chapter 2

Lillian’s gaze driftedback to the woman with the laptop. The woman glared at the screen, muttering to it as though it had personally offended her, but when she felt Lillian watching her, the woman looked up and winked. Actually winked, but something about her expression said, Can you believe I winked at you? Lillian rolled her eyes, but she offered the woman a smile in return.

The woman closed the laptop, rose, and strolled over, her wide hips swaying in tight black jeans. Closer up, the hint of red underneath her sweatshirt appeared to be a corset, revealing the kind of generous cleavage that would make Lillian a lesbian if she hadn’t already been one. Lillian also thought she made out the words COMIC-CON 2015 fading from the front of the sweatshirt. It was like the woman grabbed clothes from three different closets and somehow made them look hot. And cute.

Lillian didn’t usually go for cute, but the outfit and the combination of over-the-top flirtation and her obvious frustration with the work on her laptop made Lillian smile inside. You got a lot going on, girl.

“Not going out with your friends?” the woman asked, trailing one finger along the edge of Lillian’s table.

“No.”

“Couldn’t resist a night at the Neptune?”

The Neptune was very resistible. The woman, less so.

“I’m going to the bar,” the woman said. “You need anything?”

“I’ll have what you’re having,” Lillian said.

“Are you sure? It could be something bizarre,” the woman purred.

“I think I can handle what the Neptune’s serving.”

The woman leaned against the bar while she waited, facing Lillian, one foot kicked up behind her, chin dipped down. Her gaze snaked its way through the room. She pursed her lips in a hint of a kiss, then shrugged and broke into a grin that said, Did that work on you?

Lillian shook her head.

And then that wink.

The woman held her palms up as if to say, How about that one? She returned a moment later with two lavender-colored martinis.

“Does that really work on women?” Lillian accepted the drink, smiling to let the woman know she was teasing.

“What?”

“Your act.” Lillian winked with half her face.

“Oh. Yeah.” The woman looked down, shuffling her foot. “It does.” Then she looked up, and in a voice that was all sex and power and confidence and kisses running down a lover’s neck, she whispered, “Does it work on you?”

Her voice made Lillian’s body tingle.

“How can you be that sexy in a Comic-Con sweatshirt?” Lillian asked.

“Comic-Con is very sexy,” the woman said with mock indignation.

“It’s really not.” Lillian patted the table across from her.

The woman sat.

“Thanks for the drink.”

Up close, Lillian saw the lacework tattoo was made up of the zeros and ones of binary code and her dark hair wasn’t black but navy blue.

“You a programmer?” Lillian asked. “Are you working?”

The woman glanced back at her laptop.

“I’m making an app that’s supposed to mix your face with the faces of American presidents. It’s for kids, but how is some ten-year-old going to tell the difference between Andrew Johnson and Herbert Hoover? And it’s not even my project. I’m fixing it for someone who glitched it all up.”

“Should I let you get back to it?”

“No. I can’t take it anymore. It’s so frustrating.” On the word frustrating, the woman slipped from a normal tone to a sexy purr.

“You’re too much.”

The stress of the day felt farther away with this woman looking at her.

“Do you—” Lillian said at the same moment the woman said, “I haven’t seen—”

Lillian tried again. “Do you come here often?”

“I haven’t seen you around here,” the woman said.

They both chuckled.

“You’ve done this before,” Lillian said. “Now can you say that with a wink?”

The woman winked.

“I’m from LA.” Lillian set the words out on the table like playing cards. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

And hopefully coming back for the show but probably not. The reality of it washed over her. Maybe she should have taken the J?ger shot.

“My kind of woman.” The woman raised her glass.

They toasted and Lillian took a sip.

“Oh my God, it tastes like laundry soap.”

“Crème de violette. You said you’d have what I was drinking.”

“Why are you drinking it?”

“It’s pretty.” The woman held her purple drink up to the light. “It smells like flowers. And if you’re seventeen and you and your girlfriend want to steal her parents’ liquor and you don’t want to get caught, drink the crème de violette. No one will miss it. Happy memories.” The woman furrowed her brow. “Happy-ish.” She held out her hand. “Blue Lenox.”

Lillian raised an eyebrow. Blue Lenox? That was as stagey as the wink.

“I doubt that’s your real name,” Lillian said.

“My friends call me Blue.”

“So even your friends don’t know your real name?”

“Does it matter?”

Blue’s eyes were so dark they were almost black, but Lillian still saw a shadow pass over them for a second, and she wished she hadn’t said it.

