Chosen Family Pt. 04

Author's Note:

This is part four of five. You should read the first three parts first.

Thanks so much to everybody who has commented and reached out with feedback. It really means a lot! As I continue growing as an author, it's very helpful to know what works and doesn't work in my writing, from as many perspectives as possible.

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Brittany

Terry Pratchett was one of the greatest writers of all time. Brittany had read dozens of his Discworld books and loved them all, especially the whole Vimes arc. Somewhere in one of his books, she couldn't quite remember which one, there was a quote about heights. The exact wording also escaped her memory, but the gist of it was something like: "fall from 40 feet or 40,000, you end up just as dead." It made sense in her head. Nice and logical. The lower heights didn't bother her too much, why should the higher ones?

But then she got a taste of big wall climbing.

Wallface wasn't even that big in the scale of things, but after she and Ivy had made their way up past where the highest walls at the climbing gym would have ended, Brittany realized she was woefully unprepared for the psychological weight of all those hundreds of feet of empty air between her and the ground. She found herself tiring out quickly, and she couldn't figure out why until Ivy pointed out that she was gripping the rock with all her strength, straining her muscles in an unconscious effort to cling on for dear life.

So, instead of working further up the wall, she and Ivy spent a chunk of that first morning doing essentially trust fall exercises. Not the kind where she was meant to learn to trust her climbing partner, though. Ivy wanted her to learn to trust the ropes. It was completely different than falling at the gym. She'd done that dozens of times already, and she thought she trusted the rope well enough. But the first time she deliberately let go of the rock and let herself fall into what felt like oblivion, Brittany was sure it was the end. Game over, well played, make better choices in the next life. The bottom fell out from her stomach and she screamed for all she was worth.

It was even worse because the belay system they were using here was different than at the indoor gym. She was used to top-rope, where the ropes went all the way to the top of the wall just like the name implied. For outdoor big walls like this one, that was impossible. The system they used instead was called trad climbing, or lead climbing, which apparently had distinctions, but she couldn't keep them straight. The main differences fell to Ivy, as the one leading, to manage, but there was a big one Brittany noticed as soon as she let go of the wall. The ropes were a good deal more stretchy than the ones they used in the gym. It made sense, for the purpose, but it meant that she was in free fall for a terrifying second. If she'd messed up her harness and wasn't hooked in, this was exactly what it would feel like!

But then, with a slight elastic slowing and a bit of a jerk, the ropes caught her harness, and she swung back into the wall, feet first as she'd been drilled for weeks to position herself. Just like the ropes caught her the next time, and the time after that, and every time until she slowly stopped being surprised by letting go and finding herself not dead.

It helped a lot, and she and Ivy made their slow way up Wallface. Ivy led the way, setting the ropes into anchors as she went while Brittany belayed her from below. Then they'd switch roles and Brittany would climb, unclamping the rope and collecting each anchor she passed while Ivy belayed from above. Up and up, one pitch at a time, taking breaks between each to relax on a ledge and rest their muscles.

That was another way this was different than indoor climbing. There were little ledges and outcroppings that made nice natural break spots for them both to sit and watch the world below them. Also, rain. Didn't get that in the climbing gym.

Brittany sat next to Ivy on a ledge about two-thirds up the wall. Something like five hundred feet up the vertical cliff, which would make the distant valley more than three thousand feet down below their dangling bare feet. They'd both taken their climbing shoes off, and the cool water on their skin there felt amazing. It turned out, one of the hardest things about big wall climbing was tolerating the discomfort of wearing climbing shoes all day.

They'd stopped for lunch, and fortunately Ivy kept a poncho big enough to drape over both of them in the bag they pulleyed up the ropes, but the direction of the wind and the shape of Wallface kept them mostly fine without it. Which was to say, they were both soaked, but it was nice after the heat and they weren't getting pelted. They watched the rain fall over the landscape, distant trees swaying in the wind, water coming down in sheets, making the greens of the leaves and greys of stone seem sharper, even as the clouds and fog made everything less distinct. Up above, the dripping sound of water coming down the rocks merged with the very soft hum of rain in the forest far below.

It was beautiful. Breathtakingly beautiful. Brittany kept taking deep breaths in, loving the fresh, earthily damp smell that felt like it was filling her up with life.

"The Adirondacks are famous for sudden downpours like this," Ivy murmured, her voice sounding as mesmerized as Brittany felt.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I bet it'll be sunny again in 20 minutes."

Brittany took another deep breath through her nose. "Almost seems a shame."

"Yeah."

They both fell silent again, except for the occasional sound of bites being taken out of sandwiches. It wasn't exactly the deepest conversation she'd ever had, but it fit. Sitting there next to Ivy on this tiny ledge, back against the rock and legs dangling out into open air, made the experience seem complete. Brittany had experienced a lot of different kinds of relationships before, but climbing partner was a new one. It felt different than any other kind of friendship she'd built around shared hobbies. More intimate, with a ton more trust. How many other hobbies involved literally holding somebody's life in your hands on the end of a rope?

This route up Wallface was called The Diagonal, and it was rated 5 point 8 for difficulty. Like the bouldering difficulty scale, which denoted all its ratings starting with a letter 'V', which nobody knew the meaning of, nobody seemed to know why all rope climbing ratings started with a 5. The 5 was irrelevant. The easiest rating was a 5 point 1, and expert difficulties were anything beyond 5 point 12. That's right, it didn't even follow a proper decimal system, where 5.12 would be harder than 5.1 and easier than 5.2. That would be too easy to understand. Anyway, depending who you asked, 5 point 8 fell somewhere in the range of high level beginner or low level intermediate.

Normally, something that difficult would be a bad choice for a newbie like Brittany's first adventure on a big wall. However, The Diagonal had that rating mostly because of its height, not its technical difficulty. Sure, there were a few difficult technical stretches, but most of it was actually pretty beginner friendly. It was just really long, and most beginners trying to do it in one day would get tired well before the top.

Which was no problem for them, because they could take multiple days! It was easy to rappel down the ropes to their lean-to when it got dark, then climb the ropes again the next day to where they'd left off. It just meant Ivy had to play babysitter for hour upon hour, which Brittany kept telling her she didn't have to do, and she'd be happy to just belay her on one of the harder sections the others were all practicing on, but Ivy was having none of it. She wanted to be a part of Brittany's first summit, and honestly, Brittany kind of loved her for it.

This was her second day, after a bunch of the first one had been spent hiking over Mount Marshall to their second campsite, and then learning to trust the ropes. At this pace, she should hit the top well before sundown. But if she didn't? Whatever, there was always tomorrow. No rush, all the time in the world to enjoy the journey and the stops along the way.

"Ivy?"

"Hmm?"

"This is fucking awesome."

Ivy turned to her, showing Brittany her own wide smile mirrored back at her. "It really is, isn't it?"

"I can see why you're all addicted to trips like this. Before we left, I had no idea what we were going to do to fill all the time for a week with no internet."

Ivy laughed. "But now you understand why I never feel the need to stuff a book into this bag?" She pat the pulley bag between them.

"Something like that," Brittany agreed, joining Ivy's laugh.

"Wait until we get to the top and have dinner watching the sunset." Ivy shifted, stretching her shoulders beneath their shared poncho and letting a bit of water cascade over her face. Far from dampening her spirit, it made her laugh again. "Damn!" Ivy was very pretty when she laughed, and the rain wetting her hair caused it to stick to her face in a way that framed her very nicely.

"I'm just happy we're able to take it slow like this." Brittany held up her hands, free now she'd finished her sandwich, and let the rain fall onto them. It felt amazing, soothing her scrapes and cooling against her bruises. She didn't have all the layers of callouses Ivy's hands did quite yet, but they were starting to develop! Along with the notches the rocks had made in her nails and everything else, they felt like badges of honor.

"Yeah, it's great when we have time to spare. Sadly, won't be the case up on El Cap. You'll be there, right?"

Brittany's heart leapt in her chest. "Well, I hadn't been invited..." She trailed off as Ivy cocked an eyebrow at her.

"Is that your diplomatic way of saying you'd rather not, or did you really think you needed an invitation?"

"Um, you guys only met me like a month and a half ago or something. Assuming I'd be invited to the biggest thing you've been planning for a year would be pretty presumptuous."

Ivy chuckled and lay a friendly arm around Brittany's shoulders. "You've got a bit to learn about being climbing partners. Where I climb, you climb too."

Brittany tried not to let her excitement give her a heart attack, but it was hard! "Well then, hell yeah, I'll be there!" She said, then her brain caught up with what she'd just agreed to. "Wait, you mean just coming with you to Yosemite, right? I'm nowhere near strong enough yet to climb El Capitan!"

"You'll be able to do some of the pitches, but yeah, there'll be a lot where you'll have to follow me up the ropes. Is that alright with you? Kidding aside, I totally get it if you're not that into just being a passenger and belaying me for three days straight."

Was that alright with her? It was exactly what she'd been hoping for! "That sounds amazing. I'd honestly love it," Brittany said, then forced herself to ask the obvious question given what she herself had just said about the timeframe. "Ivy? What did I do to deserve all this?"

Again, the cocked eyebrow. "This?"

"You know, you being willing to climb with me despite me being a total newbie and, like, not even in the same league as you?"

Ivy put the eyebrow down to regard her with a serious look in her eye. "Climbing skill is just practice and experience. That part is easy," she said, then her eyes darted aside for a second to Brittany's beaten-up hands, and a little of her serious expression softened. "Well, maybe not easy, but it's teachable is the point. Your enthusiasm, and loving all this?" She waved around their rain-soaked ledge. "We're stuck on a tiny bit of rock getting our asses soaked. Most people would label this embracing the suck, but not you. You see the beauty in it. You're the kind of person who can imagine belaying me up El Capitan for two or three days continuously, helping me haul gear and climbing up ropes, and say it sounds amazing. There's no amount of training that can teach a climbing partner that."

Brittany hadn't been expecting a satisfying answer. She'd been expecting some kind of deflection, or Ivy to laugh it off and say it was her charming personality or some shit like that. This was... wow. So incredibly validating! "Well, I guess I'll have to schedule some more vacation days, then."

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Rose

Brittany's triumphant yell as the sun was starting to set was so loud, it reached their group several routes over. They all exchanged a knowing look.

"You always remember your first time," Olivia said, her voice filled with innuendo.

Rose rolled her eyes. "I'm pretty sure Ivy isn't about to jump on her that fast."

"Why not? I did, and she's a ton of fun."

"Proud of you, Liv," Alex said, then tossed Olivia's playfulness back at her. "You remember our first time?"

Olivia gave her double entendre a friendly shoulder bump, then ignored it and answered, "Obviously! The Gunks. Fuck, we were such idiots back then."

Rose grinned. "You say that like we're any different now."

"Fair. But at least now we know to stay away from that tourist trap. We've got this whole damn wall to ourselves, and it's fantastic."

The Shawangunk Mountains, or just The Gunks for short, were great climbing. There were a ton of routes with a pretty wide range of difficulties, from beginner friendly to master level. However, they were in the eastern Catskills, an hour north of New York City, which made them often quite crowded.

"Can either of you see them?" Olivia asked, looking back towards the source of Brittany's celebration. "I wish we were there to congratulate Brittany."

Rose's hands worked automatically, belaying Hazel on her way to join them here at the top. "I do too, but Ivy wanted it this way, and I think it's romantic."

"Sunset dinner on top of a mountain?" Alex sighed, dreamily. "Yeah, Ivy's on to something there. Why haven't any of us ever brought a date up here?"

"Because none of us have managed to find someone crazy enough to follow us here?" Olivia suggested, and Rose smiled to herself. Would Lydia enjoy this? Her brand of crazy was a little different, but maybe it would transfer over like Rose's own? She really should have invited her. If only she wasn't such a coward.

"Brittany isn't Ivy's date," Rose told them. "At least, not yet. I think Ivy wants to just keep bonding with her and see where things go."

"Speaking of which," Alex said just as Hazel was clambering over the lip. "How did Lydia like your little present?"

Rose felt herself coloring, not because of the erotic pictures, but because of the answer she was about to give. "I--um..."

Alex raised an eyebrow, expectantly.

"She hasn't checked yet," Olivia supplied for her.

The eyebrow went up even further, and Hazel giggled. "But you sent them yesterday morning!" Alex exclaimed. "You've been up high enough plenty of times to get reception."

"I kind of... you know... want to draw it out a little."

"Draw what out?"

"The anticipation!"

"Dude, you have a problem."

"That's what I keep telling her!" Olivia said, at the same time as Hazel joined the conversation.

"I think it's cute."

"You think everything is cute," Alex countered. "Rose, give me your phone, I'm checking for you."

Rose unfastened a carabiner from her harness and passed the stuff sack it had been securing to Alex, then went to help Hazel with the kick-hoist that would bring their dinner supplies up to them. It was a good distraction from Alex's reactions to what must have been a lot of text from Lydia. Rose smiled, feeling the anticipation inside her build even higher. She would have checked soon anyway. Couldn't leave Lydia unread for too long, even if they were camping. Still, that warm feeling of having a friendly message waiting for her was so nice. Why not make it last?

"Rose! Lydia got a DJ gig at a club in NYC in a few weeks! You're inviting us, right?"

Rose gasped, suddenly so excited she almost forgot to lock the grigri, which would have let their food plummet to the bottom. "She what!?!"

"She--" But Rose had already snatched her phone back and was reading for herself. "Oh, now you want to read your texts!?! Make up your mind, bitch!"

Rose muttered an apology, her eyes leaping across her phone screen. Over Lydia's all caps expletives reacting to her pictures - she'd come back to those soon - on to Lydia's big news. She'd applied for a bunch of amateur DJ nights, and one of them had liked her! Rose had never heard of House Of Yes, but apparently it was in New York City and Lydia playing there was a big deal. Even if she would be one of five DJs showing off their stuff that night.

Rose realized she was breathing even faster than she'd been while climbing. Her thumbs flew across the screen, frantically typing in her own caps-locked incoherence that mirrored Lydia's own, and barely held herself back from hitting send long enough to get her sisters' feedback.

"Can we just pause to appreciate that this is yet another fucking EDM event you'll be dragging my ass to," Olivia groaned. "I swear, the things I do for you, Rose."

"Lydia loved your pictures!" Rose said, scrolling up in the conversation and showing Olivia, who wasn't impressed.

"She loved your tits and ass," Olivia countered. "Anybody with half a brain couldn't fail to make you look good on camera." Though, as she kept reading, a grin slowly spread across her face. "Looks like I did manage to trick her into thinking you were using the selfie stick! Ha! Me, 1, Lydia, 0."

"When is this happening," Hazel asked. "Is it the kind of thing I can bring Mary to?"

"I don't see why not," Rose said, re-reading everything Lydia had sent, a good deal calmer this time, and letting the golden glow inside herself settle.

"Great! I'll tell her. Oh! And Ivy and Brittany will love it too!"

"At least somebody will be happy," Olivia muttered, darkly, and Alex tossed a sisterly arm around her shoulders.

"Don't worry, Liv! I'll get you so drunk you'll forget you hate EDM."

"You better be serious."

"I would never joke about something so important!"

"Fine then, I'll join. But I reserve the right to bitch about it the whole drive down."

"If there's a force on earth that can stop you doing that, please tell us all what it is."

"Fuck yourself. Anyway, Rose," Olivia said, turning to her. "You were thinking of talking to her after we get back, right?"

Olivia's expression shifting downward fast mirrored Rose's own apprehension at the subject being brought up. After all, if things with Lydia went badly, Olivia would have to be the one to put her back together, yet again. "Yeah. I was hoping she'd join us climbing or next game night or something, so before that?"

Olivia's bearing didn't improve, even as she tried to be encouraging. "It'll be fine, it doesn't have to be your whole life story or anything. Just, ya know, enough to show you trust her."

"Yeah," Rose agreed, then admitted, "I know, but I haven't figured out what I'll say yet."

"It'll come to you," Alex said, genuinely brightly. "We've still got tons of time here before we have to go back to the real world. It's like the old saying goes, never put off until tomorrow what you can put off until the next day."

Olivia chuckled and Hazel laughed. "If anybody at work asks, I'm telling them I've never met you," she said.

The good news for Rose was that Alex was half right. The rest of their camping adventure was everything she could have wanted and more. The bad news was that she never did figure out exactly what to say to open up to Lydia.

Olivia tried her best to help, making suggestions and talking through what Rose wanted, but that was something else that was strange. Olivia was clearly trying to hide it, and she was doing a pretty good job, but every time she brought Lydia up, her mood took a downward spike. Like talking about Lydia pained her. Did she not like her? But that didn't make sense. Olivia would have said something ages ago. More likely she didn't like bringing up painful topics for Rose, even if she knew it was good for her in a therapeutic way.

Finally deciding to talk about how much her ex-girlfriends had messed her up made her realize how little she'd spoken about it before, even with Olivia. Having some kind of deadline looming forced her to finally confront feelings she'd kept buried for years, and digging them up brought more than a few tears onto Olivia's shoulder. But, as she cried and talked and cried some more, it got easier to feel the reality of what Olivia had been trying to tell her for ages. That part of her life only held as much power over her as she let it.

God, where would she be without Liv?

The end result was that Rose felt better about her mental state than she had in years... but she still had no idea how to boil hours of Olivia's therapy sessions down to something to say to Lydia. Olivia's advice was simple enough. Be bold, tell her what kind of relationship you want with her, and don't talk yourself into thinking what she wants is more important than what you want. It sounded great, and Olivia would probably have written a script for her if she'd asked, but Rose was pretty sure the heartfelt speech had to come from her.

So, she found herself back in Northampton going to meet Lydia after she got off of work, desperately trying to think, and wondering where all the time had gone.

It was after 10:30 at night, which Lydia had said was actually pretty early for restaurant staff. After a week of going to sleep right after the sun set and the world got dark, it felt like going to meet her lover in the small hours of the morning, which would have felt romantic in a way if she hadn't been so nervous.

Girlfriend! Rose chided herself like she was one of her own students, and tried to adjust her mental phrasing. She'd been instinctually avoiding the word for ages, and she hadn't even realized it until Olivia pointed it out. It'd been like a blind spot for her. She had no problem at all with the concept in general, just when applying it to herself. Finally, she was about to tell Lydia she wanted to be her girlfriend, better start adjusting now.

Lydia must have missed her. Rose pulled into her driveway to find Lydia waiting for her on the front steps, still in her classy restaurant bartending uniform, and jumping up to rush over as soon as Rose got out of the car. "How was it! Tell me everything you did, starting right at the beginning. I wanna know the full story for all those pictures you sent! Do you have more? Like, not just the sexy ones, though I DEFINITELY want more of those too! Rose, you're so hot, like you have no idea."

Lydia was so happy and bubbly, Rose immediately felt herself relaxing. "Hello to you too, Lydia," she said, hugging her back. "Have I ever told you how much you remind me of my friend Alex?"

"A few times. Is there going to be a new climbing video on your channel? I refreshed it a few times, but nothing popped up."

