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If you were to place hunger and desperation on a scale, you could watch it forever only for it to gather dust. It’s one and the same. Hunger that stretches the lining of your stomach. Hunger that reaches the back of your tongue, like your esophagus reached up and begged you to take notice. Desperation is the lingering hurt that comes from the stretch. The reminder that you felt pain like that urging you to never let it happen again.
To George, hunger looked like London. It was a rundown apartment and 10 hours on a call because it was all they had. Making plans to move somewhere she doesn’t care to want and being alright with that for as long as Dream would be there.
Desperation is Florida. Because now that she’s here she’s constantly thinking up of ways to convince Dream that she should stay. Like if she relaxes for a moment everything she’s ever dreamt of will be ripped from her hands. Even now that she’s here Florida feels so out of reach.
But there’s something lingering behind the hunger and desperation. Lurking in the shadows, shifting and dodging prying eyes. Something you never see until you get there, til it’s right at your face.
George can tell that Dream’s about to fall asleep. She nudges her to tell her to lay down properly, not to squish herself to the wall just so George can see the movie playing on her laptop. She takes it from her lap and sets it to the side. Dream is just barely awake enough to follow what George’s asking her to do.
And she must be hot, sweating under her hoodie even with the AC on, because she shimmies her way out of it. George has to swallow down the urge to gasp when she realizes she isn’t wearing a shirt under it, just a bra. The soft kind that she had told her about. Lounge wear or whatever she called it then.
Dream is laying in bed, beside her, in nothing but her pink shorts and a bra on. She turns to George, eyes drooping from fatigue but her smile is gorgeous, even now.
“What is it?” she asks.
This must be it, George thinks. This is what’s been hiding behind all that hunger and desperation.
“Nothing,” she answers. But this isn’t just nothing. This is it. “You sure you want to sleep in that?”
“It’s comfortable, no wires and shit. I don’t care, Georgie. Let’s go to sleep.”
She’s still staring when they’re settled into bed. Dream feels the gaze burning on her because she opens her eyes and reaches out to tangle their hands together.
“Something on your mind?” she mumbles.
And George can’t think of anything except that she feels like she did in London and she feels like she does in Florida but also so much more. There’s no proper way to explain it. She almost wishes her emotions could come to life and explain everything to her, so George won’t get it all wrong and mixed up if she tries talking. But she knows that can’t happen, so she squeezes her hand and closes her eyes.
“You’re just beautiful,” she whispers to the air that separates them. Neither of them say anything but George can tell that it’s coming out of the shadows and it’s coming after her.
Hunger is the way you yearn. Desperation is a tight hand clasping yours. The third thing, always lurking, is love; and it’s caught up to her.
Her first month in Florida was a little rocky.
Dream will sometimes lean in for a kiss on the cheek before she leaves and George doesn’t quite know how to react in time. When it first happened she dodged the kiss out of sheer shock. Then she tried fixing it by leaning in to kiss her on the cheek instead. It was awkward but it got Dream to smile at her so it’s a win in her book.
These days, they’ve fallen into a routine about it. Dream wakes up and presses a kiss to her cheek instead of saying good morning. George will squeeze her waist and smile as she leans into it. It’s all normal. Even when the kiss happens before Dream leaves the house or when they’re about to fall asleep, or in the middle of the night, in the kitchen, in the movie room, it’s okay. It’s all routine; it’s normal and there’s nothing about it that should set George off.
“Georgie,” Dream calls out to her.
“Yeah?” she answers. George is snuggled into the sofa in last night’s pajamas. She looks up at Dream and sees her dressed up, wearing her hair naturally curly. She has the new lip gloss on that she’s been recently obsessed with.
“I’m getting my nails done and then I might pass by Walmart. Do you wanna come with?” She’s preoccupied with looking through her purse, presumably for her keys– which are on the table beside George.
“No, I’m okay,” she says.
“Okay, just call me if you want me to get you anything.” Dream wrestles her hair into her blue claw clip and gets back to pacing around the house.
