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“So, where’s Suki?” Stacey asked, gulping down her fourth drink of the night. “She’s missed all the fun.”
“I told you, she’ll be here for ten. She’s got to close up, hasn’t she,” Eve reminded her. Only on her second drink of the night—if you don’t include the shots. She wanted to be somewhat sober for when her love did turn up.
“Boring old fart,” Stacey slurred. “Always working. Does she ever take a day off?”
Eve scoffed humorously. “We’ve just come back from Brighton. You know her. After leaving the shop to Vinny and Priya for a week she’s going to want to check the books. She doesn’t that Debbie to put the magazines in the right way round yet she keeps her on.”
“Someone like her I would have thought Suki’d have sacked long ago," Stacey replied. "She wants her staff trained like shoulders, that one.”
“No, that’s just me. But then, I’m more than happy for her to boss me about," Eve grinned. Stacey was disgusted by what she was implying. "I think she keeps her because she does the unsocial hours.”
“Slave labour so she can bunk up with you,” Stacey laughed.
Eve gasped. “Is my wife jealous?”
“No.”
“Did you want to join forces with me for this thing?”
“Don’t be daft.”
“No, no!" Eve was enjoying this. She knew Stacey missed her around the house. "We could have come as Alex and Piper, or Helen and Nikki! Keep with a prison theme.”
“What so you could get off with another Governess?” Stacey raised an eyebrow.
“Stacey, I’ve told you, you’re a beautiful woman but you’re not my type,” Eve answered, nudging the brunette's shoulder with a closed fist jokingly.
“And Mrs Bridges was? I know you’re butch but she was something else.”
“Now, Stace, don’t be homophobic. We come in all shapes, sizes and tastes," Eve smirked before she realised how Stacey had referred to their former boss, if you could call her that. She was in charge of His Majesty's Prison but she didn't exactly do a good job. "Was she married?”
“I think she was, I’m sure I saw a ring every now and then," Stacey commented. Mrs Bridges was known for being incredibly unprofessional with the inmates. While she was a model employee to the staff, she was never questioned. "Maybe she was your type, you like a married woman.”
“If I had known," Eve thought about it. "Even then… sometimes desperate times calls for desperate measures.”
“Was the screwdriver worth it?”
“Yes. A lesbian needs her tools.”
“I don’t want to know,” Stacey turned her nose up again.
“It really was for those kitchen cupboards—“
Stacey waved a hand in front of her face. “Sure.”
“Anyway, what have you come as?" Eve asked, looking her wife-by-law up and down. "Miss Scarlett who doesn’t have a cluedo what happened to her Professor Plum?”
“He’s over there looking like a grape.”
Eve gasped as she looked over her shoulder to see Martin dressed exactly as described. She squealed. “So you do still love Martin!”
“Keep your voice down!” Stacey hissed, slapping Eve on the arm.
Eve raised her eyebrows suggestively. “Do you want me to, uh, plant the poison in the cellar…”
“What?”
“That sounded better in my head," Eve blinked rapidly. Both of them were confused suddenly. "I’m not even sure what I meant by that.”
“Neither do I… Go get us another drink to make up for it.”
“I’m going.”
Eve approached the bar with a smile on her face.
Time was getting nearer to Suki arriving. They had discussed going to this unconventional Sten as each other but decided they wouldn’t let each other pick out what they were going to wear. It was almost a game to see how well they really knew each other. All Suki had done is paint Eve’s nails for her. Eve was never one for manicures and all that. She kept them short and maintained and that was about it. She knew if she even attempted to paint them Suki’s famous pink half of the polish would be on her fingers. Suki had found the experience oddly affectionate.
Elaine knew Eve and Stacey’s order by heart, as she did with most of the regulars, and got straight to pouring her favourite ale when Eve felt a pair of arms wrap around her from behind. She noticed her own watch on dark skin before the smell of her usual perfume filled her senses.
“Hello, you,” Eve whispered, leaning her head back to rest on Suki’s, her hand covering the one across her stomach.
Suki grinned against her coat on Eve’s back. “You didn’t want to wear my heels then?”
Eve winked at Elaine when she placed down the new drinks in front of her before turning in her girlfriend’s arms.
“Those things were like Empire State Buildings. There is no way I could walk in them,” Eve laughed. Instead, she’d chosen a pair of dress shoes she had with a slight wedge on them.
Suki hummed contently, running her fingers down the lapels of the coat. “Otherwise, I think you got the look down to a T.”
