Chapter 9

9

A lexandra Fairchild’s ratty little face was twisted into a scowl. “How can you possibly need more time to make a decision here? We’ve conceded so much to you, we’re practically paying you to take this crumbling wreck off our hands!” She glanced at her two brothers, both of whom, Nora was amused to see, were expressionless in the face of her petty fury. They didn’t seem inclined to speak up and help her out, which only served to enrage her further. “Okay, fuck this, and fuck all of you useless fucks.”

Nora didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow at the graceless swearing. “We’re nearing the end of the fiscal quarter, Ms. Fairchild. Surely you can understand my desire not to close a big deal just now.” She kept her tone bland and conciliatory, in a way that she knew was just going to keep pissing Alexandra off.

Inside, she was still a roiling ocean of doubt and confusion. Sure, it was wise to make big transactions at the beginning of a quarter, not the end. But that was, when it came down to it, nothing more than an excuse Nora was making. She was actively putting off her decision on the Fairchild Building for as long as she could.

“Call us when you’re actually ready to close this fucking deal,” Alexandra spat as she got to her feet. “No more fucking meetings, or I’m going to start sending our attorney’s bills to you to pay.”

Matthew shrugged at Nora and hustled out after his sister. Oliver lingered. “Having second thoughts?” he asked, a hopeful note in his voice.

“No,” Nora lied. “Just tying up some loose ends.”

“Like the Lounge, I hope.” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “It’d be good if you were figuring out how to keep it.”

“If I were, that would be my business.” Nora got to her feet and offered him a tight smile. “Let your sister know I’ll call her when I’m ready.”

It was a clear dismissal, and she was glad that Oliver took the hint and left, closing her office door behind him. Nora sat on the edge of her desk and rubbed at her aching temples. This meeting could have been a phone call, and it was her fault it wasn’t. She’d called it, mostly for the purpose of pissing Alexandra Fairchild off.

It had been two weeks since she and Esme Bloom had begun fooling around with each other in the tiny office at the Indigo Lounge. Two weeks of secretive slinks through the back hallway of the deserted hotspot, of furtive quick dinners followed by the hottest hookups Nora had ever experienced in her life.

She knew what Esme tasted like, how she felt coming around Nora’s fingers. The way her breathing skipped and hitched the closer she came to her climax. Nora knew how Esme’s thighs felt clenched around Nora’s head, how her fingers felt combing through Nora’s hair, how those same fingers felt deep inside of Nora as her own orgasm hit her like a freight train.

Nora was elated, exhausted, and utterly conflicted by equal turns. She hadn’t been able to go more than a couple of days at a time without seeing Esme again, but the late nights and scrambled sleep schedules were already starting to take their toll. Laurie was mystified by the number of rearrangements Nora was having her make to her daily schedule, all the late morning starts and early evening departures. She was a good enough assistant to not push Nora on why all the changes were happening, but Nora could feel her confusion every time.

The Fairchild wasn’t Nora’s only major deal in the works, of course, but it was the only one she’d ever gotten so close to the end of and began to balk on. She knew it was puzzling everyone, from Laurie and her own legal team to the Fairchilds and their legal team. But Nora simply didn’t know what to do. This was something she’d never encountered before in her career.

She certainly couldn’t discuss it with Esme. It weighed heavy between them every time they met, but by some silent mutual agreement, they weren’t talking about it even though it was always the elephant in the room. When they were together, all Nora wanted was to touch and taste Esme, to keep chasing that euphoric high, feel the energy that crackled between them. Talking about the building acquisition and the fate of the Indigo Lounge would ruin it, and neither of them seemed inclined to go there.

Yet.

It was going to have to happen eventually. Neither she nor Esme were na?ve enough to believe it wouldn’t. For now, though, Nora dealt with her pent-up confusion and worry by poking at angry little bears like Alexandra Fairchild.

And by visiting the gym a lot more. Nora was relieved that once she and Esme had given in to the sexual tension between them, she no longer risked embarrassing herself staring at pretty women working out. So when she wasn’t irking heiresses and confusing her assistant, Nora was on the elliptical, running like it could solve all her problems.

She checked her phone clock. 4:30 PM. A little earlier than she usually went home, but tonight was an Esme night. She could go take in a high-intensity fitness class of some kind, grab dinner, and get in a good nap before she headed for the Indigo Lounge. Eagerness put a spring in her step as she got up and grabbed her purse and blazer from the coat hooks on the wall.

Laurie looked up in surprise as Nora passed her, but Nora just tossed a cheery, “See you tomorrow!” over her shoulder as she hustled herself onto the elevator and hit the button for the ground floor.

Nora knew this couldn’t go on, but God, she hadn’t been so happy in such a long, long time.

The last two weeks had made Esme happier than she had been in years, but God, she hadn’t seen these levels of stress since she was first opening up the Indigo Lounge.

