Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Cassie

People loved Parker.

When I finished my shift at Hummingbird, Parker texted me a picture of herself at Primrose Café over on Jessica Castle Plaza, along with the text, Figured I should do it like this since selfies are your love language, and I could not hold still the whole subway ride up to Aberdeen Hill.

I burst in through the doors, and I nearly ran into Parker, who was waiting for me at the door with a huge iced coffee topped with whipped cream and sugar sparkles. “Here,” she said. “This reminded me of you.”

That made my heart entirely too happy. I took the drink. “Thank you,” I said. “Ugh, I love it. It’s so sparkly. It reminds me of me too. Have you seen the page?”

“My sister texted me saying she’s your biggest fan and wants an autograph so she can scalp it.”

I laughed. “Ah… such a big fan she wants to make some money off me.”

“Look, my sister’s weirder than I am. Let’s sit and… take selfies and talk about this place, I guess.”

I would happily do that all day long.

We posted the next day about Express Coffee Logistics, framing it as Parker’s venture to bring a sense of community to cafés all across Port Andrea. After an hour spent arguing over it at Porthole Café, Parker finally caved and let us go with the slogan it’s always the new best time to meet a new best friend.

“God, I’m going to throw up on the level of cliché,” she muttered, sucking at the straw in her empty drink. The café, set right on the edge of the Robin Square commercial district at the end of the airport subway line, was prettied up and jam-packed with tourists, all stained wood and nautical décor. The big bay-facing windows were shut with the January cold, but the sound of seagulls crying still cut through the hustle and hubbub.

“You wouldn’t,” I said, turning my attention back to Parker. “You’d stain your favorite hoodie.”

“You can take it off, then. I always like when girls take my clothes off.”

I nearly died on the spot. It took about three beats too long for my heart to remember how to beat. I put on a smile. “Parker, I know you can come up with a sexier setting than I just threw up on myself. If you’re into that, you should go check out a sorority house or something?”

“Eh… shame I already finished my drink, then, or I could accidentally spill it down my front.”

No matter how you looked at it, that sounded like she was hitting on me. It was just… playful flirting, right? I didn’t know how to handle this with another girl. Let alone one I was so head-over-heels for as Parker. But she kept doing it more and more every day, and somehow, I kept finding myself being bolder and bolder to keep up.

“I’ve still got some drink left,” I said, shaking my iced latte. “Should I spill it down my front, or yours?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Is there enough for both of us? That’s usually my preferred setup with girls.”

I bit back a smile as I held my cup up to eye level. “Yeah, I think so,” I said. “Who first?”

“Oh my god,” a girl’s voice said from behind me, and I jolted, nearly slamming the cup back down as I turned to look at the group of girls coming up to our table. “Cassie Peterson? And Parker, too, right?”

“Ugh, not again,” Parker sighed, falling face-first into the table. “Things were just getting good.”

Things had just been getting to the point where I could not handle it anymore. I was glad for the interruption, because my heart had been about to burst.

We took pictures with our fans, and once we’d gotten home later, we posted them to our Insta page, along with our new slogan.

Refining our mission got easier with a personal brand. Over the next few weeks, our cafés changed from just a place to get coffee into a place to meet your new best friend—meeting points for Express fans, who wore little blue-and-yellow armbands to identify themselves to one another, all sold through our online shop, of course.

And Parker, for her part—well, she was a tough sell on the morning miracle routine after all.

“I swear,” she wheezed, collapsing on the floor one morning after I said to drop out of chair pose. “I’m never moving again. This is it for me. Parker’s time is done.”

“Corpse pose, let’s go,” I laughed, falling next to her. The camera was running, but I wasn’t doing a full routine record this time, just looking for highlights to clip. “Parker can’t handle anymore.”

“What, we stop when I can’t handle anymore?” she gasped, wiping her brow as we settled onto our backs side-by-side. “That was weeks ago I couldn’t handle anymore. We should have stopped weeks ago.”

“You’re capable of so much more than you think you are, Parker.”

“I am capable of selling espresso machines, collecting photo albums of my favorite middle-aged actresses, and complaining. I am not capable of chair pose. What the fuck was that medieval torture just now?”

I hummed to myself, wiggling my fingers and toes as I let my eyes drift shut. “It was something we’ll be doing again on Monday, Scruffy.”

“No. We absolutely will not. My thighs are marshmallows and they will stay that way.”

I laughed. “Sure thing, Stay-Puft. What do I have to bribe you with?”

“A whole hell of a lot, Unicorn.”

I kept my eyes shut and somehow found the nerve in me to say, “Staying in the towel?”

She was quiet. I turned to her, cracking one eyelid, and found her chewing her cheek. “I’m thinking it over,” she said.

“You really are a woman of simple pleasures.”

“I’ve been told I have a simple approach to things, and I do like that about myself.” She rolled her shoulders against the mat. “Well, you’ll make me do it either way, so I’ll take the offer while it stands.”

Some days, I had no idea what Parker and I were. Was this just what lesbians did, flirted overtly with one another without ever addressing it?

When I asked Sasha in Strawberry that evening, she snorted.

“Yeah,” she said, turning her barstool to face me. “Perfect score. That’s precisely what lesbians do. What happened?”

