't care less. I had never been so furious at my parents. "And you thought wrong too! I don't want to be set up, least of all to a man! I'm already in a relationship! I love Rebecca!" 

The man's face changed completely. "I am so sorry. I didn't know you are a lesbian. My father sent me after he spoke with your father. If I had know I would never have come. I got the feeling we clicked." 

I ignored the poor man completely. 

"But wasn't she sent back to Russia, Aruna?" asked my twin, Daman. "Mom and Dad only wanted to help." 

Rage coursed trough me like an electric current, leaving my limbs all prickly. "Help me?!" I spat. "By supporting me? By attempting to rescue her out of the hands of that scum of immigrations when I asked, no, begged, for it? By acknowledging what she means to me and at least giving me a chance to grieve her and to get over her? By recognizing that men are just not for me, and never were either, by the way?" 

I heard my voice getting shriller and shriller and by the time my rant was over there was nothing else left in me to do than bursting out in tears. "You are my family! Act like it!"

Everyone stared at me, open mouthed, which only fueled my rage more. I realized I had to leave there before I would do things I would regret later on. 

With all the calm I still had in me I walked out of the room, grabbed my coat and left for home.

I crawled in bed with Rain and Sunshine and lost myself in all those memories I could not stop myself to think about. The first time I saw her, that time she hid in my apartment, our first kiss, getting texts from her and the butterflies I felt when I got them, that first piano lesson and what followed after, our first date, getting to know each other... Even the stupid ones like worrying where she had gone when Lilly and I went inside in the animal shelter and she was left behind, or my initial reaction to her food.

My hand found its way under the blankets and into my panties and after a while I only thought of her smell, her touch, the sound of her voice, the feel of her lips on mine, the softness and color of her curls, the way she smiled, her eyes, the style in which she moved, and the feel of her body pressed to mine. 

I started fingering myself the way she used to do it and lost myself even more. I remebered the taste of her sweat, the ticklishness of her curls against the insides of my thighs, the smell and taste of her beautiful pussy, the softness of her breasts and the roundness of her ass. 

When I came it was crying, and not from wonder or happiness. I wanted her so badly it physically hurt. I could not imagine never seeing her again. Why didn't I hear from her yet? Was she ok? Where in Russia did they send her? Was she missing me as bad as I her? What the hell happened?

I fell asleep crying and woke up crying, but the following day was a Monday. Since Lilly had promised Frank that I would go to work again I dried my tears, made myself ready, went over there, worked and came back home where I could cry again to my hearts content, all on auto pilot. 

Tuesday was the same as Monday, and Wednesday the same as Tuesday. I kept the routine on for almost 2 months, and the more time went by the more people started to lose their patience with me over it. 

Except Lilly, of course,...

Chapter 18

It was a Friday and I was curled up on the couch crying when Lilly invited herself over to my place to kick-start my life again. She looked at me, gave me a theatrical eye roll and walked into my bedroom, straight to my closet. I stood up from my couch and followed her. 

"What are you doing?" I asked while she started throwing clothes on my bed. 

"We are going out tonight. I found Rebecca's friends and we are going to have a drink with them." 

I sagged down on the bed. "Why? What's the point?" I asked. 

She sat down next to me and hugged me. "Oh Runa, if you really have to ask you definitely need this. You need to get over her, and I think the best way to do that is to find a rebound. Since I don't know anything about the gay life or how to catch a woman, I traced Rebeccas friends and asked them for help." 

I shook my head. "No. No way that I am going! That is so embarrassing, I can't believe you did that!"

Lilly stood up again and picked out an outfit. "Here, put it on." She commanded. 

"No Lilly, I am not going!" I repeated. 

"You have to try to get over her, Aruna. Sitting here alone at home is not going to help you with that. Get out, live a little again, eat something, talk to people, catch a few rays of sunshine once in a while! Do you have any idea of how you have changed in the last months? You lost weight, your hair lost its shine, you never smile anymore, you seem to have no joy in anything that you do, and frankly, you begin to annoy people. Besides, Rebecca's friends are expecting us, if we don't go they'll be waiting for nothing." She pouted and added: "For me? Please?" 

I sighed deeply and put the clothes on. "Only for you then." I grumbled. 