“The wig isn’t great but for you, I had to.”
Suki giggled, pressing her forehead to Eve’s.
Eve had to excuse herself for a moment so she could pay Elaine but not before asking Suki if she wanted something. Of course Suki asked for a whisky—it had been a long day. Eve picked up her beer and Stacey’s wine, gesturing to Suki where she had been sitting for the night who carried her own drink over.
“Wow, Suki, look at you!” Sonia exclaimed.
It was now Eve had gotten a proper look at Suki dressed as her. She had tided her hair back into a tight, low bun so It was off her face and gave off the impression it was like Eve’s much shorter hair when they first started talking. She was wearing Eve’s black and white flowery shirt with a black vest top underneath it, black skinny jeans and converse. Suki in trainers, it was unheard of.
Eve knew they couldn’t have been hers as Eve was a size seven to Suki’s size five’s.
“I borrowed them off of Davinder,” Suki confessed. “God knows how he wears the things; they’re so flat.”
“I appreciate the effort you went to,” Eve smiled, leaning over to kiss her love for the first time that night. There was a collective groan from around the table. “Jealous, the lot of you.”
“Right, excuse me, ladies, pregnant lady needs the bathroom,” Sonia said, shuffling herself along the booth seat.
“I-I should make sure make she gets out of that costume alright,” Reiss muttered.
Sharon rolled her eyes. “I should probably make sure the pair of them make it out alive. But first, I’m going to go ask that fine gentleman officer what time his show starts.”
“Oh, yeah, Suki!” Stacey spoke a little louder than expected in her boozy state. “You missed the girl stripper.”
Suki cocked her head to the side. Trying to hide the sting of disappointment that ran through her. Not the good kind either. Images of what this woman looked like raced through her mind.
“A stripper, aye?”
“I think our Eve was hoping for a dance but she only had eyes for the men,” Stacey scoffed. “What a let down in Twenty-twenty-four.”
While Eve laughed at her best friend’s shout for equality, Suki’s anxiety only worsened at the thought of her woman looking at another. One with half her clothes missing.
While Suki had no doubts about her relationship with Eve, she did have a nagging voice in the back of her head from time to time that told her of her inexperience in world of dating women. There’s things Eve had done and seen that have never crossed Suki’s mind. She hated the thought of another’s hands on her girlfriend. She wasn’t possessive or controlling by any means, but she was protective. Eve was hers and she was Eve’s. It was as simple as that.
How close would this stripper had gotten to Eve if a dance was an option. Would she had put her breast near Eve’s face like Suki imagined most professionals do and would Eve had put her hands on her? Would she have bitten her lip to hold back the desire running through her veins. Eve was human at the end of the day, she was allowed to look.
What Suki didn’t know was while, admittedly, Eve enjoyed the sight of the stripper making Zack flustered and embarrassed, she was glad it wasn’t her in his position. The idea that everyone in the pub watching have their eyes on you while the dancer suggestively removed their clothes, had Eve squirming in the worse way possible. She would much rather save that for the privacy of her own home.
For the rest of the evening Suki pushed it to the back of her mind.
“So, Suki, why didn’t you wear that awful grey golf-y jumper of Eve’s?” Stacey broke the silence.
“Why does everyone hate it?” Eve sighed. It was comfortable. She didn’t have to explain herself further.
“Darling, I love you, but it’s not great,” Suki agreed.
“Well, it’s staying.”
Suki rubbed Eve’s knee so she knew she didn’t really mean it—well, she wouldn’t bin it with her love looking. “This shirt is special so I love it.”
“You look so gay in it,” Stacey hiccuped, pointing her finger at Suki.
“Thanks…?” Suki narrowed her eyes worryingly. She wasn’t sure it was a compliment or not.
The rest of the party was fun. Sonia came back before final orders to let everyone know Whitney had her baby girl, Dolly. Everyone aww’d at the name, given it was a bit on the unique side.
Elaine had planned a game of Mr & Mrs with blue and pink table tennis paddles. She panicked when Eve and Suzi put their names down. While Eve insisted she’d be blue and it was fine, Elaine rushed upstairs and covered the paddle in pink sticky notes. She didn’t want anyone thinking she wasn’t an ally.
Years in the pub game, she’d met all kinds of characters. Her favourite was a young man called Ralph who she had given a job after learning he was homeless. Linda couldn’t have been older than ten at the time. He was a wonderful singer and piano player. She had him perform three evenings a week. When he got sick, she took care of him when she could. When Ralph knew he wasn’t going to make it, he asked that Elaine be his own family at the funeral. Blood or not, she had shown him more love than his real relatives ever had. He was part the reason Elaine was so upset with Linda when she couldn’t accept Johnny for who he was.