George does nothing but stare at her and her pretty hair. There's citrus in the air from the cologne that she loves using and all she can do is be excited for her goodbye cheek kiss like a dog patiently waiting for a treat with its tail wagging wildly.
“Where the fuck did I put my keys,” Dream mutters and it breaks her out of her staring trance.
“Right here,” George says as she presents the keys to her.
Dream sighs in relief and takes it from her outstretched hand.
Then the routine continues.
“Thanks, George. See you later,” she says and then she’s leaning in. There’s a kiss pressed gently into her lips, like flower petals falling on top of each other. George can taste lip gloss and oranges.
“See you, Dream.”
She leans back into the sofa, pulling all the blankets back to her lap. Later, when she’s rubbing her lips together, spreading around the lip gloss, she realizes what happened.
Dream just kissed her goodbye.
On the lips.
Okay, she’s okay. It’s all fine because girls do this, right? Kiss their friends goodbye?
Her phone pings and it’s a message from Dream.
im already at the nail place and i think i just accidentally kissed you
Okay. fine, whatever. Maybe friends don’t kiss each other to say goodbye. Okay. It's all fine.
They don’t really talk about it when Dream gets home. She gives George a donut from that place they like and she disappears into her room.
She figures this was her way of saying sorry but George doesn’t want an apology. She wants to kiss her again and not have to think about flights back to London.
There’s this feeling of dread, deep in her stomach, that follows her all day. She hasn’t felt like this since before the visa. Since before they started their lives together.
It’s a bitter taste that sits right under her tongue.
Then dinner rolls around and George is in the kitchen making the only dish she knows how to.
When the table’s set and the food is on the table, Dream walks in, Patches in her arms.
“Gina,” she says. It makes her realize how long it’s been since she last called her that. She doesn’t know how to feel. She wants it back the way it was before, when she was Georgie to her and she hadn’t known the way her lips felt against hers in a goodbye.
“Hi Dream,” she replies but it feels all wrong. “You wanna eat?”
She doesn’t say anything. Instead, she puts Patches down and walks up to her, close enough that the tips of their slippers are touching. George can feel her heart beating out of her chest.
“Dream,” she whispers.
“I didn’t mean to kiss you,” she says. Dream is looking into her eyes in that sad way that she does, when her eyes are glistening and her lips can’t help but dip down into a frown.
There’s nothing she can do but hold her close. “It’s okay,” George tells her.
“I’m sorry, George.”
“It’s okay,” she repeats and now there’s tears welling in her eyes. All of this love inside her, the hunger for more, the desperation to get it right, it’s too much. It feels heavy in a way she knows is wrong.
“I’m scared,” Dream admits.
That’s all it takes for George to relax. To know that this is as important to Dream as it is to her.
“It’s okay, Dream,” she says again, tears now falling down her face. She doesn’t ever want her to feel like this again. It makes her want to crawl out of her skin and wash everything away and she doesn’t like it. “We’re okay.”
Loving her shouldn’t make her feel dirty. They are not dirty.
When they’ve both cried about it enough, Dream is the one to breach the conversation.
“I don’t know why I did that.”
George loves her in this moment, honest and tears drying on her cheeks.
“You did nothing wrong.”
“I kissed you,” she states. There’s a faraway look to her eyes that leaves George clueless to what she’s feeling.
“It was barely a kiss.” She doesn’t say it meanly, just says it the way it is. Because Dream had kissed her goodbye except it wasn’t really a kiss because if it was then George would’ve pulled Dream down onto her lap even though she’s taller than her. She would’ve pushed her hair away from her neck so she could trail pretty kisses down it in apology.
I’m sorry I took this long and I’m sorry this is all that I can give you. I don’t know if you’d like me more if I were a boy but if that’s the case then I’m sorry for that too. I’m sorry this makes me cry at night and I wish I didn’t love you but I do and I don’t actually want to stop loving you. I’m sorry I'm trying to kiss the words ‘I love you’ into your skin because I can’t say it out loud without choking on it.
So it wasn’t a kiss. She’d know if it was.
“What else would you call pressing our lips together?”
