Flirting Lessons

Chapter Ten #2

“I wish I was still in bed with my new conquest, but she had to go to work, unfortunately, and so she very nicely kicked me out of her apartment early this morning, and I thought, ‘Who better to enjoy a surprise early Saturday morning with than my best friend Erica?’?”

“Who is this mystery woman?” Erica asked. “Where did you meet her? How did this happen? Has she professed her love for you yet? Tell me everything.”

“I will answer those questions in reverse order. No, she has not, as a matter of fact she said this morning that she knows I’m not ready for a relationship and that she isn’t, either. I met her a while ago, but for real earlier this summer. And the mystery woman is…Avery.”

Erica’s reaction could not have been better. Her eyes got huge, her mouth dropped open, and she clapped her hands.

“Don’t yell,” Taylor said before Erica could say anything.

Erica shut her mouth and nodded repeatedly for a few seconds, her eyes still wide.

“AVERY?!” she finally scream-whispered. “The hot girl you’ve been teaching how to hit on women all summer?”

Taylor couldn’t stop giggling.

“Yes, that Avery,” she said. “I only know one.”

“You finally gave in and hit on her? Or did you teach her so well that the student became the master?”

“It was a combination of the two, actually,” Taylor said, still giggling.

Erica dropped her hands to the table and leaned back in her chair.

“Okay, I’m going to stop asking questions if you’re just going to answer them in that cryptic way that makes me have more questions. I need you to start from the beginning and tell me the whole story.”

Taylor grinned.

“I made a…maybe slight tactical error—or an excellent choice, depending on your perspective—with my selection of a flirting lesson for last night. I told her that it was time for a midterm, and she had to flirt with me.”

Erica cackled until the server brought over their food. Taylor thanked him and glared at Erica.

“What is so funny?” she asked once he’d walked away.

Erica picked up her fork and knife.

“You are. Your test for a woman you’ve wanted to fuck all summer—and don’t tell me you haven’t—was that she had to flirt with you? They should have named you Taylor ‘Playing with Fire’ Cameron.” She paused, a neat triangle of pancake halfway to her mouth. “Someone who didn’t know you as well as I do would think you’d done that on purpose, that you’d set a trap all ready for her to walk right into. But you’re neither that crafty nor manipulative; you wouldn’t do something like that on purpose.”

“Thank you, I think?” Taylor said. She looked down at her breakfast. The potatoes at this place were always the precise amount of crispy she wanted them to be. It made her happy every time.

“You’re welcome,” Erica said, after she finished chewing her bite of pancake. “The incredible thing about you is that I’m sure you did this genuinely, you thought it would be a good little test for Avery, and you’d tell her at the end that she did a great job and give her a few pointers, and she’d get a great ego boost out of it and that would be that. Right?”

Taylor frowned at her.

“I mean, when you put it like that, it sounds like there was something wrong with it. Obviously there was, but I didn’t plan for it to go like that.”

Erica patted her on the hand in that slightly condescending way that she did.

“No, no, I know you didn’t, that’s the whole point. You didn’t plan for it to go like that, but literally anyone who has ever met you would know that’s exactly how it would go, that is, if this Avery had any game in the slightest, which I guess she did.”

Taylor thought back to the night before and grinned.

“She absolutely did, which I didn’t expect.”

Erica was already halfway through her second pancake.

“She learned from the best, so I’m not surprised. But also—you realize that this means that your goal for a no-drama summer is now lost for good, right? This woman is definitely going to fall for you.”

Taylor shook her head.

“She won’t! We talked about that this morning! I brought it up because I didn’t want the prospect of drama hanging over my head, and she laughed at me and said she wasn’t ready to date anyone yet and obviously I wasn’t, either, so that’s not what she wanted or expected. She even said she wanted to continue with the flirting lessons! Everything is fine.”

Erica reached across the table for a piece of Taylor’s toast, and smeared some strawberry jam on it.

“As you know, what people say and what they mean are often very different.”

Did Erica think she’d never interacted with a human being before? Or that she’d never had a difficult conversation with someone she’d just slept with? Of course, sometimes what people said and what they meant were very different, but that wasn’t the case here.

“I know that. I also know Avery. Look, I’ll check in with her again if it feels necessary, but I can usually tell when there are weird undertones to a conversation, and there weren’t to this one. Now, just be excited for me that I finally had sex again. I was getting deeply irritable. I don’t ever want that to happen again.”