Rose laughed, imagining Olivia frantically working to weave together all the hours of footage from their GoPros into something coherent from the middle of the woods before her laptop battery died. "It takes Liv a while to do those! But I'll tell her you're excited to see, Liv mostly does it for us so we can remember all these trips looking back so they don't all meld together, but she does love hearing other people watch them too."

"But you've got pictures, right? Come on, I'm dying here!" She made big, puppy dog eyes the same way Alex did when she wanted to look cute. "I wanna see you being a badass!"

Lydia pulled at her hand, about to take them both inside, but stopped. Slowly, deliberately, she brought Rose's hand up to her face and examined it, tracing gently along the hard callouses, healing scrapes and bands of tape she'd wound around two of her fingertips. It was just like she'd done the first night they'd met. Except, at the time, Rose hadn't known her well enough to read the expressions dancing across her face. Now, she recognized them. Focused interest, like when she was concentrating on composing a new song, combined with the same sort of excitement she got when they did something sexy outside.

"You really like rough hands," Rose said, watching Lydia's face happily. She was learning her! Finally!

"I like how much they belong to you."

Rose blinked. "Um... yeah, they're my hands?"

"Yep!" Lydia giggled, as if that explained what she'd meant. "Sorry, got distracted. Come on in! Do you mind if I eat? I haven't had dinner yet. You want anything?"

"No, thanks, I had mine."

Rose followed her, finding herself drawn in by Lydia's infectious mood, only slightly dampened by still having no idea how to transition to a serious conversation about her past relationships, and the future of theirs. Olivia's disapproving frown floated past her mind's eye, even as she told Lydia all about climbing Wallface, exploring new routes up some of their favorite peaks, and practicing on their portaledge.

"I still can't believe you guys actually sleep on that thing," Lydia said, flipping through the pictures on Rose's phone.

"Yeah, it does take a bit of getting used to," Rose admitted, "But I love it." The portaledge was just what it sounded like. A lightweight contraption that acted as a portable ledge, and could be attached to their climbing ropes and used to sleep on during long climbs. They hadn't needed it for Wallface, but it was worth practicing the assembly, rigging, and reminding them all what it was like to sleep on it at least one night before using it on El Capitan.

"Don't you ever worry that it'll like... just fall off while you're sleeping?"

"If that was going to happen, a bunch of other things would have had to go wrong with the ropes and anchors first, and we would have been doomed anyway."

Lydia grinned. "Riiight. And if I asked one of your saner friends?"

"They'd say the same thing!" Rose declared, but then admitted, "but they'd probably also say something about still worrying a little bit anyway."

"And I know you feel the same way, even if you won't admit it."

"Really?"

"Yep. Otherwise, it wouldn't be as fun for you."

Rose blinked. "You know me too well," she said, then realized the implication. Lydia didn't know some key parts of her, because Rose had never shared them. She grit her teeth. Oh well... finally time to fix that. "Actually - um - there was something I wanted to talk to you about."

Lydia paused, and suddenly confronted Rose with an expression from her she hadn't seen before. "Oh?"

Rose felt her positivity give way to little bits of panic type tingles at the edges of her mind, as she tried and failed to decode Lydia's changed look. "I just... I should have invited you to come with us, and I'm sorry I didn't."

"Oh?" Lydia repeated, a little softer. "It's all right, I couldn't have taken that much time off work anyway."

Rose still couldn't figure out what Lydia's non-verbal cues were telling her, and she hated feeling blind like this. What if Lydia was signaling her to steer clear of anything serious, go back to lighthearted joking, and just have some hot sex after she ate? But what if it was the opposite, and she wanted to get more serious?

Oh well, in for a penny... "I know, but that isn't what stopped me."

"What stopped you?"

"I'm just..." Rose floundered, regretting once again her repeated failure to plan out how to explain herself. "I'm really bad at relationships," she finally went with. "I've had some bad ones in the past, and I'm not trying to weigh you down with all my baggage, but I just wanted to tell you that I'm sorry I'm distant with you sometimes, and it's not your fault at all. It's mine."

Lydia didn't respond. Rather, she did, just not with words. Another string of expressions Rose hadn't seen Lydia use before crossed her face, once again leaving Rose feeling socially incompetent, then she got up and grabbed her phone off the countertop, her thumbs quickly flashing across it. "Trust me, you're not the only one with baggage," she finally said, then passed her phone to Rose.

It was open to a picture. Lydia, smiling happily at the camera with somebody beside her. His arm was wrapped possessively around her hips, while her hand rested on his opposite shoulder around his back. The flash from the camera had reflected off the ring on Lydia's finger, making it pretty obvious what kind of picture this was. "You were married?" Rose asked, hoping to god that her use of the past tense was right.

"Yeah. We were together for three years. His name was Sean."

Even through Rose's social incompetence, there was no mistaking the downward slant to Lydia's voice when she said 'was'. That tone was pretty much universal to everybody. "You--um--didn't get divorced, did you?"

Lydia shook her head. "There was an accident, and since then... well, let's just say, you're not the only one who struggles with relationships." Lydia kept shaking her head, like she was trying to clear cobwebs away from it, then forced a smile. "So yeah, that's how a full time bartender, part time DJ managed to afford a house in LA on top of this place."

It was just like Olivia, when she was trying to make jokes about something sad so it wouldn't sting as much. And also like how Olivia always tried to shoulder Rose's burdens and show her she wasn't alone. She hadn't realized it, but Lydia had a lot in common with her best friend, even if their musical tastes were polar opposite.

"I'm really sorry," Rose said, passing Lydia's phone back and laying what she hoped was a comforting hand over top of hers.

"It's fine. It was years ago, and I've moved on. I wasn't trying to make this about me, I just wanted to show you that you don't have to be afraid of weighing me down with your baggage, or however you said it. Tell me about your shitty ex-girlfriends! I wanna know who hurt you so we can plot revenge together."

But had she moved on? Rose wondered. Lydia had just said she struggled with relationships too, and she still traveled back and forth to LA for half the year. Maybe opening herself up even further to Lydia was the heartache trap she'd been afraid of this whole time?

Except, Lydia was being honest with her, unlike Rose's ex-girlfriends had been. Even if the message wasn't ideal, that counted for a lot.

"Well, it's not nearly as significant as you being a widow," Rose hesitantly began.

"It's important enough to you to want to talk about it."

Rose sighed, then confessed, "I've been worrying about what you'll think."

"What do you mean?"

"Like, you seem happy with this... whatever we have going on between us, and I'm afraid I'll ruin it if I tell you I want to be more than just friends who have sex." Rose really wished, yet again, she knew Lydia well enough to decode all the new expressions she was seeing. Not knowing felt worse than trying to do this blindfolded and guess just based on her voice. But Olivia's voice filled her head, repeating the advice she'd drilled into her. Be bold, tell her what you want, and don't talk yourself into thinking what she wants is more important than what you want. "But I want us to be more than that. I want to invite you to all the things that make me happy, and not stress about whether you'll think I'm overstepping our boundaries."

Lydia's expression shifted again, the ghost of a smile playing across her lips, and Rose realized it was pretty much all the positive emotions she had cataloged. Lydia's negative looks were the ones she hadn't seen enough of yet to learn. That had to say something good about their relationship so far. "I'd like that too. I'm curious, let me know if this resonates with you. Do you know that feeling, like you want yourself to want a nice, stable relationship, because that'd be the healthy thing and all that. But you can't tell if you actually want it for itself, or just so you can finally stop feeling like a broken toy?"

Rose felt her eyes going wide. "Yeah! Like, for literally years!"

Lydia's hand gave hers a little squeeze. "Yeah, I know a thing or two about that."

"Do you still feel that way?"

"Much less so than I used to, though I haven't had anything serious since Sean. Most people hear about my dual coast lifestyle, and decide they don't want a girlfriend with an expiration date."

Rose immediately deflated. "Is that what we are?" She asked, very quietly.

Lydia paused, thoughtfully, before adopting a kind smile Rose recognized immediately. "I'm happy to be that if that's what you want us to be. Or, if you want to try to make us work long distance when I go back to California, I'm willing to try that too. It's just--" she cut herself off, the same unknown expression from before returning. Was that Lydia's version of anxiety? "It's just, you know, long distance isn't exactly fun."

"I know," Rose agreed, sadly.

"I've tried to make it work before, and it felt even more lonely than just being single... but like I said, I'm willing to try again, if that's what you want. I'm just trying to be real about how hard it'll be. It wouldn't be forever, it would only be for six months, then I'm back here again! But yeah, that's what I'm thinking." She trailed off, uncertainly, waiting for Rose to respond.

Rose shook her head, slowly, wishing she had another brilliant solution to offer. She didn't. At least, not one she felt comfortable suggesting. It was pretty much exactly the problem they'd both known about from day one, even if neither of them had admitted it was going to be a problem at the time. "I don't know what I want," Rose finally said, hoping the lie didn't show on her face. Rose wanted to ask Lydia whether she might maybe consider staying in Northampton, and skipping the cycle back to LA this year. But she couldn't, because that would be asking Lydia to give up something really important to her just to be together, and imposing into Lydia's life that far was too frightening. How could Lydia not resent her for that? They were only just having the girlfriend talk now! They needed more time. So, instead, she continued, "I know that just going on and ignoring the problem isn't healthy... but can we do that? Like, just keep being happy together, and figure tomorrow out tomorrow?"

Rose could practically hear Olivia's disappointed voice in her head. THAT'S EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT I TOLD YOU TO DO! It was so loud, Rose mentally apologized back at it. Sorry, Liv, I'm not as good an advocate for myself as you are for me. This is why I need you so much.

Still, the kind, understanding smile was back, and Rose felt it warming her. "That's fine by me." Lydia took Rose's hand, and guided her towards the kitchen. "Are you sure you don't want anything to eat? I'll make you a small dish and you can finally tell me about those ex-girlfriends we keep getting distracted away from?"

Rose mentally apologized to Olivia again, and let the opportunity to bring it up pass by. "Actually, yeah. I'd like that. And then you can tell me about the DJing gig you got."

"Oh my god, I'm so fucking hype! House Of Yes is, like, a big fucking deal! It's going to be amazing, I know it's all the way down in New York City, but please tell me you can come."

"You doing the biggest show of your career so far? Of course I'll be there!"

-------------------

Olivia

At least Rose had the good grace to duck her head and look embarrassed. Olivia glowered at her, then turned to Brittany as she finished her set on the lat pull. "You were there when I told this bitch how to treat her wants versus Lydia's, right?"

"Yep," Brittany confirmed.

It was Olivia's turn in the rotation next, which gave her a nice outlet. She adjusted the weight, settled into the seat of the lat pull, and flexed her muscles, working the bar down and the heavy stack of weights up. "Remind me what I said."

"Something about making sure she puts herself first."

"Close enough," Olivia confirmed, pulling the bar down with more force than necessary. "Rose, care to explain where you got confused?"

"I know! I messed that part up, and I knew you wouldn't like it as it was happening, but I thought the rest of the night went really well."

Olivia grunted, forcing the bar down repeatedly, and finally letting her muscles relax. She didn't turn around, instead facing the stack of weights while she spoke, just in case the mask slipped a little while talking about Lydia. "Yeah, fine, it sounds like it did, and I'm really happy you represented yourself so well through everything else. Really, I promise I am! It's just, having any plan at all for what's going to happen when she goes back to California is kind of fucking important."

Olivia got up to make room for Rose to take her turn. "I know," Rose said, shoulders slumping a little before reaching up to grab the bar and starting her set.

Even just that one small reaction was enough to sap the wind from Olivia's sails and make her want to give Rose a hug. She really was terrible at being hard on her, even if it was a message she needed to hear, so she backed off. "Gotta say, I didn't see the whole dead husband thing coming at all. That's some dark shit right there."

"Yeah," Rose agreed, speaking easily despite the heavy weight she was pulling, and earning an impressed little whistle from Brittany for it. "She said she's over him, but I think she's downplaying it a bit. Like, I think that's gotta be why she does the back and forth to LA thing, and maybe it's why her house feels so impersonal inside."

"Wait, what do you mean by that?" Brittany asked.

"I noticed it the first time I was there. I figured it was just because she uses the place for AirBnB rentals for half the year, but there's really not a lot of personal decorations around. Everything feels kind of generic and clinical."

"No pictures of dead hubby, for example?"

"Exactly. Nothing from her past at all."

"In fairness," Olivia said, "If I had a dead spouse, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want pictures of her hanging around my house, no matter how genuinely I'd moved on."

"Yeah, it's possible I'm overthinking and reading into nothing," Rose said, swapping spots on the machine with Brittany and turning to face Olivia. Focus, mask on, no slips. "But there's other things too."

"Such as?"

"Like how she never wears any rings. She's got lots of other accessories and jewelry, but no rings at all. Like she's deliberately avoiding them. And also, she's exclusively hooked up with women since Sean. Maybe it's absolutely nothing and I'm seeing a trend that doesn't exist, or maybe she just realized she's not as bisexual as she thought, or--"

"Or maybe she's still caught up in one guy in particular," Olivia nodded, trying to decide whether her concern was genuine, or born out of her selfish hope that Rose and Lydia would decide they weren't meant for each other and would have a nice, clean, amicable breakup. "I know you're going to say that it makes you feel like her experience having somebody drop out of her life and rip her heart out makes you feel like kindred spirits. Still, not from nothing, but some might call those things red flags."

"Any redder than me having nothing but failed relationships in my past?" Rose pointed out. "Lydia could just as easily decide that I'm the only common denominator in all those."

Saying positive things about Lydia was hard. Especially when she didn't have any easy excuse to hide from Rose's gaze, and had to keep her face upbeat while doing it. But fuck, it was hard to deny that Lydia was a great match for Rose, and that made it her duty as her best friend to do everything she could to encourage Rose to make it work, no matter how much it hurt. "I'm not saying it's a dealbreaker," Olivia forced herself to say. "I'm just saying, it's something you'll want to keep in mind. Like, something you can help her grow through."

At least saying things like that made Rose smile. Smiles like those, warm and glowing from deep inside her, made it all worth it.

Brittany settled the bar back up above her and the weights back on the stack. "Done here. What's next?"

"Back extension," Rose said, eyeing the lat pulldown machine Brittany was getting up from. "Up to 70 pounds now, nice!"

Brittany grinned. "Thanks! I was expecting to feel exhausted coming to the gym right after the trip, but not having specifically targeted these muscles actually makes it seem like coming off a rest."

They made their way across the gym to the angled bit of metal used for back extensions, weaving between machines and people, and stopping to grab some weights. It was crowded for a weekday lunch time. Didn't these people have jobs? Rose was between tutoring clients, and she and Brittany worked from home, so they obviously had an excuse. But everybody else? The basement setting felt stuffy at the best of times, with the recycled air and claustrophobic lack of windows, and so many bodies amplified the effect. They had to skirt around a sizeable group gathered by the squat racks watching a pair of bodybuilders with 315 on their bar, and in the process of putting two more plates on.

Fine, Olivia admitted to herself. 405 was a damn impressive squat - everybody standing around to gawk was understandable.

"We never do that," Brittany commented.

"Squats on the rack?"

"Anything over here," she motioned around them, to include the bench presses and platforms for dead lifts too.

"Looking to tack more exercises on our rotation?" Olivia teased, meeting Brittany's eye and sending a silent thanks for guiding topics to something less stressful.

"So what if I am! You made me this way, it's your fault. Those look like fun, like you get to pile on weights and really let your muscles work to the fullest."

Olivia feigned shock. "Who are you and what have you done with Brittany!"

"Fuck off! I'm just curious, we're pretty hardcore with everything else we do, why do we avoid the big three lifts?"

Olivia shared a quick look with Rose, whose shining eyes said she'd noticed the same thing. Not just that Brittany was well on her way to full workout addict - she was finally starting to use words like 'we', and include herself in observations about the family. "It's partially philosophical," Rose explained. "We work out to make us better at other things, like climbing and hiking trips. It's what makes us happy, but for people who just do the gym as their main activity, pushing weights on those lifts is their payoff."

Olivia grinned at Brittany. "What she's trying to say is that the gym rats would be miserable if they didn't have the bench press to measure their cocks against each other."

"Bench press is notorious for being unhelpful for other activities. The motion doesn't really apply in other contexts, like squats or dead lifts do."

"Yeah, but we don't do those two either," confusion twinged Brittany's voice. "We do lunge and split squats, and all kinds of back stuff, but never use the squat rack or deadlift."

Olivia stifled a smirk. "Oh, we don't do those because we're cowards."

"What?"

"Really."

"We just got back from climbing up a thousand foot high cliff, and you're gonna try to tell me we're afraid of some weights on a bar?"

"Yep! Seriously, once we get home, look up how to do the perfect squat on YouTube," Olivia explained as Rose giggled, lining herself up and lifting the weight to her chest to take the first turn at back extensions. "You'll find tens of thousands of them. Literally, it's like every gym bro on Earth has made one."

"If you watch a few, you'll start noticing a trend," Rose picked up, finally starting to sound breathless from the exertion after breezing through every workout up to now.

"What's that?"

Olivia picked up from Rose, "All of them are like, don't do this thing or you'll get hurt, or don't do that or you'll blow your back out, on and on through dozens and dozens of tiny little bits of your form. Even with a mirror, it's impossible to notice everything while you're doing it. After a while, it's like, it's a goddamn death trap! How can anybody who does them still walk?"

Brittany didn't look convinced. "You're being dramatic."

"Duh! I mean, have you ever met me?"

Both Brittany and Rose laughed, and Olivia decided it was finally safe to let the last safeguards of her mask fall away. It was a relief, being able to relax back into the family dynamic. Worrying she might slip and ruin everything for her and Rose was exhausting. "A little dramatic," Rose agreed, finishing her set and swapping with Olivia. "But you might be surprised. If you talk to anybody who's gotten injured in the gym, even professional trainers, and it's pretty likely they got hurt doing either dead lifts or using the squat rack. It's because both involve so much weight. They really are exercises where very small imperfections in form can compound over time to bad injuries, and even though they're both fantastic exercises that help your balance and tons of different muscle groups at the same time, we stay clear because of that."

They rounded out the back portion of their workout with cable rows, transitioned to a bit of core, then finally made their way over to the cardio side of the gym. Like most gyms, theirs had all the treadmills, ellipticals, and stairmasters off to their own side away from all the other equipment, as if everybody wanted the misery that is indoor cardio as far out of sight and out of mind as possible.

Brittany certainly thought so. "After all that time hiking out in the clean open air with all those views, getting back to these shitty machines is going to suuuuck."

"Yeah. I keep telling you, the secret to good gym cardio is good distractions," Olivia said, setting up her phone to balance on the treadmill and scrolling through YouTube suggestions for something entertaining.

"I think I finally got that covered," Brittany said.

"Hmm?"

"Ivy hooked me up with her Audible password."

Another quick look and exchanged knowing smile with Rose. For Ivy, opening the doors to her library for somebody was just a small step down from asking them to move in with her. "Cool," Olivia said, nonchalantly, before Brittany could read into the non-verbal exchange.

"Has she given you any recommendations?" Rose asked, barely stifling a grin, and immediately making Brittany color slightly.

"Wow! Rose, that doesn't look like she's starting in the fantasy or sci-fi sections, does it?"