“Goodbye.” This is probably the boldest George has ever been to Dream but she doesn’t care. She’s tired of hiding it under her skin, it only ends up hurting the both of them. “You can kiss me goodbye if you like.”
“What about hello?” Dream asks. Her voice is shy but there’s a tinge of sunshine in it. Sunrise, a new day.
“You can kiss me hello as well. Whatever feels nice.”
“And we’ll be okay? You won’t hate me?”
“I won’t,” she shakes her head. George intertwines their hands together, slowly, deliberately. “Nothing has to change. We can do whatever and we’ll still be us. Still friends.”
“Okay,” she says.
Beautiful Dream with the sun in her eyes and a body of water in her heart. Ebbing and flowing and crashing and flooding the walls of her body. Dream and her love she wears on the necklace that dangles around her neck, there for everyone to see, open for the taking. There wasn’t much George could do but love her.
So she leans in and proves it.
They aren’t dating, but they kiss when no one else is around.
George learns that Dream has a running train of thoughts so funny that it sends her into a fit of giggles against her lips. She doesn’t mind, as long as they keep kissing.
In the middle of all of this, Dream takes up baking. She starts small, just chocolate chip cookies and simple biscuits. Now she makes cakes and frosting and her lips never stop tasting like sugar.
Today is a muffin day. Dream made a lot because she knew Nicole would be going to visit her family for a bit. She packed her a tupperware of her best muffins and asked that she would send them her love.
Then she hugs her tight and kisses her on the cheek as she bids her goodbye.
It’s disgusting, the feeling that ripples through her. Ugly and disgusting. Possessive over someone that isn’t hers. Dream can kiss who she likes, whatever, it shouldn’t affect her.
But George spends all day moping and all she can think about is who else does she kiss? Does she kiss them the way she kisses me? Like she’s hungry and she can’t get enough?
George doesn’t think she can stomach it anymore. To press their mouths together when there isn't anything to keep them together but what is there to say? What relationship is there to fight about? It makes George sick, knowing that. Dream could have anyone. She could end up with someone that doesn’t know her the way she does, doesn’t understand her silences or her long rants. It’s just not right.
It doesn’t help that they’re going to a party tonight which means Dream will look pretty and she’ll be nice to everyone and George will have to pretend like she doesn’t have the taste of her lingering on her lips.
George loves seeing Dream get ready. They always do it together, Dream on the floor with all her makeup and her hair curler scattered on the floor and her on the desk, all her stuff in a pouch.
Dream likes to start with her hair. George always tells her the curls she already has is nice as it is but she’ll shake her head and insist on taking the iron wand to her already curly hair. She ends with her jewelry. She has a lot of earrings, most of them handmade. Today there’s a W keycap that dangles on her lobe, a small smile on her upper lobe, two simple helix rings and a star stud conch piercing. On her fingers are big, clunky rings on most fingers.
George always pulls her hair into a ponytail. Her fringe will come out of it as the night progresses but it’s never bothered her. The only jewelry she wears is a watch and the chain Dream had given her.
“Can I put makeup on you?” Dream asks her.
“Why?”
“George, please,” she pouts and she almost gives in right then and there. “I promise you’ll look good.”
“Fine,” she relents. “But not too much, okay?”
“Sure, Georgie.”
Dream gathers all her makeup and sets it in front of George. Then she makes space on the table and sits down, feet on the armrests of the chair and legs bracketing George’s shoulders.
Like a woman possessed, George places a kiss on the corner of her knee and pretends like she isn’t wishing they’d just stay home tonight.
Dream blushes, pretty pink cheeks and bright eyes. Sunrise living within her.
“Stop that,” she says but her legs don’t move and she doesn’t acknowledge George’s hand around her ankle.
It’s when she’s doing her eye makeup that Dream moves closer. She’s practically kneeling on George, trying to be close enough to do it right.
“You’re gunna fall, Claire,” George warns her. Her hands move to her waist which shakes beneath her fingers in effort to stay upright. “Just sit.”
“Where, idiot? I need to get closer.”
“Just–” George starts. She pulls her down, making her sit on her lap. “Sit down before you fall over.”
“George!”