Erica giggled again.

“God, neither do I.” Taylor glared at her, which just made her giggle harder. Then she shook herself, set down her coffee, and pulled an exaggerated straight face. “What I meant to say was ‘Oh wow, you were irritable? I hadn’t noticed.’?”

Taylor threw a piece of toast at Erica, who caught it and put more jam on it.

“Do you seriously believe that she’s totally fine with this being a one-night stand or whatever, and that she’s not all into you now? Because we’ve both seen it happen many times when a woman falls hard for the first woman she has sex with, and we both have experience with falling hard for our first, I’m just saying.”

Taylor found herself getting irritated again. Why did Erica have to ruin this nice, fun, good thing? She’d won the bet, couldn’t she just gloat about that and be done with it?

“This is different,” she said. “Avery is older than we were when we fell hard for our firsts. And she got out of a bad relationship recently, so I believe her when she said she’s not ready for something.”

“Oh, I’m sure she’s not ready for something, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t want something,” Erica said. “She couldn’t tell you that she has feelings for you, she knows you well enough to know that would be a disaster, but that doesn’t mean that she won’t want something more from you and make that very clear to you soon. Especially if you keep hanging out with her doing ‘flirting lessons’ and making her fall for you even more. And then we have to put the Taylor of it all into the picture, which means that I have a feeling that this isn’t going to be as easy and drama-free as you want it to be.”

Erica slipped into that condescending tone again, first when she’d talked about the flirting lessons, and then when she said “the Taylor of it all,” like Taylor had some sort of hypnotic power over women that made them fall for her and cause drama, or worse, like she was the one to cause the drama herself as if it were her goal. Erica should know Taylor too well to think that.

“Relax, it’s going to be fine. Avery’s not like that. We’ve spent a lot of time together this summer, we’re very honest with each other. I’m not concerned.”

“Fine,” Erica said, putting her hands up. “I get it, she’s perfect, everything’s perfect.”

Taylor wanted to push back and say that she hadn’t been saying that Avery was perfect or that everything was perfect, but couldn’t everything be just good? Was it too much to ask for Erica to be happy that things were good for Taylor? You know, her best friend? Did she have to make every small thing into a big one?

She stopped herself, though. She didn’t want to get into an argument with Erica today. She just wanted to have a nice, fun breakfast with her best friend and be in a post-sex good mood on a Saturday morning before she had to head to work.

“Thank you,” she said. Oh. She knew how to move the conversation back to a more relaxed tone. “Anyway.” She let out a big sigh. “When should we set the date for your…baby shower?”

Erica’s loud cackle made the whole restaurant stare at them again.

Avery could feel the bounce in her step as she walked to the garden on Sunday. She was such a fucking cliché, but she didn’t care. The sun was shining, she had the whole afternoon off, her coffee had tasted excellent this morning, and oh right, she’d had fantastic sex with Taylor Cameron two nights ago. The whole world seemed pink and shimmery.

That last thing might be because of her new pink sunglasses, but who cared? She’d worn them today for the first time, and she felt amazing in them. She felt amazing, period.

She wanted to shout to the whole world, I had sex! With a woman! And it was incredible! The movie version of her would do that, but the real Avery would never. The real Avery hadn’t even told Luke, her best friend of fifteen years.

Though she and Luke never really talked about sex—they had too much of a sibling-like relationship for that. Sure, they told each other when they started dating people, and Luke had told her that he’d had sex with Margot the night before he started work as her employee, but that was so wild that he’d had to tell her. But he hadn’t told her any of the details, and she was dying to talk to someone about the details of her night with Taylor.

She didn’t really have any other friends whom she could tell. She’d lost touch with most of her friends over the past few years, partly because of Derek, partly because of the pandemic, and, if she was being completely honest with herself, partly because of herself. She’d been depressed about the world and her relationship and ashamed to tell any of her friends how she felt, and she let too many texts and voicemails go unanswered, until they stopped coming. She didn’t blame her friends for that, and she wanted to see if she could rekindle those friendships, but she didn’t exactly think the way to get back in touch was to send a text saying, Are you around tonight for a phone call so I can tell you about how I had sex with a woman this weekend? Like, that would for sure get a response, but she was a little too shy to start off that way. Plus, she’d feel like an asshole only texting them to tell them about herself and not actually finding out how they were.