Little over an hour later we finally arrived at the bar. Nothing big had changed, but just like going to my family for the first time since she was away it hurt to come there without her because of all the lost possibilities I suddenly saw. A rebound was so out of the question it wasn't even funny. I only wanted the impossible: my Rebecca back. 

Lara saw us first and stepped right up to Lilly. "You managed to convince her to come!" 

Then she grabbed me by my shoulders and gave me a big hug. "You look like shit, but we will help you get over her, I promise." Not for the first time I thought Lara was a bit weird. We followed her to their table and sat down. 

Lilly ordered us a pair of drinks and we greeted everyone and started chatting. Lilly did anyway. I just sat there, staring into nothing. To them Rebecca was just a good friend, but how could they sit here so relaxed, as if nothing had happened? As if they didn't lose her at all? To my knowledge she contacted no-one, not even her best friend Lara. Weren't they at least a bit angry at her? Or disappointed? I know I was, beside the missing, the hurting and the worrying. 




Aruna and Rebecca Pt. 04



When I got into Lilly's car to go home she was mad at me and I didn't understood why. Her eyes shot fire and she shook her head while I fastened my seat belt. "What?" I asked. 

"Oh, so it still works after all!" She said as she put the keys in the contact. 

I looked at her, still not getting it. "Your voice, stupid! You didn't say a damn word the whole night!" 

I pulled my shoulders up and stared out of the window. "I didn't feel like it." 

Lilly didn't respond, but she drove faster and faster until we arrived back at my place, less than 15 minutes later. When she parked and I wanted to get out she grabbed my arm and held me in place. 

"You are not going to like what I am about to say, but stop this Aruna. Just. Stop. I didn't say what others are thinking and saying behind your back for a while now because you are my best friend and I love you, but you were only together for two weeks. Snap out of it. Stop the self pitying and start living again. You can't lock yourself up in your apartment forever like it is a tower and you the princess who awaits rescuing. Tonight I thought I finally got a bit of the old Aruna back, but then you never even opened your mouth to anyone. Do you know how hard it is to help someone who doesn't want to be helped? Please, I know she meant a lot to you, but I only want my best friend back." 

"First my parents, then Frank and the others at work, now you,... People should stop pushing me so hard dammit!" I fumed. 

"God damn, move on already!" Lilly shouted in my face. "I hate to say it but she obviously did, otherwise she would have written, phoned or emailed you by now!" 

Ouch, that hurt. 

"Fuck you Lilly! Mind your own business!" I yelled before I got out of the car. I slammed the door of my apartment building shut with as much force as I had in me. 

The week that followed was one of the worst in my life. I could not imagine a life without Rebecca, but I had managed to make it even worse by alienating everybody else who I cared about. I should have done something to make amends, but a big part of me was really disappointed in all of them, and far too stubborn to lift even a finger to pick up a phone. 

Chapter 19

And then came the day that I finally got word from her. 

I was about to go to work, and quickly grabbed my mail of out the box on my way out. It was a very normal looking letter. Until I took a closer look I thought it was a bill. It was white and had the same size as the other letters, but the stamps gave it away, and then I noticed the curly handwriting. 

My heart stopped and did a sprint at the same time. It was Rebecca's. 

I would love to say I ripped it open immediately, but at first I could only stare at it. I sought support of the nearest wall, and then I opened it. 

"My dearest Runy,

Let me begin by simply telling you that I miss you very, very much. I am only half a person without you and it hurts every second of every minute of every hour of every day. 

I know that now that I live so far away we can never be what we were again, or become what we were meant to be, but I think about you all the time. Everywhere I go I see stuff I want to share with you and knowing that I will never see or hear or touch or smell or taste you again breaks my heart. We were only really together for a few short weeks, but you should know that you will always be very special to me. 

The reason I write this letter is also why it is so late. Igor told me about the hard time you are having with it too, and asked me a few times already if I would please call you or write you or show any other sign of life so that you would feel a bit better, but I couldn't so far. I really hope you can forgive me. You see, I have to ask you something and it is the hardest thing ever. I want to ask you to let me go if you haven't already. Get over me and start again with someone else. You are an amazing person and you should be happy. You deserve nothing less. 