Since living together, it turned out the lovebirds knew each other between than they thought. It had been a right laugh; Stacey nearly wet herself at Suki realising what a nightmare Eve was to live with. Not that she was lazy by any means but she was a loud snorer, she was terrible at putting her cereal bowl in the dishwasher and was very particular about where her clothes went in her wardrobe. She knew when Suki had put washing away for her.
Final orders were called and the punters slowly started to leave.
Eve and Suki had to hold onto Stacey so she didn’t trip down the small step. They walked her to her door, Suki whispering her disapproval to Eve about the situation the closer they got. More than once they had to save Stacey from falling flat on her face.
Stacey was fishing her keys out from her bag when she remembered she needed to thank them for bringing her back.
“Thank you, ladies,” Stacey slurred cheerily. She grabbed their faces one by one and smothered their cheeks in kisses.
Eve loved seeing Stacey like this, she found it hilarious. Suki was fuming her make up now ruined by Stacey’s red lipstick and her car key was digging into her skin.
Stacey held onto Eve, holding her tightly around the neck in an attempt to hug her goodbye. She patted her former cell mate’s chest hard a few times.
“Next time there’s one of these, you and me are going as Thelma and Louise.”
“They weren’t a couple,” Suki said impatiently, forcibly grabbing the keys from her hand. She unlocked the door.
“Oh…,” was all Stacey said slowly as Eve walked her into the house safely.
Eve kicked her shoes off the second she walked through the door of No. 41. She heard Suki cough behind her and quickly picked them up, placing them neatly on the shoe rack.
Eve put Suki’s favourite purple handbag on the hallway table before shrugging the jacket off her shoulders
“How did it feel to be me for a night?” Suki asked.
“I don’t know how you carry one of those things around all day,” Eve pointed to the discarded bag.
“It was empty.”
“Still,” Eve replied sternly. She smirked when she see Suki start to pull items from her jeans. “How was it to put everything in your pockets?”
“Uncomfortable! I nearly sat on my keys twice,” Suki joked, waving the set with many colourful chains to it.
“Hence why I told you to take my carabiner or nothing at all,” Eve smirked when Suki rolled her eyes at her. When Eve told her a lot of lesbians did it, she told her girlfriend she’d rather be seen dead than without her handbag holding personal items. She did not understand the fashion. “You knew we were coming home together.”
“Were we?” Suki raised her eyebrow, closing the space between them. She wrapped her arms around Eve, admiring the way her shirt fit her girlfriend. Especially the dip in the neckline. “Who decided that?”
“We did. A few months ago now if you remember,” Eve reminded her, tapping their noses together, making Suki giggle.
”Oh, I remember,” Suki mused, playing with the fabric of the neckline.
Suddenly those thoughts from earlier came back to haunt her. She didn’t know why it bothered her so much. It’s not like she was a saint.
Suki had to ask her about it.
“Have you ever watched a stripper?” she asked, her eyes fixed on what her own hands were doing.
Eve was confused. She wanted to create a space between their bodies so she could see Suki’s face but instead, she answered the question.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Eve didn’t understand what brought this on.
“She was a performer in a gay bar on Canal Street,” Eve confessed. Memories of her nights spent there every weekend plagued her mind. “How come?”
Suki sighed, moving herself out of Eve’s arms to sit on the stairs. She still didn’t look at the brunette. “Nothing. I’m just being stupid.”
”Do you to talk about it?” Eve asked softly, putting herself on the step next to her girlfriend. She rubbed Suki’s knee.
Suki shook her head.
Eve studied her face for a moment. She wanted to know what was going on in that whirlwind of a mind. So stern and sure of herself to anyone she passed, but deep down, the businesswoman struggled with more things about herself than people realised. Even Eve was sure she didn’t know its full extent.
“You know I only have eyes for you, right?” Eve whispered. “Even when you’re dressed as me.”
”I know,” Suki grinned, resting her head on Eve’s shoulder. “It does nothing for me, by the way.”
”Same, babe,” Eve laughed, resting cheek on top of Suki’s head. “But I do love to see you in my clothes.”
Suki hummed contently. She cupped Eve’s cheek before kissing her softly.
“I think it’s time we got out of them,” she said against her lips.
Eve didn’t need to be told twice.