How did a person text a friend they hadn’t talked to in over a year? She made a mental note to figure that out after she got home from the garden.

She also wasn’t…exactly…quite so low-key about Taylor’s whole brush-off from Saturday morning as she’d pretended to be. She hadn’t lied to Taylor, she knew she wasn’t ready for a relationship, and she sure as hell knew Taylor didn’t want one. She’d given herself a lecture in the shower on Saturday morning about not making a big deal out of this, playing it cool, not getting too attached. But still, it stung a little that Taylor hadn’t fallen madly in love with her over the course of a night. Or even fallen madly in lust with her. But she was glad that Taylor had brought it up, and that they’d talked about it. She knew Friday night couldn’t happen again, but she wanted to stay friends with Taylor, and keep up the flirting lessons.

And she was really, really glad it happened.

When she got to the garden, she raced over to their plot to see what had changed in the past few days.

“Oh my God!” She let out a squeal as she looked at the jalapeno plant at the corner of their plot. They’d planted that pepper seedling together, and had nurtured it for weeks now. On Wednesday there had been a bunch of flowers on it, but suddenly, there were actual, tiny little peppers.

“What are we yelling about?” Beth said as she approached the plot. “Was that a good yell or a bad one, so I can prepare myself?”

“A good one, a good one!” Avery pointed to the pepper plant. “I just got here, but look! Look at all of these baby jalapenos!”

Beth came closer.

“Oh my God!” Beth yelled. Avery grinned at her, and Beth had a huge, equally dorky smile on her face that Avery could feel on her own.

“I know, right?” Avery looked back at the plant. “And there are so many of them!”

The older woman who had a plot a few rows away came over to them, probably confused by the yelling.

“Sorry,” Avery said. “We were just excited. By, um, the baby peppers.”

She looked at their peppers and smiled.

“Your first year?” she asked, and they both nodded. Her smile got bigger.

“Us old-timers get excited, too, about our first little baby vegetables. It’s a pity we started playing it cool at some point and don’t yell about it anymore. Keep yelling.”

She smiled at them again and walked back over to her plot. Avery and Beth looked at each other.

“Do you also feel like we got visited by the gardening fairy godmother?” Beth whispered to Avery.

Avery nodded.

“One hundred percent. I’ve always wanted to be visited by a fairy godmother. Who knew I just had to start gardening for it to happen?”

They grinned at each other, and then began their weeding from opposite corners of the plot. It was hard, hot work, and Avery distracted herself by thinking about Friday night and how excellent it had been. Excellent, unexpected, fun, and, surprisingly, very sweet. She’d expected Taylor to be good in bed, but she hadn’t anticipated that she would be so kind and thoughtful. When she’d said that thing about how inexperienced she was compared to Taylor, she really liked that Taylor didn’t deny it, or brush off her worries, but acknowledged them and made her feel better. After they’d moved to the bedroom, she’d been very nervous, which she was sure Taylor knew, and Taylor had managed to give her direction without making her feel bad or inept. And she’d been very complimentary afterward.

“Okay,” Beth said in her ear, making her jump. “That’s the third little chuckle you’ve let out in the last twenty minutes, and I know it wasn’t the little jalapenos this time, or the little radishes or the enormous fucking zucchini. What’s got you in such a good mood?”

Beth would be the perfect person to talk to about Taylor. She’d already told her about the flirting lessons; she would probably love to hear about what happened at the midterm.

Wait no, she barely knew Beth. She couldn’t tell her about this.

“Enormous zucchini?” Avery asked to buy some time. “Where? I haven’t gotten there yet.”

Beth grabbed her arm and pulled her over to their zucchini plant.

“You can’t see it at first, look under the leaves,” she said. “I was going to pick it, but I left it for you to see first.”

Avery pulled up a few leaves.

“That’s…the biggest…zucchini I’ve ever seen!” she said between gulps of laughter.

“I could say something very dirty about that vegetable right now, but I’m not going to do it,” Beth said. “See how I’m restraining myself from saying that it would be just an incredible dildo? Shit, I said it, didn’t I?”

Avery giggled and nodded.

“You sure did.”

Beth reached for the zucchini and snapped it off the plant so quickly that Avery gasped, then giggled again.

