Authors: Kirsten Rees
Maybe it was a little of the sun and holiday spirit but I was caught up in it. She was a new hostess in the bar I worked in and one of the most sensuous people I'd ever met. She had the olive complexion of Mediterranean skin but she wasn’t Italian or Spanish. Her hair wasn’t as dark as mine, more of a brown with strands of gold where the sun had touched it. I wondered where she had come from and then flinched at the unfamiliarity of feeling curious about someone again.
When you work in a bar, there is no hope of falling straight to sleep after a busy shift on your feet. Usually a few of the staff stayed behind and had a few drinks but tonight most had gone home and since Amy had already left with her boyfriend, I set off home. I had barely walked more than twenty yards when I heard a voice behind me.
“Nina, wait I will walk with you.” Said Nika.
Nika and Nina – it sounded like a cartoon and I smiled to myself as she approached. She lived about five minutes walk from my flat and so we walked home together. Just before we reached my place, it began to rain so I invited her into my flat to wait it out. The showers were always heavy but didn’t last long.
Three hours passed and I can barely remember what we even talked about now. I had given the very short tour of my tiny flat and she had opened my wardrobe to look through my clothing while I sat on my bed and tried not to cringe. What I do remember very clearly though is when she sat beside me and I laughed at something she said. My hair fell forward and she reached across to tuck it behind my ear and her fingers grazed my cheek ever so slightly. The electricity coursed through me and my eyes locked onto hers. She moved closer to me, her hand still almost but not quite cupping my cheek. My eyes flicked from her eyes to her mouth and back again. Her bottom lip touched mine and then she pressed her mouth to mine.
Alex realised he had been reading the same paragraph over and over not really taking it in. So was she gay? Was her sexuality the issue that she couldn’t handle or maybe her family didn’t approve? For all Nina’s self-loathing in these pages, if she had realised she wanted to be with a girl it would have made sense why she hadn’t felt anything for the guys she had been with before. Then why was there still so much more left to read in her diary and why would she have come home. No it couldn’t be that and besides her family would have loved her even if she had found that this was what she wanted.
Neither of us moved at first, just sat there with our lips touching and then after what seemed like minutes she ran her tongue along my bottom lip. I put my arm around her, and we lay wrapped in each other, pressing chaste kisses on to each other’s lips. After a few moments we pulled apart and fell back until we were laid beside each other on the bed. We did no more than kiss each other until we fell asleep. When I woke in the morning she had already left. I sat up in my bed trying to work out if I dreamt the night before when my hand touched something. A small piece of paper was folded up next to me and my hands shook slightly as I opened it up.
‘
Last night was something special and I hope you feel the same x’
What had I done, did I want this ? It was my own asinine motivation that brought me here to ‘start over’ so did that include relationships too. I hadn’t thought that far ahead when I packed my bags and moved to another country – I just hadn’t wanted my life the way it was.
I don’t know why I made an extra effort getting ready for work that night because I hadn’t made up my mind one way or another. I walked into the bar holding my breath and part of me was grateful she wasn’t there. Yet I found myself walking over to the wall where the shift plan was pinned. My eyes scanned the page and fell on her name noted in to start in ninety minutes. Approximately fifteen minutes before she was due to start I wandered into the ladies and after I came out of the cubicle I began fussing with my hair and make-up until I realised why I was doing it and blushed. I managed to cool my cheeks before rushing back behind the bar and trying to focus on working.
“You look hot.” Amy commented as she smiled at me.
She was just being sweet but I was aware I did look a bit better than when I’d arrived - my skin was turning a healthier shade of brown and I had taken to going for walks in the fresh air and eating better.
The bar suddenly got so busy then that the first I saw her she was already on stage and she was mesmerizing. For such a gentle, quietly spoken girl, the moment she stepped on stage she became a different person. She was confident and charming and the face of every person in the room was tilted towards her as she spoke. Her Greek accent almost disappeared and she could have been from any European city as she said ‘good evening’ in five different languages and the room cheered in sections in response.
For the rest of the night, I had to be asked twice for drinks orders. On her break she came over to the bar and I couldn’t help but notice she waited for me to serve her a drink.
“Hey, you look really beautiful.” Her eyes were fixed on my face when she spoke.
“Eh thanks, you look incredible up there.” I replied.
“Haha what can say it’s a talent.” She laughed and rolled her eyes.
“I better get back to work.” I said, feeling nervous and unsure of what else to say considering our surroundings.
“Yeah me too, see you later?” She said it like a question but I could only nod in response.
“So you’re digging the new hostess huh!” the voice came from directly behind me and I spun.
“What?” I looked at Amy in confusion and then looked away as soon as I realised what she’d said. “We’re just friends.” I said but even I could hear the lack of conviction.
“No sweetie,
we
are just friends – I don’t look at you the way she looks at you. It’s okay you know, we don’t really get to choose who we fall for. But I guess you gotta be able to admit it to yourself before you can let me in on the secret.” She winked and went back to work.
The night seemed to drag on for hours longer than the ones passing on the clock. I had run through every scenario and conversation in my head, from thinking we had both just had a couple of drinks and it happened, or it was something a lot of people tried experimenting with, through to maybe this is why I had had issues with guys because I had my feelings mixed up.
When her shift finished half an hour before mine and she disappeared, I couldn’t work out if I was disappointed that she had just left or relieved I didn’t have to have those conversations in reality instead of just in my head. Or was I glad she had left because I was scared of what it had meant, or maybe I was disappointed that…my thoughts trailed off when I saw her coming from the bathrooms and she flashed a smile at me before settling in to a chair next to some of the other staff. Was she waiting for me or just going to have a drink after her shift? I tried to recall any other normal night but my mind wouldn’t focus on anything before last night.