“What?” she laughs at her surprise. “I’ve got you. I wasn’t going to let you fall over, come on.”
Dream looks down at her. Even sitting on George she’s still taller than her. “I’m not too heavy?” she asks.
“Never,” she shakes her head.
“Tell me if I am.”
“You won’t be.” George’s thumbs rub circles against her hips. She can’t help but kiss her on the high of her cheekbone, where she carefully brushed glitter onto it. “Don’t worry about it.”
She nods but she stays quiet as she continues pressing the brush against her eyes. It’s only then that she realizes that George had called her 'Claire' and not ‘Dream’ like she usually does.
“This is okay, right?” George whispers.
“‘S fine,” she answers but she won’t meet her gaze. “Close your eyes.”
It doesn’t take long for her to finish. Soon enough Dream is reaching back to get another product. She presents George with two tubes of lipstick.
“Which one do you want?”
“What do you think looks good on me?” She counters.
“Well, this one's more pink and this is more red.”
“I don’t mind. Whatever you think looks best.”
“Don’t get mad at me if you don’t like it.”
She puts down one of the two and swipes the lipstick against her lips. Dream has George’s jaw cradled in her hand, her focus laser-sharp. Her hair falls gently against her face but she does nothing about it, more concerned about the lipstick than she is about her obstructed vision.
Her finger wipes at the excess by the corner of her mouth and George can swear that there’s a storming brewing. The air is so thick and muggy, energy fizzling right at the surface. Dream pauses her movements, then she’s staring at George, her finger so close to her mouth it almost feels like she could stick her finger right at the heart of her and get away with it.
It’s a long moment of just nothing. Everything is suspended in the air as they lock eyes, breaths still. George’s thighs burn where Dream’s skin is touching hers, burning in a way that brands her.
Dream takes a deep breath in,
Then a beat,
And they’re falling into a kiss. Desperate and messy, like they’re trying to climb into each other. George can taste sugary sweet against her lips and it takes over her mind. Her world starts and ends at the place where they meet, the place where their hearts spill into each other from open mouths. There’s lip gloss smearing into George’s lipstick and the thought of that has her panting, hands climbing up and down Dream’s sides. Her blonde hair falls down the sides of George’s face and it makes her feel beautiful. Getting kissed within an inch of her life, haloed by Dream’s beauty.
“Georgie,” Dream says into her mouth but George doesn’t want to hear more. She kisses her deeper thinking let us have this moment. Stay here, with me, kiss me forever until you’re short of breath then kiss me some more.
But Dream has always been the one with more sense and she’s pulling away. She’s sitting on her lap, panting, and mouth smeared red. Her hair is in disarray but her hands stay on George’s face. She’s beautiful like this, kissed breathless and such a girl, it only makes George want her more.
“Um,” Dream pants. “Your lipstick.”
George spares a thought to how she must look right now. Lip gloss all over and her hair coming out of her ponytail .
Like she’s Dream’s her mind interjects.
George pulls Dream closer, arms tight around her waist. “You should see the other guy,” she jokes. Then she’s planting kisses all over her face, her neck, covering her skin in red lipstick where their kiss hadn’t touched. Dream laughs like George doesn’t love her so much she could die with it.
“We… um,” Dream starts, distracted. “The party, Georgie,”
She buries her face into Dream’s neck. She smells like orange citrus here, like the body wash she likes using. “We don’t need to go.”
“We do. Or I do, at least. Ken’s already gonna kill me for being late, I can’t not go.”
“Fine,” George pouts. “But we leave before it gets too late. I don’t care what Manager Kendall has to say.”
Dream nods in agreement, laughing at George’s annoyance, “Fine. Let’s, um. Clean up first. We’ve got lipstick all over.”
She moves to stand but George holds her in place. “Wait,” she tells her, taking out her phone. “Let’s take a picture.”
Dream doesn’t say anything to stop her. She smiles sweetly, settling closer to George.
It comes out nice. They’re both smiling and George has her arms still around Dream’s waist. She has lipstick marks on her cheeks and down her jaw while George’s skin stays free from any.