“And who are you?” Blue asked.

“Lillian.”

They stared at each other for a moment. Blue had a smear of glitter on her cheek.

“It’s nice to meet you, Lillian.” Blue tucked the tip of her tongue between her teeth, her smile opening around the pink tip. She winked again.

“Just to be clear,” Lillian said, “your act doesn’t work on me.” It kind of did. “But you’re good at it, and it’s hot when someone’s good at something.”

“Your act is working for me.”

“I don’t have an act.”

She had so many, code switching so many times she didn’t have a native language. It was almost a relief to be called on it.

Blue cocked her head.

“You are wearing a white linen suit to the Neptune. And it’s after ten, and it’s still ironed. That’s a tour de force of staying on brand.”

Blue touched the cuff of Lillian’s jacket, rubbing the fabric between her fingers. Lillian felt a little shiver go through her as she stared too closely at the touch. She could almost feel Blue taking her delicately between two fingers and rubbing her the way she rubbed the fabric of the jacket.

“Linen-rayon blend.” Blue made it sound sexy.

“You like textiles.”

Blue nodded. “I sew. Impressed?”

The bartender interrupted, a glass of white wine in hand.

“That’s for her.” Blue nodded to Lillian.

“Sorry for the wait,” the bartender said. “I had to run next door for wine. We don’t serve a lot.”

Next door was a store called Quikee Cigarette and Food Outlet, which didn’t bode well for the wine, but it was actually good.

“I guessed you might not have a palate sophisticated enough to appreciate the violette,” Blue said when the bartender had left. “Even though you’re wearing white linen to a dive bar after ten o’clock. So you know I’m a programmer. Can I ask what you do?”

“Please don’t.”

That was what hookups were about. Not being anyone. Just a body intertwining with another body in a dance no one would ever see. She was good at that dance even if her last hookups had been lackluster. Truth: they’d left her with a dull sense of dissatisfaction. But it had been a while since she’d felt a woman’s hands on her, and this woman could push the stress of the day to the back of Lillian’s mind.

But before Lillian could speak, Blue said, “Just to be clear, we’re doing this”—she gestured to the space between them—“because we’re going to sleep together, right? And you’re going back to LA, so no catching feelings?”

“I was going to be a little more subtle.” Lillian laughed. “But yes.”

Blue might like textiles, but she didn’t do strings. She was perfect.

“Good.” Blue folded her hands in front of her. “You want to hang out first? Not talk about what you do for work? Share fries? Dance?”

Blue motioned to the dance floor. The stereo blared a trending dance-challenge song that included the lines Ride the pony. Next we zip, baby, zip. The dancers were lining up and imitating zipping up jackets because that was a sexy dance move. Lillian watched the choreographic horror.

“Zip, zip, zip me up and down? That shred of self-respect people talk about? I still have it.”

Blue looked a little hurt.

“I will dance. One song. Anything but the Zipper.”

What was she doing? Lillian never danced for fun. Dancing for fun was inviting unnecessary injury, her mother, Eleanor, was probably thinking at this very moment. Breaking your body on a grand fouetté en tournant was the natural order. Tearing your ACL because you got knocked down by an errant twerker was unforgivably careless.

“To be denied the Zipper with a beautiful woman.” Blue sighed. “If we’re not going to dance yet, what will we talk about? You know I’m a programmer. But I’m not the least bit interested in what you do. Don’t even tell me.”

“Thank you.”

Blue appraised her for a moment, then asked, “How do you feel about houseplants?”

Lillian made small talk with her lovers. It was crass to suck on a woman’s vulva without first spending forty minutes discussing the weather and the best restaurants in town. (That was not one of her mother’s edicts, although maybe she’d agree in the alternate universe where Lillian talked to Eleanor about anything besides ballet.) The trick to hookup chat was to be friendly without saying anything. No connection. No shared moment. Houseplants were as safe a topic of conversation as any.

“I kill plants.” A dead ficus tree was waiting for her right now.

“Why would you do that?”

Because I travel all the time, and I’m never in LA, but when I am, there’s always this moment when I imagine what it’d be like to come back to a home, not just a house. So I buy a plant. A plant says home. Okay, maybe plants weren’t that safe a topic.

“I don’t kill them on purpose.” Lillian mimed giving Blue a playful swat.

“I have beautiful plants,” Blue said. “It says a lot about me.”

“What do your houseplants say about you?”

“Well.” Blue sat back. “I have great style. I take care of things. I don’t drop the ball.” She winced. “Usually. I like the ones people think are plain. Everything is beautiful if you appreciate it.”