"Nope!" Rose matched Olivia's teasing voice, while between them, Brittany tried and failed to look like she didn't know what they were talking about. "And I'm guessing not mystery-thriller either. That just leaves Ivy's romance collection."

"Only question is where on the romance-to-smut spectrum Ivy put her on. I think I'm guessing Written In The Stars."

"Oh, spicy," Rose said. "Good guess, but I think you're underestimating Ivy's heat level. If somebody expressed even a slight interest in romance novels, what's the first book she'd tell them to read? Or listen to, in this case?"

That was easy. They both said it at the same time. "Delilah Green Doesn't Care!" Then Olivia turned to Brittany. "Dude, you're basically listening to porn in public."

Brittany joined them laughing, still looking a little embarrassed. "It's not porn! You've read it, right?"

"Yeah," Rose said. "Most things Ivy gets really excited about we all end up reading eventually."

"Slower than her, obviously," Olivia nodded.

"Yeah, I think Ivy devoured Delilah Green Doesn't Care in a day."

"It's really good so far!" Brittany said, excitedly.

"Of course - it's smut."

"Liv! Is that seriously all you got out of it?" Brittany turned to Rose, "I swear, she's even more sex obsessed than Alex sometimes."

"Don't let her fool you. She just puts on this show to hide how much of a hopeless romantic she is on the inside."

"Hey!" Olivia exclaimed, "I'm a proud pervert, and if you doubt that for a second, I'll show you both my browser history."

Rose's smirk turned absolutely wicked. "What? And show us how much time you spend on Gone Wild Audio Sapphic?"

"Rose!" Olivia groaned, while Brittany cackled.

"What? The reddit site?"

"No!" Olivia tried to say, but Brittany was obviously ignoring her and listening to Rose.

"Yep! And guess what her most searched tags are."

"ROSE!"

Brittany stopped ignoring her just long enough to eye her appraisingly. "Cuddles?"

"That's one!"

Brittany never did put her headphones on. She and Rose kept each other entertained the entire treadmill workout, and Olivia let them go at it mostly without trying to defend herself. She sighed, happily, feeling like her mission to bring Brittany into the family was coming along nicely. But it was more than that. After having to wear the mask for so long whenever Lydia came up, these normal, easy conversations with Rose felt amazing. Like she could enjoy being with her best friend without all the baggage of wishing they could be more.

It was all worth it.

As days passed, and slowly turned into weeks, Rose started including Lydia in more of their activities, which obviously made things much harder for her. The moments she got to be alone with her best friend, where it was safe to let her guard down, came less and less. It was amazing how many opposite feelings she could have over the same things. Like, Lydia herself. When Olivia forced herself to swallow her jealousy and be honest, she liked her. In a different universe, they could have been friends.

Or hearing Rose call Lydia her girlfriend. The first time, Olivia could see Rose's face twinge at the edges. Like she'd blasphemed against Zeus and was expecting to get struck by lightning. Overcoming that fear was such a personal victory for Rose, how could Olivia not be thrilled? It was like seeing her sister coming to life again, and the simultaneous urge to curl up in a ball and cry triggered more self-loathing than anything before.

One day at a time. She repeated it to herself so many times, it became like a mantra, but her weariness putting on the show of being fine turned to exhaustion at exactly the wrong time. With every passing week, the end of the summer got nearer, and Rose still didn't have a plan for Lydia's departure.

Olivia tried to guide her. To push her towards self-reflection about what made her happy, what she wanted, and how to achieve that. Not even just in her relationship with Lydia - in life in general. Most of the time, Lydia wasn't even part of the discussion. They went all over the place, from their shared excitement every time they went climbing, to the satisfaction Rose got being an amazing teacher, to the sense of closeness they felt with their family, and everywhere else in their lives. What would the perfect existence look like for Rose? For both of them?

Those were the bonding sessions that made all the struggling worth it. Feeling like she'd helped her sister grow, just a little bit. Seeing Rose's smile - so bright and happy, full trust and hopefulness for the future. It made Olivia feel like she could die happy, even as she felt herself breaking that trust whenever she gave evasive half-truths about what her own perfect existence would look like.

Every time a talk did come around to Lydia, Olivia felt a little more of her stamina being stripped away. It got harder to stifle the little embers of completely selfish hope that Rose and Lydia would reach their deadline and have a nice, peaceful breakup, going off as friends with no drama, and letting her and Rose go back to normal. Or, as normal she was capable of, anyway. Embers of hope that flared up when Rose talked about how Lydia never offered to stay in Northampton, or asked her to move to LA with her. Olivia tried her best to encourage Rose to initiate that conversation. She really did... but that topic always wiped Rose's smile away and brought her anxiety back.

Yes, it was selfish. Yes, it made her a shit friend, but after a while, Olivia found she couldn't force herself to keep bringing that up. Not when everything else with Rose felt so good, when it was just the two of them. Not when it felt so irresistible to bask in the glow of Rose's smile as she realized, slowly, how much more positively she was feeling about herself. Not when their bond felt stronger than it ever had before, and it was the only thing in the world she wanted for herself.

One day at a time. More camping trips, more climbing, tons of family dinners and so many laughs during weekly game nights. Life would have been perfect, if not for the one thing making her feel like she was always tired, and could so rarely totally relax.

One day at a time, and finally, Yosemite and El Capitan were barely a couple weeks away, Lydia's departure was imminent, and it was time to get in the car and drive to fucking New York City, through Friday night traffic, just to suffer through an EDM "concert." If there was one consolation, this was a bit of Lydia hate she had the perfect excuse not to hide. Why, Rose! If you had to hook up with somebody else, why couldn't you have picked a metal head? Or a classical composer, or a fucking polka fanatic, or anything but EDM!

-------------------

Rose

She'd only seen pictures of the club online, but walking into it with Lydia made it feel a lot more real. House of Yes's dance area wasn't the biggest room in the world, but Rose could already imagine it. Once the space filled with people and the music started, it would feel very intimate. Perfect for the mood of the set Lydia had planned.

"This is so cool," she said, following Lydia up to the stage.

"Yeah," Lydia agreed, practically giddy with excitement. "I still can't believe I'm here!"

Since it was the club's amateur night, Lydia would be sharing the spotlight. She and four others would each have an hour long set tonight, showing off their music and living the dream, and the club would get a night's entertainment basically for free. Everybody won.

Rose looked around the room while Lydia quickly checked over the stage equipment, muttering to herself about small differences between the setup here and her own stuff. She plugged her laptop in and tested some settings.

"This sound system is amazing," she said, appreciatively.

"Wouldn't it be weird if a place like this didn't have a good one?" Rose wondered out loud.

"You'd be surprised. A lot of clubs try to save a few bucks and skimp on speakers or amplifiers, and some spaces just have terrible acoustics that the landlords won't pay to fix. It sucks, and people just assume it's the DJs' fault, when there's nothing we can do about it."

Online, Rose had read that this place was known for a few things, like having a thriving queer scene, which had been part of why Lydia had enthusiastically applied for amateur night here. It was also, apparently, known for having burlesque shows, and being here in person, Rose could definitely feel it. There was a prop cage hanging from the ceiling, alongside several long ribbons that she'd seen pictures of very scantily dressed people performing acrobatic routines on. The stage itself had a big, musical theater like frame that reminded her a little of the set of Moulin Rouge.

Rose turned back to Lydia, and watched over her shoulder as she adjusted the tempo fader sensitivity and listened for the results. Lydia had taught her a ton of her craft in the last few weeks, and she was proud of being able to mostly follow what she was doing, and why. Far from demystifying everything, her peek behind the metaphorical purple curtain had only served to cement Lydia's talent for making music come to life in her mind.

They'd only grown closer in the weeks since their serious girlfriend talk, which didn't surprise Rose as much as her own lack of surprise did. It was a weird bit of almost circular logic, but she felt like she was supposed to be surprised, and she wasn't, and that's what triggered the surprise in her. It seemed strange to her, but it'd made perfect sense to Olivia. According to her, she'd worked it up in her head that the world would end, which it obviously wouldn't, but she hadn't given herself credit for having already figured that out. Said differently, she'd already trusted Lydia without needing to see the proof, even though she hadn't believed she had the capacity in herself.

Long story short, it was a very good feeling.

Lydia had started coming with her to climbing too, and she loved it. She got a huge kick out of trying to do much harder walls than she was ready for, throwing herself upwards with no self-preservation instinct, sometimes making it but usually falling, and laughing hysterically as the ropes caught her. It was such a different approach to the sport than any of them were used to. She did it purely to have fun, without thinking about grinding for improvement, and they joked she would fit right in with the children's classes. There were a bunch of kids who couldn't be older than 9 or 10 who could fly up the wall, and Lydia matched their innocently joyful energy perfectly.

Rose left Lydia to finish her sound check and let her attention wander idly around the stage again, taking in more of the space while it was relatively unoccupied. Somebody else must have been prepping for the upcoming night, because the floating cage retracted up into the ceiling and a bunch of colorful, streamer-type flowing sheets descended, along with a metallic crescent moon and some stars. There must have been some cross-breeze up there, because the sheets softly billowed, their colors dancing around each other, and Rose could imagine the effect once the main lights dimmed and the party lights took over.

It definitely fit Lydia perfectly. "I'm guessing you wish you were allowed to combine this place's themes together?"

"What?" Lydia asked, quickly repacking her laptop and making room for the next DJ to check his stuff.

"Music and nudity?"

"Oh!" Lydia turned, very quickly glanced around, and seemed disappointed by how many people were there despite the club not opening for another hour. Rose grinned, wondering how far Lydia would have gone if they'd been alone, especially with what they already had planned. "Obviously!" Lydia said. "Can you imagine? Us, up here, together, everybody watching us getting sexy..."

She got a faraway look in her eyes that Rose had learned meant she was having erotic daydreams. Which, given what she'd just said, was pretty obvious, but it was still nice to have confirmation for Rose's inventory of her expressions. Since they'd turned official and started seeing more and more of each other, Rose was feeling decently confident in it. At least, it'd been a full week since she'd encountered a completely new one.

Which also gave her the confidence to act on what she thought would turn Lydia on, without asking, despite the setting. Indeed, exactly because of it! Rose snaked a hand surreptitiously into her pocket and found the remote Lydia had given her. Once the show started, Lydia would be up on stage for her set, alone. She'd tried to convince Rose to stay with her, but this was her special night, and she deserved to be the center of attention.

But that didn't mean they couldn't have any fun! Rose pressed a button on the remote, and Lydia's body gave an involuntary jerk before freezing in place. "That feels good?" Rose teasingly whispered in her ear.

"Right on my clit!"

"Perfect!" Rose turned the vibrator secured in Lydia's underwear off, gave her a quick kiss, and used the words Olivia had been so fond of during their photo shoot. "It'll be our sexy secret, you minx. Everyone out there," she waved out to the empty dance floor, knowing Lydia was imagining it full of people, "will think you're just vibing with your own music. But we'll know what's actually happening. What you're vibing with is much more literal."

Lydia half moaned, half groaned, and kissed Rose back. "God, where have you been all my life?"

-------------------

Mary

Mary hadn't answered the phone. It rang the same time as a cramp hit her. Always a bad omen. Besides, she was with Hazel and Alex at the hotel, prepping for the night. Girl time - whatever her brother wanted could wait.

Obviously, Keith didn't see it that way. Hazel's phone rang next, and she immediately picked it up and put it on speaker.

"Hey Keith, how are--" Hazel started to say.

"WHY THE FUCK DO YOU HAVE MY GIRLFRIEND'S NUMBER!" Mary yelled at the phone, wishing she could wring her brother's neck remotely.

"Hello to you too, sis! Sup, Hazel, how was the trip down?"

"Awful. Took us two hours to drive down to the New York border, then another two hours in traffic to make it the last twenty miles."

"Sucks," Keith laughed, without an ounce of sympathy. "That's what you get for trying to get into NYC on Friday night."

Alex leaned around from behind Mary towards the phone. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, take your I-told-you-so and shove it up your ass."

"You're there too, Alex! Sup, slut, why didn't I get invited to this party?"

Mary glared daggers at the phone as Keith and Alex shared some gossipy news about coworkers that was too hot to risk being overheard back in the office. Why had she gotten him that job again? All he ever did was embarrass her.

"--and so then, Martinez introduces the next speaker, and there's this little pause as whoever it was comes off mute. We can't prove it was Martinez, there were a few other people off mute, but you know the sound that came up?"

"What?" Hazel and Alex both asked together, and Keith did some vocal drumming.

"Tzing dum da-dum dum dum."

Despite his terrible beatboxing abilities, it was instantly recognizable as the Pornhub jingle. Mary couldn't help cracking a tiny smile.

"No way!" Hazel gasped, while Alex exclaimed, "I knew Martinez was a fucking perv!"

"Coincidentally, the sound stopped just as his mute icon came on. Almost everybody wasn't paying close enough attention to who was muted and unmuted to see, but yeah, I caught it. Can't prove it, and obviously not gonna get myself fired pointing fingers at an executive director, but it's still fucking funny. I just wish it'd stayed on a few more seconds. Let us all know what kind of porn he was watching."

"Oh, that's obvious," Alex picked up the phone and rested it on the bed beside Mary, so she could go back to styling Mary's hair while chatting. "Definitely lesbian porn. You've seen how he looks at me, one hundred percent he fantasizes about finding some unicorns for a threesome."

"What?" Keith's voice dripped sarcasm in a way Mary had come to associate with being ashamed of being related to him. "Just because he's a straight cis man, you automatically assume he fetishizes lesbians?"

Mary groaned. Right again. At least he was predictable. "Keith, please, not this speech again."

"Are you telling me I'm wrong?" Alex challenged, a smirk on her face that Mary was a little relieved to see. At least they thought he was joking.

"Fuck no! You're obviously right, and that's my point. Everybody gets on straight guys' nuts for getting off to lesbians, but nobody can say with a straight face that they blame us. You're fucking hot! You're so fucking hot, even straight women think so. Straight women search for lesbian porn more often than any other term, and it's not remotely close."

"Close, but not quite! I look at PornHub analytics too."

"Yeah," Hazel chimed in. "Lesbian is up top, but threesome is close behind it."

"Turns out, straight girls dream about two cocks at once almost as much as they fantasize about never having to take a cock again. Wish they'd make up their minds," Alex lamented. "It'd make picking out which ones are open to seduction much easier."

Alex certainly was dressed to seduce. She'd come in on her motorcycle, and had a dark leather jacket and pants that made her look completely badass.

"Goddamn," Keith laughed. "And here I thought I was going to worst one on this call."

"It's like you don't even know me," Alex joined his laugh.

"You still haven't told us why you're calling," Mary butt in, hoping to sidetrack the conversation before her brother could make any more sweepingly offensive generalizations.

"Right, right. You're all going to the concert at House of Yes, right?"

Keith sounded hesitant all of a sudden. Weird. Probably bad. "It's not really a concert, but Rose's friend is DJing there tonight. Yeah?"

"I was scrolling through twitter earlier, and... I'm pretty sure Austin is going to be there. He moved to Brooklyn not too long ago, if you didn't know. Small world, ain't it?"

Oh. Shit. And now, she couldn't even be mad at him for calling anymore, either. "Of course you still follow him," she muttered.

"What? Is that disloyal of me?"

"And you've got Hazel's number too. Is there anybody in my life you're not friends with?"

"What can I say? You've got good taste."

Mary sighed and didn't bother figuring out if he was being sarcastic. "Well, gotcha. Thanks for warning me."

"No problem. I know it'll be a huge crowd and odds are you'd miss him even if you were both deliberately looking for each other, but still, thought I'd tell ya."

"Yeah, thanks."

"I'll let you all get back to dolling yourselves up, then. Have a good time, guys."

As soon as he'd hung up, Alex asked the obvious question, so Mary had to explain. "Austin is my ex-boyfriend. We were together for like a year or something, and it wasn't a bad breakup or anything. He just thought we were closer to getting married than breaking up, so he was kinda down about it."

It was strange. She'd been obsessed with comparing everything to her relationship with him, and all her ex-boyfriends before him, but she hadn't even thought his name in months. Like she'd divorced him from every bit of his personality and traits except his gender. That... was probably messed up. A little pang of guilt went through her. The last time she'd thought about him as an individual and not a generic person with a penis was probably when her mother had used their breakup as an excuse to pick a fight. Bitch. Mary almost cursed out loud, partially because of another cramp, but mostly because that reminded her. She hadn't called her parents since then, and dad deserved better.

How was Austin doing? That nagging guilt had decided it liked her, and was busy making itself comfortable for a long stay. He hadn't been a bad guy, really. He'd just... well, had the misfortune of spending a year dating somebody who didn't know herself well enough to realize she wasn't into men. Did he know that's what had happened? How could he, she certainly hadn't been sending him updates. Would it make him feel better, knowing there wasn't anything he could have done? Or was he perfectly happy thinking she was just a bitch, and washing his hands of her?

Why did she suddenly care so much? God damn it, Keith, bringing him up again. Mary sighed, and forced herself to be fair. Probably better to have a bit of warning than get ambushed by this weird guilt on the spot if she did run into him.

"So it'd be awkward to meet him at the club?" Alex asked.

"Honestly, I don't think he'd be weird about it. He's not that kind of guy. Just, you know, given the choice between running into my ex at a club with my girlfriend, and not that..."

"Obviously prefer not. Well, if you see him and want someone to run interference, I'm your girl." She turned her attention back to Mary's hair, which she'd been combing out before Keith's interruption.

Mary had wanted to try a new look. Something to help her express to the world the gayness she felt inside. Except, she had no idea what she was doing, or why her own attempts felt so wrong. Whenever she tried anything that looked wonderful on the LesbianFashionAdvice reddit, she couldn't help feeling stupid. Her reflection in the mirror didn't look like her. It looked like an imposter wearing a costume.

So, reluctantly, Mary had given up on her dream of surprising Hazel with something special and did what she probably should have from the start. Ask for help. It was also something she probably should have realized much sooner than this last second before leaving for the show, here in her hotel room with Hazel and Alex, trying to pull something together from spare stuff out of their bags. It would have pissed her off if she'd been in their spots, anyway. But apparently for Fashion Guru Alexandra, the challenge was what made it fun.

"You know, way back in high school, it was something like this that made me realize I might like girls," Mary said.

"Getting ready to go out?" Alex asked.

"Helping a friend do her hair, like you're doing. It's so intimate, you know?"

"Hell yeah I know! Dude, that's like a lesbian rite of passage!" Alex exclaimed, and Hazel agreed.

"You too, Hazel?" Mary asked, surprised.

"Getting my hands deep into a pretty woman's hair, up close enough to smell her, watching her reactions to my touch in the mirror?" Hazel giggled. "Yep, young me had a few heartthrobby episodes like that."

"I can picture the scene perfectly," Mary chuckled. "Speaking of which, I wish we had a good mirror here. Am I allowed to look yet?" Mary asked Alex.

"What do you think of this, Hazel?" Alex asked, apparently ignoring Mary's question and brushing a bit of Mary's hair around from the back to rest on her shoulder. "You've got amazing hair, by the way. It's really full, so much we could do with it if we had more time and you're willing to experiment with the color and a little reshaping."