It fuels this possessiveness in George, with Dream in her lap and her kisses all over. Tangible proof of what they are when no one else is around.
If this is all that they’ll ever be, friends that trade kisses where it exists only in pictures, then George could live with it. She doesn’t need anything else but this.
They don’t talk about the kiss. They don’t talk about any of the kisses they’ve shared and George is starting to wonder if it’s doing them more bad than good.
Dream barely spares her a glance, skittish and fleeting even though she’s right beside her. She thinks about the picture in her phone, the lipstick that Dream had to reapply. It’s harder to admit, when the lights are on and eyes are on them, to pretend she doesn’t want more— doesn’t need more.
The party was whatever. George spent the entire night grinding down jealousy as she watched Dream gather the attention of the room. It’s easy to tell yourself that you can handle ‘just friends’ when you’ve just been kissed within an inch of your life and not when you’re actively watching people try to hit on her.
So, whatever , she thinks. It’s not like any of them are coming home with Dream.
But even though it’s George that’s beside her when she falls asleep, things couldn’t have been more tense.
George wakes up alone, most days. She still sleeps in Dream’s room but there’s this thought in the back of her head that tells her she’s not welcome. So she shifts to only sleeping over when Dream initiates it– which becomes rarer and rarer. They don’t kiss goodbye or hello or whatever else because Dream stops seeking her out.
Days blend into each other and it doesn’t take long for George to feel like a stranger in her own home. She thinks about talking to Dream, about telling her she can’t take it anymore. To tell her she’s sorry for how jagged everything feels, like forcing two puzzle pieces to stay together.
But there’s always the small moments, when it’s late in the night and just them two. Dream will seek her out and get her soft and pliant. George will pretend like being this close to her, chest to chest as they tumble into sleep, means nothing but it haunts her. She’s dreaming of soft lips and purposeful hands. She’s starting to think maybe this has gone too far but George can hardly deny Dream of anything. Not this, especially not this.
Dream’s head is pillowed on George’s chest. She’s drawing patterns on the skin of her stomach. If George could stretch this moment into forever, she would. But she can’t, so she takes whatever she can get and grips it in her hands until it slips away. Until she slips away .
Dream is the first one to break the silence. “I don’t think I can do this anymore,” she whispers into the quiet.
It’s everything George has been dreading since she first felt her lips on hers. She wonders when Dream figured it all out, when she tasted how in love George was and had to pull away before she got burned.
“What do you mean?’ George asks, playing dumb.
“Whatever we’re doing. I’m sorry, Georgie. I can’t do it anymore.”
George lets her words settle into the covers. She lets it sit between the small space separating them. She wonders if dream can hear the way her heart is slowing down, pauses in between beats lengthening until it stops.
“Do you want me to leave?” she asks.
Dream raises her head, shifting until she’s half sitting, half leaning down on George.
“What?” her voice trembles on the question. “Like, leave Florida?”
“I just,” George starts but it’s harder than she expects to voice out her heart. “I don’t want you to be uncomfortable with me.”
“Georgina, you can’t leave.”
“I know, but. I don’t know. It’ll be easier for both of us if I do.”
There’s nothing but silence in the space where laughter used to fill it.
“Do you want to leave?” Dream asks her, heart breaking over the words.
George doesn’t trust herself to say anything so she shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Claire.” There’s tears welling up in her eyes. She thinks back to the night Dream came to her in apology. They’re going around in circles.
Dream shakes her head at her. George can tell she’s about to tell her it’s not her fault but she needs to say everything before she loses the nerve to.
“I didn’t mean for it to get so messy,” she breathes, “I thought we could, I don’t know, just do whatever and we’d be okay. I can live with just this, I promise. I can do with nothing, even. If all we do is just live in the same house I’ll be fine. We don’t need to kiss or, I don’t know. Just don’t ask me to stop.”
Dream’s breath stops right at her chest. “Stop what, George?”
“You know,” she whispers. George looks at Dream, beautiful and breaking at the seams. She wants to say her name forever, to give her everything until they’re living in a house cluttered with so much love they can barely move. “Don’t make me say it, Dream. You know,” George begs.
