Page 69 of Flirting Lessons

Erica was already halfway through her second pancake.

“She learned from the best, so I’m not surprised. But also—you realize that this means that your goal for a no-drama summer is now lost for good, right? This woman isdefinitelygoing to fall for you.”

Taylor shook her head.

“She won’t! We talked about that this morning! I brought it up because I didn’t want the prospect of drama hanging over my head, and she laughed at me and said she wasn’t ready to date anyone yet and obviously I wasn’t, either, so that’s not what she wanted or expected. She even said she wanted to continue with the flirting lessons! Everything is fine.”

Erica reached across the table for a piece of Taylor’s toast, and smeared some strawberry jam on it.

“As you know, what people say and what they mean are often very different.”

Did Erica think she’d never interacted with a human being before? Or that she’d never had a difficult conversation withsomeone she’d just slept with? Of course, sometimes what people said and what they meant were very different, but that wasn’t the case here.

“I know that. I also know Avery. Look, I’ll check in with her again if it feels necessary, but I can usually tell when there are weird undertones to a conversation, and there weren’t to this one. Now, just be excited for me that I finally had sex again. I was getting deeply irritable. I don’t ever want that to happen again.”

Erica giggled again.

“God, neither do I.” Taylor glared at her, which just made her giggle harder. Then she shook herself, set down her coffee, and pulled an exaggerated straight face. “What I meant to say was ‘Oh wow, you were irritable? I hadn’t noticed.’ ”

Taylor threw a piece of toast at Erica, who caught it and put more jam on it.

“Do you seriously believe that she’s totally fine with this being a one-night stand or whatever, and that she’s not all into you now? Because we’ve both seen it happen many times when a woman falls hard for the first woman she has sex with, and we both have experience with falling hard for our first, I’m just saying.”

Taylor found herself getting irritated again. Why did Erica have to ruin this nice, fun, good thing? She’d won the bet, couldn’t she just gloat about that and be done with it?

“This is different,” she said. “Avery is older than we were when we fell hard for our firsts. And she got out of a bad relationship recently, so I believe her when she said she’s not ready for something.”

“Oh, I’m sure she’s not ready for something, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’twantsomething,” Erica said. “She couldn’t tell you that she has feelings for you, she knows you well enoughto know that would be a disaster, but that doesn’t mean that she won’t want something more from you and make that very clear to you soon. Especially if you keep hanging out with her doing ‘flirting lessons’ and making her fall for you even more. And then we have to put the Taylor of it all into the picture, which means that I have a feeling that this isn’t going to be as easy and drama-free as you want it to be.”

Erica slipped into that condescending tone again, first when she’d talked about the flirting lessons, and then when she said “the Taylor of it all,” like Taylor had some sort of hypnotic power over women that made them fall for her and cause drama, or worse, like she was the one to cause the drama herself as if it were her goal. Erica should know Taylor too well to think that.

“Relax, it’s going to be fine. Avery’s not like that. We’ve spent a lot of time together this summer, we’re very honest with each other. I’m not concerned.”

“Fine,” Erica said, putting her hands up. “I get it, she’s perfect, everything’s perfect.”

Taylor wanted to push back and say that she hadn’t been saying that Avery was perfect or that everything was perfect, but couldn’t everything be just good? Was it too much to ask for Erica to be happy that things were good for Taylor? You know, her best friend? Did she have to make every small thing into a big one?

She stopped herself, though. She didn’t want to get into an argument with Erica today. She just wanted to have a nice, fun breakfast with her best friend and be in a post-sex good mood on a Saturday morning before she had to head to work.

“Thank you,” she said. Oh. She knew how to move the conversation back to a more relaxed tone. “Anyway.” She let out a big sigh. “When should we set the date for your…baby shower?”

Erica’s loud cackle made the whole restaurant stare at them again.

Avery could feel the bouncein her step as she walked to the garden on Sunday. She was such a fucking cliché, but she didn’t care. The sun was shining, she had the whole afternoon off, her coffee had tasted excellent this morning, and oh right, she’d had fantastic sex with Taylor Cameron two nights ago. The whole world seemed pink and shimmery.

That last thing might be because of her new pink sunglasses, but who cared? She’d worn them today for the first time, and she felt amazing in them. She felt amazing, period.

She wanted to shout to the whole world,I had sex! With a woman! And it was incredible!The movie version of her would do that, but the real Avery would never. The real Avery hadn’t even told Luke, her best friend of fifteen years.

Though she and Luke never really talked about sex—they had too much of a sibling-like relationship for that. Sure, they told each other when they started dating people, and Luke had told her that he’d had sex with Margot the night before he started work as her employee, but that was so wild that he’dhadto tell her. But he hadn’t told her any of the details, and she was dying to talk to someone about the details of her night with Taylor.

She didn’t really have any other friends whom she could tell. She’d lost touch with most of her friends over the past few years, partly because of Derek, partly because of the pandemic, and, if she was being completely honest with herself, partly because of herself. She’d been depressed about the world and her relationship and ashamed to tell any of her friends how she felt, and she let too many texts and voicemails go unanswered, until they stoppedcoming. She didn’t blame her friends for that, and she wanted to see if she could rekindle those friendships, but she didn’t exactly think the way to get back in touch was to send a text saying,Are you around tonight for a phone call so I can tell you about how I had sex with a woman this weekend?Like, that would for sure get a response, but she was a little too shy to start off that way. Plus, she’d feel like an asshole only texting them to tell them about herself and not actually finding out how they were.

How did a person text a friend they hadn’t talked to in over a year? She made a mental note to figure that out after she got home from the garden.

She also wasn’t…exactly…quite so low-key about Taylor’s whole brush-off from Saturday morning as she’d pretended to be. She hadn’t lied to Taylor, she knew she wasn’t ready for a relationship, and she sure as hell knew Taylor didn’t want one. She’d given herself a lecture in the shower on Saturday morning about not making a big deal out of this, playing it cool, not getting too attached. But still, it stung a little that Taylor hadn’t fallen madly in love with her over the course of a night. Or even fallen madly in lust with her. But she was glad that Taylor had brought it up, and that they’d talked about it. She knew Friday night couldn’t happen again, but she wanted to stay friends with Taylor, and keep up the flirting lessons.

And she was really,reallyglad it happened.

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