Page 22 of Love Is…?
Tessa tapped the journal. “You need to go back to basics. It’s all very well hooking up but it makes you sound like a display at IKEA.”
Jayde gaped. “Hey! Flirting, picking up, experiencing a night of pleasure, and anonymous sex, are all valid life choices. And I’m very good at those choices.”
“I…yes. You’ve certainly got the flirting bit covered and…the rest.” Tessa cleared her throat. “But we’re going back to the beginning of falling in love with love.”
Jayde shook her head, almost in resignation. “This is so your jam, isn’t it? Loving love. Having love. Saying the words.”
“Absolutely. Angel, my cousin, says I’m a bit Disney princess about it all. But every time I’ve told someone I loved them, I truly meant it. Angel reckons I say it too early, which I think is absurd. There’s no time stamp on telling someone that you love them.”
“But…” Jayde’s eyes rounded. “Shouldn’t you wait a while before making that declaration? You need to make sure you really know that person.
“You sound like Angel.” Tessa shrugged. “Who really knows a person at any point in time? Sometimes you just know them without knowing why. You just…know.” A niggle of doubt poked at her heart. Maybe she hadn’t known. Maybe she did say it too early. Maybe she was simply enamoured with beinginlove. Tessa growled at herself. No.
Jayde leant forward. “Do you mind if I ask what happened the last time you said I love—oh! You’re not in?—?”
“Single at the moment.” Tessa snuggled in to her corner. “Last relationship was when I was nannying in Canada. Her name was Olna. We were together eighteen months and in the third month I told her I loved her, because I did.” She smacked the cushion. “I meant it.”
This time it was Jayde’s turn to reach for Tessa’s hand. “What happened? Did she say it back?”
“No, which I was fine with, because saying I love you doesn’t need an echo. It’s an emotion riding a wave that lands in the sea of unconditional. If the tide comes in, and love returns, it brings back the sea, doesn’t it?” They held each other’s gaze, then Jayde squeezed Tessa’s hand and released it. “Anyway, Olna decided that my job was beneath her. Apparently nannying isn’t a realjob.” Tessa made a feeble attempt to air quote but her fingers wouldn’t leave the cushion. She sighed. “She wanted a girlfriend who was infused with wit, charm, good looks, and some sort of prestigious job, which was kind of ironic considering she worked behind the concession counter at the local cinema. Um….So she also said that a girlfriend should be skilled and adventurous in the…” Tessa faded off and blushed. “Doesn’t matter,” she finished inside a mumble.
Tessa was grateful that Jayde had the tact not to comment on the last part because it was more than she’d wanted to share with the sexy woman in front of her. Jayde would probably win every game of Twister based on her sexual experience; an image that Tessa shook away.
“So it was kind of a train wreck?” Jayde asked gently.
“Hm. Pretty much.” Tessa hummed sadly.
“How do you come back from that? I mean, why would you ever want to be in love again?” Jayde seemed genuinely confused.
Tessa couldn’t help it. She grabbed Jayde’s hand as if to anchor her while she made her point “Why? Because, yes, my heart hurts each time it gets stomped on. But my love is not a single-use shopping bag. It’s refilled with a wonder of the now and a desire for the new and a longing to be cradled softly within another person’s heart. It is on that wave, Jayde.”
They held each other’s hand until Tessa decided that it was all too intimate and weird, and pulled away. She snatched up the notebook.
“So, curriculum. You’ve already skipped ahead a few sections, so you’re overachieving. Let’s backtrack.”
Jayde seemed to be in a daze, then must have realised that Tessa had spoken, if her quick head shake was any indication, because she refocused and quirked an eyebrow.
“Hit me with it.”
“We’re going to dinner.”
Jayde blinked. “We are?”
“Yes.” Tessa nodded. “We’re going to dinner so you can practice going to dinner.”
Jayde wrinkled her brow. “I know how to eat, Tessa.”
Tessa knew there’d been a comma in that sentence, but holy hell her clit, in fact most areas of her pelvis, clenched as her hormones forgot the existence of punctuation.
“I…”she stuttered, at a loss for an actual response.At least the blushing had calmed itself. Thank God.
Jayde smiled slowly. “Food, Tessa. I know how to eat food.” Clearly Jayde’s preferred teaching method was to instruct via demonstration because the great big piles of flirt being aimed at Tessa were exhilarating. “So, shall I write one as well?” Jayde smirked, obviously reading Tessa’s mind.
“A curriculum?”
“Yes.”
Tessa took a deep breath and tried out her own smirk which seemed to succeed because Jayde’s eyes sparkled.