Reshaping? Oh god! Visions of Brittany's blue dyed, boyishly short cut hair flashed in front of her eyes. "I don't want to chop my hair off!"

"I would never! It'd stay the same length, just shape a bit around from one side here, maybe?" She experimentally tucked the left side of Mary's hair back behind her ear, making it look like it was cut very close in, but leaving the rest to fall naturally. "Hazel, would you like that?"

Hazel hummed thoughtfully. "I think it would sacrifice a bit too much of her style. We want her to still feel like her."

"Thank you," Mary mouthed to her girlfriend, who flashed her a bright smile.

Alex fished around in her bag, muttering about potential and all the things she could do if she'd been gifted a head like Mary's, and eventually came up with some clothes. "You brought those ripped jeans I've seen you in before, right?"

"Yeah?"

"Wear them along with these. Put them on, I'll wait in Liv's room."

Alex passed her a bundle, then slowly wandered off towards the door, casting a flirty look with wiggling eyebrows over her shoulder before lingering a second longer and finally leaving. "Hazel," Mary said, questioningly, "I do believe she was signaling that she'd like it if I started stripping right in front of her?"

"Yep, that's Alex. Don't mind her, she doesn't have an off switch. Show me what she gave you?"

It was really basic. Just a plain white t-shirt, a vest, and a beanie. Combined with her ripped jeans and her hair, which Alex had combed out straight and parted so most of it angled right except the small bit that went left, she looked... "I feel like I'm missing a load of piercings. Don't I need a bunch all around my ears and at least two in my nose to pull this look off? And some tacky Asian writing tattoos?"

"Do you hate it? I think you look good!"

"I don't hate it," Mary said, still appraising herself in Hazel's phone camera. "I guess I just feel like a hipster."

Hazel slipped a comforting hand into Mary's. "You know, I don't think there's anything wrong with how you usually dress."

Mary squeezed her hand back. "I know. I just feel like I'm in a different place than I was before us."

"We'll find something that works for you," Hazel held out the dress Mary had been wearing before for her.

Mary looked back at the image of herself, shifting back and forth between the new look and the relative comfort of the dress. If nothing else, this certainly did give off gay vibes. Especially the hat. Amazing how a simple beanie can convey so much. "Actually, I think I will wear this tonight. Give it a chance to grow on me."

-------------------

Brittany

"Brittany, look at this," Ivy said, excitedly.

Brittany's hand nearly slipped, which would have been tragic because she'd nearly finished replicating the pattern Ivy had drawn in her sketchbook onto Ivy's arm, and they didn't have time to start over again. "A little busy here."

"Can you clip that part where she makes the transition?" Ivy asked Olivia, who was working on putting together all the footage from each of their separate cameras into one Climbing Cannon video. Since Wallface more than a month ago, they'd been on two more climbing and camping trips together, and somehow Olivia had found time to keep up creating videos after each one. Between all of their GoPros and multiple days each trip, it must have been hundreds of hours she'd combed through. Brittany narrowed her eyes in focus. Just one more leaf, right up at the top of Ivy's arm, and that should make it to Ivy's shirt sleeve. It sucked that Ivy couldn't do it on herself. With her insane artistic talents, it probably wouldn't have taken her more than a few minutes. Brittany felt like she'd been at it for an hour.

She nearly slipped again when the door burst open and Alex's voice announced her arrival. "Guys, make sure you compliment Mary tonight, she needs the confidence. Oh! Brittany, that looks fucking awesome!"

"Thanks," Brittany muttered, tracing the final bits together and connecting them back to the main stem of the design. "I think I'm done. See if you like it, Ivy."

"It looks amazing," Olivia agreed, giving an appreciative whistle. "Too bad it's temporary. Ivy, you'd look so cool if you got that as your tattoo."

Brittany stepped back to let the others crowd in, and to admire her own work. Not bad. Obviously, Ivy's original in her sketchbook looked better, but with Brittany's limited drawing skills and the difficulty of using temporary tattoo marker on skin, she'd take it. The design was similar to the one she'd seen Ivy drawing at her first game night. Patterns of green leaves and a vine stem, snaking their way back and forth from her wrist up to her shoulder. In theory, an actual tattoo implementation would be much more detailed and intricate, going further onto her neck and back, but that would all be covered by her clothes, so they'd decided not to bother tonight.

"Why have you never tried this before?" Alex asked while snapping pictures on her phone. "You've drawn hundreds of tattoo pictures for yourself. This looks so badass."

"That's kind of what I was worried about," Ivy said, holding her arm up and flexing it experimentally.

"What?"

"If I love how it looks on me, it'll be that much harder not to impulsively make it real." She paused, looking at Alex's phone and how she appeared from their perspective. "You did a great job," she finally told Brittany. "Thanks for coming up with this idea. I really like it."

"No problem," Brittany said. That compliment from the master artist herself! "Now, what were you guys trying to fuck everything up distracting me with?"

"This," Ivy gestured at Olivia's laptop, where footage of Brittany's head climbing upwards on the Mount Cannon Cliffs was playing. It must have been taken from Ivy's GoPro as she'd been belaying from above.

"Please tell me this isn't a clip of me falling."

Olivia made space for her to get closer. "Nope, this is just before the top. I wish I'd had the drone on you for this, but I think this was when Hazel was trying the crux on that five-eleven route. What was it called?"

"Labyrinth Wall," Alex said.

"Right, that one. The angle for this shot isn't the best, but you can still mostly see."

Brittany watched herself considering her next moves, and tried to place the memory. After a certain point of exhaustion, they all sort of mushed together in her mind. On screen, she apparently made a decision, and started moving. Up with one hand, bracing herself and shifting her feet, then hooking one heel into a crack in the rock and using that to balance her weight so she could reach and pull herself upwards with the other hand. Huh... if she didn't recognize the blue hair and filthy shirt she'd worn for days on end, she might have guessed it was Ivy. For just a few seconds there, her movements took on the graceful flow the others all had when they climbed, like dancers.

"You're improving so fast," Olivia said, sounding genuinely impressed.

"It took me ages to finish the climb, and I fell a bunch! You could have flashed it easily," Brittany protested, meaning that Olivia could have done the entire route in one go, on the first try, without falling once.

"I've been climbing for years. You're not weaseling out of taking credit that easily."

Brittany gave her a playful shove onto the bed. "Oh, fuck off! I'll have you know, I'm a master of avoiding credit."

"Olivia's right, you know," Alex said, shifting her focus from Ivy to the video, and watching appraisingly as past Brittany maneuvered her way slowly upwards. "You're a lot better than you should be, considering you just started this summer. Still lots of improvement potential. Like here," she paused the video, pointing at past Brittany's hips. "You can set yourself much closer into the wall in spots like that, so you've got more range of motion and there's not as much strain on your muscles tiring you out."

"I keep trying to tell her that. Maybe you can beat it into her head," Ivy commented, in her drill sergeant voice, but with an affectionate smile for Brittany while she spoke.

She smiled back at her climbing partner. The more they climbed together, the closer they got, and it seemed like it cascaded into their other activities. Like, the others joked that they'd formed their own two-member book club, and their D&D characters were in the middle of a will-they-or-won't-they arc. The temporary tattoo had been one of Brittany's ideas to try to give back to her. Push Ivy a bit to make some of her art come to life. It wasn't much, but getting the encouragement from somebody outside the immediate family, who Ivy felt were required to say nice things, seemed to make her happy.

Brittany's next idea wasn't nearly as innocent as a little temporary ink. She was still trying to find the perfect match to push Ivy into realizing her acting dream, and fortunately, Ivy didn't seem to have caught on yet. Despite Brittany's not so subtle questions about whether she would enjoy acting in a musical, how she felt about stage adaptations of classic movies from their childhoods like Legally Blonde and Mean Girls, and what her favorite Shakespeare play was.

"It's hard to keep my hips close on overhanging sections like that," Brittany tried to defend herself. "Liv, do you have any clips of you guys doing a similar section? I wanna see how you do it."

"Yeah, let me see where I saved Rose's file, I think there's a good bit in the middle."

They spent the rest of the time before heading out to the club going back and forth between different points of view on the wall. The more Brittany watched her master teachers climb, the more she appreciated that it wasn't just a physical game. Climbing had a mental, problem solving component that was at least as important as physical fitness, if not more so. If she wanted to progress to harder climbs, and she couldn't figure out the right sequence of moves for the situation, no amount of athleticism would compensate. Like, even if Brittany's mind were magically transferred into Ivy or Olivia's body, she would still epically fail the climbs they were comfortable with. At least, until she learned to think like they did.

But she was making progress. The more she understood how they approached different situations, the less mystical their abilities seemed. She was still certain she couldn't even attempt the difficult sections they'd been practicing on, her fingertips hurt just watching some of the tiny holds they'd supported all their weight on, but at least she could understand some of their thought process. Whenever they paused the video and quizzed her on where they were going to set their feet next or why they were doing something, she could actually answer them. It wasn't always the right answer, but at least they were reasonable guesses. That was something!

"I still can't believe we're gonna be sleeping on that thing," Brittany said during a section of video featuring Alex and Hazel chilling on the portaledge. It was basically a sturdy stretcher type platform, just barely big enough for two people to lay down side by side, and it was set up to be raised and lowered on their climbing ropes. Once it was secured and locked, it did feel solid. Enough. Well, enough to sit on and have lunch, anyway. But to sleep on, all night, with nothing but the thin material between her and the empty air beneath her?

"That's what everybody says when they see it the first time," Olivia chuckled.

"Don't worry, you'll get used to it," Ivy added.

"Who knows?" Olivia went on, "maybe you'll be like Rose and fall in love with it."

"But Rose doesn't count because she's insane," Alex said, then turned to Olivia and shifted tone. "Are you going to be alright tonight, Liv?"

Olivia sighed, depression twinging around the edges in a way that always made Brittany's heart bleed for her. "Yeah, I'll be fine. Just as long as I don't have to deal with Rose and Lydia together at once."

"I'll cover for you if they're both coming at us."

"Um... yeah, thanks Alex, that'd help a lot."

"But I don't think you'll be able to get through all of tonight without giving Rose at least one dance."

Olivia shook her head, darkly. "You know, she said that a few times on the drive down. I swear, you all are plotting together to ruin my alcoholic wallflower image."

Alex rolled her eyes, and Ivy shared an amused look with Brittany. As much as Olivia liked to pretend she hated EDM in general, and dancing to it especially, they'd seen all Drunken Liv out there many times, in the middle of everybody, swaying and moving with the crowd with a blissed out happy smile like there was nowhere she'd rather be.

There was a knock on the door, and Hazel's voice called through, "You all ready to go?"

It was a short walk from their hotel to House of Yes, which was a very different area of New York than where Brittany had once lived. She was used to the enormous high-rises and congestion of Manhattan, and compared to that, this area between Williamsburg and Ridgewood felt like suburbs. They passed mostly three to four floor brownstone walk-ups, with lots of coffee shops and night clubs sprinkled in alongside the occasional bodega and art gallery. Ivy paused in the window of a tattoo parlor, gazing wistfully inside and giving her temporarily decorated arm a happy look. Brittany smiled, but didn't say anything. Just let the idea take root and blossom in Ivy's head.

Instead, she turned to join Hazel and Mary to do what Alex had said. "I like your outfit, Mary."

"Thanks," she said, but didn't quite look like she believed her. "Hey - um - do you mind if I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"The way you do your look. You know, with the short hair... and masculine clothes... and--"

Brittany smiled inwardly, then took pity on Mary stepping on eggshells and stated the obvious for her. "I look like a high school boy."

"Yeah!" Mary seemed relieved, like she'd been half expecting her to be offended, which made Brittany chuckle.

"You know, with all the times I've been called an extremely fuckable twink, I'm pretty sure you're not about to say anything worse."

Mary gawked. "You - what? Really? But," her eyes darted downwards briefly to Brittany's chest, and Brittany guessed what she was thinking.

"I actually experimented with binders, a long time ago. I ended up hating it." She puffed out her chest. "The girls needed to be free."

"How does this feel to you?" Mary asked, motioning up and down Brittany, as if to encapsulate all of her at once.

"Mary is trying to find something that feels natural to her," Hazel helpfully supplied, and Brittany nodded sympathetically.

"This feels normal to me. It just feels like... well, me, I guess. Sorry if that's not helpful at all. I know the struggle, though. Every time I'm forced to wear a dress and traditional feminine makeup, it feels like I'm in drag."

"Really?" Mary asked, contemplatively. "Like you're wearing a costume?"

"Yep, exactly!"

"How did you know this would be right for you? Did you see someone else wearing it and just know, or like, did it just feel right when you tried it on, or what?"

Ahh, so many terrible high school memories... "It was more like I tried everything else I could think of, hated everything, and finally arrived at this as the last thing I hadn't eliminated yet. It didn't really click at first either, I had to feel it out. Like I said, I tried binders at one point, but that felt wrong for me immediately, and not just because they crushed my boobs to oblivion."

"So you're saying I need to keep struggling for ages until I happen across something that works," Mary said, glumly.

"No, no!" Brittany quickly backtracked. "I'm sure you'll figure it out soon. It's easier when you've got people around you who can help. Back when I was young and trying to figure this out myself, I was one of those lesbians who was terrified of girls, had mostly male friends, and made the mistake of trying to be just one of the boys."

That earned a chuckle from Mary. "I've spent enough time around my brother's friends to know what that's like. How long did it take for you to branch out?"

Brittany glanced at Hazel, who was smiling knowingly back at her, then around at the whole group. Her friends, who she was finally coming to feel like she belonged with. "Oh, I realized my mistake years ago. I just never had the guts to do something about it until recently."

-------------------

Olivia

Apparently, there was once a golden age of drinking at clubs. At least, that's what her father said. A glorious age when bartenders were perfectly happy to sell bottles of liquor without asking stupid questions like: "You're not gonna drink this all on your own, are you?" or "You know we have a limit per person?" or "What are you, insane?" Sure, tons of shit about being born back in her parents' days would have massively sucked. Such as having to stay in the closet her entire life. Bit of a buzzkill, that. But at least the booze would have flowed, and she wouldn't be stuck on the fucking line for the bar every twenty minutes to spend another twenty dollars for another shitty half shot of vodka mixed with far too much peach, orange, and cranberry juices.

If only Lydia had been behind the bar like she was at her regular job back home instead of being up there on stage. She mixed a fantastic Long Island Iced Tea. Alex had made the horrific mistake of trying to get one here, and had been handed a cup of slightly flavored Coke for her 26 bucks.

"You look like you're having the time of your life," Alex teased her from over the top of her falsely advertised soda.

Olivia glowered at her. "This place is a prison."

"You think jail has dancing and music?"

Olivia grumbled about what qualified as music, but it was inaudible because of the same noise she was complaining about. Why were so many people obsessed with EDM? It was just so... bland. Why couldn't they all go to a metal concert and actually rock out?

But clearly, she was the lone hater in the crowd. Everybody else was vibing with the beats Lydia had put together, and was playing for them from up on stage while Rose gazed up, adoringly, from the front of the crowd. It hurt so much to look up there, and Olivia hated that it hurt because Rose looked so happy. Shouldn't being in love with her best friend mean Rose being happy made her happy? Wasn't that how love was supposed to work?

But obviously, no matter how many times she tried to present that perfectly logical viewpoint to her heart, it wouldn't listen, and went right on pumping jealousy through her in sharp, agonizing waves of Lydia hate. And she even liked Lydia, as a person! She was fun, she mixed amazing drinks, she was helping Rose grow, she... well her music taste left A LOT to be desired, but nobody's perfect.

Lydia returned Rose's attention, singling her out from the entire crowd for her affection, and Olivia forced herself to squeeze her eyes shut before the wave of lonely ache swallowing her up found its way to her tear ducts. Whatever. She took a long gulp of Sex On The Beach and cursed the cheapskate bartenders for all they were worth.

Deep breaths. Deep breaths... Have to get her control back before Lydia's set ended and Rose came to find her for a dance. Burying her emotions and putting her mask back in place, she turned her back on the stage to face Alex.

"Tell me something that's not depressing."

Alex shrugged. "I just found out my boss's boss's boss watches PornHub on meetings."

Olivia gave her friend a very pointed look. "Um, are you sure you're one to judge?"

"Hey! For your information, I'm never on PornHub!"

"Bullshit!"

"No, really! PornHub sucks now, its just a bunch of people posting teasers for their OnlyFans pages. Reddit is kind of the best porn site out there now."

"Watching amateur Reddit porn on Zoom calls isn't better!"

"It totally is!"

"How?"

"It's--" Alex cut off, looking in surprise at something over Olivia's shoulder. "Davidson!" She basically yelled to be heard above the throbbing noise everybody else thought was music. "What are you doing so far from Northampton?"

Olivia turned to find a similarly surprised looking guy staring around for whoever had yelled at him, before finally finding them and starting over.

"Am I supposed to know him?" Olivia quickly asked Alex.

"Doubt it. He's a friend of a work friend."

"Oh, good," Olivia said as the guy whose name she'd already forgotten joined them. Call him... Dude. That always works. "Alex, how do you know every single person in Northampton?"

"How do you not? It's a tiny fucking town."

"We've got very different definitions of tiny. There's, like, a dozen different colleges."

"Alexandra, that is you!" the newcomer exclaimed.

"Sup, Davidson," Alex shook his hand. "And it's just Alex."

"Right, sorry, I forgot. I'm surprised. I just moved here, I never expected to find anybody I knew."

"One of our friends is dating the DJ," Olivia explained. "And I'm Liv, and no offense, but I'm going to forget your name and call you Dude. Hope that's cool."

"That's fine," Dude laughed. "I'm used to it. So many people call me by my last name, I feel like nobody remembers my first one anyway."

"What is it?"

"Austin."

Alex nearly dropped her drink, which, shitty though it was, would have been tragic. Olivia quickly grabbed it out of her hand, just to be safe. Can't be wasting any precious moisture in this desert. "Careful!" She told Alex.

"Was it something I said?" Dude asked.

"Um... Okay, weirdly specific question, but you wouldn't happen to be recently single, would you?"

Dude's eyes narrowed, and he answered hesitantly. "Yes?"

"I think your ex is here with one of my friends too."

Olivia's eyes darted back and forth between them, trying to connect the dots. It took a few seconds, which felt like a good thing. Maybe the damn bartenders were being more liberal with the vodka than she'd given them credit for. "Oh!" She exclaimed brightly when the stars finally aligned, and she gave Dude a more appraising look, trying to picture him with Mary. It kind of fit. Both him and Alex looked half surprised, half embarrassed, like they'd been caught in bed together or something. Fuck, if neither of them were going to embrace the obvious comedy here, she'd do it for them! "Well, this is awkward!" She laughed, tossing a friendly arm around Dude's side and physically pulling him into the joke. "You're in very good company. Alex here has been through three women in as many months, and I've been lying to my best friend about how I secretly want to fuck her."

