Page 10 of April

“Yeah, okay,” Linden replied, looking like she believed her now. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Sure,” she said and hurried out of the bar.

Once outside, she turned right on the crammed sidewalk. She didn’t turn around to see if Linden was watching her go. Asher didn’t live far from the Quarter, which came in handy. It was either a long walk or a short drive, and normally, she would’ve just walked, but she was still wearing her heels, and the crowds made it difficult to actually enjoy a late-night walk. On top of that, she was a woman walking alone, and doing that by herself this late wasn’t advisable. She ordered a car, walked to where it picked her up, and within a few minutes, she was at her apartment building, closing the car door behind her.

Looking up at the two-story building, she was grateful that she’d found the place three years ago. After the most recent big hurricane had torn off the roof, the owners had redone a few apartments altogether, and she had come along right when one of them had become available. It was a two-bedroom unit, with one bedroom and bathroom downstairs and the other bedroom and bath upstairs, along with a small loft space that she used mainly as an office and extra storage.

When she unlocked her door, instead of following her usual procedure of placing her purse on the table by the door, hanging her keys on the hook, and removing her shoes, she tossed her purse onto the floor after removing her phone, dropped her keys on the table after locking the door, and kicked off her shoes that had cost more than two-hundred dollars when she’d gotten them on sale last season. Then, she unzipped the side zipper and let the dress that had cost even more than that fall to the floor before she moved to the sofa, wearing only her strapless cream-colored bra and bikinis, and flopped back on it.

Staring up at her ceiling, she tried and failed to get the image out of her mind. Linden wasn’t just kissing Jill; she was making out with her. Hands were moving under clothing and over skin. Asher felt that the bile was back, or it hadn’t ever really left. She wasn’t sure, but she knew it was there now.

This wasn’t fair. It couldn’t be happening… She knew enough to know that it wasn’t Jill whom she was thinking about. Jill was twenty-five, or maybe twenty-six now, and was a pretty girl, but she wasn’t someone Asher had ever thought of like this; how she was thinking about Linden right now. When she pictured it again, Linden’s lips on Jill’s, she sat up, thinking about running to the bathroom to force herself to vomit up whatever was boiling inside her, but she knew it couldn’t be real. Asher was straight. She was a heterosexual woman who had, up until a few months ago, been totally confident in that fact. Then, Linden had come out to her, and Asher had started to wonder if she needed to do some soul-searching herself.

When Linden had told her about her self-discovery and the steps that she’d been taking to become her full, complete self where she could be happy and accept herself, Asher had started to wonder. She’d watched Linden scroll through that app, and she’d thought that many of the women there were attractive, and not just in the way that a woman could tell when another woman was attractive – Asher could actually see something happening. She’d started picturing women in her sexual fantasies. Sometimes, she’d picture men, too, but sadly, never Gavin. Even when he was on top of her, Asher was thinking of someone else. While it was never Linden, it was some faceless man or woman who managed to make sex fun and exciting and not six minutes long with no foreplay.

They’d been together, her and Gavin, for three months now, two of them exclusively after one month of dating, and they had waited to have sex until they were exclusive. It had been her idea because Asher didn’t sleep with anyone unless they were exclusive. It had always beenokay, never the best sex of her life, and now, as she sat on her sofa, staring at the white walls of her apartment, she was beginning to understand why.

Asher closed her eyes. She needed to check for herself. She picturedherselfon the dance floor with Linden. Linden’s arms were around her, and her back was against Linden’s front, how Jill’s had been. Then, she pictured herself turning and Linden kissing her. That got her to open her eyes for a second because it felt wrong. It felt strange and wrong to be picturing her best friend kissing her, but Asher closed them again and let herself envision it. Linden’s hands were on her stomach, rising higher before they were cupping her breasts over her bra. Then, they dipped inside the fabric to cover her bare skin for only a moment before they pulled her breasts out of the cups to massage them and play with her nipples.

Asher opened her eyes again and looked down. Her own hands had done what she’d just pictured. She allowed herself to lie back down and continued picturing it. Linden was kissing her again. Linden ran a hand up Asher’s thigh under her dress and moved it until it was cupping Asher’s sex. Asher let her own hand slip into her bikinis and played out the rest of the fantasy.

“Fuck,” she whispered, finding herself soaking wet.

She let her fingers play as she pictured Linden movingherfingers inside her bikinis right there on that dance floor, and she stroked herself as Linden did the same in her fantasy until she was coming on her couch at her own touch and opening her eyes, staring at the ceiling again as she tried to calm her breathing.

