ILONA'S STORY
Julie and Ilona have had a passionate one night stand but in the cold light of day Ilona has to face up to the consequences of her actions, the first of which is the relationship to her fiancé, Nick. However no sooner has she resolved that one than Ilona begins to question her sexual orientation as she recalls incidents from her past. When she is reunited with her closest girlfriend from school she begins to realise that her preferences for women go back further than she thought.
Jodie's brown legs stretched slightly as she tossed the netball into the basket and Ilona felt a slight warmth in her belly as her teammate turned and raised her arms in the air. Her breasts rose against the tight tee shirt bearing the team logo, the Magpies rested against her left breast, her black hair was tied up in a ponytail. One of their teammates gave her a high five now that they were one goal ahead and with three minutes to go Ilona knew the game was in the bag and that prediction came true when Jodie scored another goal with just a minute to go.
Watching Jodie in the shower some ten minutes later filled Ilona with both pride and something else, a flickering surge of lust mingled with jealousy. Jodie's first timid attempt at attracting a woman had been maddeningly slow. Their friendship stretched back to their last year of high school when a shy English girl had turned up in Ilona's class to do her Year Twelve.
Her accent set her apart instantly and then there was a distinct faux pas when she casually admitted that she was gay. That admission earned her a session with the school counsellor and her mother to explain that her sexual preferences were not acceptable at this school. Admittedly her mother had been somewhat bemused, Jodie's mother, Margaret was a lawyer who had enrolled her daughter in a private school because she liked the curriculum and her assertiveness turned the tables in a most dramatic fashion when she threatened to sue the school. Faced with a woman who wasn't afraid to take on the establishment they backed down, Jodie could stay but she couldn't advertise her sexual preferences.
Nevertheless, it was a Pyrrhic victory because the word had already been passed around the school and it gained certain embellishments, so that Jodie became a teenage bunny boiler until Ilona had stepped in, physically as it turned out when a girl pushed Jodie over. Ilona had grabbed the girl's ponytail and yanked her backwards, and after that Jodie had been invited into Ilona's circle of friends. Jodie had become one of her best friends and she'd set on her own mission to find a girl for her gay girlfriend.
Pickings were slim though and the mission was cancelled after Jodie begged her to just be her friend and that friendship had become even stronger after they both graduated. Ilona had lost count of their sleepovers and yet despite their closeness, neither of them had made a move on the other. Ilona came to value these sleepovers because she could put some distance between herself and the guys who pursued her with relentless tenacity. Whenever she needed time out she went to Jodie's house. They'd even joined the same netball team not long after enrolling at a Tafe college and it was at a game where Ilona met Frankie, an overtly gay woman who was initially drawn to Ilona but when she realised that she was with a guy she switched to Jodie.
It had taken her a while to get to first base, Jodie was very much Ilona's best friend and Frankie didn't play nicely with other girls. Eventually though she had gone on a single date with Frankie and Ilona had retreated to the sidelines to give them space but over the next few months though Ilona came to regret her decision to sit it out. Frankie was the kind of girl who needed to dominate everyone, even her own friends thought her high maintenance because Frankie didn't play nicely with other girls.
Frankie became not just Jodie's girlfriend, but also her best friend, supplanting Ilona and eventually she acknowledged it. Jodie was skittish and nervous whenever she was alone with Ilona and was always replying to texts and phone calls from Frankie, to the point that Ilona felt like a third wheel and whilst they'd never fallen out, Jodie had always felt as if she was on the outside looking in. To her credit though, Jodie had resisted Frankie's demands to ditch her old straight friends and move into her circle of friends, and that in itself was a testament to Ilona's influence on the shy English girl she'd befriended.
Ilona's eyes opened as a wet nose pressed against her face and for a few seconds she couldn't place the source as she fought to remain in the dream and then she recalled the lovemaking last night that had gone on until nearly ten, with a few breaks in between sessions. She felt a little tired but it was a pleasant, lazy kind of tiredness that made you want to stay in bed longer. A wet tongue licked her cheek and she reached up to slide her fingers through the dog's thick coat.
"Max," she murmured and rolled her head to one side. She'd fallen asleep beside Julie last night but Julie was not in bed and then she heard muffled voices from the living room and propped on her elbows to listen because one voice sounded male in origin. The door opened some thirty seconds later and she heard Julie call out as she entered.
"Second door on the right, the bathroom is next door to it," she closed the door behind her and Ilona sat up, the duvet fell off her naked breasts and Julie knelt on the bed. She was wearing a white silk dressing gown and she had a look of concern on her face.
"Darren's here, apparently Nick's mother has been trying to call for the last hour but your mobile is still off, it's on the coffee table where you left it."
"An hour?" Ilona stared at the clock on the wall, "it's only eight thirty. She doesn't know this address does she?"
"No, she rang your mum and she rang Darren because he'd been here yesterday. She was on the verge of ringing every hospital in the eastern suburbs in case you had an accident but your mum said she thought you were at a colleague's place."
"I was going to ring her this morning and cancel today. She had the weekend all set up for these wedding preparations," she stared straight ahead.
"Where's Darren now?"
"Having a piss," she stared at the entrance to her walk in wardrobe, "I've got a spare robe in there if you want to duck upstairs and get changed."
"I knew I was going to have to at least put her off today," Ilona fell back against the pillow, "we do need to talk about last night but it looks like I'll have to do something today."
"I think that goes without saying," she nodded at the wardrobe, "grab a robe from in there."
Ilona nodded and slid out of bed. The sudden appearance of Darren had heightened the sense of danger and that was both exciting and worrisome because this was not the first time she'd used a casual fuck to get out of a relationship that was dragging her down. Harry had been the most recent example but there had been two others prior to him, albeit not so serious because she'd not been tied so closely to them. They'd been short affairs, three weeks and ten days, respectively and when they parted there was not the same sense of finality because there was no commitment.
Darren looked up from his position on the couch when Ilona walked into the room five minutes later and brother and sister greeted each other with a sly smile.
"Did you shit the bed this morning?" Ilona smirked as she sat on the couch and leaned over to pick up her phone, "I was going to call the dragon lady sometime after nine."
"So, what happened last night?" Darren stared at the engagement ring on the table.
"Something happened," she followed his line of sight, "I realised the ring was too heavy."
"I could've told you that months ago."
"But you didn't," she turned the phone on, "and even if you had I wouldn't have listened but I've had time to think since I started seeing Julie and last night things got," their eyes met.
"Hot and sweaty?" Darren raised an eyebrow and then sank back and stared at the ceiling, "well this might set a fox amongst the pigeons and here was me putting off buying a new suit."
"Why a new suit?" Ilona glanced up as she waited for the icons to populate the screen, "you didn't even buy a new suit for the last wedding."
"That's because I hadn't put on weight," he patted his belly, "but fuck the suit anyway. What're you going to do? Call it off? Or put it down to a last fling before the handcuffs come on?"
"The last time I had a fling I wound up engaged," she pulled a face, "no, this is different," her eyes shifted to the phone as the messages started coming in.
"Fuck me," she tapped the screen and started scrolling through her messages. A couple were from her future mother in law, two were from Nick, one was from Darren, one was a message from her mother and the other six were from girlfriends, including one from Jodie but there were also three missed calls from Nick's mother, "last time I'm turning my phone off."
She read the one from Jodie and a lump came to her throat.
"Well that's a funny coincidence," she glanced up, "Jodie's walked out on Frankie."
"You're kidding me," Darren shifted in his seat, "where's she gone?"