Do not worry about me. I live with family of Igor in Moscow now and with time I will get on my own two feet again, as I always do. 

All the love I can send in a simple envelope, and to last a lifetime,

yours forever, 

Rebecca."

I sagged to the ground. I didn't want to let go, I wanted her back dammit! Even the suggestion made me so sad I couldn't breathe. But what could I do other than going after her to Russia? 

Smiling my first real smile in months, I ran back upstairs. Wouldn't that be a surprise! There was a return address on the envelope, so now I finally could! 

I bursted in my apartment, flipped open my phone, ordered a cab to the airport and started to throw a few extra essentials in my handbag. Toothpaste, toothbrush, hairbrush, the book I was reading, credit card, passport,...

My heart was thrumming in my ears. I was really doing this, I couldn't believe it. I was going to see her again! My grin must have been enormous. 

Waiting for that taxi was like waiting for an ambulance. Every second was one too many, and 10 minutes felt like 10 hours. When it finally stopped in front of my building I practically dived in. 

"The airport, as quick as you can!" 

When we arrived I pushed a 50 note in the drivers hand and sped off to the nearest ticket desk. 

"When is the first plane to Moscow? I need a ticket for it!" I blurted out to the fat lady behind it. 

She sighed and checked her computer. " It leaves in 5 hours." She said monotone, not even looking at me. " Do you want a first class, business class or coach ticket?" 

That was the first time the state of my bank account popped into my head. "Oh dear god, let me have enough." I prayed silently. "Coach." I answered. 

It could not go fast enough now. I simply had to see her again, and no airport people would stop me. Not even if they had questions like why I didn't have any luggage, or why I bought my ticket only 5 hours before the plane would leave, or why I was such a nervous wreck, which they all asked. 

The letter Rebecca sent me was becoming more and more crumpled, but I didn't care. I must have read it at least a 100 times since I opened it. I started to realize there was a slight possibility that she didn't even want to see me, but I had to lunge for it anyway. Otherwise I would regret it for the rest of my life. So I sat there, in the departure hall at gate 27, waiting, dreaming, fretting, brooding, worrying, one large lump of nerves, with a big brick of what-the-fuck-am-I-doing in my stomach, while more and more people started to arrive to finally board the plane. 

When I found my seat and clicked the seat belt closed for lift off I still could not believe I was going to be in Moscow in less than a day. 

Everything felt surreal, and a thousands what-ifs raged through me. What if she didn't want to see me? What if I could not find her? What if I could find her? What if seeing each other would break our hearts even more? What if she didn't want me back? What if she did want me back as much as I wanted her and we started a relationship again? How would we do that? Make it a long distance thing? What if I could not let her go anymore afterwards? What should I say to her? Would she still look the same? What if it was all simply too good to be true? What if it was only a postal address, a locker in a bank somewhere?

I tried to read my book, and when that failed, I tried to sleep to kill some time, but that flight seemed to last forever. 

Chapter 20

The first thing that I noticed when we landed was the cold. I know, so cliche, but I only had a light jacket with me and one of the many neon signs said minus 18. It was one of the few that I could read. Here and there were English translations under the russian signs to help tourists get to their right destinations, but all those unfamiliar letters around me felt really disorientating, like being stranded on another planet. 

I could not stop to stare at the many differences of this place compared to where I came from though. I had to get a taxi, and quick. 

I followed the signs with a yellow taxi on them and came to an exit of the airport with at least a hundred if not more cabs lined up next to each other. Lada's, Volga's, and many, many other soviet rustbuckets, all in various colours or combination of colours and states of decay. Often only recognisable as a taxi by the little sign on the roof. I had never seen so many together in my life. For a while I just stood there, watching how other people were being picked up and dropped of. 

"Hey miss! Where you need go?" one of them shouted at me. "I make you price, I bring you?" 

The car looked like it's better days had long been gone: rusty doors, one welded completely shut, a taped rear window, scratches and dents everywhere, but it was one of the only ones in yellow with the famous black checkerboard pattern at the sides, so I trusted it a little more than the others. 

I walked up to him and showed him the letter. "Yes please. I need to go to this address." 

"Hmm, for that adress, 3000 rubles." he said. 

