1
Life for Rachel over the months took on a smoother, albeit blander shade of normality as the outside world turned to darker shades of winter. She needed it and it was that obvious that she wasn't the only one who could see it. So much confusion...
So thank God for best friends, even those like Donna who might sometimes unintentionally upset the apple cart in unexpected ways. Like coaxing the flower of a maturing woman's sexuality to blossom and bloom; like turning the sudden realisation that your daughter is gay into an opportunity to use sex and lovemaking as a way to help a mother to understand and to feel the way free human beings once did.
To rescue her from the premature and undeserved onset of frigidity, caused by the meddling and selfishness of a man she once trusted with her life!
But then Donna was admittedly Rachel's only best friend. The other bitch turned out to be another poser, faking everything from domestic bliss to her loyalty as a wife - and all the while fucking Rachel's husband on the sidelines.
Donna had in fact said before, without hesitance, that she would kill for Rachel. When she found out about Steve's cheating and then walking out, she was damn close to proving true to her word and Rachel didn't doubt it one bit.
But come this stage and in terms of Steve - the fallout he caused, the bitterness he left behind, and with Rachel trying to forget where she could not forgive - the most painful and bitter part was simply that he showed no responsibility or effort in regards to Emma.
The bastard was ashamed and so he should have been. But because his cockiness and his stubbornness wouldn't allow him to walk the walk of shame, head hung low like the whining dog he had become over the years, he carried himself with stern, cold reserve as he helped himself into their house by day, knowing well that Emma would not be there as he came to drop money on the table.
This was what it had come to. 'Avoiding your own daughter because you have the balls to fuck around but not the heart to admit that you're fucking with her life at the same time,' Rachel put it to him one day. He was hoping to avoid her too, and so chose not to speak. In her home, that just didn't cut it. 'Or maybe because all you can do is think with your cock you don't want to taint her with your dirty fucking hands?!'
'I don't deserve this,' Steve insisted and walked away, but Rachel followed, infuriated by his pig-headed ignorance.
'You're right,' she said with a wavering voice, not daring to come undone and to let him win - not that way. 'You don't deserve any of this. You don't deserve to make my entire life a lie. You don't deserve to abandon the life that you helped to make.'
'Oh get off my fucking back,' he yelled as he made a beeline for the front door, and his hands wouldn't do what his brain - or maybe his cock - told them to do. Ironically, a man couldn't count on his cock to think for him.
Rachel wouldn't get off his back. She would ride his back out that door, down the driveway, down the street and right out of town if she had to. 'And you don't deserve to troll your daughter like this, when she's giving up hope on you, wondering why you don't call or answer hers or even hold half a conversation with her.'
Fumbling with the door handle, he barely got out of the house before she was on top of him, and then he had the nerve - or the lack of - to swing that door shut on her. Well she ragged it open with such strength that he almost ran to the minivan.
'Who do you think you are; Santa Claus? You might as well be seeing as you've been emptying your sack all over town!'
By that point Rachel was livid and yelling at full lung capacity for all to hear. Amused faces watched intently. And when Rachel suggested, 'I'd change the locks but you'd probably still dump your load down the chimney,' there were howls of laughter.
The tyres even screeched when the minivan took off with a bloated and embarrassed looking Steve behind the wheel. At that point his face was burning with such a deep red that he could have been Santa. But Rachel wasn't done riding him...
'YOU WANTED OUT, YOU STAY OUT!' she screamed after him. 'YOU DON'T PUSH YOUR WAY AROUND ME EVER AGAIN LIKE YOU OWN ME OR THIS HOUSE. YOU HAVE A BANK ACCOUNT. YOU CAN WIRE EMMA'S CHILD SUPPORT FROM NOW ON SINCE THAT'S ALL IT'S COME DOWN TO!'
She had just taken on the world, the meek mouse now a proud lioness, fighting for her cub and herself. Rachel had also stunned the world into a dead standstill, but faces were smiling. Somebody else cheered. Somebody whistled and then clapped their hands together; a lone standing ovation that all at once meant nothing and everything.
Rachel had turned around to go back to the house when her eye caught Rose Copeland from next door. Her facial expression was the same passive, slightly haggard picture as always. But when she spoke...
'You're my new hero,' she said and then offered Rachel tea. Then the sudden tears became a torrent and so she gladly accepted. All the while thinking, 'oh fuck I am so wet right now...'
2
In a sense, once she could put the unpleasant details safely away at the back of her worried mind, Rachel came to be ever more thankful for having Donna at her side. And Donna could happily stand at arm's length too if it was necessary. Trust was not even a question between Rachel and Donna.
If what happened between them had occurred twenty years ago, the chances were they'd still be together now. And yet their friendship had lasted that long anyway and they were still together as friends, and yet with a bond as strong as family. Either way their love was unconditional, so the sex was never going to come between them. But it had changed Rachel, irreversibly!
She was discovering a sense of independence, not just of body, but of heart and mind, and she was winning hearts and minds, such as that of her next door neighbour Rose. They had never really bonded as neighbours. When the Copelands came along, Rachel and Steve were already in that cooling period, becoming estranged and pretending to be busy all the time so that they could ignore the underlying problem.
Rose and Jim, as she discovered, had a very simple life of work and relaxation, preparing for the inevitable onset of grandparenthood. Sex didn't come into the equation, but they were comfortable and clearly affectionate. Why couldn't Rachel and Steve have had that?
She guessed not everybody could. And as Rose put it, 'it takes two!'
"Chinese food, white wine and Netflix," became the order of one later Friday evening after all that bullshit began to smooth over and calm. Donna knew how to entice Rachel into a perfect girl's night in.
It was nice to be able to function at the bare minimum and to let convenience take care of the rest. Rachel forgot what laziness felt like and she welcomed it, and Donna, with open arms. After scrolling through a bunch of action movies and arthouse, both of which didn't interest either of them beyond the promise of a semi-naked Jason Statham, they settled on a Nicholas Sparks movie.
'Scott Eastwood, though,' Donna remarked with an appreciative nod as they cuddled up on the couch in front of the hanging flatscreen television on the chimney breast. Earlier Rachel had made a joke about a certain Santa Clause getting his sack roasted on an open fire.
'Drool,' she responded, drawn out for emphasis. 'You know, he looks kind of like-
'Clint Eastwood?'
'Yeahhhh!!'
