Bea breaks up with Ben for the second time only three weeks after the first time. It ends with a shouting match over the phone during which Meg is sitting on the edge of Bea’s bed, wincing as the conversation descends from civil to shouting to crying. When Bea finally hangs up the phone, she flings it across the room and Meg raises an eyebrow. “Honey, you need a serious dose of ice cream and rom coms and possibly a bonfire where you throw all your pictures of him into the flames and shout curses out of a Marlowe play.”
Bea rubs at her red eyes and sniffs. “I think I just need about 48 hours in bed with the lights off.”
“Nooooo,” Meg says, drawing the word out dramatically and pulling Bea into a hug. “If you’re gonna mope, you gotta do it the good old fashioned way, with your best friend by your side and a heroic dose of sugar.”
Which is how they end up curled together on the couch with a tub of ice cream each, a bottle of red wine between them, and “Love, Actually” on the TV. Bea cries at all the Emma Thompson parts and make Meg swear she’ll never tell anyone. “I have a reputation to maintain,” she says, and Meg just smiles.
When the movie ends, Bea curls into Meg, resting her head against Meg’s chest and says, “Love is dumb.”
“I don’t know about that,” Meg says. “Ben the dick is awful, but that doesn’t mean love is categorically pointless.”
“He was supposed to be perfect for me,” Bea says miserably into Meg’s cleavage.
Meg snorts. “You’ve got a lot in common, sure, but that doesn’t mean you’re perfect for each other. Honestly you should be with someone more laid back than him. Someone more grown up.”
“Hmm. Alternately, love is pointless and I should never be with anyone ever again.”
“We could be spinsters together,” Meg suggests, maybe because Bea seems pretty dead set against the idea of a new relationship, maybe because she’s kind of enjoying holding Bea this close. “We could start a coven.”
Bea looks up at her. “Don’t you have to be able to do magic to start a coven?”
“Damn. Foiled again. Well, we could always learn.”
Bea sighs. “I do wish I could just live with you. Love sucks but I like you.”
“I like you, too. Maybe we could get like, platonically married.”
“Could we? For tax purposes?” Bea asks, looking up at her hopefully.
“The best kind of marriage,” Meg says with a grin. Truth be told, she isn’t feeling that good about romance right now, either. “We could get a flat together, a couple cats, the whole deal.”
“What if one of us decided we wanted to start dating?”
“Well, the other would have to find out dramatically and probably fall to the floor weeping and then burn down the flat.”
“For the realism,” Bea says.
“For the realism,” Meg confirms.
Bea sits up. She seems a little more cheerful. “I think we’d have to kiss. You know, for the wedding.” Her face is a bit flushed, and Meg wonders if it’s from the sugar or the wine or neither.
“Just the once,” Meg says, wondering why she, too, is beginning to blush. This is silly. She’s tipsy and it’s been a long time since she got kissed and that’s the only real reason why thinking about kissing Bea is making her flustered.
“Maybe we should practice,” Bea says, poking at the bottom of her tub of ice cream for the last few bites.
Meg freezes. The fact that her heart is now racing makes it a bit harder for her to deny that she’s more than theoretically interested in being kissed right now, even after a few glasses of wine. She’s never thought about Bea like that before. She’s never thought about any girl like that before. It had just never crossed her mind, never seemed like a possibility. All her life, she’d liked boys enough that she hadn’t stopped to wonder if she might like anyone else as well. “Yeah,” she says. “Maybe.”
Bea stands up and straightens her pajama shirt. It’s unbearably cute and it’s starting to seem bizarre to Meg that she’s never noticed how pretty Bea is. “Okay,” she says, giggling a little. “So I’m uh, Bride Number One, let’s say, so I’m at the front of the church, and you’re coming down the aisle --”
Meg abruptly loses what little had remained of her sense of self control and cuts Bea off by standing and pulling her into a kiss. She has one hand on the small of Bea’s back and the other on the back of her neck, fingers sinking into Bea’s hair. Bea makes a little surprised noise and then kisses her back, arms coming up lazily around Meg’s waist. All Meg can think is that Bea is the sweetest thing she’s ever tasted, and she happily ignores the fact that that’s because she’s just eaten a pint of caramel ice cream. Bea pulls back and takes a deep breath, and for one awful moment Meg thinks she’s about to get rejected, but then Bea laughs softly and says, “That didn’t really seem like a practice kiss.”
“No, I don’t think it was.”
Bea steps back a little, but keeps her arms around Meg. “So -- what exactly was it?”
Meg frowns, contemplative. “I’m not really sure. I just sort of suddenly wanted to kiss you.”
“I’m not sure what it was either,” Bea says. “But I think it was something good.” Meg nods, and she goes on. “Something worth talking about when I haven’t just broken up with my boyfriend and had half a bottle of wine.”
“Yeah,” Meg sighs. “I think that’s probably true.”
They don’t talk about it any more that night and fall asleep together in Bea’s bed, legs tangled together under the sheets. They wake up the next day around noon, sunlight coming in through the crack in the curtains. “Hey, sleepyhead,” Bea says when Meg stretches.
“You been awake long?” Meg asks, ready to be apologetic.
“Like five minutes.”
“Asshole.”
Bea doesn’t protest, just props herself up on her elbow and says, “So. You kissed me.”
“You kissed me back,” Meg says, unsure why she feels so defensive.
“True.”
“I thought we were going to discuss this when you had, like, distance from Ben and everything.”
“Point of fact, I am very far away from Ben, and it has now been over twelve hours.”
“Seriously, Bea. It takes time to get over a serious relationship like that.”
“Okay, that’s true,” Bea says, lying back down. “But I mean, I’m not really hung up on him. I feel like it’s been ending since we visited Wellington, you know? I was upset last night but honestly? I was so ready for it to be over.”
“I just mean,” Meg pauses, fiddling with the pillowcase. “If we’re -- something, I don’t want it to get messed up because you’re not over Ben.”
“I don’t want that, either. But I also kind of really want to kiss you again.”
Meg can’t help smiling. “Yeah,” she says, biting her lip. “Me too.”
“Maybe we could just keep it private. For now. Because if we tell anyone it’ll be messy. I just broke up with Ben --”
“And I’ve always said I’m straight --”
“Yeah, what happened to that?” Bea asks, poking her in the ribs.
“I don’t know. I’d never thought about it before. I guess I like girls, too.”
Bea nods. “Like me and Peter. Join the club.”
“Something like that. But yeah, I’m not sure I’m ready to start talking to people about it.”
“And that’s fine. You shouldn’t have to,” Bea says, and Meg is a relieved. She’d been a little worried that it would be an issue. “So maybe, for right now, we can just kiss sometimes and not put a label on it and not tell anyone. I think it’s a lot less likely to get screwed up without pressure from our friends, too.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” Meg says, and rolls over to kiss Bea just once before she sits up. “Hey, we just had a very mature conversation about our feelings.”
Bea nods, still sprawled across the bed. “We’re pretty good at this, huh?”
“Much better than you and Ben.” Bea rolls her eyes and Meg says, “Too soon?”
“A bit.”
“But not too soon to make out with you?”
Bea sits up, all eagerness. “Definitely not.”
“Good,” Meg says, and leans forward to kiss her.