"I have no Russian money to pay you." I stated. "And that is way to much." I took my wallet out of my purse and checked what I had left. A bill of 50 and some change. "I can give you 30 euro's." 

"100." he countered. "We stop by bank if need." 

"No banks. If you won't take 30 I go to one of the other taxi's." I said. 

"50. No lower. I have 6 kids." 

Stupid me, he saw my money of course. Feeling that he would not budge further, I stuck my hand out. "Deal." 

He shook it and then I finally got in the car. 

The inside was at least as worn out as the outside: a torn backseat, yellow air-freshener dangling from a cracked mirror, and the loudest, most tormented engine I have ever heard. It was an adventure on it's own, so when the car stopped at the rear entrance of a restaurant, and he told me we were there, I took a relieved breath. 

I handed over the money, we thanked each other, and then I stepped out, into the cold again. 

Chapter 21

I squeezed the letter in my hand, took a deep breath to calm myself, without effect, and started to look for the entrance of the restaurant. I found it behind the corner. 

The restaurant was not that big, but it was very busy, and cosy. Right before me a big group of people had arrived and they were only just taking their seats. It was nice and warm inside and my fingers started to tingle immediatly from the warmth after the freezing cold outside. 

In the back stood a bar with a bartender and behind him two big doors to what I guessed was the kitchen. The bartender was watching the croud with a little smile on his face, and looked friendly enough, so I went to him and took place on one of the barstools. 

"Hello sir, do you know a Rebecca? I am looking for her and I have only this address." 

He looked a bit surprised to see me, maybe he hadn't seen me enter. He said something I didn't understood.

"Sorry sir, I don't understand you."

"No Russian?" He asked. 

I shook my head and asked again. "Is Rebecca here?" I made a sweeping gesture, meaning the whole restaurant. 

He finally seemed to understand. "No."

My heart sank.

"But later she here. You wait. Friend?" 

I nodded again and smiled. My fingers thrummed the bar nervously. 

He placed a glass with something yellow inside in front of me. "Here. You need." 

I shook my head and showed my wallet. "No money." 

He pushed it a bit further at me and smiled. "No bad. Rebecca your friend, she pay for you." 

I took the glass and sipped it slowly while I looked around and joined the bartender in his session of people watching. "Thank you sir."

The group of people who came in right before me all sat down now and were getting menu's and ordering their drinks. An old lady a few tables further was feeding her little dog scraps from her plate under the table. And by the window in the corner I spotted a grand piano. My heart skipped a beat. I hadn't played since Rebecca vanished out of my life.

Without even realising what I was doing I put my glass down and walked up to it. I stroked my fingers over the ivory keys and felt the familiar tingly rush coming over me. Oh how I regretted not playing for so long. I could have really helped me but I guess playing reminded me of her now, it reminded me about those lessons we did togheter. 

I took a chair from a nearby empty table, placed it in front of the piano, closed my eyes and started playing. Soon my surroundings dissapeared from me. Time and place lost all it's meaning. Just me and the piano. I played and played and played. 

I had been in such a deep pit the last couple of months and could hardly believe I was able to take this away from myself for such a long period. Coming to Russia was already a win situation. Even if she didn't want me back, I got this part of myself back. Nobody was ever taking that away from me again, not even me. 

While I thought of her I heard the music changing. All the hope I felt now, but also all the pain, the frustration, worry, anger, powerlesness over the situation and love I had came out. 

Only when I felt something wet dripping on my hands I quit. Water? 

I sniffed. No, tears. I landed back on earth and wiped my face on my sleeve. It was dead silent behind me. Shit, how embarrasing. 

I took a deep breath and turned around slowly. What I feared as I heard the silence was true. Everyone listening and staring at me. 

And then I noticed who sat at the nearest table. Rebecca. My Rebecca. 

We made eye contact and stood up at the same time. We met halfway the table and the piano and fell into each others arms. 

"You are real! I can't believe you came!" She cried. I felt her tears in my neck and only now realised she was crying too. Then the words sank in. 

"Of course I am real and of course I came! As soon as I knew where to go! Don't you ever ask me to let you go again!" I laughed and cried at the same time. 

We broke loose out of our hug and stood there for a while, holding hands, looking at each other. 

"Come on, we need to catch up." She eventually said. "Let's go to my kitchen." 

