Thanks to some prodding - some from my brain, some from my friends - I've decided to take a big ol' leap and put up a few parts of my novel up here for you to read if you like. Perhaps I'll continue if I ever get around to actually sitting down and writing again (besides, y'know, LJ posts and such XD).

Now, my huge disclaimer is two-part:
a) I have never written, as those of you who've read my writing know, purely in a "novel format." I don't like dialogue. Or interaction between people that isn't vague or that I don't have to explain. As I keep writing I'm getting a tad better, but I'm still stuck for the most part in my "old" writing mind.
b) This is a rough draft. I stress the rough part. Hopefully, if I ever get it to the point where I want to publish it, it will be cleaned up through several drafts and this one will become ancient history.

And with that...

     “Wasn’t that amazing?” Vivian yelled as she skipped down the sidewalk, nearly tripping over a crack in the cement.

     Leana laughed, following close behind her in case she tripped. “Viv, I think you may be drunk.”

     Vivian turned suddenly and pointed a finger at Leana. “I think…you may be right,” she replied. She turned her hand and moved her index finger and thumb together. “Hey! I can squish you!” she said, repeating the motion. “Squish. Squish. You’re squished!”

     “Yes, darlin’, I’m squished,” Leana smiled, taking her arm and turning her towards home. “Just a couple more blocks and you’ll be home, and we will put you to bed, and you will wake up with a wicked hangover and no remembrance of this.”

     “Ah, no, didn’t I tell you?” Vivian asked, one eye still closed and her fingers squishing anything she could see. “I remember everything I do when I drink.” She shrugged. “It’s a curse.”

     “Terrific,” Leana muttered, pulling on her arm. “Stop squishing things, darling heart. We need to-“

     “What did you just call me?” Vivian’s voice was stunned and she stood still on the sidewalk, causing Leana to walk backwards a few steps to keep from falling over.

     “Um…darling heart? Why? Do you not like it? Is that a bad thing?” Leana asked, curious as to why it had affected Vivian this much.

     “No, no, I…how did you know?”

     “Know what?” Leana asked, beginning to become annoyed, standing in the cold while the very drunk lust of her life was frozen in the middle of the sidewalk at three in the morning.

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     Vivian awoke slowly, trying not to open her eyes if she could manage it. The light seemed to be coming in from a strange angle…and the sheets weren’t the cotton ones she had put on her bed yesterday…and there was…

     Vivian’s eyes flew open. Yes, there was Leana. In bed with her. In bed practically on top of her. Vivian did a quick check – yes, they were both still clothed. But their legs were entwined, arms around each other’s waists, foreheads almost touching. The symmetry of it would have been intriguing as a photograph, Vivian thought, but at the moment, it was really causing her brain to short-circuit and leave her with only this: ohgodshe’sontopofmeandilikeitohgodohgodohgod

     Leana sensed the change in Vivian’s breathing, when she woke up and when she realized the the position they found themselves in. She had been awake for a bit now, but had stayed where she was, savoring the contact for as long as she could. She continued to not move, waiting to see Vivian’s actions.

     Vivian was at war with herself. She wanted to move; she didn’t want to move. She wanted to wake Leana; she didn’t want to wake Leana. She lay, paralyzed, staring at the far wall.

     When she didn’t feel Vivian begin to move or calm down, Leana risked a quick peek through her eyelashes. Vivian’s face, from what she could see of it, looked downright terrified. Leana sighed internally and decided she had to do what needed to be done.

     Vivian felt Leana stir, felt her pull her arm away, heard her yawn. She missed the contact at the same moment she felt relieved of having it gone. She moved her head, looking at Leana’s face as she slowly opened her eyes. “Good morning.”

     “Good morning,” Leana smiled, as though it were any other morning they were greeting one another, at the gym or Vivian’s apartment. She turned over onto her side of the bed, shaking her head as if it clear it of cobwebs. She swung her legs over and stood, grabbing the nightstand as the blood rushed to her head. “Okay, I need food. You want anything?”

     “What do you have?” Vivian asked.