Dream settles back in bed. They’re laying side by side, facing each other. George wants to strip herself until she’s nothing but bone.
Dream takes her hand in hers, gently, carefully, until George feels like breaking apart at the touch. She brings it up to her lips, kissing the back of it. George can feel the smile on her lips and it makes her dizzy.
“George,” she says against her hand in a way that makes George want . “Do you love me?”
“Dream…”
“Georgina, Just–” she takes a breath. “Do you?”
In all the years she’s denied it, brushed it off and discarded the question, practiced until hearing it did less damage to her, she never thought she’d be placed in this position. Asked if she loves Dream. Not to say it, not to let Dream hear it. Questioning the core of it. Do you love me? Like there’s any chance that a version of her exists that doesn’t.
If everything were different, if she never left London, stayed an ocean away from Dream, she’d love her from a distance. If they’d never met, never found each other, George would spend her whole life wondering what was missing, forever looking for the chunk of her heart that lives within Dream. If the world was turned inside out and George wasn’t the girl that she is today, she’d fix it, turn everything right side up until she was. George would love her to ruin.
“I love you,” she admits. There’s no use hiding it, no use denying.
Here in the face of her love living, she can’t bear the thought of not letting her know how deeply, how devastatingly in love she is.
Dream is staring at her, hands finding their way across the distance, settling on her jaw. Heaven must be the way Dream’s fingertips ghost over her cheeks.
They’re kissing before George can ask what’s happening.
“You’re so fucking stupid,” Dream says into the kiss. “So stupid.”
“What–?” She starts but Dream pulls her back in, lips against lips in a desperate way that George has never known. They kiss until they’re fused together by their skin, kissing until it’s all they know.
When George gets them to come up for air, Dream is already laughing.
“Dream,” she says but Dream is laughing so hard she might choke on her spit. “ Claire,”
“This is so fucked up, George. We could’ve been dating for months now, why didn’t you say anything when I kissed you?”
“Well, how was I supposed to know you wanted to be my girlfriend, you acted like the world was ending because you kissed me!”
Dream’s face flushes, she’s giggling into the skin of George’s neck. “Girlfriend?” she teases, shy, like she didn’t just have her tongue in her mouth.
“Shut up,” George mumbles. “I didn’t know. Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Was kissing you not a big enough clue that, like, I don't know, I love you?”
George rubs her face with her hands, feeling the heat of her skin, “You cried!”
“And you said it wasn’t a kiss and nothing had to change! I thought you were rejecting me.”
They’re both falling into each other, laughing until it hurts. George leans in to press a simple kiss to her lips, because she can and the idea of getting to do this again without the question of what am I to you? is freeing.
“Does this mean I’m your girlfriend now? Or will you say nothing has to change and we can keep being best friends forever?” Dream whispers.
“Shut up. You literally told me you didn’t mean to kiss me, idiot.”
“Can we just—” she stops herself, rolling onto her back with a huff. “Shut up. You’re stupid. I’m stupid. Congrats we’re so fucking dumb. Can you get over here and just kiss me now?”
And who is George to say no to a request like that? She moves until she ends up on top of her. There’s already a kiss on her lips waiting to get to Dream.
“Girlfriend,” George muses. “You’re my girlfriend.”
Dream pulls her down to a kiss, but is it really a kiss when both of you are smiling so hard your teeth are knocking into each other?
“Shut up,” Dream murmurs.
“Girlfriend,” George repeats. “You’re my girl. My beautiful girlfriend.”
Dream pulls away from her lips and buries her face into the crook of her neck. “Stooop,” she complains but George can feel the heat of her cheeks on her shoulder.
She runs her hands through Dream’s hair thinking, I’ll have forever for this .
There’s no more rush, no more desperation to keep this single moment alive. No more being hungry for the feeling of her lips against hers.
There’s nothing left but love. Love that stretches along the lining of their stomachs until they're full with it. Love that climbs up their throats until it peeks out from their mouths, begging for the other to notice. Love that lingers. Love that reminds them that they have this now, and they can take their time, use forever to learn each other. They’ve got time.