Page 14 of Finally Loved

“I’m complaining toyou. But that’s what friends are for. I’m not complaining officially. Who do you think I am?”

Alba laughed and gestured to a table. “Here good?”

“Great. So long as our new friend doesn’t jump out and scare us again.” She paused, reaching for the chair. “Actually, check under the table. He’s not down there, is he?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not a jumpscare café.”

“If anyone recommends one of those to you, do not invite me.”

“Noted.” She pulled one of the menus over to herself. “Though, why you think I’d want to go to one of those in the first place, I have no idea.”

“Probably because you’re being oddly avoidant about who recommended this one, so I’m over here wondering whether the person you have a crush on is the recommender. In which case, you’d have done weirder than going to a jumpscare café just to impress them.”

“And you haven’t?”

“Can’t be trying to impress someone when Idon’t know who they are.”

Alba sighed. She really had hoped the distraction would be, well, a distraction. No such luck, apparently. “I don’t have a crush on anyone. And it was just someone from work.”

Zainab eyed her over the menu, every part of her expression skeptical. “And does this person from work have a name?”

“You work with people who don’t have names?”

“You know how to answer questions?”

“Sometimes—”

“Alba?” The voice was both unfamiliar and too familiar all at the same time. And, honestly, probably the worst voice Alba could have heard at that moment, even as something in her stomach felt soothed by the fact that she was finally going to get an answer.

Maybe the fixation had simply been the unanswered mystery. Now, the mystery would be answered and she could go back to not caring about this random stranger.

And maybe Zainab wouldn’t notice anything…

Alba shot up from her seat, watching as that short, curvy woman with the most unusually colored hair stepped tentatively towards her. “Neve.”

Zainab snorted. “Someone from work my ass.”

Chapter 5

Neve wasn’t entirely sure why she’d said anything. Alba hadn’t been paying attention. It would have been so easy to just walk by without being seen. Instead, she’d frozen, stared, and yelled out Alba’s name.

Her eyes finally moved from Alba’s face to the rest of her table.

Neve winced. It was fairly obvious from their conversation together last weekend that Alba wasn’t straight. Neve wasn’t certain what she was, but she definitely wasn’t straight. And there, sitting opposite her, was possibly one of the most modelesque women Neve had ever seen. Long, black hair, gorgeous facial structure, and piercing brown eyes.

She’d interrupted a date.

Of course someone as beautiful as Alba dated women who looked like they were gracing the cover of a magazine when they were simply getting coffee.

Not that Neve wanted to date Alba. She didn’t want to date anyone right now. She had spent the last week wondering whether it was ever going to be safe to date anyone ever again.

But she still had eyes, and an aesthetic appreciation for the world.

She might not understand it herself, but she wasn’t ignorant to the way the world worked, and, when she thought about it, she imagined both Alba and her date were the kinds of women Alice and Charlie talked about being hot.

Neve blushed, realizing she was simply staring at them, debating what it meant to be hot, and interrupting their date.

She really shouldn’t have said anything at all.

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