Page 109 of April

“Linden, I’m working,” she said but giggled and didn’t push Linden away.

“Dance with me,” Linden whispered into her ear.

“I’m on the clock.”

“No one is paying attention. You know we’re invisible at these things unless we don’t want to be,” she said, kissing Asher’s neck as a slow song began to play. “Come on. Just here. We’ve never danced before. Not like this, at least.”

“We shouldn’t,” Asher replied.

“That’s not a no, Ash,” Linden noted, running her lips along the column of Asher’s neck.

“I want to,” Asher admitted. “I want to… slow dance with you. I’m not like Jill, though, Linden. I can’t do a sexy dance with you anywhere, but especially not here.”

Linden slowly turned Asher around to face her and wrapped her up in her arms.

“I don’t need you to sexy dance with me. I want us to really dance. In your kitchen the other night, we swayed for about two seconds before we stopped to kiss, and I donotregret that, but I want to dance with you like this, with people all around and a slow love song playing in the background.”

Asher only nodded and wrapped her arms around Linden’s neck, who pulled her in closer. They stood just outside the tent where several people were dancing on the wooden dance floor, and Linden couldn’t think of a single thing she’d rather be doing or a single person she’d rather be doing it with. She was with the person who understood her better than anyone else ever had. She was with her best friend in the world, who had been with her through just about everything. Linden was with the woman shewas falling in love with. No, she was with the woman she wasalreadyin love with, and she’d never been in love before.

Her entire life prior to coming out had been about pretending and trying to fall in love with the men she dated. She hated that, in the past, she’d actually said those words to boyfriends after they’d said them to her, despite not feeling them in the same way. She hated it because it felt like now, Asher was the only person those words belonged to. None of the women Linden had gone out with had ever made her feel like there could be anything more, anything serious, anything real. She’d just been in this cycle that she’d had no idea how to get herself out of until Asher had told her that she was interested in women. It had been one woman after the other for Linden. She hadn’t slept with all of them, of course, but out of all of those drink dates, dinners, coffee chats, and nights spent in apartments and bedrooms, Linden hadn’t ever left a woman at the end and instantly missed her how she had with Asher that morning.

“This is nice,” Asher said against Linden’s neck.

“Yes, it is,” she replied.

“Will you wait for me, and we can go back to my place? Or do you want to stay at yours tonight?”

“Wherever you’ll be,” Linden said. “I want to bethere.”

“My place is a little closer.”

“I packed a bag.”

Asher pulled back a bit and asked, “You did?”

Linden nodded and replied, “Clothes and toiletries. The basics. It was just in case we decided to stay at your place.”

“You can leave whatever you want there; you know that, right?”

Linden squinted at her and asked, “For a little while at least, right?”

“What do you–” Asher stopped when she figured out what Linden was talking about. “Not tonight, Linden. We’redancing, and you’re going to stay tonight. Can we talk about it tomorrow?”

“How many tomorrows do we really have?” Linden said more to herself than to Asher.

“Baby…” Asher let out and pressed her forehead to Linden’s.

Asher hadn’t ever called her that before, and though Linden had been called ‘baby’ by a lot of women recently, it hadn’t ever been like this. It hadn’t ever meant as much. She leaned in and captured Asher’s lips, needing more of her right now, needing to feel as close to her as she possibly could in this moment.

“We’ll talk about this, okay?” Asher told her when they pulled out of the kiss. “But not tonight; not when it feels this good to hold you. I don’t want to ruin this night when there’s just so much promise.”

“Promise?” Linden asked.

Asher just kissed her again in response, and it was a little deeper this time. Her tongue slipped into Linden’s mouth, and she sucked on Linden’s bottom lip. It drove Linden crazy, so she pulled Asher fully against her, not caring that people could see them. When Asher pulled out of the kiss after a few minutes, Linden stood there a bit starry-eyed.

Asher chuckled and said, “You look like you can’t believe that just happened.”

“I can’t.”

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