In that case being sorry isn't enough, you will have to penance 😤
"Ava?" Beatrice popped her head out from Ava’s home office, asking in that sheepish voice that made her girlfriend instantly alert.
“Uh oh, what did you do?” Ava got up from where she was sitting on the couch, and walked the short distance across the living room to meet Beatrice in the study, where the former nun already retreated back into.
“So I was looking for something in your desk drawer,” Beatrice admitted. “And I found something I think I shouldn’t have.”
Ava looked down at her own desk, and mentally went through everything she kept in those two drawers. There was no way Beatrice found the key taped underneath her left drawer; and even if she did find it, Beatrice wouldn’t know what it opened.
“Oh?” Ava—bravely—acted nonchalant.
“Sorry, I really wasn’t looking for it. It just fell out, and I got curious,” Beatrice was rambling now, and Ava couldn’t help glancing at the bottom drawer of her filing cabinet in the corner, behind where Beatrice was standing. It appeared locked, still.
No, Beatrice was looking down at her own hands, which held a single photograph. Ava could make out Diego’s handwriting at the back of it. Christmas, Diego 8, Ava 17. Oh, no.
“I’ve never seen a photo of you when you were seventeen,” Beatrice said, voice small and apologetic. “Please don’t be mad, but you and Diego looked very cute.”
Ava knew the photo. It was the only one of her and Diego together. Sister Sophia pushed her chair in front of the small Christmas tree they had at St. Michael’s that year, and Diego insisted on taking the picture with Ava, standing on his tippy toe and giving her bunny ears. That was a decade and two lifetimes ago.
“Well, Diego was cute.”
“Ava—”
“No, don’t, I’m not mad. I’m not even sad,” Ava laughed, reassuring a nervous looking Beatrice. “I just don’t like to look at myself. Then.”
“Oh, Ava.”
“I looked like Jim Carey from Dumb and Dumber,” Ava blurted out.
Beatrice held up the photo in her hand and looked at it. “No, come on, that bowl cut wasn’t that bad.”
“By whose standard? 15th century Catholic monastery?” Ava laughed again, amused by Beatrice’s lame attempt at making her feel better about the haircut from hell.
“Well, I think it’s cute,” Beatrice doubled down.
Ava walked up to Beatrice, and gently took the photograph from her and placed it back down on her desk. “And if I were to return home tomorrow with a fresh bowl cut?”
Beatrice wrapped her arms around Ava’s waist and sighed dramatically. “Nothing will change the way I feel about you, you know that.”
“Not even with a monk bowl cut?” Ava asked, leaning forward till they were almost kissing.
Beatrice gave her a quick peck on the lips. “Not even with a monk bowl cut.”
“God, Beatrice,” Ava chuckled, nuzzling the other woman’s nose with hers. “When did you get this good at lying?”
Beatrice grinned and kissed Ava again. “Probably between the fourteenth and fifteenth time of me telling you it’s okay that you didn’t do your dishes right away.”
“Those needed to soak, Bea.”
“Yes, whatever you say, my sexy monk.”
“Beatrice!”
Bonus:
Ava snuck back into her home office much later that night, when Beatrice was fast asleep.
She closed the door, circled behind the desk, and pulled open the drawer to find the key taped to the bottom of it. Ava quickly removed it and turned around to unlock the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet on her left hand side.
The locked clicked open, and Ava hurriedly looked into the deep drawer. In it, under thick files of OCS mission reports and stacks of marked floor plans from their previous jobs, was a dark blue velvet ring box.
Ava opened it to check. The same diamond ring that she got weeks ago stared right back at her.
“Soon,” Ava mused out loud, to no one in particular, before snapping the ring box shut again.