     “Uh…Frosted Flakes…I have…I think there’s eggs…” she walked towards the kitchen, muttering to herself, throwing back the occasional random food item. “There’s eggs! Two of ‘em! And…there’s a frozen waffle! And milk…wait…oh, god that’s disgusting…okay, we officially don’t have milk.” Vivian heard the sound of running water, then the violent stuffing of something into the depths of the trash can. She giggled to herself as she walked into the kitchen.

     “There used to be some frozen orange juice…I could make that…um, ice cream’s an acceptable breakfast food, right?” Leana continued, looking up with a grin that faded as she looked at Vivian. The t-shirt she had loaned her last night had seemed long enough, but in the light of day in her kitchen it seemed less so. Her eyes traveled up Vivian’s legs, to where the t-shirt brushed the top of her thighs, her breasts free from a bra, and then onto Vivian’s amused eyes, at which point she turned a deep shade of red and returned to digging in the cupboards.

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     Vivian sighed, leaning her forehead on the on the cool glass of the window. Outside she could see the tops of buildings, the beginnings of the trees in Central Park. In the city that never slept, everyone was asleep in her neighborhood. Beyond, blocks away, miles away, people were living the life she used to live. Parties, alcohol, someone new every night. She remembered dance floors so crowded that everyone touched someone else, someone they hadn’t come with. She remembered stumbling home as the sun was just beginning to rise, laughing so hard she thought she would faint from lack of breath, holding onto someone’s hand or arm as they held onto hers, both of them trying to keep from falling.

     When she met Carl, however, she had been getting older. Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, becoming ancient in her business. Her agent, her publicist, everyone was telling her to settle down, to marry, to have children, to perhaps release a CD or two. They told her she would quickly become too old to be seen in the public eye without criticism of her attempts to do what she could five years earlier.

     So she allowed them to put her in a white dress, send her down an aisle on a tropical island, smile and kiss her husband, only vaguely knowing that only six months later they would both begin affairs.

     And now…now there was this. She sighed again, wishing she still kept an emergency pack of cigarettes for nights like these. There was this, and she didn’t know what this was. This was fast and crazy and slow and amazing and it made her head turn upside down and it made the world spin and she was sick of it and couldn’t get enough of it.

     “What’s happening to me?” she whispered quietly, asking no one, asking anyone who may be listening. When she heard the answer she knew was the truth, the answer she didn’t want to hear, she closed her eyes tightly, as though it would shut out the words, shut out the world.

     You’re falling in love.

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            Leana shuffled into the kitchen, a sheet wrapped around her in a way known only by those who spend many nights in many strange beds and lose too many pieces of clothing to find them all in the morning. Or perhaps they just don’t want to bend down to pick them up with all the throbbing in their head.

            Vivian watched, smiling into her cup of tea, as Leana reached around the counter, searching for anything hollow and round to pour caffeine into. She found a large mug and grabbed for the coffee pot. Her eyes slowly widened as she turned around the room.

            “There…is…no…” she choked out. The horror-stricken look on her face made it hard for Vivian to hold her laughter in, but she managed it.

            “Yes, believe it or not, some people in this world manage to survive without coffee,” Vivian replied, taking the mug from her and pouring in hot water from the kettle on the stove. She put in a tea bag and held it out to her. “Here, this is caffeinated and tastes disgusting without milk or sugar. Close enough, right?”

            Leana gave her the best glare she could muster, then leaned on the counter as Vivian went back to the breakfast bar and sat down on a stool. “Barbarian…living like cave people…ridiculous,” Vivian heard her mutter.

            “So,” Leana said with a deep breath, having drained half her cup, “do you want to do the touchy-feely-girly thing and talk about, well, this” she indicated the two of them, half-naked in the kitchen, “or are you going to be agreeable and not make me think so hard on three hours of sleep and lacking caffeine?”

            Vivian leaned back, holding her cup as though it were a shield in front of her body. “Do you feel we need to talk about it?”