“My mother collects hundred-dollar orchids.”

“No wonder you’re wearing ironed linen.”

That was on point.

“If we knew each other,” Lillian said, “I’d introduce you to my mother. If you suffered through hours of orchid talk, she’d give you one.”

“That’d be nice,” Blue said a little wistfully.

For no reason, that made Lillian ache. Those orchids were awful, all their delicate little needs and pollens and speckles that meant something if you cared about the difference between the dendrobiums and cymbidiums. If that made Blue happy, Lillian should ship her a crate of them.

After covering houseplants, Blue had a supply of odd but relatively innocuous small-talk questions. What was the weirdest billboard Lillian had ever seen? Which did she think was more interesting: praying mantises or dragonflies? Lillian had no opinion, but she gave Blue points for asking something no one had ever asked her about before.

“I like talking to people,” Blue said, a hint of shyness hovering behind her sultry smile.

When Lillian checked her phone to see if they’d talked for the requisite forty minutes, it had been two hours.

The music in the bar had cut to a slow song with 6/8 timing.

“One dance before we go?” Blue asked.

Blue’s hand was warm and strong as she pulled Lillian toward the dance floor. Before Lillian realized what was happening, Blue invited her into the first steps of a Viennese waltz. The other dancers cleared the floor. Lillian didn’t dance ballroom, but you couldn’t go through a lifetime of dance academies and not know the steps to a waltz. It probably wouldn’t have mattered; Blue’s grip was unwavering. Lillian felt warmth building as Blue guided Lillian’s legs with her own, her leg almost slipping between Lillian’s, teasing her. When the waltz was first choreographed, people had been shocked by that sensual closeness. They said it was erotic. They weren’t wrong.

“You know how to dance,” Lillian said.

“You do too.”

“You’re just a good lead.”

Blue trailed her fingers down Lillian’s neck, sending a shiver of pleasure down Lillian’s spine. As a turn of the waltz brought them close together, she brushed her lips over Lillian’s. When the waltz brought them together again, Blue slowed their pace and kissed her.

It felt like their first kiss, which of course it was. But the women Lillian slept with blended into one so nothing felt new, but this did. She was just being sentimental. Tired and sad (if she’d admit it to herself). This was almost certainly the last trip she’d take with the Reed-Whitmer Ballet Company. That ending made everything feel heavier than it should. She pushed the feeling aside and returned Blue’s kiss the next time the waltz swirled them together. She let her tongue ghost Blue’s lips. Blue stumbled. Lillian caught her.

“You’re strong,” Blue whispered.

The song ended. Lillian closed her eyes, her cheek resting against Blue’s hair. A hookup had to smell right. Blue’s perfume smelled like cloves and cherry or expensive suede. It fit her perfectly.

“Let’s go.” Blue bit the last word off like toffee.

Lillian’s hotel was a short walk away but she stopped at the door. She needed Blue’s fingers inside her. She wanted to see Blue arch in pleasure. Who would Blue be in that moment? The programmer with philodendrons or the seductress? Finding out would be as satisfying as the orgasm Lillian’s body yearned for. Strange. Lillian liked to make a woman come because it was challenging with a stranger, and she liked to win. But she was rarely curious about the women themselves.

“Just to be clear, I hook up with women when I travel,” Lillian said. “No strings. No phone numbers. No breakfast in the morning. I get a health check after every partner.”

“I do too,” Blue said.

A damp breeze wafted the smell of rain and concrete.

“I don’t mean I think hookups are cheap.” Lillian was taller than Blue. She gazed down at Blue’s eyes, the same midnight-ocean blue as her hair. “I just mean, I’m looking for a shooting star. Not the moon. No scones in the morning. Are you good with just one night?” She had to be sure. She cared about her lovers enough not to want to hurt them, but Blue, with her silly wink and floral drink and love of plants and textiles—what was it with the textiles?—she really didn’t want to hurt Blue.

“After we have sex,” Lillian said, “I’m going to ask you to leave. I don’t cuddle. I’m never going to buy a second bedside table. Not with anyone.”

God, that hurt when she really thought about it. So she didn’t.

“A second nightstand.” Blue looked adorably pleased with her pun.

Lillian touched Blue’s tattoo with her fingertips.

“I’m serious, Blue. Are you okay with never seeing each other again?”

“If I thought we’d have breakfast together…” Blue’s smile was suggestive and gentle. “I would have told you my real name.”