Page 55 of High Note

“Hey, honey. This is Lupe.”

She would have rolled her eyes, but they were closed. “Yes, Mom, I know. What’s up?”

“I know it’s early for you, but. The internets. They’re going crazy.”

“The internets.” What the hell was Lupe talking about?

“Yes, ma’am. You and that girl, that little Skyla girl singer. There’s videos of y’all up singing and playing and hanging out at the bar with Evie and Chey and everything. They’re calling it like a lesbian hoe-down.”

“Oh, fuck me.”

“Yeah, that was sort of my position too. I just figured somebody who cared about you should let you know before somebody who didn’t did.” Lupe sounded sorry, and Kirsten didn’t quite know what to say.

That this is gonna suck?

There was no way around that.

“Well, I appreciate it. I’ll give you a holler later. Thank you so much for letting me know.”

She hung up her phone and stared for a second. Dammit. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do.

“What’s wrong?” Skylar’s voice was soft, worried. Like she kind of knew.

“Well, my dear. It sounds like we had a bastard with a phone and a YouTube account in the bar last night.”

“Ah, is that all?”

Okay, that was not exactly what she had expected the response to be, but she would take it. That worked. “Pretty much, yes. Besides the whole lesbian hoe-down comment. Yeah, I think that’s pretty much it.”

“Huh.” Skyla stretched. “Last time I heard, it was not illegal to hang out with your girlfriend and your friends in a bar. I’m over twenty-one. And besides, that wasn’t even a bar. It’s a pizza joint with a bar.”

“Hey, if you don’t care, I don’t care. I am more than happy to go back to sleep.” She rolled over and blinked at Skyla. “It is only 8:00 in the morning.”

“Are your friends mad?”

She snorted. “My friends were just warning me so that you wouldn’t wake up to bad news, honey. That’s all. They’re just worried about you.”

Skyla pinked and kind of grinned, her nose wrinkling with it. “Oh, that’s sweet. But if my career can’t weather something like this? I’m in big trouble. I mean, don’t get me wrong. There willbe the screamers. The think of the children-ers. And I’m sure my ex-husband will be out there banging the drum of poor, abused old man.”

Kristen nodded like she understood, but there was a part of her that wasn’t sure what all this was. Sure, it had felt to her that, if Skyla was not absolutely in the closet, she was not entirely out of the closet. In her experience, country and western fans could be a little intense. Still, Skyla knew her business and, lord knew. Kirsten didn’t. So she was just gonna let it go.

“Do you want to go back to sleep or do you want some coffee?” Oh man, Skyla sounded way too awake for her, but coffee meant coffee. And that meant being awake. And that meant somebody wanted to talk, so she better get her butt up.

“I’d love coffee. You want me to make it?”

“No, I can do it.” Skyla grabbed her phone and headed downstairs. And Kirsten heard her let Reba out of the little crate.

There was a quiet down there that just felt bad. So she slipped on a pair of sweatpants and a pair of fuzzy socks and her favorite NIN T-shirt.

Sleeping wasn’t near as much fun as hanging out with her beautiful lover, right? Of course right.

She bebopped downstairs, the cold air making her nipples rock hard. She needed to feed the cats and figure out if she had anything to offer Skyla for breakfast.

Surely, she did, right?

Bacon? Oatmeal? Something?

“What would you like for break—” She turned the corner, stopping short at the sight of Skyla standing there in tears. “Babe? Babe, are you okay?”

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