We walked back to the bar, where she introduced me to the owner of the restaurant, the bartender, and then went through the double doors. 

Inside the kitchen she picked me up and put me on one of the counters. "My Runy!" She wispered. 

I couldn't speak anymore. I never thought I would be called that again. I flung my arms around her and simply kissed her. 

Her lips and mouth and everyrthing else was the same as I remembered and more. We could not let go of each other. I could not believe that one of the things I worried about on my way here was that it would hurt us both extra bad if we had to let each other go after this. I was never going to let her go again, unless she sent me away. Even if it meant living under a bridge or never going back home again, or both. 

I pulled her even closer to me and slid my hand under her blouse via her neck. Her shoulders still were that same magical mix of muscular but soft. And that red hair! And her scent! I wanted to bury myself in it. 

Her cold hands traveled under my own jacket and I immediately got goosebumps everywhere, although I never felt more hot or turned on in my life. I didn't dare to close my eyes out of fear that she would dissapear and it would all be a dream so we stared into each others eyes while we kissed. It made it all the more intense.

We were so lost in each other that we didn't hear the flapdoors of the kitchen going open and closed. 

"Ahem!" 

We froze midkiss. Oh no, busted. Again. 

We broke loose out of our kiss, but Rebecca did not let me go. 

It was the bartender/owner, and one of the waiters. They talked a few sentences with Rebecca and then they both shook my hand politely. 

I jumped of the counter with a red face. "Sorry to sit on your counter sir." 

Rebecca laughed and translated. Then they both laughed too. 

"Runy, this is my boss, Aleksei, who you already met, and my best friend and one of the waiters here, Michel." 

I shook their hands, still blushing, while Rebecca introduced me to them. 

They laughed some more, but then suddenly it was all business again. Aleksei klapped in his hands and ordered something in the lines of 'right, and now back to work!' because immediately after Rebecca grabbed an apron from a hook near the door and put it on. 

"I have to work baby." she said sheepishly. "The restaurant is filling up and I am the chef. I cat be replaced this soon. Aleksei asked me to ask you if you wanted to play some more on the piano, but will you please stay here and help me? It's only a room away, but..." 

I kissed her hand and grabbed another apron. "Don't worry love, after all I have been through today, I am not leaving you so easily, not even to play piano next door. " 

She radiated a smile. "You can play for Aleksei and the customers another time, right? With a bit of luck it is not such a long shift tonight so we can go home soon." 

"I still suck at cooking though."I admitted. "I lived off bread, instant soups and take aways in your absence." 

"A very healthy diet." She winked. 

I stuck my tongue out in reply. "Just give me a simple job and I will let you do the rest and stay out of your hair, ok? For now." 

She looked around and gave me a bag of carrots, a knife and a chopping board. "Can you chop these in slices for me? They're for tommorow's mise-en-place." 

"The mise-en-what?" I asked. 

"Tommorow's preparations." she explained. 

I took to a corner of the room, and started slicing while I watched her do her business. It still amazed me how much she was in her element in a kitchen. She did everything at the same time. Stirring in a pot, putting another on the fire, baking meat in 3 frying pans, humming, out of tune I must say, glancing at me once in a while, filling up plates, sticking up new orders to the carrousel,... 

Now and then Michel popped in to take the full plates away and bring empty plates back, so when my carrots were all sliced and in a neat pile in a bowl with some plastic foil over them, I started doing the dishes. 

We worked in concentrated silence. I think we just had too much to say to each other for meaningfull conversation right now. It would come when we were alone, later, when we had nothing to do and a little more privacy.

After a while I heard rather than felt my stomach growl. The kitchen was filled with delicious smells and I realised I hadn't eaten since that morning at home. I was far too nervous for the food at the plane, and it had looked and smelled rather disgusting anyway. 

Rebecca looked over with a smile on her face and broke the silence. "Are you getting hungry?" 

"I guess. I haven't eaten in a while." 

She grabbed a plate out of the shelf and loaded it with a bit of everything. Three kinds of meat I could not name, a whole range of vegetables, rice, fried potatoes and mashed potatoes, and in a bowl in the middle some soup.

"Start with the soup Runy, and tell me if you recognise it." 

I recognised it without even tasting it. It was the same soup she made that first time togheter. 

