Viv doesn't call the next day. Or the day after that. Sunny goes about her life as usual on her days off, working her way through her CDs and hanging out with Ravi and Fraser, going over to Delilah's for supper on Wednesday before she gets a bus to her parents' house. Two visits in the space of a week is cause for concern, apparently, and Martha quizzes her over breakfast on Thursday morning. Sunny gives the bare bones of the truth – that she and Viv are still working through some things; that she messed up when she didn't invite Viv to the bar.

"These things pass, sweetheart," Sylvia says as searches the entire house for her keys. "And if they don't, that's quite a telling sign that maybe the relationship isn't going in the right direction."

"Mmm." Most of Sunny's responses have been noncommittal hums because her brain is so full of thoughts that she lacks the energy to verbalise properly. She is not a multitasker. Her style is dedicating energy to one pursuit at a time, and when her brain is busy, her body is out of action.

"It'll be okay, baby," Martha says, rightly sensing that Sunny doesn't much want to talk. "Want to come to the city with me today, have a bit of retail therapy?"

While there are several cities within reach of Black Sands, the city refers to York, the nearest and Sunny's favourite. She loves the tall walls that encircle the city, more than twice her height and hundreds of years old; she loves the magnificence of York Minster, a stunning feat of Gothic architecture. She loves rambling through The Shambles and freaking herself out with the ghost stories of spirits that haunt the old streets, ducking into one of literally hundreds of pubs for a little fortification before continuing on her adventures.

"Yeah, that'd be nice," she says.

Sylvia huffs. "Sure, sure, just forget about poor old me stuck in stuffy lecture theatres all day while you two go off gallivanting around town."

"Darling, I told you you'd be jealous when I retired," Martha coos, stroking her wife's arm. "There's nothing holding you in that job but yourself. If you want to join us, I'm sure no-one will question it if you pull a sickie."

Sylvia presses her lips together. Considers it. Shakes her head. "I like my job," she says. "Next time you plan an impromptu trip can we make sure it's on a weekend?"

"Uh, I'm pretty sure an impromptu trip can't be planned, Mum," Sunny says. "Spoken like a true English professor."

"Oh, shush, you." Sylvia flaps a stack of unmarked essays at her. "Aha! There you are, you little bastards." She seizes her keys from beneath the jumper Sunny dumped on top of them yesterday and jingles them. "I've gotta run. I'll see you later." She plants a quick kiss on Sunny's forehead and tips Martha's chin up to kiss her lips, and rather than be disgusted by her parents' blatant displays of affection, Sunny's touched. Her heart sings when she sees how happy they still are after so long, how Martha's cheeks still flush pink in the afterglow of a kiss from her wife.

An hour later they're in the car. Martha's wearing her glasses because she can't read the road signs without them, though she knows the route like the back of her hand, wending through the countryside until they meet the A64 and it carries them all the way to the city. A couple of times a year they'll follow the road to its end in Leeds and hop on the motorway down to Sheffield to see Martha's sisters, all of whom ended up in the city of steel. Sometimes they'll take the A1 all the way up to Edinburgh to see Sylvia's brother Eric, who was a stranger to the family for the first decade after Sylvia's transition because he couldn't cope with the loss of the person he thought was his brother.

Sunny didn't even know she had an uncle until she met him at the age of eleven, after his and Sylvia's parents were killed in a crash. It took their deaths for him to realise he wanted to know his sister, and after years of healing – and plenty of therapy for both of them – they're closer now than they were as children.

"Mum?" Sunny's looking out of the window, watching fields and trees roll past before they join the main road.

"Mmm?"

"How did you know Mum was the one?"

Martha smiles a knowing smile and says, "I didn't, for a long time." She drives with one hand on the wheel, the other tucked under her thigh until she has to change gear.

"Oh."

"Don't get me wrong, we had a powerful connection. I knew I loved her early on, and we didn't waste time getting together, but I never thought about the idea of the one. We just kept going. Kept plodding on," she says, nostalgia washing over her face.

"One day at a time," Sunny murmurs to herself. Her mother nods.

"Yeah. Like ... like a puzzle, I suppose. One piece at a time until one day, the whole thing is complete. Some people make a puzzle in a day. I guess that's probably love at first sight. Some take it slow and make it last for years, and that was Mum and me."

Sunny turns this information over and over in her mind. She knows all about her parents' history but she never sits her mother down and questions her. She just soaks up the snippets they have shared over the years.

"There were times, before you were born – and especially when I was pregnant with you – that I thought we might not make it," Martha says.

Sunny's attention pricks up at that; she tears her eyes from the view to her mother. "What? Seriously?"

"God, we argued so much." Martha's shaking her head now. "She wasn't happy, and we both knew it but I didn't know why, and I think she knew but she was scared of what it meant. Because, yeah, it's big stuff. It's scary."

"When did she tell you?"

Martha rubs her arms. "God, it still gives me goosebumps, remembering it." She laughs and shimmies her shoulders to shake off the shivers. "You were only tiny. I was struggling, we both were, and I was angry at Sylv. I was an absolute state – I was sleep deprived and you were such a fussy baby – and I couldn't get Sylv's attention, and I just snapped at her. I was frustrated and crying and I yelled at her, you're not the man I married. And..." Her voice thickens and she clears her throat, swallows hard. "That moment is so clear. When she looked at me and she said no, I'm not. And she told me, and ... it all clicked into place."