Hell, possibly since she was a teenager exploring her newfound sexuality and trying desperately to hide it from her stern, conservative parents. Leaning on the rail of the mezzanine overlooking the dance floor, Esme stared downwards, where a parade of drag performers twinkled under the shifting rainbow lights, and saw nothing. She stuck her thumb up to her mouth and began to nibble at the skin by the nail.

Almost immediately, a hand clad in a striped fingerless mitt swatted at her. “Fingers aren’t food,” Ruby admonished, taking Esme’s hand in both of hers.

Esme sighed. “I know. I know.”

“It’s been forever since I’ve seen you do that.” Ruby leaned on the railing as well, still holding Esme’s hand. “Is everything okay?”

“As it can be.” Esme had never been a good liar, but she could manage fudging the truth from time to time. “You know, it’s all, a lot.”

That was entirely truthful. If Ruby took her to mean that she was only referring to the impending potential eviction of the Lounge, well, so be it. And if she didn’t follow up with clarifying questions, that was hardly Esme’s fault. Esme held her breath waiting to see what direction Ruby would take the conversation in.

To her relief, Ruby elected to take the distraction route. “Did Sasha tell you about the vegan chocolate cake and vanilla bean ice cream sundae she’s been working on? It’s almost perfect. Soooooo divine, too. Each test she lets me try is better than the last.”

Esme smiled as Ruby chattered on. She wondered if Ruby would ever catch on to the fact that Sasha was head over heels for her. Had been since the day Ruby first crept through the door of the Indigo Lounge, hands wrapped around the strap of her enamel-pin festooned messenger bag, looking for somewhere to write her steamy sapphic romance novels. That was five years ago, and ever since, Ruby had been an enthusiastic taste testing focus group of one, never knowing how much of her heart and soul Sasha was putting into each dish. The entirety of the Lounge’s menu for the last five years was actually a love letter to Ruby that Sasha was too shy to read aloud in plain English.

“…anyway, I was just on my way home. It’s time to feed Winston and take him for walkies.” Winston was Ruby’s elderly Scottie dog, upon whom she doted. When she made her occasional family trips, Winston stayed with Sasha, who was allergic to dogs but, Esme knew, secretly took Claritin when she tended to him. Another little love letter to Ruby. Esme smiled wistfully as Ruby gave her a sweet smacking kiss on the cheek— she’d have to wipe off the ruby-red lip print later—and bounded off.

What might it be like to have someone love her the way Sasha loved Ruby? Instead of the torrid, clandestine affair she’d embarked on with Nora? Esme tucked her thumbs into her fists and considered it. Sasha’s love was quiet yet immense, steadily enduring.

This thing Esme had with Nora was a burning fire, confusing, intense, worrisome, addictive. Esme had known many types of love in her life, from the protective maternal affection of the lesbian couple who took her in after her parents had thrown her out, to the familial bonds she’d established with her friends and regulars. She loved her daughter desperately and missed her badly. And in her fifty years, she’d felt romantic love towards a number of beautiful women, none of which had lasted but all of which had ended amicably, because Esme did not believe in bitter endings.

And yet how could her affair with Nora end any way but bitterly? No matter how they talked about their personal lives and hobbies—Esme now knew that Nora was from the Valley, that they’d both started out middle-class and had had to claw their way towards their dreams, that they’d both understood their sexuality from a young age—before they got down to the most consistently mind-blowing sex that Esme had experienced, there was one thing they never talked about, and it was what was absolutely going to blow them up at some point.

It was a bad, bad road she was riding down, but Esme couldn’t bring herself to get off it. This was nothing like she’d experienced before—and hadn’t been since the first moment Nora walked through the door of the Lounge. Nora Hartley represented the destruction of Esme’s life-work, her Ikegai, her purpose. But she also represented excitement on a level that Esme had never before experienced. That was a heady high Esme was hard pressed to turn her back on.

The best she could do for herself was keep these assignations to a strict schedule. Esme only allowed Nora to come by every two or three days.

She pulled her phone out of her bra and checked the time. 7:30 PM. Hours to go before she let Nora in through the back door of the Lounge again. Between her thighs, she felt herself growing warm and full just at the thought of what would happen tonight.

Trouble, trouble, trouble. Her life right now was nothing but pure trouble.

Nora’s head fell back against the shelves behind Esme’s desk. Her vision was dotted with sparkling little stars and her toes ached from how hard they’d curled up when Esme made her come. “Jesus Christ,” she breathed. She flattened a hand out over her racing heart, willing it to slow down.

Esme, sitting in the desk chair, eased Nora’s legs gently down off her shoulders and rolled back. She seemed to be looking around on the floor for something. “Where’d you throw my top?”

Blinking, Nora tried to look around the office. “It can’t have gone too far. You basically work out of a closet.” As her vision cleared, she spotted a crumpled wad of blue fabric piled on top of the lone filing cabinet shoved into the back corner of the little room. “Is that it, the blue thing over there?”

Esme stood up and pulled her pink-flowered bikini panties up. Pushing her hair back from her face, she squinted towards the filing cabinet. “Ah. Yes. Thank you.”