“Wow, I am really acting like a teenager today, aren’t I?” Avery said. “I swear, I’m not usually like this. Um, did you know that zucchini—and all squash, actually—are fruits, not vegetables?”

Beth nodded.

“I did know that, just like I know you haven’t answered my question about why you’re in such a good mood.”

Avery shrugged.

“Oh, it’s nothing, I’m just…” Her voice trailed off as she looked at Beth’s face. Could she tell her?

“What are you doing after this?” she asked.

Beth’s eyes got big.

“Having drinks with you?”

“You sure are.”

The rest of their time at the garden, as they weeded and deadheaded and plucked hidden zucchini from underneath leaves and chatted with other gardeners, Avery had mingled excitement and anxiety dancing around her stomach. Should she really tell Beth about Friday night with Taylor? At this point, she’d committed, hadn’t she?

Well, she didn’t have to tell her. If she changed her mind, she could tell Beth that she was sorry, she couldn’t get drinks after all, and leave quickly, and next week she could make up some story.

But she didn’t want to do that. She wanted to tell Beth, even though she didn’t know her all that well, even though she was nervous about telling her, even though she wasn’t in the habit of talking to anyone about stuff like this. She wanted to be different, remember? More open with people?

Beth had been so encouraging when she’d told her about the flirting lessons with Taylor, and she hadn’t acted like Avery was weird or her growth as a person was stunted for not knowing everything already. Maybe Beth would be weird about this, though? That was possible. But that’s what taking risks was, right? Learning how to deal with it if you weren’t completely sure of the outcome? God, that still sounded terrible. But maybe slightly less scary than it had?

After about forty-five minutes, Beth appeared at Avery’s shoulder as Avery was frowning over the stunted cilantro plant.

“What’s wrong?” she said when she saw Avery’s face.

“This cilantro! It doesn’t look like it’s supposed to. I don’t know what we did wrong.”

“It’s gone to seed,” James said as she walked by their plot. “It’s the heat. Cilantro is more of a fall plant here; it’s too hot and dry in our summers for it. You didn’t do anything wrong. Plant more in a month or so.”

“Thanks,” Avery said. James nodded briskly and kept walking.

“Forget about the cilantro!” Beth said. “We have more important things to discuss! I’m dying of curiosity here.”

Avery bit her lip. Okay. She was going to do this.

“I hope my story is worth all of this. But let’s go.”

Beth turned to Avery once they got into Beth’s car. Avery didn’t even wait for her to say anything.

“I slept with Taylor on Friday night.”

Beth squealed.

“AHHHHHHHH I KNEW IT!” Her face filled with glee, and she clapped like a seal. “Wait, I need all the details. Where can we go?”

Avery thought for a minute. They couldn’t go anywhere she might run into anyone she’d known forever, nor could they go anywhere she might run into Taylor or any of her friends. Hmm.

“Okay, this is a little random, but there’s a champagne place about fifteen minutes away that I’ve been wanting to go to. And I don’t think I know anyone who works there.”

Beth started the car.

“Perfect, I love champagne. Just tell me how to get there. And don’t say anything else until we’re there, I need to concentrate on this story.”

Twenty minutes later, they were seated in the corner of the restaurant’s patio with a glass of champagne in front of each of them and a plate piled with thin, crisp, golden french fries in the middle of the table.

“To having that kind of smile on your face,” Beth said, and raised her glass.

Avery laughed and raised hers, too.

“Now,” Beth said after she took a sip. “Tell me everything.”

So Avery told her. Not quite everything, but almost. She didn’t tell her about the way Taylor’s eyes had looked when she’d taken her clothes off, or how nervous and excited she’d been to undress Taylor, or about her anxieties about going down on Taylor. But she told her a lot.

And Beth’s reactions could not have been more satisfying. Her eyes got big when Taylor said it was a flirting midterm. She gasped when Taylor said, Now is when you kiss me , and she let out a little squeal when they got back to Avery’s apartment. By the time Avery finished, Beth had a huge smile on her face.

“Okay, I have many questions,” she said, “but first, can we toast to this incredible first queer sex experience for you? It was incredible, wasn’t it? No, I don’t even have to ask that, I can see it in your face, let’s toast.” She held up her glass.

Avery giggled again.

“I’ll toast to that.”

Beth took a gulp of her drink and then grabbed a handful of fries.