She tears her eyes from the road for a moment and gives Sunny a watery smile. "That's when I knew she was the one." One hand clenches into a fist. "There was this huge thing we had to work through together, and I wanted to do it. I wanted to be right there by her side, if she wanted me."

"And she wanted you," Sunny fills in.

"You know it, baby." Martha grins and slaps the wheel, jumping when she accidentally peeps the horn at a field of sheep. "You know what? Part of our problem, I think, before she came out to me, was that she was pushing me away before she'd given me the choice. She decided for herself that I wouldn't want to stick with her. But I did, and once we figured that out, everything came together. You can't make other people's choices for them."

Sunny isn't sure how to apply her parents' story to her own situation because they're so wildly different but she's sure there's a common thread in there somewhere, something she can unravel and tie around her heart, something to tether her to Viv.

"You're the strongest couple I know," she says. The view changes from green to grey as they join the artery that is the A road funnelling them into York. "Half of my friends' parents are divorced or, like, trapped in a dead-end marriage."

"Maybe they settled with what they got," Martha says with a one-shouldered shrug. "Your mum and I, we fought for what we have. We were forced to step back and examine everything we had, and we made active choices every step of the way."

There it is again, Sunny thinks. It all boils down to choice. Action. Passion and desire. When it comes to matters of the heart, she can't afford to be passive. The heroes in the romances she loves don't get the girl by sitting back and letting life happen when obstacles crop up – they fight. They make declarations. They pour their hearts out. They know what they want and they go after it, no matter what stands in their way. And if what stands in their way is the very fabric of the universe, the concept of time itself?

Well, she's just going to have to figure that shit out. Because if she lets Viv go, she has let go of everything she lost the last year of her life for. In another universe, this is the woman she wants to be with forever. So whatever it takes, she has to make it work.

*

The weather holds for a day in York. Sunny empties her mind as she shops with her mother, buying herself a cute pastel jumper with an eclectic pattern that screams eighties dork; they stop at a café for coffee at eleven, and they dip into a pub on the riverbank for lunch, and when their feet ache after a day of walking, they cap off the afternoon with a second café. Sylvia's home from work when they make it back.

After supper, Sunny thinks of Viv when she tots up everything she's eaten today – three full meals and countless snacks, her stomach round and bloated with the satisfaction of a day well fed – and as she reclines in front of the TV (Sylvia is very attached to EastEnders; neither her wife nor her daughter share her love of the soap but happily read or think with it on in the background) she pieces together her plan to show Viv that she's serious.

Their working hours make it awkward. Viv works nine to five on the same days that Sunny works five to one, which means either getting up too early, staying up too late, or waiting until they're both off work on Wednesday. She can't exactly pull another sickie when she's just had four days off for an imaginary bug, and she doesn't know anyone at The Book Nook well enough to get them in on a plan with her to let Viv leave work early. But if Viv's other day off is any day but Thursday then maybe she can pull something together. If only she had a clue what her girlfriend's schedule looks like.

"Are you staying the night?" Martha asks around a ginormous yawn, almost nodding off against her wife. It isn't late but it's been a long day of driving and walking and she's exhausted.

"No," Sunny says, making the decision in that moment. "I want to wake up in my own bed, I think. What time is it?"

"Just gone eight."

There's a bus at twenty past, which gives her a couple of minutes to grab her stuff before she needs to be out of the house in order to catch it, so she leaps up from her seat and rushes out of the room.

"What's the hurry?" Sylvia calls.

"The next bus is in less than twenty minutes," Sunny yells back. "I can be home for nine-ish."

"I can drive you back, Sun," Sylvia says. "You don't need to rush off like a blue arsed fly."

Sunny pokes her head around the door, one shoe on and the other in her hand. "Are you sure? It's pretty late."

"It's eight o'clock, darling. And it's only an hour's round trip. What kind of early to bed dinosaur do you take me for?"

Sunny laughs and nods at Martha, who's struggling to keep her eyes open. Sylvia pats her affectionately. "Early night, hun?"

"I'll be asleep by the time you get back," Martha says, failing to stifle another yawn. "It's so lovely to see so much of you recently, Sunny." She gathers the energy to get off the sofa and pull her daughter into a hug. "You know you're always more than welcome here, baby. Any time you want to come back, for however long. We love having you around."

"What if I lost my job and couldn't pay my rent and had to move back in?"

"Then we'd welcome you with open arms for as long as it took you to get back on your feet again." Her expression says I know you're joking, you silly moose but her tone is sopping with sincerity.

Sunny does a sweep of her room and gathers up her stuff. When she spots that battered copy of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, she grabs that too and vows to read it again. Her keys jangle in her pocket as she jogs downstairs where Sylvia's standing with her car key around her finger, her other hand running through her long hair. She straightens it every morning during the week but its natural wave is starting to creep back in.

"Ready?"

"Yup." Sunny hauls her bag onto her shoulder and steels herself with a long, deep breath. She wishes she could stay longer – sometimes she wishes she could never leave – but she needs to get back. It's time to face the music.

*

i absolutely love writing scenes with sunny's mothers! hope you liked this one!