It was weird how much easier admitting that to an absolute stranger was than it had been talking about it with her sisters. Maybe positive reinforcement after how the world hadn't exploded when they found out. Or maybe because he had no idea who Rose was, and she didn't really care what he thought. At least Alex laughed too. "Bitch, you're just jealous you can't pull like I do."

Olivia grinned, tried to think of something witty to toss back at Alex, but couldn't come up with a punchline fast enough. Something involving her relationship with Brittany crashing and burning, but Brittany having been so successfully wooed that she'd wanted to stay friends afterwards. A shame. The pieces were all there, but her brain just wasn't cooperating. "The point," she said to Dude, who was looking back and forth between them like they were crazy, "is that you'd probably enjoy having a drink with us."

-------------------

Brittany

Lydia's set was really good. It stood out from the other DJs for being much more rhythmic and layered, weaving together multiple flows of sound in each track to create a tapestry that kept shifting around her. Moving with the music felt as natural as breathing. Ivy was right there with her, dancing and swaying, perfectly harmonizing without needing to coordinate at all.

It was a little like climbing with her, in a way. Like they were all on their own, despite being surrounded by a sea of dancers, feeling like Ivy knew what she was thinking and was already moving to synchronize with her. She swayed, and Ivy swayed with her, melding with her body like twin trees in the wind. The music swelled, and as one, both of their arms rose. Without looking, she inched her hand over, and immediately found Ivy's there, open and waiting. Their eyes met, Ivy's shining with the same excitement Brittany felt.

And the same tension, mirrored back at her. The tension that had been growing between them since that day on the ledge in the rain. Ivy's eyes darted downwards to Brittany's lips, and Brittany smiled invitingly back at her. They'd never talked about it, and somehow, that made it feel more fun. Signaling each other and returning signals, feeling the tension grow into something seductive. Brittany waited for Ivy's eyes to come back up and meet hers again, pretty and bright, then she deliberately dropped her own gaze to Ivy's lips.

Maybe she was still new to this whole climbing thing, but she was pretty sure the climbing partner dynamic wasn't meant to include wanting to make out. Then again, most people's climbing partner probably didn't have lips as invitingly kissable as Ivy's. At some point, the tension would burst. It felt inevitable, but for now, Brittany was loving how neither of them seemed to be feeling any rush.

Rose drew them both back to reality. "I love this song!" she said as the tune shifted. A little faster, but the rhythm keeping enough similar elements to make the transition seamless. It seemed familiar to her, and Brittany realized why as soon as the vocals started. A cover of Chappell Roan's Red Wine Supernova, with the main vocals done to match the electronic arrangement.

"Nice," she agreed, loud enough for Rose to hear her. "Is that Lydia's voice on the backing?"

"Yeah!"

"She sounds great!"

"I know!" Rose glowed with pride for her girlfriend. "I wish she'd sing more."

"Whose is the main voice?"

"A friend of hers from bartending in LA."

"No way," Ivy said. "She's got a voice like this, and she's stuck behind a bar?"

"That's LA for you," Brittany said, sagely, as if she'd ever been there. "The land where talented people go to live the dream, and discover that every other talented person in the world has already had the same idea."

The crowd around them seemed to like the song too. The energy level picked up and swept them along with it, back into the whirlwind of revelry. Brittany felt as Ivy snaked her arm around her, letting her fingertips trace playfully along the waistband of her jeans just above her butt before coming to rest on her hip. Such a flirt! Determined not to be outdone, Brittany swayed with the music, deliberately letting her body slide along Ivy's while she sought out her eyes. They were so deep...

Ivy batted her eyelashes back at her, and mouthed the lyrics of the song as it played around them. "Fall right into me!"

Such a fucking flirt!

-------------------

Mary

"So, like, are they about to start making out, or what?" Mary asked Hazel as they both watched Brittany and Ivy making eyes at each other. They were only a few feet away, but pretty clearly, they were in their own little bubble of reality, oblivious to everybody else around them.

"They're just having fun!"

"They look like they're about to jump on each other and rip their clothes off, right out in the open!"

Hazel circled around behind her and wrapped her arms around Mary, watching her friends from over Mary's shoulder. "Jealous?" she said in Mary's ear, voice husky even above the music.

Mary tried to turn her head, but got blocked by Hazel nibbling at her ear. "That tickles!"

"Because it sounds to me," Hazel said between licks at her earlobe that had Mary giggling and wriggling against her girlfriend, "like you wish it was us making out on the dance floor."

"You're as bad as they are!" Mary laughed, but squirmed playfully into Hazel's embrace, loving the way Hazel pushed back against her ass. What! It was a dance floor with good music playing! Moving with the beat was purely innocent, no public sexiness involved.

Hazel spun her around, making Mary laugh again as she tried to turn it into a dance move, failed, and ended up hanging on to Hazel for balance.

"That worked better in my head," Hazel grinned.

It was nice gazing up at Hazel like this. In this position, leaning partially back supported by her strong arms, it was a bit like something out of a sappy romance scene in a Disney movie. Except, obviously, in some alternate universe where Disney would have a gay princess pairing. "You're like my heroic princess up there," Mary giggled, and Hazel seemed to follow her train of thought, because she played her role perfectly, leaning in and kissing her.

When they came apart, Olivia was standing over Hazel's shoulder.

"Finally come to dance?" Hazel teased.

"Fuck off. I'm--" she glanced around, and apparently caught sight of the love birds, because she laughed. "At it again? Why don't they just fuck already?"

"That's what I was saying!" Mary agreed, still wrapped up in Hazel, and realizing a second too late that she might not be in a position to judge.

With a visible effort that made Mary wonder how many of those terrible drinks it had taken to get her drunk, Olivia refocused her attention. "Anyway, I'm supposed to warn you that somehow, Alex is friends with your ex-boytoy because she knows everybody on earth, and she never made the connection because she's an idiot. So, like, don't go over that way unless you wanna see him moping." She waved vaguely towards the bar.

While Olivia was speaking, a painful cramp made Mary wince hard enough for Hazel to give her a concerned look. First while talking to Keith, now hearing about Austin, but almost nothing in the time between. It was like her uterus had become allergic to men.

He was moping? Olivia said it in the same joking tone she'd just used to call Alex an idiot, but it still made the negative feelings she'd had before resurface.

After Olivia had gone - back the same direction she'd indicated, because apparently she and Alex were somehow having a good time chatting with her ex - Mary asked Hazel, "I haven't thought about him for months before Keith brought him up. Why do I suddenly feel guilty for avoiding him?"

Hazel shrugged. "Do you feel bad about how you ended things?"

"It's not that," Mary said, frustratedly trying to find the right words. The same problem expressing herself she'd been having for months, even if these were different feelings than usual. She really missed being confident and articulate. How much longer until she finally got to go back to that? "It's more like I feel bad about how little I care about him now, or hell, how little I cared when we were together, while he was trying his best to be a good guy," she tried to explain, then realized the contradiction between her alleged indifference and apparent attack of conscience. "Why am I like this," she muttered, far too softly for Hazel to hear over the music, but she still gave her a sympathetic look.

Hazel took her hand and navigated their way between dancers towards the back of the crowd away from the speaker stacks, which only made Mary feel worse. They'd come all this way to dance! Now she was dragging Hazel's night down too! "I'm sorry," Mary said, trying to pull back on Hazel's hand. "Let's go back, we can keep dancing, I was really having fun."

But Hazel kept them going to a spot they could speak without having to yell above the music. "That's a bit better," she said, then gave Mary a tight hug. "Stop worrying about ruining my night! We're a team together, if you're stressing, I want to help!"

At least this time, the emotional swing made sense. Hazel's arms felt so wonderfully warm and safe. "But I don't understand why I'm feeling shitty!" Mary complained. "Other than cramping, but you know how that is." It had to be in the top 5 on her list of things she loved about having a girlfriend. Being able to complain to her partner about her period, and have her get it.

"Do you mind if I do an annoying therapist thing and ask you something I'm pretty sure I already know the answer to?"

Mary raised an eyebrow. "You know how ominous that sounds, right?"

"Back at the hotel, and again just now, you said something about Austin being a mostly good guy."

"Yeah?"

"Why do you seem embarrassed about caring about him?"

Mary more than half assumed Hazel was joking, but she seemed entirely serious. "Um - because he's my ex-boyfriend, and I'm with you, my present girlfriend!"

"I hope you know, you don't have to worry about making me jealous," Hazel said, firmly, looking a little offended by the suggestion. "I'd be a pretty shit partner if I thought I'd lose you just chatting with somebody from your past."

That took Mary aback. Men were so annoyingly committed to their 'she was a pure and untouched virgin before she met me' fantasies, merely talking about the existence of previous lovers set them on edge. "No - no! Sorry, that's not it."

"Good."

"It just--" Mary cut herself off, feeling like saying 'it just felt bad' was like a child refusing to eat their broccoli.

Fortunately, Hazel took pity on her. "Does it feel like when you've already made up your mind that something was a mistake, and you've committed to that, but then you feel something else that makes you question it?"

Alarm bells went off in Mary's head. "I'm not questioning this! Being with you is right!"

"That's not what I'm saying!" Hazel wrapped her up into another reassuring hug before Mary could freak out too much. "All I'm saying is that getting to a destination doesn't make every slightly off trail step along the path a mistake."

Mary breathed Hazel's scent into her. God, Hazel really had the superpower to flip her emotions on a dime just with an embrace. She snorted out a laugh. "What the fuck does that mean?"

"It means that being a lesbian doesn't make every interaction you've ever had with men a mistake. It also means that caring about somebody you spent a year together with doesn't make you any less of a lesbian. It makes you a normal person with perfectly understandable feelings."

At this point, she really shouldn't be surprised by shit like this anymore. It was like Hazel had reached into her head and rearranged the scattered blocks to make them nice and orderly again. "Why didn't you just start with that? It makes so much more sense than whatever you said about paths and trails."

"Oh, shut up deflecting," Mary could hear the smile on Hazel's lips from her spot nestled in her hair.

"You're going to make me go talk to him, aren't you? As part of my journey along the path of self-discovery towards enlightenment?"

Hazel laughed. "Of course I'm not going to make you do anything! I'm just letting you know that there's nothing wrong if talking to him is something you want to do."

Mary pouted. "Can't you just make me so I can pretend to myself I'm only doing it because you're twisting my arm?"

More of Hazel's beautiful, musical laughter. "Nope!"

"Oh, fine," she grumbled. "Do you have any idea where Liv meant?"

"Probably close to the bar."

"Hazel? I'm nervous."

"It'll be fine!"

"I broke up with him, then didn't speak to him for months!"

"You'll be fine! Just stay calm and be yourself."

It took a few minutes to find the group in the middle of the ever-flowing sea of people. They initially tried forcing their way through, but got pushed around so much they gave up and decided to shift with the tide and take a round-about route to the bar that had Mary thinking again about Hazel's weird paths analogy. In the end, Hazel found them. Alex, Olivia and Austin were chatting and laughing together like they'd been friends for ages, and it made Mary even more nervous. It felt like she was always the one being the buzzkill. Right on time, another cramp. Just perfect.

As soon as they arrived, before anybody could even say hi, Hazel immediately took Alex and Olivia by the arms and dragged them away. "Get a drink with me, guys."

"Don't have to tell me twice," from Olivia, while Alex complained.

"But she came! I wanna watch the drama!"

"We'll be back, Dude. You want another drink?" Olivia asked over her shoulder, helping to drag Alex away, but Austin didn't seem to notice. He'd been staring at Mary, face somewhere between surprise and apprehension. Ah well, could be worse. Could be anger, or disgust. Seconds dragged by, neither of them saying anything, and Mary's nerves intensified. Why had she wanted to do this again? Frantically, she cast around for some way to break the ice.

"Dude?" she finally asked, raising an eyebrow. "Does she think you're The Big Lebowski?"

Austin gave a forced laugh. "You've certainly got some interesting new friends."

"Liv said something about you knowing Alex already?"

"Not really know her, just met her a time or two through somebody else. I'm surprised she remembered me."

The music filled the space between them again, neither of them knowing what to say. It was, somehow, worse than if he'd outright said he hated her and gone to rejoin the fun people. Mary took a deep breath. There was only so much worse it could get, might as well have it out in the open. But, before she could open her mouth again, Austin beat her to it.

"You look different."

Obviously, he was right, but Mary still glanced down over herself, almost surprised to find the same hipster outfit they'd spent so much time agonizing over before getting distracted. "I feel different," she said, looking back up and meeting his eyes. Had he always been this tall? Or had she just gotten used to not having to crane her neck back talking to Hazel? "I think I can finally explain why I was such a shit girlfriend to you."

The surprise on Austin's face transitioned to full-on shock. "What? Mary you--you don't think I was the problem?"

Mary blinked. "Is that what you were expecting? Me to come over to yell at you?" Then she sighed, thinking back and being forced to admit he might have pretty good reason for jumping to that conclusion. "No, Austin. You were definitely not the problem." She sighed again, bit her lip to buy time for a wave of courage to arrive before saying the hard part, which it obviously didn't. Just another cramp. Just perfect... "You tried your best, and I barely put any effort in at all, and you deserve an apology for that. For what it's worth, I was figuring a lot of my own stuff out, and it really had nothing to do with you. It's on me for never telling you anything."

She thought Austin said something, but it got swept away by the music and crowd, so Mary looked up at him to try and see his reaction. Surprise radiated back at her. Maybe a little disbelief too? God, what did that say about her? She'd conditioned him so much that an apology was shocking? It made Mary want to slink away and curl up in a ball.

"Wow," he said, louder this time. "I gotta admit, when I came out tonight, I was not expecting anything like this at all."

He didn't want any of this. He just wanted to dance and get drunk. Fuck. Well, she couldn't blame him. "Sorry," Mary muttered, realizing a second later that there was no way he could hear her.

"If you don't mind my asking, does this mean you've figured it out?"

"What?"

"That stuff of your own you mentioned?"

Mary took a mental step back. "You want to know?"

"I... well, um," Austin sounded as uncomfortable as she felt. "If you don't mind talking about it."

Finally, Mary felt a smile starting to form on her lips. This was just like them. They'd always sucked so much at communicating, and she hadn't realized it until Hazel showed her what good communication could be like. "Yeah. I'd like that."

-------------------

Rose

The crowd was like a single entity, joined together as one by Lydia's beautifully unifying music. Part of Rose wanted to let herself go completely and join the hive mind. Later. After Lydia's set, they'd give in to hedonism together. For now, Rose kept herself focused on making this the best night of Lydia's DJing life.

She, Brittany and Ivy had picked a spot close to the front, near Lydia's setup, but a few rows of dancers back. Close enough to play eye tag with her while staying innocently inconspicuous. Not that anybody was paying them any mind. Even Lydia herself, up on stage though she was, was relatively unnoticed. Most people were focused on the revelers around them, the flashing lights and sweeping shadows, the music and the dance. It showed how much everybody was wrapped up in the experience, and for Lydia, that was the biggest sign that she was doing a great job. She loved being the puppet mistress, playing the crowd with the controls on the soundstage, slowing the tempo and softening the bass to make them dance more intimately, then switching to a faster song to get them jumping again.

Lydia slowed the beat down, and surreptitiously, Rose snuck a hand into her pocket and turned the dial controlling the intensity of Lydia's vibrator down too. Just a little, enough to mirror the changing music, and Lydia flashed her a grateful look. Rose smiled back, hoping Lydia could tell how much this game turned her on. She'd been hot and flushed for ages, and it must be getting really intense for Lydia too, to be happy for a small reprieve. Usually, Lydia was all gas, no brakes.

It was absolutely insane how much fun this was! Being Lydia's accomplice, enabling her to live this dream, felt perfect. Like they had this incredibly sexy secret they were sharing together, hidden in plain sight, that made them special from everybody else. Or, not just 'like' that. That was, very literally, what was happening!

Lydia met Rose's eyes again, her grin turning feral, then she increased the tempo back up to full dancing swing. Vibrator up too! Rose twisted the dial, and was rewarded by Lydia's eyes going wide. It was going to be so much fun to tease her about how obviously hard her nipples were in front of everybody! Somehow, Lydia managed to hide her arousal as enthusiasm as she turned her attention back to the crowd, and started hopping to the thrumming beat of her next song. Rose recognized it, one of Lydia's own creations that she was especially proud of. It was a fast but rhythmic flowing melody that played tricks on the mind, making everybody feel the infectious excitement without leaning on high volume or super heavy bass.

The climax of Lydia's set. There'd been two DJs before her, and would be two more after her, but she'd gotten the best response from the crowd by a lot!

After doing a lap around the room, Lydia's attention returned to the front, filling Rose with warmth that had nothing to do with being surrounded by people on a hot summer night. Out of hundreds of people here, she was special. Lydia, the goddess of the night, continually singled her out.

Those feelings still made her nervous, but not in the same way as before becoming official. No, this felt almost bittersweet. They still didn't have a plan for what to do when Lydia migrated back to Los Angeles. Six months, she'd be gone, and it'd be the same pattern year after year. Could she stand having a long distance girlfriend like that? Could either of them? But, unlike all Rose's failed relationships, this time it wouldn't be anybody's fault. They'd both gone into this with open eyes, and maybe there was something kind of romantic in that. Like, they were both so drawn to each other, they were willing to take the heartache that came next no matter what path they chose.

The song ended, Lydia gave her little goodbye speech to the crowd, and she got a huge wave of cheers as she unplugged her gear and made way for the next DJ. Rose relaxed, and turned the vibrations off. It'd be a few minutes at least before she finished backstage. Joining the applauding crowd, she was surprised to see Lydia toss the bag with her laptop and everything to somebody wearing a staff shirt, then sprint around the stage side and down the stairs to the floor. A few seconds of apparent muscling her way between people, and she appeared again right beside Rose.

"Hey!" Rose said, excitedly, before Lydia launched herself at her.

"Turn it back on!" she growled in her ear, then locked their lips together and gave Rose the most savage kiss of her life.

Rose was vaguely aware of the crowd around them, going wild all over again at what must have been a pretty hot display. Wolf whistles, clapping, Brittany and Ivy's voices saying something indistinguishable - damn, she'd been so focused, she'd completely forgotten about them! Having an audience only made it more intoxicating! She dove into Lydia's mouth, battling her tongue for dominance, absolutely loving how desperately she wanted her. Her! Rose's insides went all giddy, and she was sure she would have been making incoherent fangirl giggles if it was possible around Lydia's tongue. It wasn't just Lydia pulling her in to share her spotlight. It was how Lydia wanted her, and wanted everyone to know it. She kissed her back, only just barely keeping her arms wrapped around her and not wandering down to her ass.

A task made much harder when they finally came up for air, and Lydia started breathing in her ear. "That was FANTASTIC! It was the best thing I've ever done. How am I the only one with a toy in me? Next time we're both wearing one. Fucking A, Rose, you're gonna lose your mind, just like me, and you're gonna love it!"

There was a smoldering fire in her eyes that Rose didn't need to think about to decode. It was universal, and it made her heart swell. "But I'm supposed to be the designated driver," she said, jokingly, then poured more fuel onto Lydia's fire. "When I get you home, I'm gonna make you let out all those screams you've been holding in. I'm--"

Lydia's lips cut her off again, scorching Rose with the heat of the blaze she'd been fanning. More kissing, such a good reward! Positive reinforcement for playing with fire. Who wouldn't want to be a pyromaniac?

