Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

Reid

At least fifteen times today I’d opened up a message to tell Sophie that I wasn’t coming over. That I couldn’t do this little sapphic mentor thing with her.

And then I’d found myself mixing some fruity drinks and pounding my elbow on her door at exactly the time I’d told her I’d be there. I couldn’t really explain why I had walked into her apartment and was going along with this. Curiosity?

I guess?

Sophie was obviously stressed out about this, shifting on the couch and taking constant little sips of her drink and fiddling with things.

“How about we start with conversation?” I wasn’t going to tell her this, but I might have looked up a few things online so if she didn’t have a full plan for this, I had something to say. A direction to go in.

Sophie nodded and set her drink down. “Okay.”

“Do you want me to go for it?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

She really needed to chill out. I wanted to put my hands on her shoulders and tell her to take at least ten deep breaths. But that would require me to touch her and I wasn’t going to do that.

“Before we do that, how about we just kind of…shake it out.” I raised my hands and shook my hands and wiggled my shoulders, feeling like a fool. I knew I looked like one, but she followed my lead and did the same.

“Listen, you’re going to be fine. You’re not being graded on this. If you strike out, then that just means it wasn’t the right person for you. People will be drawn to you if you’re secure in yourself.” There was a difference between knowing who you were and putting up a confident front to hide your insecurities.

Sophie nodded and then I realized she had a notebook. She was taking notes. That was so damn cute.

Her handwriting was a messy scrawl, but that was cute too.

“Let’s pretend we’re at a bar and you see me, and you want to approach me.” I picked up my drink and sipped it. “What would you say?”

Sophie opened her mouth and then closed it. “Can’t I just…wait for someone to approach me? Do I have to do all the work?”

I snorted. “I mean, you don’t have to always be the one going up to people, but I think it’s a good place to start. Even if you don’t use it, you’ll still know that you could.”

She let out a long breath. “Okay. That makes sense.”

Sophie stood up and walked a few steps away and then came back.

“Hi, um, is that drink good?” She stopped and looked down at me and shrugged.

I decided to go along with it. “It is. I’d definitely recommend it. Are you here with someone or are you flying solo?”

“Oh, um, I’m here by myself.”

I put my hand out. “I’m Reid. Would you like to sit down? I’d be happy to order you one.”

Sophie sat and her eyes were intent on my face.

“Yeah, that sounds good,” she breathed.

“And scene,” I said, slashing my hand between us. “That wasn’t a bad first try.” It hadn’t been. I’d expected much worse.

“I just…I feel like I tell myself what I’m going to say ahead of time and then I see someone, and I forget everything.” She clutched her hands in her lap. “I’m kind of a disaster.”

“You’re not a disaster, Sophie. You’re just a late bloomer. I know that sounds like an insult, but it’s not. You’re just figuring things out later than some people do. There’s no shame in that. Some people are so scared of stepping out of their comfort zone that they never even try. You’re trying.”

Her cheeks went pink instead of red and she bit back a smile.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Do you want to try again? Or we could just talk?”

“No, I want to give it another shot.”

So we did. The next time she was a little more confident, still a little awkward, but it worked for her. So many people would find her charming and would want to buy her a drink or take her out and make her laugh and blush.

After a few more tries, including when she attempted a terrible pickup line, she had a cupcake and asked me what was in the drink that I’d made. I told her and she wrote down the recipe to keep in her phone.

“You know, I don’t really date,” I told her after I’d had my third cupcake. I couldn’t stop eating them. They were so rich and the frosting was absolutely fluffy and perfect.

“Is there a reason for that?” she asked as she leaned back on the couch, facing me.

I pressed my lips together. I guess we were talking about this. It was kind of inevitable.

“Yup. Bad breakup.”

She cringed. “Sorry.”

I waved her off and licked some frosting off my finger. “Not your fault. I mean I’ve gone out with people since then, I haven’t been completely on my own, but I don’t feel the need to get into another serious relationship. I’m good by myself.”

I’d said those words who knew how many times to Cade and Hunter. They were even worse now that they were deliriously happy.

“Two of my best friends are both in love and the pressure for me to pair up just like them is intense,” I admitted. I hadn’t told anyone that. At least I had Jo, but she was so busy with school that she rarely had time for me either.