            Leana let out an audible exhale, frustrated that Vivian wasn’t following the rules. She was “straight,” supposed to be freaking out. Leana soothing her, reminding her that it was a one-time deal. Then later when it happened again they’d go through the same thing. And she was married, and that always –

            Vivian watched Leana, seeing her tap her middle finger on the side of her jaw. It was unconscious and it always meant she was trying to figure something out. Vivian could visibly see when she remembered the facts of her life. Leana’s gaze lept to the thin bands on Vivian’s finger, then up to Vivian. “So…usually, when this happens, I mean, with the married women, there are rules…and Carl –“

            “What if I told you it didn’t matter?” Vivian asked, watching Leana’s brow furrow as she tried to make sense of the sentence. She leaned forward, grinning smugly as Leana’s eyes glanced down to the inside of her gaping robe then up to Vivian’s face again. “Carl and I – well, our marriage is a compromise of sorts. He has his things on the side, swimsuit models and other twigs with half-filled skulls, and I have…” she let the sentence drift off, gesturing vaguely in the space between the two of them. “It’s happened before, just…never with a woman, for me. We understand each other. We fulfill our needs separately and appear together publicly.”

            Leana looked down again into the depths of her cup. It was not as if she had never encountered a situation like this before. Plenty of women had marriages of convenience. They produced a child or two, at least one male, and then they were allowed to do as they pleased, with whom they pleased, as long as it was kept quiet and a pretty face was put on for cameras, society, friends.

            “Have you ever fallen in love with one before?” Leana asked, finally bringing her gaze up to see Vivian facing sideways, looking at the wall as if in deep thought. As soon as Leana said that Vivian winced, softly.

            “Shit,” she muttered under her breath, so low Leana almost couldn’t hear her. “I thought you hadn’t heard that.”

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     “What are you doing?”

     The question whispered in her ear made Vivian smile as arms wrapped around her waist. “I’m making pancakes.”

     Vivian could hear the smile in Leana’s voice. “Honey, you don’t know how to cook.”

     Vivian turned around to face Leana, pretending to be offended. “Maybe there’s a lot you don’t know about me…like my ability to cook spectacular pancakes!”

     Leana just chuckled and tightened her grip on Vivian when she tried to pull away. “Let me ask you this – when was the last time you cooked anything without setting something on fire or making someone sick?”

     Vivian had to giggle at that as well, then put a mock-serious expression on her face as if she was really considering it. “That would have been…” she said thoughtfully, “when I was five and helping my mother make brownies. And that’s because she took out all of the eggshell and re-mixed the wet ingredients when I decided a liberal helping of vanilla would help the taste.”

     Leana laughed, loosening her arms and allowing Vivian to return her attention to the stove. Leana took out the coffee pot hidden above the stove – “Carl’s too short and too lazy to look up there,” Vivian had told her – as well as the overpriced coffee beans she still grumbled about buying, then set about the task of making her coffee. As the scent filled the kitchen, she reached over Vivian to grab two mugs, and a few minutes later handed Vivian her tea as she sat down at the breakfast bar, sipping her coffee and setting her gaze upon an oblivious Vivian.

     Vivian was looking down at the pan, muttering something to herself, looking at two different cookbooks and then returning to the pan and muttering again. She poked at the supposed pancake in it with a spatula, then attempted to flip it over, managing to cause a great deal of pancake batter to fly onto the counter and releasing the smell of burnt pancake. She stared into the pan again and muttered some curse words.

     Leana giggled to herself, watching this all play out, then realized how hard Vivian had tried as she watched her eyes fill with tears. She set down her coffee and walked over to the stove.

     “Viv, baby,” she said, gently tugging on Vivian’s arm, “baby, look at me.”

     Vivian turned towards her, looking so much like a forlorn child that Leana felt like both giggling at the cuteness and crying at the sadness. “I just really wanted to do something nice for you. You always make the breakfast or do these little sweet things and I never do, I just never have the time and you always seem to make the time for me and I’m just –“

     Leana put her finger over Vivian’s mouth to silence her. “Darling heart, don’t you know that it doesn’t matter to me?” she said. “You could make me a million pancakes that were the most delicious I’ve ever had, but none of them,” she curled a lock of hair back behind Vivian’s ear, “would be the same as having my adorable, beautiful, smart, funny, sweet girl who can’t cook worth a damn,” she said with a smile.

     Vivian gave her a watery smile, kissing Leana’s palm as her fingers came to wipe away Vivian’s tears. She pulled her close and rested her head on her shoulder. “You know, I really don’t deserve you.”

     Leana gave one of her deep-throated chuckles and pulled away to rest her forehead against Vivian’s. “Nah, but…I’ll stay around anyways,” she replied with a grin.