"Think we've given these pervs enough of a show?" Lydia asked when she finally released her.

"Yeah, if we keep this up, I think he'll be annoyed," Rose nodded up towards the stage, where the next DJ was trying to get people's attention to start his set.

"Want to go find the others to come join us?"

"Yeah!" Rose turned to Ivy and Brittany, but didn't see anybody else with them. "What happened to Hazel and Mary?"

Brittany laughed, like she'd just told a joke, and she exchanged an amused look with Ivy. "Dude, they went back to the bar like fifteen minutes ago!"

"What, really?"

"Yeah, you were kind of off in your own little world for a bit."

Lydia wrapped an arm around her. "That's my girl!"

Ivy and Brittany led the way through the crowd and back towards the bar area, which seemed the most logical spot to start looking for Olivia at least. As soon as they were out of the spotlight, Lydia pulled her close again and said, "I was thinking about it a lot while I was watching you dance, and I should have asked you much sooner. Do you want to come to Los Angeles with me when I go back, for like, a few days of vacation? I can show you the city, we could hit some of my favorite clubs, and then I can drive you to Yosemite when the rest of your friends fly out. It could be like a road trip across California! What do you think?"

Emotions raced through Rose. It wasn't an offer to stay in Northampton and be together. It wasn't even asking her to move to LA full time with her. Maybe Lydia knew she couldn't leave her life here, and maybe she had to respect that Lydia couldn't give up her life there. She could do that. She could accept being as special to Lydia as she'd shown her she was, while also accepting that they were different people with different lives.

Olivia would be so proud of her. Sure, she'd insist it was better that they actually have the conversation outright, but still. Feeling good about a relationship despite knowing it could end soon was a major step for her.

"Of course!" Rose squealed, excitedly squeezing Lydia's hand. "I'd absolutely love to see LA with you!"

"Awesome!" Lydia gripped her hand back, then fixed her with that same hot sexy look. "Now, unless you want me to jump on you and rip your clothes off in front of your friends, you should probably turn the vibrator off."

"Oh!" Rose hastily fiddled with the dial in her pocket again. "Sorry, I forgot. How does it feel trying to walk with it going?"

"I would tell you, but that'd spoil the surprise for when I do this to you!"

-------------------

Mary

So far, the conversation had gone well. Better than she'd expected, anyway. He was genuinely interested in hearing her perspective, and rather than being annoyed about how she'd shut him out before, he seemed more worried about accidentally offending her now. So much so, it was getting a little annoying. Like he thought she was a bomb that might explode on him if he said the wrong thing. Does anybody actually like being treated like they're unstable?

"So... if you don't mind my asking," Austin uncertainly began asking another question the same way.

"You don't have to keep saying that," Mary reminded him. "I know you're not trying to be a dick."

"Right. Sorry. So, like, when we were together... and we had sex... did you hate it?"

Mary laughed, and immediately felt bad because it seemed to confirm Austin's fear. Still, it was so stereotypically masculine of him, she couldn't help it. "Austin, are you worried that you were so bad in bed, it turned me gay?"

"No, no!" He waved his arms emphatically between them. "I know it doesn't work like that," he said, then paused again, as if he was worrying that talking about her sexuality like it had a set of rules that worked or didn't was homophobic. He really was walking on eggshells, and Mary wished he wouldn't so she could stop cringing. "I was more worrying, like, if I was forcing you to do something you hated..."

He trailed off, sadly, and Mary felt shitty again for laughing. It was a lot more legitimate a worry than she'd given him credit for. "I didn't hate it," she told him, then added when he gave her a disbelieving look, "honestly, if I did, it might have made it easier to figure my sexuality out."

"But, like, if it was me being pressured to have sex with another man--"

"It wasn't like that for me. Let me think how to describe it," Mary gazed off into the crowd, which had opened up a bit since Lydia's set ended. Hazel, Olivia and Alex were chatting a little ways away, fresh drinks in their hands. Hazel had two, and Mary really hoped one was for her. She thought back to how Olivia had described her sapphic history, and decided to borrow the words that had resonated with her. "It felt good to be so wanted by you. It made me feel beautiful and sexy. The sex itself didn't do much for me, but I liked how wild you went over me. Like I was some kind of succubus or something. And also, not feeling much pleasure from sex wasn't just with you. That was pretty much everybody I'd ever been with, so I'd kind of internalized it as my own fault." Mary shook her head, chuckling at her own stupidity, and realizing she was happy she'd arrived in a spot where she could see some comedy in it. "You probably think I'm an idiot, and yeah, it seems pretty obvious in retrospect. But yeah, you can have a clean conscience. You didn't force a lesbian into fucking you, that was all me."

Austin relaxed a bit. "Thanks," he said, and finally cracked a smile for the first time since they'd started talking. "At least, I think I can be pretty sure that if I was so bad that I'd single-handedly turned you off men forever, you'd probably tell me in great detail."

"Obviously I would!" Mary laughed, happy that he seemed to be getting away from the eggshells part of his nervousness. "But I've been talking all about me and my stuff. What's been up with you?"

Austin shrugged, a little sheepishly. "Not much."

Mary waited for him to elaborate, but he didn't. Obviously. That would probably involve sharing his feelings and he, after all, had a masculine image to uphold. She'd really gotten spoiled, being with Hazel. "You know, you're allowed to tell me how much your life sucks. Or how things have instantly improved for you after we broke up. It's all fine."

"I don't know. It's kind of a lot to take in. I'm just thinking back over a bunch of stuff. It all felt... I don't know. Real to me? Maybe that's not the right word. I just keep thinking about stuff we did together that made me happy and I thought we both enjoyed, and understanding why they impacted me so much more than you reframes them a lot."

And just like that, the moment of lightness vanished. What was she supposed to say to that? It was just a bit of the repercussions for her failure to communicate with him, but delivered thoughtfully, without any edge of blame. "I'm sorry," she said, sounding very small even to herself.

"It's alright," he said, bottling up all his emotions yet again. He gave a little shrug, like he was being dismissive of his own happy memories being snatched away. "It's not your fault, there's nothing to be sorry for. We just weren't meant to work out."

"Well, yeah, but--" Mary floundered. It felt weird trying to persuade someone else to be mad at her. "--I still basically led you on for ages."

"From what you've been describing, it sounds like you were more leading yourself on, which probably was worse for you than it was for me."

Yep, that was Austin. She'd forgotten, but it was one of the most infuriating things about him. How he always insisted on being so reasonable, and made it so hard to justify being mad at him. "I'm just saying, if the situations were reversed, I'd be pissed it took so long to figure shit out, and so much of my time got wasted."

"Wasted?" he said, thoughtfully. "No, I don't think I'd say that. You're not the only one who learned a bit about themselves. But," his expression shifted to wry amusement, and he flicked his gaze over to where Hazel was standing with the others. "If things were reversed, I'd be the one here with some hot guy on my arm, and that'd certainly be interesting."

Fine. If that's the way he wanted to play it, she'd go along. She chuckled, and laced her voice with enough sarcasm to make it obvious she was teasing him. "Austin, are you saying you think my girlfriend is hot?"

Thankfully, he got it and didn't go back to stepping on eggshells. "I would never! Even though she does look like she squats at least two-twenty five."

"You are! You're totally checking out her ass!"

"Really, all three of them are built like trucks." He chuckled and shook his head. "Not the sort of group I would have pictured you fitting in with."

Mary toyed with the idea of continuing to tease, and making a joke pretending to be offended about him saying she wasn't in shape, but there wasn't enough sarcasm in the world to fill the gulf between her and Hazel's bodies. "Honestly, you're not wrong. I didn't fit in too well, at least in the beginning. They're really nice, but I don't share a ton of interests with them, and I was a little intimidated at first, but it's working out better now I'm not quite as inside my own head. Hazel helps a ton. Would you like to meet her?"

"Honestly? It's been good catching up again, but I was kind of hoping to spend tonight trying to meet someone I might have a shot with."

"What? You didn't have chilling with a bunch of lesbians on your bingo card?" Mary laughed. "I totally get it. It's been good catching up too. Thanks for being so understanding."

And, just like that, he gave a little goodbye wave to the three behind her and vanished into the partying throng. Just as unexpectedly as he'd reappeared in her life, he'd popped right back out again. Mary stood, collecting herself, trying to decide how she felt. Austin was... well, he was a good guy. Needed to work on not holding back his feelings so much, but he tried his best, and he cared. Why had she been so embarrassed every time she'd thought back on dating him, again? Was it really what Hazel had said? She'd, like, so dramatically over-shifted her mindset that she'd shoved everything in her pre-lesbian life in the trash? Written off every interaction she'd had with men as a stupid mistake?

Mary looked down her body at Alex's vest, and felt the beanie on her head. It was a cute outfit, but it really, really wasn't her. What had been wrong with her normal clothes, again?

Yeah, maybe Hazel had a point.

"Hazel?" Mary began, questioningly, as the three came up to join her.

"Yeah?"

"I think I've been feeling like Mary-The-Lesbian needs to be completely and totally different than Mary-The-Confused-Bi-Girl-Who'd-Only-Ever-Dated-Men, and I'm just now realizing how dumb that is."

-------------------

Olivia

Olivia exchanged an amused, knowing look with Alex across Mary and Hazel. Alex grinned back, signaling that they were both thinking the same thing. Mary was such a baby gay, it was adorable. So many things each of them had gone through, seeing it play out in somebody else was equal parts validating and entertaining.

"Don't worry, girl," Olivia gave Mary a friendly pat on the shoulder. "It gets easier."

Mary's eyes lit up hopefully. "It does?"

"Nope! But at least you'll have made enough friends to tell you bullshit like you've got it right and it's the universe that's wrong."

"Don't listen to her," Hazel said, and Alex backed her up.

"Yeah, Liv is just salty that alcohol can't solve all her problems."

"It's user error!" Olivia said, emphatically. "Booze is perfect, I just haven't figured out how to harness its full power yet."

Olivia turned to Alex, ready to deflect whatever she was about to say about alcoholism, but she wasn't there. Ha! It doesn't even count as denial if she never had to say it! But, before she could celebrate the moral victory too much, Brittany and Ivy joined their circle, and Olivia caught sight of Alex a little bit away, chatting animatedly with Rose and Lydia.

Olivia felt all the air leave her, like she'd been punched in the gut. Speaking of problems she hadn't figured out how to drink her way out of...

Thank god for Alex, buying her enough warning to not ruin everything showing her reaction. Stealthily, she edged around to Hazel's other side, desperately hoping her mask was showing better than it felt, because right now it felt pretty pathetic.

She was so damn tired of it. Tired of constantly feeling on the edge of catastrophe, tired of feeling powerless to do anything about it, and especially tired of needing to maintain the illusion that she was fine. If it had been any other problem in the whole world, she could have leaned on Rose for strength. Having to cut herself off from her best friend's support had her feeling more lonely than anything the rest of the family could cure.

Rose separated from them and came to her. "Hey! Alex tells me you're dying for a dance with me?"

She said it with a twinkle in her eye, like she knew full well Olivia had never said any such thing and Alex was making it up, while also knowing it was perfectly true. Olivia did her best to look affronted while internally thanking god for Alex, the greatest wing mate of all time, for finding a way to keep her from having to deal with both Rose and Lydia together. "Alex is a liar and a deceiver."

Rose batted her eyelashes and made a fake sad face. "So you won't give me my dance tonight?"

"Oh, fuck you too, bitch," Olivia dramatically downed the last of her drink and passed the empty glass off to Hazel. "If you're gonna guilt trip me, you better give me a good time."

She started off toward the main floor, and turned back just long enough to see Hazel rolling her eyes at Rose, who was laughing. None of them ever believed her! She really wasn't into dancing! "I saw that!" She called to Hazel, then grabbed Rose's hand and dragged her off.

"Liv!" The excitement in Rose's voice carried, even through the rising noise of the crowd and music as they got closer to the stage. "Lydia just asked me to come to LA with her!"

Olivia was suddenly pretty sure she knew what heart attacks felt like. The burst of emotion was so much, it was almost like a physical pain in her chest, and she didn't even realize she'd stopped dead until Rose crashed into her back. Rose didn't skip a beat, coming around and happily continuing, "her idea is to visit for a week or something, then she can drop me off with you guys in Yosemite."

Olivia forced herself to breathe normally. It was just a trip. Just a few days, Rose wasn't moving to LA to be with Lydia forever. She wouldn't do that anyway, even if Lydia had asked her to. She knew that. No need to panic. "Really? That sounds great."

But this time, Rose had stopped in her tracks. Oh no - "Liv? What's wrong?"

OH NO! Heart attacks definitely weren't supposed to come in pairs - it was too much too fast. Quickly, she flicked her gaze up to Rose's face to see how much trouble she was in, and found a very hard, focused expression looking back at her. "Please don't ask me that," Olivia said, wishing she could vanish out of existence.

"Why?"

A lie. Think of one! Something, anything!

Why had lying to Rose become her normal? How fucked had she made their friendship?

Olivia's mind stuttered, slipping backwards like a car stuck in mud. "I can't talk about it," she finally managed to say, quite truthfully.

The edge to Rose's hard expression softened to concern, which was somehow worse. "Liv, you've been suffering in silence for months now while you've been trying to support me. Please, let me in."

Olivia felt herself choking up, and quickly glanced around them. The middle of a crowd in a fucking EDM club had to be the single worst place possible to have a breakdown, but that didn't stop the breakdown coming. All the powerlessness she'd been trying to muscle her way through came at her at once, and made her feel completely incapable of damming up the lake of emotions anymore.

The mask shattered. Tears, hot and wet, streamed down her face, but it wasn't enough to completely blur out Rose's expression. The hard look was back, and she could practically see the gears turning and dots connecting in Rose's mind.

"What was it that just set you off, Liv? Lydia?" Olivia tried to choke out a denial, but Rose kept on thinking out loud. "You've been trying so hard to help me with her, but you always seem strange. Why, Liv? Do you not like her, or... or..." Rose trailed off, her expression turning from concerned confusion, to realization, and then to horror. "Oh."

Horror. That meant rejection. Olivia felt her heart break inside of her. This was it. The nightmare scenario come to life. "Rose," she pleaded. "I'm sorry, Rose. Please - please don't hate me."

Again, the confusion, but just for a quick flash before it was replaced by redoubled horror. "Oh god. Liv! Is that why you haven't told me?"

"I'm still not telling you! It's nothing, it's just - just a mistake! See--" she tried and miserably failed to smile "--I'm fine, everything is fine."

All the times this nightmare had played out in her head had been a little different. Sometimes Rose was angry, sometimes disappointed, sometimes reacting to Olivia's feelings themselves and other times from the months of deception and broken trust. As all those terrible dreams came to life, Rose landed on probably the worst of all. She just looked sad. Like Olivia had broken her heart as completely as the rejection in Rose's horrified face had done to her.

This was it. The end. Game over. Olivia started to turn, though she had no idea where she was going. Off to find a dark hole to hide in, or maybe back to the bar to steal a full bottle of something first.

She barely made it half a step before Rose stopped her. She wrapped her up in her arms and squeezed her as tight as her muscles could go. "Liv, I will never, ever hate you. We're going to figure this out, and we're going to do it together."

-------------------

Rose

She'd missed it!

Olivia wanted her, and she'd missed it! FOR MONTHS!

She'd let her best friend - the most special person to her in the world - torture herself. For her, and probably in some misguided attempt at noble self-sacrifice. All because she hadn't been perceptive enough to stop her.

And of course, quickly replaying through memories, Olivia had worked very hard to hide her feelings. It seemed so obvious in retrospect.

But it wasn't Olivia's fault. It was who she was. Olivia would jump in front of a bullet for her, and then try to hide the bloodstains afterward and drive herself to the hospital alone so Rose wouldn't worry.

It was her fault. Rose felt it deep in her soul. She'd been so oblivious, so wrapped up in herself...

But, Rose realized, she didn't have time to be a deer in the headlights. Olivia was barely holding herself together, tears cascading over her cheeks, looking like she was about to run away and hide. If there was any way to make this worse, that'd be it. Moving quickly, Rose wrapped her up in her arms and tried to reassure her. "Liv, I will never, ever hate you. We're going to figure this out, and we're going to do it together."

"I'm fucking everything up," Olivia moaned.

"No, you're not," Rose said, squeezing her into her embrace and gently rubbing up and down her back, then repeated, "It's okay, Liv. We'll figure it out."

Olivia hiccupped through her tears. "How? Rose, that was the whole reason I didn't want to tell you. There's no good choices."

While they'd been having their private little meltdown, they'd completely ignored the club around them, but Olivia's emotional display was attracting a few looks. This DJ had opened his set with a calm, chill tune, but he was slowly building it up to dance intensity and volume. Rose glanced around, trying and failing to find a quiet corner they could disappear into. Damn.

"We'll start by talking through it. I want you to tell me everything, and then we can figure out what it all means one piece at a time," Rose said, reflexively falling back on her teacher-to-student persona while she thought. Nowhere to go in here. Should they leave the club to talk? Go back to the hotel? Nice and private, but a little far. House Of Yes had a garden type area near the entryway, maybe that would be clear enough of other people? Olivia had started clinging to her like a shipwreck survivor to the last floating bit of driftwood. "Come on, Liv."

Calling it 'the garden' was a bit much. It didn't have a ceiling, and was open to the sky with some lounge seats and finger food, and an extra bar setup. The flowers were nice, but scarce, with just one line of planters along the wall beside some benches, and a few more flower arrangements hanging down from overhead. Maybe that justified a garden in New York City? Some clever people had realized the line at the bar here was much shorter than the ones in the main room, but other than them and one group intensely scrutinizing a food menu, it was deserted. Rose picked a spot for them on a bench away from the door, the sound of music progressively softening as they made their way over, and finally sat with some nice carnations hanging in bowls around them.

Olivia hadn't said anything while she'd been following Rose, but her eyes had never left her either. She looked like a lost puppy, neglected and lonely, which made Rose curse herself some more for letting things get this far. But she tried to keep her face determined. Clearly, Olivia had picked up on her initial bad reaction, and she couldn't bear to hurt Olivia any more than she already had. "That's a bit better," she said, passing her a stack of napkins she'd grabbed from one of the food tables.

"Thanks," Olivia muttered, dabbing at her eyes.

Right. Start at the beginning, just like she would with a student. "So, you have feelings for me? That's why Lydia triggers you?" Rose said, trying to make it sound natural, but feeling the words incredibly awkward in her mouth. It made sense, but it was crazy! It was Liv!

But Olivia nodded, as slowly and as unenthusiastically as possible, like admitting it was an emotional defeat. "Yeah."

"You love me?"

Hesitation, but then the same depressed nod. "Yeah."

Once again, visions of the last few months flashed before her eyes. All the times she'd come to Olivia with her Lydia problems and gushed to her about the amazing times they'd been having together. Shame and guilt flooded Rose. Even if she hadn't known, and Olivia had done her best to keep it that way, she still felt like a horrible friend.