I swirled my drink idly, feeling the smooth wood of the bar top underneath the ridged bottom of the glass. The air smelled like strawberry candy and bourbon, and the sounds of shoes squeaking on the dance floor mixed with the low bass thumps of the music. “Well, you know… Parker and I have been living together for a month now, and we kind of just… well, I swear she’s flirting with me.”

“She’s Parker. She’d flirt with a tree if it had boobs.”

I pouted. “So that’s it? There’s nothing special there after all?”

She sighed, taking a slow sip of her drink. She looked good today, wearing a flowy top tucked into a faux-leather tight skirt, and she had her regular contacts switched out for glasses today, sleek black frames that brought out the intense contrast of her eyes. By all means, she should have been attractive—well, she was attractive. So why wasn’t I attracted like I was with Parker?

“Look,” she said, turning to me. “I’m sorry you’ve gotten in so deep with Parker. I’ve seen your page, and how much you’re putting into her company…”

My heart surged. If she was going to tell me it was a bad idea, I needed her to just… not. I couldn’t take criticism. “It’s been really good. I’ve really reconnected with the community. I’ve gotten some of the other Insta girls wearing the Express armbands. My followers love Parker—”

“I know. I know. I’m not saying it’s been a bad move.” She shifted. “It’s probably a dangerous move, though.”

“What do you mean, a dangerous move?” My stomach turned. I didn’t want her to really answer that.

“Look, Parker’s…” She struggled for words. “Parker’s kind of gay.”

“Um…” I paused. “Yeah, I’ve, uh, noticed.”

“Like, overtly. She’s been keeping it lower-key than usual, because she doesn’t want to put too much lesbianism all over your polished straight-girl brand, but at some point, it’s going to bleed over.”

I pursed my lips. “That’s okay. I don’t think Parker is going to mind if people find out she’s a lesbian.”

“Yeah, but what happens when people find out you’re a lesbian?” She shook her head, turning back to her drink. “I think you’re getting your business and pleasure mixed up, Cassie.”

“What, because… I shouldn’t associate with gay people on my public page?”

“Not if you’re trying to stay in the closet, you shouldn’t. You should be careful. Word travels fast. Half the people in here know Parker. Half of them have slept with her. And I’ll bet half of them have some grievance with Parker, too. What happens if one of them tries to air dirty laundry like that?”

I sighed, sinking over the bar. I shouldn’t have come out here tonight. “I don’t know…”

“I can tell you’ve been having fun, and that’s good. But seriously. People don’t take well to having something hidden from them like that and coming out of nowhere.”

I chewed my lip, but I didn’t say anything. After a second, Sasha shrugged, turning to me.

“Good news is, it’s pretty busy in here tonight. Let’s get you laid.”

I almost fell out of my seat. “You’re—uh—you’re very direct when you’re in lesbian mode, aren’t you?”

She grinned. “Look, I don’t want to beat around the bush, okay? What’s your type, anyway? Little scruffy twerps in big shirts?”

I cleared my throat. “I don’t know if I really have a type,” I mumbled, looking down.

“Well, then we’ll go exploring. Come on. You wouldn’t believe how much people will go wild over a new face on the scene, and since I can say this with impunity now that you shot me down, you have a nice face.”

“Do you think so?” I kicked the air beneath my seat. “Do you think I’m Parker’s type?”

She stared for the longest time before she fell back into her seat with a whoosh, suddenly looking ten years older. “Look, Parker just wants to bang you, all right?”

“What?” My voice went maybe six octaves too high. Move over, Mariah Carey, I thought. “What makes you say that?”

“Well, you’re a woman. Ergo, she wants to fuck you.”

“I…” My head felt staticky. “I don’t know…”

“But only fuck you. I’ve never really talked to her myself, but everyone around here has heard of Parker. She doesn’t do anything serious with anybody.”

“Well—” My head spun. “I know that. But… well… I don’t know…”

“But you thought maybe you were special?”

I sighed, hanging my head. “We do, like, everything together.”

“Yeah, and she’s afraid of intimacy. There’s been a couple people burned here by getting too attached to Parker. Something about her being completely aloof gets a lot of girls interested, but it could not be less my type.”

I chewed my cheek. “What is your type?”

She shrugged. “Hopelessly naïve, clueless girls who are easily impressed?”

I paused. “That’s… your description of me, isn’t it?”

She grinned. “So watch yourself around Parker. She knows how to break a girl’s heart.”

“You didn’t answer the question…”

“I don’t want to see you get hurt, Cassie.” Her expression softened, and she put a hand on top of mine on the bar top. “If Parker’s flirting with you, odds are she just wants to sleep with you. And if you’re cool with just sleeping with her, then honestly… go for it, you know? But nothing you do will ever make her serious about it.”

“Right.” I kicked the air. “I should probably just go… look around, date other girls, huh? Help myself get unstuck from Parker.”

“Yeah. You should let me take you out onto the dance floor, and you can go dance with whatever girl out there strikes your fancy.”

I swallowed, hard. “I don’t know… I’m just not feeling anything about anyone else, you know?”

“Yeah, because you’re sitting here talking about it instead of going and meeting them. What’s that thing you and Parker have been saying on your page, again? New best time for a new best friend?”

“Yeah! It’s because our brand is all about making new friendships, and our cafés are a place to find like-minded people—”

“Well, it’s a new best time for a new… girlfriend, too. There’s no time like the present. Let’s move it, before you overthink it.”

I squeaked as she tugged me down from the barstool, jumping up and heading towards the dance floor, but I stumbled along after her.