This is a collaboration with the amazing SiteNonSite, who has been co-posting it under Novels and Novellas. As always I encourage you to take the time to read all of SiteNonSite's stories if you haven't already.
This chapter does not have the same level of heat as previous chapters, so if you're looking for a hot fix, there's 7 previous chapters.
Warning/Trigger Warning - just for the lesbian sex purists there is some heterosexual activity in this chapter (we have tried to keep this minimal - but it is part of Sarah's story which she needed to be tell. Don't act all offended - you already knew she wasn't a gold star.) On a serious note, it may be a challenging one due to some religious themes. Consider this your warning.
For those of you who have been following since the beginning - yes, this is for you, you will finally get some answers to your questions. That said you may have many more questions, so please leave them in the comments.
Special thanks to HaltWhoGoesThere for proof reading this chapter for us.
Of Confession
I hadn't really been thinking about where I was until I turned down 1st Ave, and with a little jolt of surprise saw that I was in Little India. Walking downtown from Port Authority I'd known where I was headed, I wasn't lost or even off course, it was mostly a straight shot down Broadway. But I'd been walking in a bit of a daze. New York is especially dirty on Sunday mornings, and a little strange... not quite itself. The whole city feels like it slept in its clothes; slowly waking up hungover and empty. So everything seems unfamiliar anyway, but I also hadn't been over this way in years.
And even as fucked up and out of control as everything felt, part of me couldn't help but find it striking that my mind was still stitching a map of the city together, that I was still placing disconnected places I know separately in relation to each other - connecting them.
And so here I was, in front of the funny little twin Indian restaurants Darci had dubbed "Jeff and Akbar". A group of us had been visiting the city from Brown for a symposium. I remember I had tried so hard to get Danny to come down from Buffalo and meet me that trip, and I'd been so relieved he hadn't come.
I looked around, reorienting myself, I was at 1st and 6th. To be fair, I hadn't thought of that trip in years, much less been down this way. I try to remember who I'd been with that night besides Darci and Kwasi - Bald Jeff... I think Bobbie, but I'm not sure. I remembered that there were six of us, that we had to wait for a big enough table, the two restaurants both scrambling to make room fast enough to get us inside first.
The warring restaurants occupied two tiny, but almost identical, walk-up spaces in a single storefront. One stairwell led towards their doors - facing each other - each space mirroring the other, each with the same plate glass front, and each competing to outdo the other with cheap strings of lights hanging from the ceiling - hundreds of them. Competing hawkers, both in ties and waistcoats, had pressed us to come to one or the other, extolling the great virtues of their respective establishments.
We had gone to the one on the right... or maybe it was the one on the left - it had been years ago. I'd needed to duck under the thousands of tiny lights hanging from the ceiling - strings of tiny white bulbs, glowing chili peppers, Santas and sleighs, all a jumble.
"Nothing means anything," Kwasi had joked looking up at them. Which had triggered a diatribe about postmodernism from Bald Jeff that we had all shouted down.
The six of us had crowded at a table in the back, the heat of the lights bearing down on the tops of our heads - especially Kwasi, who was a head taller than Jeff. The rush to order, the waiters bringing us one course after another after another, until the table was crowded with plates, pretty little hammered tin bowls, and towering cans of Kingfisher lager. The food had been mediocre at best, but no one cared. Kwasi and Darci hadn't started dating yet, and he had been flirting with us and doting on me, making me laugh. She had been holding on to me, whispering in my ear. It had been a fun night. I'd been happy.
In the light of day the little places looked dingy and tawdry.
'Lots of things look tawdry in the light of day,' I thought, walking down the tree-less avenue, the trash in the gutters, the stained sidewalks and shuttered storefronts. It had all started going wrong when Claire had told us how old she was.
It's not like she lied to me. We'd never talked about our ages, I'd just assumed. But, I thought of the way she had introduced me as a "prodigy" and "wunderkind" to her friends at events, "Young Sarah" when we were alone.
'I just never imagined...'
But it's more than that, because she has no accent it's so easy to forget how different our backgrounds are but she grew up in Asia and Europe, we have so few shared references. So I missed cues that might otherwise have drawn my attention to our age difference.
'Twelve years...'
She had told me about her first time, the older boy with the dick as big as a coke can. I was four when Claire had sex with him. It's no wonder she has had so many amazing experiences - she's had so much more time.
I saw Kwasi's face in my mind's eye, how he'd looked at me and Claire when I found out. He'd known, right then, that's when he'd figured it out. Both he and Wes knew...
I moaned aloud. Catching myself, I froze, but there was no one nearby, no one to hear. It was still early. 1st Ave smelled like curdled beer. I started walking again, head hung down - my whole body bent by mortification.
'Why didn't you call Kwasi?' I asked myself. 'I should talk to him...'
But even as I thought this, I knew why I hadn't. It wouldn't just be talking to Kwasi, and I really didn't want to talk to him