"Were you afraid of how I'd react?"

That stirred some life behind Olivia's eyes. "Fuck, Rose, I'm still afraid you're going to start freaking out."

"I won't. I promise, it's okay."

"I hope you still feel that way when you're done feeling sorry for me," Olivia said, finally breaking eye contact and leaning back, gazing off into the night sky. "Okay, you want to start at the beginning? I had this, like, epiphany right after me and Brittany had sex, and it was exactly as fucked up as that sounds. At first, I didn't tell you because I was afraid you'd think things could never be the same between us. Like, you'd feel obligated to date me to avoid losing me, but you'd think dating would drive us apart like it did with your ex-girlfriends."

Rose considered that, following her friend's gaze upwards. It was far less dark than it should have been, light pollution obscuring all but the brightest stars. Focusing on something trivial like that helped keep herself grounded away from the panicky emotions Olivia was obviously afraid of, even as she admitted to herself that fear was very far from groundless. "Okay, that does sound like me."

"And I was also afraid that you'd be completely weirded out, and I'm still waiting for that to hit you now."

"Liv, I keep telling you, it's--"

But Olivia cut her off. "It's not okay! Look at me, Rose." She obeyed, turning to find Olivia suddenly very close, an almost defiant gleam to her eyes. "Now, imagine kissing me."

Rose did a double take. "What?"

"You heard me. Imagine our lips coming together, my tongue going into your mouth, my hands on your boobs, all the rest of it."

Rose did her best not to fall into the trap. She really did, but years of feeling Olivia in the best friend and sister spot in her heart had conditioned her. She recoiled, and as she did, a flash of hurt passed across Olivia's face. Rose could practically feel it vicariously through her. Olivia knowing, but holding out some small hope she'd be wrong, and having that hope stamped out as she saw Rose's involuntary reaction rejecting her.

"That's what I thought," Olivia said, tonelessly. "Then add in the tiny little issue of you having a great girlfriend who's perfect for you, and yeah, I didn't want to tell you."

That hollowness. Like the place inside Olivia where her joy and happiness belonged had been emptied out. Rose felt her own heart breaking for her, and even more so because it was her causing it. She wanted to make it better. To fill Olivia back up, make her smile, whatever it took. "I get that..." she said, then trailed off, floundering. "I'm sorry, this is really new to me. I don't know what to say yet. I still wish you would have let me in from the beginning, instead of deciding everything for both of us and taking everything on, all by yourself."

Olivia let out a long breath, and dabbed at her eyes again. "I know. I'm really sorry about that. But I felt like telling you would force you to choose between me and Lydia, and both of those choices would feel really shitty to you."

"But now I feel like I haven't gotten any chance to reciprocate your feelings, and that feels really bad too!"

The ghosts of a bittersweet smile played across Olivia's lips. "See, that's proof I did something right, at least."

"What do you mean?"

"You wouldn't have said that a few months ago. You would have just freaked out. You've come a long way so fast, I'm really proud of you."

Olivia was right, and she was also probably right that it wouldn't have worked out this way if she'd opened up from the start. How much harder would it have been to relax around Olivia if she'd been trying to be her girlfriend at the same time? Rose shook her head, knowing the answer. It would have been just like the stress she'd felt starting things with Lydia, except much worse, and without feeling like she could go to Olivia for help.

Lydia! Oh god, what--

Rose shook her head, hard. One crisis at a time. "I'm really sorry you were in that position," she said, quietly.

Olivia shrugged. "It's not your fault."

"If I wasn't so fragile for so long--" Rose began, but Olivia glared at her.

"If you're gonna say that, I can blame myself for being a shit friend not managing to help you for so long too. Are you gonna let me do that?"

"No," Rose admitted. At least that defiance was a bit of life from Olivia.

"Good."

A brief silence opened between them, Olivia leaning her head back to look at the few visible stars again, and Rose quietly doing the same. She tried to sort through her feelings - or as much of them as she could do quickly.

Things were going to change with Olivia. That was inevitable, now. They couldn't just put the genie back in the bottle, even if they'd wanted to. Did she want to? Rose's gaze unfocused, the lights from the buildings and low glow of the distant sky blurring as she tried to do a lot of introspection very fast.

How much of her reaction to Olivia's kissing challenge was internalized reflex? How much was actual repulsion? Rose tentatively tried letting her imagination follow the same path again, but hit a wall. It just felt too strange. It was Liv! But obviously, that was the point. Think - was she really dead set against anything romantic with her best friend?

But there were too many emotions there, all insisting they were the most important, and Rose was pretty sure it would take ages to sort them all out. And... maybe it didn't matter all that much? Maybe it was like they'd been telling Mary. Don't worry about the sex so much as who you feel like you could love being together with for life.

That was Olivia. Definitely. No mystery there. She loved Olivia, she had for years, and she always would.

Just... loved her like that?

Tendrils of the fear she'd felt, months ago when she'd comforted Olivia after a party and Olivia told her why her girlfriend broke up with her, snaked in around the edges of her mind. She wasn't the same frightened woman she'd been then. But, she wasn't completely transformed, either! The core of that fear was still alive and well. She absolutely couldn't lose Olivia.

Was she still the same woman who felt, in her bones, turning a friendship romantic was a death sentence? Well... hopefully not...

Lydia's face swam across Rose's mind's eye, angry, like she knew what she was considering. Rose pushed her away again. One crisis at a time!

"Liv?"

"Hmm?"

"You know how we've been talking about what my perfect existence would be like? What's your real answer? What do you want to happen, now?"

"It doesn't matter," Oliva said, glumly.

For the first time, Rose had to fight down a flash of anger. Of course it mattered! Damnit, Liv, always putting yourself last! "It matters to me," she said, evenly. "I'm asking you to be selfish, for once. Imagine you've got a magic wand and you can wave it and make your dreams come true, without worrying about anybody else."

"Fucking worst pitch for a Disney movie I've ever heard," Olivia muttered, and Rose smiled encouragingly. If she was being sarcastic, that hopefully meant the worst of the crying was over. "Okay, fine." She paused, gazing wistfully into Rose's eyes, as if she'd never really let herself imagine what a good dream for herself might be. "I'd teleport us back home. Not the hotel, back to our house in Northampton. It'd be the same, except we'd be sharing one bedroom, and it would be nice and tidy despite you living in it, because this is my fantasy and it doesn't have to be realistic."

Rose chuckled, hoping to lighten the mood with a joke. "Us teleporting across two states is normal, but me managing to clean our room could only be magic?"

"Yes, and you know it. Anyway," she paused again, narrowing her red-rimmed but drying eyes. "You're not allowed to repeat this to anybody."

"Of course."

"You'd do something sappy like sweeping me off my feet, picking me up and carrying me to our bed." Another chuckle from Rose earned a glare. "Oh, shut up with your hopeless romantic accusations."

"I didn't say anything!"

"You were thinking it. Then you'd cuddle me in our bed, and tell me all the things you love about me, and we'd make out and you'd want me just as badly as I want you, and we'd have sex and then cuddle some more with you as the big spoon, holding me close until we fall asleep..." She trailed off, like she was trying to savor the last flavors of candy before swallowing, then turned her full attention back to Rose. "There. Now you know how much your roommate wants to fuck you. I'm sorry if that's going to make living with me uncomfortable, but you did ask. Happy?"

This time, Rose had been ready, gauging her own reactions. Despite feeling the same conditioning telling her it was insane, she didn't flinch away. She wasn't repelled by the scene Olivia had described... At least, not in a way that seemed insurmountable.

And the physicality wasn't even the important part, even if it was the scariest. No, what Olivia wanted most was somebody to hold her safe and close, to care for her the way she cared for them, to love her and want her like she deserved. And she wanted Rose to be that person for her. It wasn't so different from the sisterhood bond they already cherished, just a bit deeper and more intimate. She could do that. Rose felt her heart swell, and knew it'd be her joy to be that person for Olivia.

"Yeah, that does make me happy." She held Olivia's eyes, preparing to make a decision, and not feeling surprised at all to realize she'd already made it. Maybe it hadn't been a decision at all. Maybe it'd always been true, and Olivia had simply realized it first. Even though part of her still rebelled at the perceived wrongness, even though she was sure she wasn't ready to do the physical things with her that Olivia wanted right now, her heart had already made its choice. Rose nodded, very slightly to herself, and accepted it. "I love you. It might take me a bit of time to wrap my head around this and adjust before I'm ready for anything physical, but I want to try. If you're willing to wait for me, that is."

Hope flashed across Olivia's face, bright and strong, but then Rose could see as she forcibly locked it down, and that made her so sad. Poor Liv, she'd become so used to being disappointed, she couldn't let herself believe something good. "Please don't say that unless you mean it," she said.

"I mean it."

"Rose, you've got the remote control to your girlfriend's vibrator in your pocket, right now. You can't just dump her."

Rose exhaled, slowly, forcing herself to stay calm while the other catastrophe she'd been putting off finally demanded its turn. Lydia... poor Lydia... she didn't deserve having her night shattered like this. How on earth was she going to tell her? Just the thought sent a flood of anxiety coursing through her. "But I also can't let you feel alone anymore." Moisture shimmered around the corners of Olivia's eyes again, and Rose immediately knew why. "Liv, it's not your fault," she said, as firmly as she could, but Olivia clearly didn't believe her.

"If you break up with her, it's because of me. How can that be anything but my fault. I don't want to be a homewrecker! I don't want my stupid feelings to ruin your first good relationship in forever!"

"You're not ruining anything! Liv, you know Lydia and I have no idea what we're going to do when she moves to LA. Even without you, Lydia and I would either break up soon, or just drift apart in long-distance."

"Maybe, but I've poisoned it now. You'll never know how it would have gone. She wants you to go to LA with her, maybe it would have worked out."

"That's just a vacation." Olivia wasn't just being stubborn. This really mattered to her. Rose tried a different approach. "Imagine you were dating me, but you had plans to go move somewhere else. What would you do?"

"That's--that's different."

"Why?"

"Because I don't own a home in the middle of paradise."

Okay, maybe Olivia was being a little stubborn. "You'd find a way for us to stay together. Either ask me to move in with you, or offer to stay here with me."

It wasn't a question. It was a fact, and they both knew it. "Fine," Olivia said. "Yes, I get it, Lydia hasn't done that. But Rose, I still hate this."

Rose laid a comforting hand overtop of Olivia's. It was a movement they'd both made thousands of times, but now, the touch felt different. More charged, and that clearly made Olivia nervous. She stared down at their connected hands, as if worried Rose would mistake it for something sexual and pull away. She didn't. Instead, she shifted in closer to Olivia, hoping to set her at ease. "What would you like," she asked again.

"I don't know. Fuck, I'm still trying to wrap my head around this. I'm so happy you're not freaking out. Like, seriously, you have no idea how freaked I was. I've wanted this so bad, just... not like this. It's not just that I don't want to be a homewrecker either. I love you so much, Rose, and if we're going to start something, I want it to last forever, so it has to start right! I want you to come into it freely, because you want to. Not because you're trying to make my crying wrecked ass feel better, and definitely not feeling like you're a terrible person dumping your girlfriend for me!"

Wow. If any part of Rose had doubted, that put it to rest. Olivia wanted her - wanted them both to be happy together, with a sincere earnestness that was purely her. It made Rose's heart surge with happiness, a little guiltily, as tension continued radiating off Olivia.

Alas, it was short lived. She'd never been the one to initiate a breakup before, only been on the receiving end. She knew, painfully clearly, how much it sucked, and thinking about trying to do that to Lydia filled her with an almost crippling level of anxiety. Especially tonight! It was the worst possible timing, Lydia was having the biggest, best night of her life and they'd been playing sexy games for hours. She was expecting to get back to their hotel room and have amazing sex, not get her heart crushed.

But there wasn't another choice. She liked Lydia a lot. They'd shared an amazing summer together, forged a bond, and she'd cherish the memories. Hurting her would be more painful than hurting herself... But she didn't love her. She wasn't Olivia.

"But Liv, we can't just go back in there and pretend nothing's changed."

"Can't we? Can't we, like, just think about this for a bit, and see if you and Lydia organically break up, and then if you still feel like you still want me when I'm not tugging on your heartstrings--"

Rose shook her head. "No. I can't lie to Lydia like that. It would be like--" Rose struggled to find the right words, but Olivia was suddenly looking mortified, like she'd suggested Rose drink poison, and was nodding her head in understanding.

"No! Yeah, I'm sorry, I didn't think that through. I'm sorry, I'm not trying to turn you into your ex-girlfriends."

"I know you're not," Rose said, quickly.

"I was just thinking that you'll feel evil if you tell her the truth, and like, I don't want that for you."

"I can talk to her without feeling evil," Rose tried to stay confident, but the anxiety made it sound more like a murmur.

Olivia gave her a level stare. "Really, Rose? I'm not trying to talk you into lying to her, but like... how can I possibly ask you to go to her and say: sorry, bitch, it's been fun fucking you, but being with you means so little to me that I'd rather be with this woman I can't even stand the thought of kissing. You get why I hate that idea, right?"

Rose couldn't help chuckling, even if Olivia was only being halfway sarcastic. "Really, Liv? With subtlety skills like that, no wonder you fooled me as long as you did."

"You think you can spin it better than that?"

"After you set the bar so high?" Rose joked, then leaned back and let herself confront the frightening core of nervous anxiety. Her mind raced, playing through the potential conversation with Lydia like a simulation, again and again. It didn't have to go down the terrible way Olivia thought. At least, not if Lydia was the person Rose believed she was. She'd understand, if Rose was honest with her. She'd definitely be very unhappy, but she wouldn't freak out. At the very least, she would hear her out. She wouldn't bite her head off. Probably. Rose couldn't know for sure... but that's what trust was. Had she actually learned to trust Lydia, or were those just words?

And maybe... maybe Lydia might actually be relieved, on some level. Rose replayed that last serious conversation in her head, trying to remember. She definitely hadn't seemed enthusiastic about the idea of long distance...

"I think Lydia will understand, and I'm positive she'll appreciate the truth far more than an act."

"What are you thinking of telling her?"

"Just the truth. What we talked about, and how I feel."

"And that's different from breaking up with her? How?"

"I'm not trying to reject her out of my life, like a total breakup. I don't want that, and I hope she'll see it. I know the whole we-should-be-friends thing is really cliché, but it's kind of what we were before, and after she moves across the country, it's kind of what we would become anyway. I'm going to try to show her that she means a lot to me, and I want a relationship with her. Just, not the one we have right now."

"And you think she'll go for that?" Olivia asked, worry on her face, like she was watching Rose try to defuse a bomb.

More mental simulations, but they all assumed she'd learned Lydia well enough to guess how she'd react, and right now Rose's people reading confidence was pretty low. She really wanted to get across that she didn't want to reject Lydia out of her existence. That she really cared about her, and wanted them to still be a part of each other's lives. Just that they weren't meant to sustain a romance across thousands of miles.

Would that make it sting less? Or was that just being selfish, asking Lydia to stay in a friendship she might not want after getting smacked in the face by betrayal? At least she could give Lydia some choice. She knew from painful experience how much better than nothing that was.

Rose sighed. Every time she imagined it, breaking the news after everything they'd done together tonight was a total shock to Lydia, and Rose felt the pain of hurting her deep in her own chest. It was bad, and she'd be lying to herself if she tried to pretend she wasn't afraid... but it was bearable. It wasn't like the crushing darkness of agony she felt if she imagined something like telling Olivia she would stay Lydia's girlfriend, and she'd have to be okay with that and just being friends.

So Rose finally shrugged, and gave Olivia back her little ghost smile. "If I'm right, it's much better for everyone. If I'm wrong, she and I will have a really terrible night, but after I've finally stopped crying, I'll feel a lot better knowing I tried." Rose paused, then softly murmured, "It's what I wish they'd done for me."

Olivia didn't need to ask which they she meant, or why it was so important to her. Rose could see Olivia's instincts telling her to find some way to get her away from the metaphorical bomb, and the moment she gave up and accepted it. "Alright, if you're sure, then you have to text me if it goes badly."

"I will, no matter what happens."

Olivia shook her head, almost disbelieving, and slumped down to rest her head in her hands. "I can't believe this is actually happening. I was so frightened for so long - hell, I was fucking terrified when you found out just, like, half an hour ago or whatever it's been." Even through her fingers, Rose could see the hope she'd been forcing down all night finally starting to play across her face. "Rose," she whispered. "Are you sure this is what you want? Like, you can say no. It's fine, we'll both be fine, and we can go back to being friends."

Rose was right there with her, except for her, the surprise was compounded by how suddenly everything had happened. Part of her was still caught up over it being Olivia. Of all people, her best friend! But, just as much as that part of her insisted this was a dream and she would wake up any minute, another part of her was slowly coming to understand that it being Olivia was exactly why this was perfect.

"You'll always be my ride-or-die. It's like I told you before. Girlfriends come and go, but family is forever."

"But if you wake up tomorrow or something and realize this was all a terrible mistake, you have to promise that you'll tell me."

"As long as you also make me a promise too. From now on, you won't shut me out again. Especially if it's something that has you frightened for ages. I always want you to come to me, because I'll always be here for you."

"I promise. Fuck, I've hated lying to you so much, I'm really sorry. I just didn't know what else to do."

Rose got up and took her hand again, easily pulling her up to stand beside her. "I know, and I understand. I really do, I would have been scared too. Just, no more, okay?"

"I promise," Olivia nodded, and finally, Rose saw her smile. She scrunched her eyes shut, hesitated a moment, then dove in for a hug, burying her face somewhere in Rose's hair. Rose chuckled and gently rubbed her back the way she liked. They were so close together, they could feel each other's hair in the breeze across their faces, and Rose tried analyzing her own reactions again to the closer contact in their new context. Strange, but not too much so. Did she kind of like it, or was that just wishful thinking?

"You know, you never did give me that dance."

Olivia laughed, genuinely, from deep inside herself. "Really, bitch? That's what you remember, after all this? Oh, fucking fine, but only because I love you." She paused, holding the intimate closeness for a second, then admitted, "It feels so weird saying that to you."

"We've said it to each other tons of times before."

"Yeah, but it's different now that you know how much I mean it."

Rose very gently let her forehead close the tiny distance to Olivia's and let her feel the skin-on-skin contact, then squeezed her into the hug again. "I love you too, Liv."

-------------------

Mary

The evening slowly wound down. Olivia and Alex left the club first, saying something about wanting to go back to the hotel bar for some drinks that didn't suck. Rose and Lydia departed soon after them, and Ivy and Brittany rejoined her and Hazel on the dance floor for a few more songs before they all decided they were wiped out and headed back together. At some point, those two must have gotten their fill of mutely making eyes at each other, because they enthusiastically joined her and Hazel's discussion about how Hazel managed to look incredibly gay in her simple sundress and flats, and how Mary could channel that same sapphic energy when she went back to her usual fashion choices.

"It's the confidence," Brittany suggested.

"No way, I'm the most awkward person in the world," Hazel said, and Mary immediately rose to her defense.

"No you're not, you're always so sure of yourself whenever you're giving me lesbianism 101 lessons."

