I learned from the seminal classic Sliding Doors is that the most insignificant-seeming things can change your life. If Gwyneth Paltrow had caught that Tube, she wouldn’t have ended up with such a terrible haircut. And if Jane had poured me a glass of red wine or a beer, I might not have— but I’m getting ahead of myself. The point is, I can’t handle vodka. And that’s why everything that happened, happened.
Jane was sitting on the kitchen work top, pouring Smirnoff into two tumblers.
‘Let’s do shots,’ she said, handing one to me. ‘Down it in one.’
We clacked our glasses together and tilted our heads back. I managed to dribble half my vodka down my chin.
‘That’s cheating!’ she said. ‘You have to do it again now.’
She twisted the lid off another bottle of Smirnoff.
A new song came on, with a bored-sounding female vocalist.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Dance with me.’
She jumped down from the work surface and put her arms around my waist. I put mine around her neck, feeling self-conscious, like a girl at a prom in a teen movie, only not, obviously. She moved her hips against mine in time to the bass line. I tried to focus on her face, but it seemed to flicker. The vodka was buzzing in me, and I couldn’t tell if we were swaying, or the room was, or both, but it didn’t matter.
Jane looked up at me through her fringe. ‘I’m going to kiss you now,’ she said. ‘Stop me if you don’t want me to.’
I didn’t stop her. I closed my eyes instead.
I’d never kissed a woman before, except once during spin the bottle at university. That kiss was just for play, though, not so much a lesbian kiss as an impression of one – lips barely touching, tongues waggling around outside our mouths, wet in every sense of the word. Kissing Jane wasn’t like that at all. Her mouth was hard one minute, soft the next. I felt as though we were having a sexy, wordless tongue conversation. She pushed herself into me until I was leaning against the hob. I accidentally pressed the ignition with my bum. I could hear it sparking behind me, like an unsubtle metaphor.
A man came into the room and immediately backed out again, saying ‘Shit, sorry,’ shutting the door quietly behind him. I heard him say, ‘There are two women kissing in there.’
The door opened again as someone peered in to see for themselves. It must have been Alice, because a moment later I heard her voice in the corridor: ‘Julia’s in there! Kissing Jane!’
‘You’re joking.’ It was Dave. ‘Isn’t she straight?’
Jane and I stopped kissing for a moment and looked at each other.
‘You don’t seem very straight to me,’ she said.
I shrugged and pulled her to me again, feeling powerful and young and spontaneous.
‘Come back to mine,’ Jane said.
But I shook my head. ‘I can’t tonight,’ I said. I hadn’t sufficiently recovered from the Finn incident to have drunken sex with a stranger again.
On the night bus home, Dave turned around from the seat in front and smiled, leerily. ‘That was hot,’ he said, breathing beer on me. Not that I could talk; I could barely feel my mouth, I’d drunk so much vodka.
‘You’re disgusting,’ said Alice, hitting his arm.
‘Well, it was,’ he said, scratching his beard. ‘I could have watched that for hours.’
‘Don’t be such a misogynist,’ said Alice. But she turned to me and said, ‘Do you fancy her? She’s sort of dangerous seeming.’
‘Jane’s not dangerous,’ said Dave. ‘She just knows how to get what she wants.’ He was still looking at me, unsteadily. ‘Are you bi, then, or what?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m pissed.’ I didn’t know what I was, or how I felt, except that I was excited.
Alice moved to the seat next to mine and leaned close to me. ‘I don’t think you can really know if you’re gay or whatever until you’ve – you know.’
‘Until I’ve gone down on a woman.’
‘Exactly. It might be disgusting! Like licking a snail.’
‘But blow jobs are disgusting,’ I said.
‘What? No, they’re not,’ said Alice.
‘Yes, they are,’ I said. ‘Who would actually want to put a penis in their mouth?’
‘Not me,’ said Dave.
‘Maybe you are a lesbian!’ said Alice. She seemed very excited by the idea.
‘Maybe I’m a lesbian,’ said Dave.
‘Can we stop talking about it now, please?’ I said.
We swung off the bus into the February air. I let Alice and Dave walk ahead of me, casting one long shadow in the streetlights. I wanted to be on my own for a moment to think about Jane, and to remember the kiss.
I was nearly fifteen minutes late for my session with Nicky that week. I arrived at her door panting and sweaty, despite the cold, and as soon as I was waist-deep in the terrible armchair, she asked me, ‘Why were you late?’
‘Sorry,’ I said, still breathing too quickly. I hate being told off. ‘I lost my keys—’
‘No,’ she said, holding up her palm to me. ‘No, no, no.’
I frowned. ‘What do you mean, no?’
‘I mean why were you really late?’
‘Honestly,’ I said, ready to get angry, ‘I must have dropped them in the kitchen—’
‘When we are late for things,’ Nicky said to me in a sing-song voice, ‘it’s because somewhere inside us we really don’t want to go to them. Which reminds me. I had a dream about you last night.’
‘Are you supposed to tell me that?’ I asked. ‘What was I doing?’
‘We’re not really here to discuss my dreams, Julia. Why didn’t you want to come here today?’
‘I did want to come.’
She seemed disappointed. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘What would you like to talk about?’
‘I’d quite like to talk about your dream.’
‘Why don’t we talk about what you did at the weekend?’
I was a bit thrown. ‘I didn’t do much,’ I