As she slid down off of Esme’s desk in search of her own black thong and jeans, Nora winced. As hot as their escapades were, the fact that they were taking place in a broom closet was, quite literally, becoming painful. It simply wasn’t comfortable fucking in an IKEA desk chair or on top of a wooden desktop. To say nothing of getting dressed again afterwards! Esme had it relatively easy with her loose tops, flowing skirts, and slip-on sandals or Mary Janes. Nora was as dressed down as she ever got in her button-fly Levis, loose t-shirts, and sneakers. It was better than if she’d been showing up in her designer suits, but still not easy to get into when you were one of two women getting dressed in what was basically a furnished Target dressing room.

Nora wriggled her feet into her blue Tory Burch sneakers and grimaced as her left heel crumpled the back lip of the shoe. $300, and shoes never recovered from the heel being stepped on like that. Damn it . “We’ve got to find a better place to meet,” she announced, taking better care with getting the second shoe on.

Esme’s head popped through the neck of her top, and she looked at Nora wide-eyed. “What?”

“We can’t go on like this. Your office is charming, but very, very tiny.” Nora gestured around. “I’m taking ibuprofen every day for the aches and pains. I just wrecked my shoe. And I noticed you haven’t replaced the glass for that photo of Janelle Monáe you cracked with your head last week.”

Blushing, Esme stuffed her feet into her black pleather slides. “I’ve been busy.”

Nora chuckled. “Okay. But how have you explained it to anyone who asked?”

“Not many people come back here besides the staff,” Esme replied, her cheeks still pink. “Only Sasha noticed. I said it had fallen down, and she seemed to buy it.” She paused while tying her hair back into a low ponytail. “Wait. You know Janelle Monáe?”

“I didn’t know she was into women, but now that I think about it, that’s somehow not surprising,” Nora mused, grabbing her Lululemon jacket up from the back corner of Esme’s desk. “No, I met her at a Meta party a couple of years ago. She played here?”

“Mm, yes, about ten years ago? She was still kind of breaking into the wider public consciousness, did a set here, everyone loved it. She’s lovely and her music is so good.” Esme handed Nora her Hermès Kelly bag. “I’ll get the glass replaced this weekend.”

“I can pay for it,” Nora offered.

“No. You pay for all our dinners already and won’t take money from me.” Esme shook her head. “Glass isn’t all that expensive. It’s fine.”

Setting her bag down, Nora reached for the afflicted photo and pulled it off the wall. She carefully ran a finger over the unbroken parts of the glass. “You know, it might be less dangerous if we just met elsewhere.” She looked at Esme, wondering how she’d react to her next words. “You could come to my house in Pacific Palisades.” Somehow, she was more nervous suggesting this than she ever had been closing a multi-billion-dollar deal. “My bed is very comfortable. I don’t even know how high the thread count on my sheets goes.”

But Esme only stared at her, mouth slightly open. “W…what?” she eventually asked.

“Come… to my house?” Her nerves began to jangle a bit more. “I just think it will be more comfortable. We can relax. Spread out.”

Esme blinked, then let out a short laugh. “Ah, no. Thank you, but no. What we have here, between us,” she gestured back and forth. “This is fun, but this is not on a me-sleeping-over-at-your-place level.”

“I mean, you don’t have to sleep over if you don’t want to, I just thought it might be nicer to have space, cushioning.” She felt like she was being straightforward here. This wasn’t complicated; she just wanted to move all their great sex over to somewhere a little cozier, that was all.

“No. No.” Esme shook her head. “Going to your house changes things, and I can’t believe you don’t see that it does.”

Nora had expected some resistance, they’d only been hooking up for two weeks, but thought there might be a playful air to any objections Esme raised. Instead, Esme actually seemed almost horrified by the thought. “Okay, would you prefer we go to yours?”

“No! No, for God’s sake. I don’t want to change things from whatever they are now.” This time when Esme shook her head, her hair came loose from its ponytail, she was so vehement. “They’re complicated enough without getting comfortable. We shouldn’t get comfortable. We really shouldn’t even be doing this at all.”

“We are, though,” Nora pointed out. “And I was pretty sure we were both enjoying it. What’s wrong with enjoying it more?”

“I can’t…” Esme waved her hands around. “No. First, it’s fucking in your bed. Then you suggest we have dinner out somewhere for some reason, maybe just because you know somewhere you think I’d like, or you think we shouldn’t spend so much time sleeping together. The goalposts would keep moving.” Reaching over, she wrenched the office door open. “I go to your house, or you come to mine, the game changes. If you’re not happy with the way things are now, then maybe we should cool off.”

This was unbelievable. “I was suggesting comfort . Literal physical comfort. Not a relationship .”

“I’m not taking any chances. I have no need to allow further trouble into my life. And you’ve been trouble from day one. I need a break.” Esme swallowed hard. “You, me, this thing here, this is enough of a problem. Can you go now?” She pointed out the door.

Not knowing what else to do, Nora rolled her eyes and left. She still didn’t know what she’d done wrong, but it looked like she was about to have a whole lot of time on her hands to think about it