“First question: Why are you here, with me, and not still in bed with her? I mean yes, the garden is very exciting in August, I wouldn’t have wanted you to miss that zucchini, but I have a feeling Taylor offers a few more attractions.”

Avery let herself think about that for a moment. Let herself imagine what it would have been like to spend all weekend in bed with Taylor. That sounded…heavenly.

She reached for some french fries to bring herself back to earth. She’d barely eaten any, she’d been so busy talking.

“I had work all day yesterday, and Taylor is…Taylor. She checked in with me yesterday morning, and we agreed that neither of us wanted a relationship. But we’re still—”

Beth set her glass down.

“Wait. She brought this up already? Did you even have clothes on yet? Of course you agreed, she had the upper hand! I can’t believe her. Just because she’s more experienced doesn’t mean she’s allowed to be an asshole about it!”

Avery had the strange urge to give Beth a hug. The only person who had ever flown to her defense like that was Luke. It wasn’t necessary, but still.

“No, seriously, it was okay. Truly. I know I’m not ready for another relationship yet. Even if I was, I don’t think it should be with someone like Taylor.” Beth was looking at her doubtfully, so she kept talking. “I swear, I’m not upset. I never expected Taylor to want any more than sex. And I don’t want any more than that with her; anyone who gets serious about Taylor is asking to be crushed in the end. I’m glad we already talked about this so that things wouldn’t be weird between us.”

It must be so stressful to be in a relationship with Taylor. She knew Taylor too well at this point; she knew how it would go. The many women who’d had their hearts broken by Taylor could probably fill a convention hall; she didn’t want to be part of that number.

Beth looked relieved and took another handful of french fries.

“Good, I take back my rage at her. I will no longer plot to destroy her. And I’m very pleased that she gave you some great orgasms.” Beth raised her champagne glass to Avery again. “I know, I know, you didn’t tell me the details, but I could tell by the way you talked about it and that smug smile on your face.”

Avery felt the smug smile creep back and couldn’t help but shrug.

“Well, I mean…all I can say is, to many more.” She lifted her glass and touched it to Beth’s.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Beth said. She raised an eyebrow. “Okay, but that brings up another question. Are you going to do it again? With her, I mean. I know you don’t want a relationship, but no one said you had to have a relationship to have good sex.”

Avery made a face.

“In my experience, once you have a relationship, all you have is bad sex, which is yet another reason I’m in no hurry to get into another relationship.”

Beth shook her head.

“Oh, honey. We need to talk about your relationships at some point, and yes, it’s probably good for you to wait awhile. Also, you didn’t answer the question.”

Avery shook her head.

“No, it was pretty clear that she didn’t think we should do it again, and I don’t, either. It would make things too complicated, and I don’t think I could really do a friends-with-benefits thing with her. But we’re still doing the flirting lessons—I want to get better at this, and I definitely want to kiss more women.” Avery couldn’t believe she’d said that out loud, but Beth just lifted her second glass of champagne to her. “I hope she keeps introducing me to her cute friends so I get a chance to do it again with someone .”

“Don’t worry, I have no doubt about that,” Beth said. “Who wouldn’t want to have sex with you? You’re hot, you’re smart, you’re fun, you’re the whole package.”

Avery held back her sigh. People always said this about her. Yet it was hard to believe them, since no one ever wanted to sleep with her.

Well. Taylor had.

Avery felt that smug smile spread across her face again.

“What are you smiling about now ?” Beth asked.

Avery laughed, slightly embarrassed, but only slightly.

“Because I was going to roll my eyes at you and say, ‘Then why does no one ever actually want to have sex with me in real life?’ But then I remembered—”

“Someone did!” Beth finished for her. “And mark my words, that someone still does.”

“Why do you think that?” Avery asked. Not rhetorically, she really wanted to know.

“Because of everything you told me,” Beth said. “Yeah, she kind of blew you off, but she was also into it. Wasn’t she?”

Avery didn’t have to think about that. Even with her general insecurity about everything sex and relationship related, she knew the answer to that.

“Yeah,” she said. “She was.”

Beth nodded.

“Even if you two don’t sleep together again, she still wants you.”

Avery hoped Beth was right. Because she sure as hell still wanted Taylor. At least no matter what happened between them in the future, she’d know she’d already had her.

That would probably give her more confidence than any possible flirting lesson could.