I took a spoonfull and closed my eyes. "It is even better than in my memory." 

My stomach growled again and she put her hand on it, which immediately gave me butterflies. "When exactly was the last time you ate?" she asked. 

"Right before I got your letter." I admitted. "A day ago? I dont know how many hours it has been. A slice of bread and an apple. The food in the plane looked to disgusting for words so I only drank water and fruit juice on my way here." 

"You left as soon as you had my letter?" she asked softly. 

I nodded and stroked the sides of her face while I chewed on a piece of bell pepper. "You should have written earlier baby. Why didn't you wrote earlier? I was so worried, and hurt, and I missed you so terribly bad. I can't live without you, everything went to shit. I didn't function anymore, I messed everything up." 




Aruna and Rebecca Pt. 04



I saw a tear form and glide down her cheek and felt immediately guilty for what I said and how it must have made her feel. But it was the first time we talked at all about our time apart and I had so many questions, and so much to tell. It suddenly looked rather daunting. How to handle it without hurting her further? It was not her fault, we were both victims here. And yet a part of me was angry at her too, wanted to hurt her the way she hurted me by playing dead to the world. 

I spooned another mouthful of the food in my mouth as we were both silent for a few seconds. Then when my mouth was empty again we spoke at the same time. 

"I am so sorry for what I did to you Runy. I should have written much earlier.. I am so terribly sorry."

"What the hell happened to you?"

Rebecca looked at the floor, clearly ashamed. "I was illegal. Immigrations found out where I lived and raided my apartment. Apparently they thought I was living there and subletting it to 8 other illegal immigrants. They took everything away from me right in the beginning so I could not contact anybody or supposedly warn anyone. They treated me fairly ok overall, but even long after they arrested me they kept interrogating me about all these other people which I didn't know. And then when they finally believed I didn't know them and I had lived there alone they put me on a plane and sent me back to Moscow. I tried everything to get them to bring me back to my apartment one last time, to say goodbye to you and explain, but they would not let me. I told them I had a cat, and they said they would send animal welfare over. I told them I had valuable stuff in that apartment and they simply told me it would all be sold in auction or thrown away. I told them I had to tell people that immigrations had me or they would start looking for me and be angry at me, but they only laughed and told me that was what I deserved."

"But why didn't you phone me as soon as you landed?" I asked while I wiped her tears away with my thumb and lifted her head so I could see her face. "Or emailed me or even facebooked me?"

"I am not proud of that." She whispered. "I was so angry at myself and I wanted you to be angry at me too. Losing you was the worst I have ever been through, and it was all my own fault. Then three days later I heard from Igor what you were going through, that you were a wreck too, and I told myself I didn't deserve you and forbade myself from contacting you so you could get over me faster. I didn't want to hurt you, I only wanted it to be over sooner for you. I wanted you to be angry at me. I wanted you to stop loving me." 

She sobbed and I pulled her to me. "I am so sorry Runy. I tried to protect you and only made it worse. I should have done it differently. I am so sorry. It is all my fault and I am so, so sorry." She made my shoulder wet with her tears. 

"I could never stop loving you Rebecca." I whispered in her ear. "Never. Not even if I tried. I am still angry, furious even, but not at you, not anymore, now I know what happened and why you did what you did." 

I pulled her a bit away so she could see my face as I told her the truth. "You see, this is not your fault. That day when I came home from work and you weren't there, I found a postcard in my mailbox. It had a police car on it and a kiss from Nicky on the back. She ratted you out. 

"She didn't want us to be together." Rebecca said. "That piece of ..."

I nodded and kissed her forehead. "She is a jealous bitch and someday she is going to get what she deserves for it." 

Rebecca was crying but as I said that she laughed through the tears. "I am so happy you are here." 

At that moment Michel came into the kitchen again. He said something, but when he saw us standing there, and the emotional messes we were, he sighed. He threw his hands in the air and strung another few sentences together of which I understood absolutely nothing. 

Rebecca let me go and hugged him instead. Then she turned back to me and grabbed my hand. "He is taking over the kitchen. Let's go home." 

She pulled me with her and I followed her willingly. Michel winked at me when we got out. He said something, but I could only smile in reply. Language was going to become a problem.