I slid the very last glass into place on a shelf and threw the cloths in to the wash bag and my shift was finally over. My stomach was rattling around but not nearly as much as my hands were and I shoved them in my pockets.
I sat with the group and we had a few drinks together as we often did. Once Amy and another of the girls left, I made my excuses and got up to leave too. When I came back out with my bag, Nika was waiting by the door.
“I’ll walk with you, if you like.” she said.
“Sure.” I replied.
We spent the next thirty eight hours in a little bubble, just talking, sleeping and eating in my little apartment. We had two days together before I was due back to work on the Monday afternoon. I left Nika curled up on my couch and she was still there when I returned later that evening. We walked down to the beach and sat out on the rocks watching the moonlight ripple on the water and I saw my very first shooting star. The light pollution back home meant I was lucky to even see stars at all. I felt still, and when Nika intertwined her fingers in mine, I made myself focus on that moment and tried with everything I had to block out the past and stop worrying about the future.
At first some of the guys we worked with got off on it and some even had the balls to try for a threesome but not one of them could distract us from each other. Nika told me I was amazing, and something in her eyes made me want believe her. I said my story got a little more complicated, but that's not how it felt. In fact it was the easiest relationship I had ever been in. Life was somehow easier and I was something resembling happy.
I didn’t think it was what being ‘in love’ felt like but then I had no experience of that and so I had no way of knowing really. I knew I felt safe and she cared for me as I cared for her. As the Summer months went by, we fell into a little routine and life was more simple than I could ever remember.
Something about being here, away from my past and my world at home, it was good for me. There would always be scars but I could get through whole hours without thinking about the past. Only the permanent marks on my right leg were a constant and permanent reminder of Chris and the effect he had on my life. It was like I had slipped into someone else’s life where everything was maybe not quite perfect but at least it was okay.
I had no reason not to trust Nika, she was too gentle and delicate to cause any fear of physical pain and she rarely spent enough time away from my side to warrant any fear of her betraying me.
But it wasn't just the lack of reasons that I felt I could trust her. She knew me. For the first time in my life I let someone see behind the walls I had put up and I told her some of my past. I saw the tears in her eyes, felt her heart beat faster as she held our hands clasped against her heart, and understood the tremor in her voice as she asked me about my decisions. It wasn’t pity in her eyes, she knew pain, judgement and suffering. She had already told me how her Father had hit her the day he found out she was gay. She was cast out onto the streets, her family spat at her as she picked up her few belongings from the ground and she limped away trying not to listen to them shouting that she was never to set foot in their home again, that she was nothing to them. To abjure one’s family member in the small community she had once belonged to, was a permanent consequence to an unforgivable act.
I did not, could not understand their way of thinking, but she did not blame them for their decision. “It’s how they live, giving thanks to God and banishing those who do not conform to the Orthodox Church. I know it sounds old fashioned but it’s a small, remote community and you can’t judge them for having beliefs and standing by them when I went against them.” said Nika.
She spoke of her family with a kind of reverence. They had cast her out and yet she respected them still. I had to ask “how can you be so gentle describing the people who disowned you because of who you are and how you live your life? It’s not some kind of teenage rebellion and it’s not as if you choose to be this way.”
“But I did choose this life.” she replied.
“No one chooses to be gay; it’s not like being a vegan! It’s part of who you are and there are not many people who would willingly choose to make their life harder and more complicated than it has to be!” I said.
“Leaving my family, being on my own, it’s made me stronger, I wouldn’t be who I am if I could have stayed. Had they allowed me to, they would have forced me into an arranged marriage, I would have been miserable. They did the best thing for me without even realising it. They allowed me to live the life I want. And I am happy.” she said. “I know that this between us, I know it’s different for me than it is for you.” and with that she got up and went to make food for us both and that was the last she mentioned her family.
It had made me want to open up to her, to try to make her understand why I had come here. I wasn’t running away, I just wanted to start over and let my family get on with their lives without my problems.
“Oh Jesus, you’re even more fucked up than I am. This has to be the most screwed up sit down dinner I will ever have the pleasure of attending. Remind me why you are doing this again?!” said Amy.
“I just thought it would be nice for everyone to have a little bit of home with a proper, home cooked meal sitting down at a table with people we care about.” I replied.
“You mean, you and your girlfriend, me with my crazy, pot-head flatmate, our mutual neighbour and her insane boyfriend and the dog from across the street that always seems to get in here even when the door is shut?! Right I can see how this resembles a normal Sunday family get together.” she said.
“Oh who asked you anyway?” I threw back. “So does that mean Ilandro isn’t coming tonight?” I asked.
Amy scowled at her phone, clearly he had been invited but for whatever reason wouldn’t be joining us. Their relationship was tumultuous at best and a war-zone at its worst. I didn’t know what was worse listening to their frequent shouting matches, or their make-up sessions that everyone got to hear through the walls.
After ten minutes of listening to what sounded like them breaking the bed against the wall one day, I left my uneaten lunch and went for a walk. I took the opportunity on some of my days off to see some of the sights in the surrounding towns. As much as the lights of cities thrill me, I loved walking through the small, peaceful towns. I had noticed what looked to be a very small village a few times on one of the bus routes. Spontaneity gripped me this one particular day and I clambered down the back stairs vehicle and went to look around.