Sophie frowned. “I’m sorry. That must be hard. And I’m guessing that your friendships have changed now that they’re in committed relationships.” That was true.

“I’m happy for them. I really am. I feel like an asshole for missing them.” I hadn’t told them that either.

“I know what you mean. It’s not the same, but my best friend Larison moved away for school and I know it was for the best for her and her daughter, but it still sucks. A lot.” She frowned and looked at her empty glass.

“Want me to make another drink?” I asked, mostly to extricate myself from the uncomfortable turn this conversation had taken.

“Sure. Use whatever you want,” she said, getting up and following me into the kitchen.

“Let’s see what we’re working with.” I opened the fridge and she had lots of things, including grenadine. Excellent.

I paired some lime seltzer water with some pineapple juice and some grenadine. It wasn’t the best thing I could do on the fly, but it would work.

“You’re really good at that,” Sophie said.

“Thank you. You’d think that after mixing drinks all we I’d want to turn it off, but my brain just kind of does it now without me knowing what’s happening.”

We had our second rounds of drinks in the kitchen and Sophie was biting her lip again.

“Something you wanna say?” I asked.

“Okay, but you can’t be mad.”

I raised my eyebrows. “I’m going to need more information before I decide if I’m going to be mad or not.”

I had no idea what the hell she was going to say. It could be anything from she stole the hair from my hairbrush and made a doll out of it to she accidentally grabbed a piece of my mail and opened it.

“So, uh, when I was waiting for Tyler, I took a look at your bookshelves and then I may, I mean, I did , take pictures of your shelves so I could see what books we had in common and maybe add some books to my Tbr. I’m sorry if that’s weird.” She’d stepped back from me and cringed, as if she was bracing for impact.

“I was expecting something way worse. That’s not that bad. I mean, I would have let you, if you’d asked.” It wasn’t an outrageous request. “But now I want to look at your bookshelves.”

Sophie followed me over to the wall where she had three shelves shoved together. They were stuffed with books and a few other knickknacks, including some pictures of her. One of her and Kaylee posing together when they were younger made me gut clench. I quickly looked away. Things like that were going to happen if and when I hung out with Sophie. They were inevitable and I was going to have to deal with it.

Books. Back to the books.

Doing a quick scan, we did have a lot of books in common. A shocking amount.

“I loved this one,” I said, pulling one thick volume off the shelf.

“Mmm, me too,” she said. “I was into sapphic romance for a while before I came out. In fact, those books are kind of why I figured things out.”

I turned around to face her. “Really?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I got absolutely sucked into this one series and it was eating up my life and I’d never been captivated by characters that way before. They were all I thought about. And I was also reading a lot of fanfic too. I’d always read slash and avoided anything with a whiff of sapphic in it and then I watched this show and decided to go for it, and I was hooked. It’s a miracle I got through the semester with good grades, honestly. I’d been missing Larison and Juniper so much that I needed something comforting and I guess that was what I turned to and one night I was thinking about my favorite fanfic and then I was crying. I don’t know. It all hit me at once.” She leaned against the bookshelf as if she was tired.

“That sounds rough,” I told her.

She laughed. “It was. It was really rough. I ended up calling Larison in the middle of the night and she talked me through it. She’s bi, so she got it.”

I nodded. “I’m glad she was there for you.”

Her smile was small, but it was there. “Me too. She’s the best friend I could ever ask for.”

Sophie hadn’t called her sister. I didn’t know if I should read anything into that or not. I decided not to think about it.

“So the books and the fanfic made you gay, huh?” I said, and that earned me a real smile that made my skin feel too tight and a little hot. Like I’d been out in the sun.

“Pretty much. What about you?”

“Uh, same? Kind of? I saw a movie and even though the two women didn’t end up together, I couldn’t stop thinking that they should have and that kind of led to a bunch of other things and I came out in high school.” Just before I’d started going out with Kaylee. Not only was she my most intense relationship, she’d been my first. First everything.

“You know, I really think we should start going door-to-door with sapphic books and try and convert people to lesbianism,” she said, her eyes lit up.

I threw my head back and laughed. “Have you heard of our lady and savior Sappho?”

We both lost it at that, and I discovered something terrible. I liked her. I enjoyed spending time with Sophie. Being with her wasn’t awful.

It would’ve been so much easier if I could hate her.