"Weren't you making fun of me for how awkward I was when I asked to have lunch with you the first time?"

"That's not a lack of confidence! That's just you being adorably shy."

"You think everything I do is adorable," Hazel grumbled, and Mary didn't try to deny it.

"It is!"

Hazel turned back to Brittany and Ivy. "So you're claiming confidence is a uniquely lesbian trait?"

"No, no. It's more like, a flavor of confidence, I guess," Ivy said. "There's not really a word for it, but you know what we're talking about."

"Yeah," Brittany agreed. "We all know it when we see it."

"You realize how unhelpful that is!" Mary exclaimed. "I used to feel much more confident when I thought I was bi."

"You're just getting used to a new environment! You'll get the confidence back, don't worry."

The debate over how the existence of highly confident straight women all over the world impacted this view lasted them back to the hotel and across the lobby. Brittany stopped to glance through the archway leading to the bar, and immediately choked back a laugh and waved them all over.

The scene was like something out of a sitcom. Alex stood, lounging up against the bar in a way that could most charitably be described as provocative, and was chatting with the bartender, so obviously flirtatious that they could all tell from across the room, without needing to hear a word. On the stool beside her, Olivia was slumped over with her head in one hand, eyes half closed and an empty glass of something in front of her, and an expression of such blissed out happiness on her face that it seemed an absolute shame to ruin it going to ask what was happening.

"She wasn't kidding, she really does love good booze," Mary joked, but was surprised to find the other three quivering excitedly.

"Did she tell Rose? Did either of them say anything to you guys?"

"Not to me, but she must have."

"And it must have gone well!"

"Yeah, I haven't seen her looking this happy in months."

"Is Rose in there too? I don't see her or Lydia."

"They must be upstairs."

Mary was lost. "What are you talking about? Are you sure she isn't just bombed?"

"It's a long story," Hazel said, quickly. "I'll tell you later, but basically Liv and Rose have been in denial about having feelings for each other for ages, and they might finally be coming to their senses."

Mary hadn't noticed. She'd been too busy worrying about herself when she'd spent time around Hazel's friends. "Oh, really? Didn't anybody ever tell them?"

Ivy and Hazel exchanged a look. "Oh, tons of people did. That's actually part of the problem. They got told they'd be great together so many times, it just pissed them off. Or rather, it pissed Liv off. Rose thought it was a joke."

"We have to go find out what happened," Hazel said, leading the way into the bar and taking the spot next to Olivia. "Hey Liv."

"Hazel!" Olivia lurched up so abruptly, she nearly toppled backward off her stool. "Now it's a party!"

"You look like you're having a good night," Brittany said, coming in from Olivia's other side and asking Alex, "how many drinks deep is she?"

"Hey! I'm not too drunk to count!" Olivia indignantly protested, and Alex surprisingly agreed with her.

"That's actually only her second since we got here," she said, then gave Olivia a playful little smirk. "Shocking, I know. I keep telling Helena here," she motioned to introduce her new bartender friend, "that Liv gives the biggest drunk tips ever, but then she goes and defies all my expectations."

"You all suck!" Olivia declared, the huge smile on her face not dipping for an instant. "Now I have to get hammered just to spite you all."

"No, you don't," Alex said, firmly, taking the empty glass Olivia was about to demand Helena refill out of her reach.

"You just got done saying I have a reputation to uphold! Make up your mind."

"Tell us what happened," Hazel asked, eagerly, and Olivia spun to cock a playful eyebrow at her.

"Who says something happened?"

Brittany groaned. "Oh, come on! Don't make us beg!"

Ivy took a different tact. "Fuck it, I'm not too proud. Please, Liv, share with us your secrets. I promise I'll love you forever, and I'll even let you keep my copy of A Day Of Fallen Night you still haven't returned."

"Fuck! I thought I gave that back to you ages ago! I'm sorry, I'll go get it." And Olivia actually made to get up, apparently completely forgetting that they were in the wrong state until Ivy pointed it out with a laugh.

Once they managed to get the story out of Olivia, Mary had to admit, it was pretty cute. True love finding a way, and all that. As she spoke, Olivia kept fluctuating between joy for the future and worry for Rose right now. She kept saying things like: "She said she loves me! Me!" And then: "I hate so much that she has to tell Lydia now. Fuck, that's going to be so hard for her. I should go check on her."

And she'd start getting up, and Alex would have to stop her with a hand on her shoulder, and remind her Rose had already texted that she'd come find them when she was able to.

"Of course she loves you," Ivy said. "We all do."

"You tried to tell me, and I didn't believe you." Olivia tried to get up again, wobbled slightly, and tossed herself at Ivy for a hug. "I'm sorry, I should have listened."

"Hush with that," Ivy squeezed her tight. "We should celebrate!"

"I want to, but I feel guilty," Olivia said. "Rose is up there, and Lydia is getting her night ruined, and it seems shitty to be so happy, but I can't help it. Guys, do you think Rose is okay? I should go check on--"

"You should celebrate with us," Alex said, firmly. "Rose is a big girl, she'll be fine. She'll come join us soon."

"Yeah," Brittany agreed, taking Ivy's spot hugging Olivia.

There were lots of hugs, and Mary was surprised when Olivia included her in one. For a second, she thought she'd been intending to hug Hazel and missed, but then Olivia whispered in her ear, "You make Hazel so happy, and it's amazing."

Maybe it was simple. Maybe it was kind of sappy, coming from a drunk friend of Hazel's. But hell, maybe that authenticity was exactly why it had such an effect on her. Mary immediately felt her insides melting, and her heart making a big pounding drum of joy inside her.

"I - um - thanks," she whispered back, completely taken by surprise.

Olivia glanced between her and Hazel, and grinned. "If you're tired, it's cool if you wanna go upstairs and relax and give her some awesome cuddles now."

"Are you sure? I'm beat, but I can stick around if you guys want to party some more."

"Don't worry about it, go! I've got important work to do here while we wait for Rose anyway."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I gotta convince Ivy and Brittany to stop circling each other like mating birds and fuck already."

Mary spoiled the secretive whispering by laughing aloud. "I was saying earlier that I wanted to tell them that!"

She caught Hazel's eye, and they said their goodnights to the group and made their way back towards the hotel lobby and elevators. As they left, Mary heard Olivia saying, "So remind me Brittany, what play are you plotting to trick Ivy into auditioning for?"

Hazel was so excited by that, she almost turned back around as Ivy squealed and Brittany berated Olivia for spoiling the surprise. Mary held Hazel's hand firm, worried that if they got drawn back again, they'd never be able to make their escape back to their room. "Sorry, but please, I'm wiped out and I really wanna get out of these clothes."

Hazel took pity on her, and as soon as they were back in their peacefully empty room, Mary shed the outfit and made her way directly for the shower. "God, this is going to feel so good."

"Be careful with it," Hazel called. "It's one of those where a tiny shift on the dial takes it from freezing to boiling."

"Thanks." The warning definitely saved her from a rude shock. Half way around the dial, and the water was still frozen. Mary fiddled with it, trying to find the sweet spot where it'd be cool enough to feel good on the summer night, but still warm enough to wash the grime of everything away. An inch to the left was scalding. Half an inch back was arctic ice. She eased it, a millimeter at a time, until warmth finally arrived.

Mary withdrew her testing hand and quickly cast a self-conscious glance over her shoulder to check Hazel was still out in the main room, then immediately felt stupid. Hazel, obviously, was intimately familiar with tampons. But still... hoping she wasn't violating some kind of lesbian relationship specific trust-and-comfort-between-partners norm, she inched the bathroom door closed before finally pulling hers out and getting rid of it.

She felt better as soon as she got under the stream of water.

It wasn't even that she'd felt bad before. For all its ups and downs, today had definitely ended up very positive! She'd learned something about herself, had a great time dancing, overcome a fear she hadn't even realized she'd had - all while getting closer to her girlfriend! Just, if she could have done it all without the cramping, that would have been nice. She leaned back, stretching her shoulders, letting the water flow through her hair and down her body.

A little flow of cool air hit her as the bathroom door opened. "Mind if I join you?"

Mary instinctively felt her legs press together. Fuck! Why did their first sexy shared shower have to be tonight! "Sure!" Mary forced herself to say, hoping she'd got the cheerful tone right.

Even through steam and water-dripping eyes, naked Hazel was gorgeous. Which is to say, Hazel was always glorious, but being able to see her beauty unimpeded by clothing was a joy Mary would never get tired of. Her fingers itched to reach out to her, rub soap all over her body and sliding her hands across her skin, at the same time as her legs shyly shifted to angle her hips and bleeding vagina slightly away from her.

The movement drew Hazel's eye. She glanced down, lips quirking slightly in a knowing little grin, before she moved to spin Mary around and wrap her arms around her, effectively hugging into her back while the shower flowed over both of their faces. "You know," Hazel breathed into Mary's ear, "there's a funny thing with lesbians."

Mary laughed and let sarcasm seep into her voice. "You don't say? Just the one thing?"

"Yes! There's exactly one funny thing about us, and this is it. There's been a few studies done about period sex, and the exact numbers differ a bit, but the overall trend is the same. Lesbians are much more enthusiastic about period sex when it's their partner's period, and much more shy about it when it's their own."

Mary gulped, following her train of thought. "Really?"

"Yep. We're much more comfortable getting our own hands dirty giving pleasure than asking our partners to do the same for us." Mary felt Hazel's arms sliding down her front, her hands caressing over her skin and along her stomach, slowly downwards. "I don't want to pressure you at all. Just let me know, and I'll stop in a second. It's totally fine, no pressure at all." Mary's breath caught as Hazel's fingers teased over her mound, playing just above her lips. "But I've always felt like this can be a wonderful experience for us to share, together, and I'd love to show you."

Instinctively, Mary suspected those results were at least as much to do with shitty hormones making her feel bloated and as un-sexy as possible, as they were with the practical messy concerns. But, as Hazel's fingers continued working their magic, playing with the cascading water over her sensitive skin, Mary felt herself warming up to the idea. She nodded, causing her ear to wiggle against Hazel's lips, the tickling sensation drawing a giggle out of her. "Oh, fine. But for the record, asking me while you're already teasing my pussy is cheating."

"Great!" Hazel cheered, but to Mary's surprise, she immediately broke contact, and she heard her opening some kind of plastic bottle top.

"Soap?" She guessed. God, was she that messy down there? She didn't even want to look.

"Lube," Hazel corrected.

"Really? If there was ever a time I wouldn't need that," Mary said, but Hazel laughed from behind her as she wrapped her arms around her once again.

"You've never tried shower sex before, have you?"

"Nope. Yet another first for me. You're wracking up so many of my virginities, oh miss conqueror."

Hazel laughed again. "Well, showers sweep away all our wetness, so you have to use lots of lube."

Mary raised an eyebrow, even though Hazel couldn't see it. "And you had some right here?"

"Yep!"

"So you had it packed, and you planted it here earlier?"

"Well--Um--"

"Ivy and Brittany are so not the horny ones tonight! You're just as bad as they are!"

Hazel pressed herself closer into Mary's back, letting her boobs slide around a bit and teasing Mary's earlobe with her tongue. "Well, what can I say? You make me wet."

"That can't be me. That's just the shower."

"Oh, shut up and let me seduce you!"

Mary let out a long, deep sigh as she felt Hazel's lubed up fingers slide between her pussy lips and seek out her clit. It felt amazing, but no way she wasn't a bloody mess down there. She still didn't want to even look. She kept waiting for Hazel to draw back or flinch or something, but Hazel never did. Instead, she slid her fingers over her clit like everything was normal, seeking out and finding Mary's favorite spot just slightly off center, and making her purr.

Hazel was firm, but gentle at the same time. She kept up licking and sucking at her ear, alternately kissing along her neck, which felt absolutely divine. Mary's mind felt like it was circling along with Hazel's fingers. Around and around, again and again, never backing down or shying away. Hazel was just as enthusiastic as she always was, coming at her like she wasn't coating her hand in blood.

If Mary had ever felt so viscerally accepted by anybody before, in her entire life, she couldn't remember. So desired, cared for and loved. It was like Hazel was bypassing her body and reaching directly into her soul, embracing everything within, the good and the messy.

Mary felt herself tearing up, which immediately got swept away by the shower, but somehow, she felt like Hazel knew. She didn't say anything, which Mary was grateful for because she didn't want to have to respond. Instead, Hazel sort of softly hummed, a tuneless but comforting melody that combined with the shower to feel warm in her ears.

It felt like it took a long time for the pendulum of Mary's emotions to swing all the way over to orgasmicly aroused, but Hazel was patient. She kept her movements strong and consistent, steady as the shower water falling all around them, sliding her fingers again and again over the magic spots they'd discovered together. It was definitely magic, too. Like, they only existed in her vulva when it was Hazel touching her. Whenever Mary tried to find them herself, they vanished.

Her orgasm was the kind of perfect emotional release she'd been craving all night. Her heart beat hot and heavy inside her as her clit pulsed and throbbed against Hazel's fingers, and most of her weight collapsed into Hazel's strong embrace. She leaned her head back and found Hazel's lips with hers, locking in for a tender kiss.

Not just icing on the cake, kissing Hazel made cumming complete. Feeling joined up with her, surrounded and wrapped up in her while her insides soared from her touch... It was wonderful. Almost transcending sexuality into a spiritual experience. The sort of thing poets wrote sonnets about, and stoners spent decades trying to recapture the perfect blend of drugs to experience again.

She got to have it whenever she wanted, because her beautiful goddess Hazel loved it just as much as she did.

"You were right. That was wonderful."

"And the best part is doing it in the shower wipes everything away with no fuss."

Finally looking down, Hazel was right. There was a very slightly reddish shade to the water circling the drain, but even that quickly faded to clear. Huh. "We've got to do this every month."

"Sure!"

"I'm serious, how much of that lube do you have?"

"We can get more," Hazel laughed. "You want to try it on me?"

Coming from a lifetime of straight sex, taking turns had felt like a strange concept at first. Like taking time away from feeling pleasure to do the chore of giving some out would have sucked. But it worked so well with Hazel, Mary wondered how she'd missed it for years. Even if giving Hazel pleasure wasn't exciting and rewarding all on its own, which is absolutely was, it was the best way to recharge her own body after her orgasm. It made everything flow perfectly, back and forth one turn after the other, making the sex last for hours.

"Tempting, but no," Mary said, finally collecting herself enough to take her weight off Hazel and turn herself around to face her. She met her eyes and blinked, slowly, smiling wide and showing off how much Hazel's efforts had transformed her mood. "I want to continue my pussy eating lessons, Professor."

It wasn't really a teacher-student role-play. It was mostly just a joke, but it fit pretty well, and they both thought it was funny, so it'd stuck. Hazel cocked a playful eyebrow up at her. "Have you kept up with your homework?"

When Hazel had originally suggested jaw strengthening exercises, Mary thought she was kidding. She'd gone along with them to play along with the joke, and been shocked by how quickly she noticed a change. After just a few weeks, she went from barely having enough stamina to get Hazel off with her mouth at all, to being able to relax and luxuriate in the joy of licking Hazel's clit for ages.

Mary brightly smiled, doing her best young-schoolgirl-with-a-crush impression. "Of course, Professor!"

Hazel hummed her play-skepticism. "Well, I suppose I'll be the judge of that." She raised her leg up to rest on the ledge on the side of the tub. "Get to it."

What, here? Mary pouted. "But I wanted to taste you on the bed," she playfully whined. Much easier to relax and take her time with soft blankets and pillows than cold unforgiving tile.

Hazel slightly broke character by laughing, then got back into it, forcefully taking Mary's head and pushing her down to her knees. "Today's lesson is shower sex, if you couldn't tell. First tip for you, be mindful of how you're breathing. All the water on our skin can easily give you a nose full."

Mary shifted, trying to find a comfortable position for her knees on the hard shower floor, and finding it worked best with most of her weight back on her feet while using Hazel's planted leg as a pillar for balance. "Thanks. Any other tips, Professor?"

Another musical laugh from above her. "I just spread my legs and forced you to your knees. What does that tell you?"

Mary looked up, getting a face full of shower spray but unable to resist the chance to tease. She feigned a confused look, pondering the question like a struggling student. "That you're a pushy bitch?"

"No!"

"Oh! That you're really horny and you want me to go fast!"

"Much better."

If there was one area Mary could say she'd gained confidence in leaps and bounds, this was it. She leaned in and parted her lips, tasting Hazel's pussy and feeling her heat and texture with a joy that was still fresh and new despite how much time recently she'd spent between Hazel's legs. She wasn't suddenly some master of eating pussy. Compared to Hazel, she was still a complete novice, but she still felt confidently at home here.

Because, after finally overcoming her nerves and taking the plunge into the world of lesbian sex, she discovered she loved it! She absolutely adored eating pussy! It was so intimate, so intensely sexual, with so much sensation coming at her from all sides all at once. It was like being smothered in Hazel while getting to give her intense pleasure and getting a front row seat to it.

She loved how Hazel's scent filled her up, full and erotic and feminine, more and more with every breath through her nose. She loved licking and exploring every corner of her pussy, using her lips along with her tongue to stimulate her, then burying her tongue as deep into her as it would go. She loved the tastes and flavors that colored everything, and the way they strengthened as Hazel became more aroused. She loved the way Hazel's body reacted, her powerful muscles heating up, flexing and contracting and eventually going haywire, all because of her. But most of all, she loved how it always made Hazel's eyes go so deep and loving. Looking up from between her legs, those eyes always turned her heart to joyful goo.

Just a few short months ago, if somebody had told her she'd end up feeling like this was much easier than picking out some clothes, Mary would have laughed in their face. But in a way, it sort of made sense. Everything was easier when Hazel was there with her. Figuring out what her lesbianism meant to her, and how to express that to the world through fashion? That had to come from her alone.

It wasn't Hazel's spasming thighs or labored breathing that signaled her impending orgasm. It was always her eyes. Even in the shower with water spraying everywhere, Hazel's eyes slowly widened and their intensity seemed to boil over, like she wanted to swallow Mary up with the depth of her attraction to her, and it was about the best thing Mary had ever felt in her life. One day, she'd get good enough to draw out Hazel's orgasm with her tongue. Learn to keep her on the edge for minutes at a time, and really see how wild those eyes could get. Until then, Mary circled Hazel's clit with her lips and sucked, licking hard and fast, hoping to make Hazel's orgasm feel as special as her own had been.

"How was that, Professor?"

"Damn," Hazel moaned, happily. "Definitely A+ for enthusiasm."

Mary beamed. "And technique?"

Hazel smirked down at her, and did her best unimpressed professor voice. "Solid C."

"Oh, fuck you!"

"Hey! C's get degrees!"

"Fuck--oh, wait, I actually like that." Mary batted her eyelashes as they got out of the shower and toweled themselves off. "Is there anything I can do to earn some..." she leaned into the most sluttily suggestive voice she could, "extra credit, Professor?"

"Oh, I'm sure I can think of something," Hazel laughed, taking her hand and leading her back to the bed.

"Good! Because I have to get into grad school. One day I'm gonna have pussy eating letters next to my name!"

To be continued.