“I can’t,” she said to herself. “I can’t.”

When Asher heard the phone ping from the table, with the hand not in her underwear, she reached for it.

Linden Washington: Hey. Can you let me know you got home okay, please?

Having checked the readout, Asher closed her eyes and sighed before she stood up and walked into the kitchen, where she washed her hand. Then, she kicked off her ruined panties and the bra that had gathered below her breasts and arrivedback in her living room naked. There, she picked the phone back up and typed a message that she’d gotten home okay.

Linden Washington: What’s our code word?

Asher laughed softly. Years ago, they had come up with a safe word in case one of them had gotten into a dangerous situation. The city was as safe as any other, but it didn’t hurt for friends to have a system just in case someone bad got a hold of their phone and pretended to be them texting that everything was okay. Even though she’d just gotten herself off to the thought of Linden touching her on a very public dance floor, Asher sent back their word.

Linden Washington: And you’re really okay? Feeling okay,I mean?

Asher told her that she was and walked upstairs to her bedroom. She dropped her lingerie into the laundry hamper, turned on the shower, and got inside.

“I have to break up with Gavin,” she said to herself as the hot water coated her skin.

CHAPTER 4

Linden stared up at her ceiling, thinking about Asher. The night before had been a strange one. Asher had looked like she was going to throw up any minute before she’d left the bar, and Linden wasn’t sure that, in their entire ten-year friendship, she had ever seen Asher sick. Asher was always her healthiest friend. Usually, she had a smoothie for breakfast that was green and smelled bitter. Linden had only tried it once, and that had been enough. For lunch, Asher typically had another smoothie, fruity and sweet this time, along with a salad. Dinners for her were usually grilled chicken or fish or the occasional small steak with a salad as her side, and she rarely snacked on anything that wasn’t a healthy option, choosing fruit or kale chips over the snacks Linden preferred that had actual flavor.

Asher also went to the gym, but not to get muscles. She just ran on the treadmill and swam in the pool. It was usually only one or two times a week and not every week, depending on her schedule. She’d given Linden a guest pass once, and Linden had gone with her, but she wasn’t much of a gym person. She had a treadmill in her apartment. It had been a gift from her parents – a hand-me-down, really, from their own house when they downsized into a smaller place. She ran on that about thirty minutes a day, four or five times a week, and that was good enough for her.

In the month leading up to a big wedding, Asher took extra vitamin C because she couldn’t risk getting sick before the event, and with at least four major weddings a year, that basically meant that Asher Hahn was the healthiest person in the world. Linden tried to remember a time when she’d seen Asher not feeling well even a little bit. There were mornings when she’d been tired. After the Cumberland wedding two years ago, she’d been so wiped for weeks that Linden had actually asked if she might be pregnant. Asher had been with Martin back then, and it had been six months with him, so it had been possible. Other than that, she couldn’t think of a single time when her best friend had felt bad enough that she looked pale and like she needed to vomit.

Linden hadn’t wanted to continue texting her last night because Asher had clearly been exhausted, so once she had checked on the woman that she’d gotten home safely, she returned her attention to Jill and Sophie, and they’d stood around the table for another hour, just talking, while both Jill and Linden looked around at the people in the crowd. Sophie had left not long after, deciding she’d rather be home when her girlfriend called her to say goodnight. With Bryce in the Pacific Time Zone, Linden had gotten the impression that Sophie had only come out with them to kill time until Bryce was at her hotel after a meeting and late dinner with the studio.

That had left Linden and Jill to their own devices, and around one in the morning, they’d danced again to a much faster song and hadn’t touched at all. The next song, though, had been a little slower, and they’d danced how they had the first time but without the kiss. A woman had joined in, and Linden had been excited, thinking that she wanted to dance with her, but she’d wanted to dance with Jill instead. Linden had gotten herself another drink, found another woman to talk to for a few minutes until Jill had found her, and they’d talked for another thirtyminutes or so until Linden finished her drink. That had been it. Jill had enjoyed her dance with the woman, but she hadn’t been interested in anything more. Linden hadn’t found anything more, either, so they’d walked to a corner where they could share an Uber, and Linden had made sure Jill got into her apartment safely before she had the car take her to her own.

Now, it was the next day, and Linden needed to talk to Asher. She picked up her phone and texted her, hoping the woman was free on their one day off this week. Ten minutes later, she heard a ding and went back to her phone, picking it up and reading Asher’s reply.

Asher Hahn: I can do a late lunch. Slow start to the day today.

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