Chapter 15
Julia
Ichoked on my own spit.
“Um, did you just say you want to trade me cooking lessons for orgasms?”
“Yeah.”
So it hadn’t been wishful thinking then. The little smirk on her face was adorable. Sexy even. She liked that she’d surprised me. I liked it too.
My mind went careening back to the hot scene in the living room when I’d first arrived.
I’d never had something like that happen to me before.
She’d taken one look at me and had to have me, and I’d felt the same.
We hadn’t been able to get each other naked fast enough, and I came so hard I thought I was going to black out.
I was turning into a damned nymphomaniac around this woman, because every time I’d seen her since we first fucked last Friday the only thing I could think of was sex. Hot, sweaty, mind altering sex. And now she was proposing more sex? Sign me up.
Resisting the urge to fan myself, I leaned forward to study Chris’s face. Seeing that she was serious, I decided to go for broke. But broke included me being honest about my own feelings.
“Can I be honest?”
“I wish you would,” she replied.
“I’m confused. I’ve never had sex that’s like this.
It’s… I don’t even know how to describe it.
And after last weekend I’ve been like a junkie all week, craving another hit.
Of you. But it’s not just the sex. The thing is…
” I paused and took a bracing breath. “I don’t just like you as a sexual being. I like you as a person too.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I’d like us to be friends.”
I could have sworn that I saw a flash of disappointment on her face before she schooled her expression.
“Just friends?”
I shook my head and gave her a sly smile. “I wouldn’t be opposed to friends with benefits.”
“That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement,” she said drily.
“Okay, I’m just going to put myself out there then and tell you what I want. I want to be friends. I want to have sex. Lots of sex. I like you more than I thought I would, and I love fucking you, so let’s hang out, fool around, and see what happens.”
She was quiet for so long I thought for sure she was going to shoot me down. I waited patiently, recognizing that unlike me she wasn’t a verbal processor. Chris needed a few minutes to think, and I gave it to her, sitting quietly and finishing up my dinner.
“I’d like that too,” she finally said.
Something inside me settled, like I’d been holding my breath or something, but I didn’t want to analyze why Chris’s answer was so important to me.
“So what happens now?” I asked.
“You wanna watch a movie or something?”
Her question caught me by surprise. “What?”
Chris shrugged, and I detected a tinge of pink on her cheeks. “It’s just that if we’re going to be friends, we should do some friend things.”
“Like get drunk on tequila at the local bar?” I teased.
“Well, maybe let’s not do that again for a while. If ever. But watching movies, having dinner, going to concerts or festivals, hiking, those are the kind of things I do with my other friends.”
“Okay, we can do that,” I agreed.
God knows I needed to give my vagina a little break before we went at it again. We hadn’t exactly been gentle with each other earlier.
“What kind of movies do you like?” Chris asked after we’d loaded the dishwasher, put away the leftovers, and transitioned to the couch.
I looked around at Chris’s place, having been a little too preoccupied earlier to do so.
It was pretty basic. Kind of plain. It reminded me of one of those short-term stay places that business people rented.
It didn’t have a lot of personality. Maybe she’d moved in recently and hadn’t had time to decorate yet?
“How long have you lived here?”
“A couple of years. Why?”
“You don’t have any pictures anywhere. Or artwork,” I pointed out. “Your walls are empty. Other than the TV.”
“I’m not big on decorating.”
“Hmm, okay.” I plopped down on the couch and patted the cushion next to me. “Let’s talk movies. You like romantic comedies, right?”
I burst out laughing at the look of disgust on Chris’s face.
“No? Let me guess. You like gruesome true crime stories?”
She shook her head.
“I like the franchise superhero movies. I love a good cozy mystery. I like medical dramas like The Pitt and Grey’s Anatomy.” Chris paused, then mumbled, “I liked Heated Rivalry.”
I blinked in surprise. “You like gay hockey shows?”
“No, just this one.”
“Okay, have you seen that new vampire bodyguard show? The one based on those Sapphic Security lesbian romance books?” I asked. “It’s supposed to be pretty funny. And hot.”
“No, I haven’t seen that yet.”
“I heard that Lila has a cameo on the show.”
Lila was a super famous rock star who lived here in Seattle when she wasn’t on tour.
She’d made headlines a few years ago when she fell in love with her personal assistant.
The last I heard the two of them were happily married.
I didn’t know either of them personally, but I knew that they were in the same friend group as some of my boss Gina’s friends.
Seattle was a small city, after all, and the lesbian population was pretty tight.
“Sapphic Security sounds great,” Chris said, already flipping through the streaming menu to look for the program.
I popped up to grab my purse, pulling out my current knitting project.
“You’re going to knit while we watch the show?” she asked.
“Yeah I, uh, I don’t know if you know this, but I have ADHD. I’ve learned that my brain can focus better if I keep my hands occupied or otherwise move my body.”
I wasn’t sure why I felt weird about telling Chris that I was neurodivergent. It wasn’t that unusual, and I certainly couldn’t help how my brain was wired. But I hadn’t really talked about it with anyone other than my closest friends.
“I guess that explains why you were always so twitchy back when we were in school,” she said, her voice kind. “I remember that you were always jiggling or messing with your pen in class. Although you still do that sometimes.”
“I take meds and I’ve done some occupational therapy to help me manage symptoms,” I said. “But honestly, just having a fidget spinner or a knitting project goes a long way for helping me focus.”
Chris started the first episode of the show, and to my surprise, she slid closer to me on the couch, putting her arm around my shoulders.
“Is this okay?” she asked, her eyes fixed on the screen. “Can you still do your knitting?”
“Yeah, I didn’t peg you for a snuggler though,” I said as I relaxed against her. “I’m not sad about it though.”
We watched two episodes of the show, stopping in between to grab water and use the restroom before cozying up on the couch again.
It was a fun show about lesbian vampires who found their human mates while working as their bodyguards.
Their foul-mouthed wolf shifter boss Lois was the best part of the show though, she was hilarious.
“Do you want to stay over tonight?” Chris asked as the credits rolled on the second episode. “I promise that my mother doesn’t have a key to my apartment.”
“Does anyone else?” I asked.
“My two best friends, Marlee and April, do but they’d never intrude on my privacy,” she said.
“In that case, let’s head to bed.”
***
“How’s it going with your new squeeze?” Robbie asked as we walked up the street to the bar where we were meeting the rest of the team for an after-work happy hour.
I scheduled these once a quarter to give the team a chance to connect outside of work. They were always voluntary after hours events, and of course no drinking was required. My team was pretty tight, and generally most of them attended.
Robbie knew I was seeing someone, but she didn’t know who it was. I’d kept that information private.
“It’s going okay,” I said. “We’ve been spending a lot of time together, mostly on the weekends.”
“How long has it been?”
“Uh, about six weeks maybe?”
It had been six weeks since we’d first hooked up, five weeks since we’d agreed to be friends with benefits. Except that friends with benefits looked exactly like dating, even though neither of us had admitted it.
It had been going well too. Better than I ever would have imagined.
Maybe not having the pressure of putting the dating label on our relationship helped, I wasn’t sure.
All I knew was that not only was I becoming good friends with my childhood nemesis, but I was also quickly developing feelings for her.
Big feelings. That should have scared me to death, but for some reason it didn’t.
“At least your mother isn’t on your ass about getting a girlfriend, that must be a relief.”
“Yeah, except now she’s pestering me about us getting married! Can you believe it? Any other parent would be like, You’d better date for a year or two to be sure, but not mine. I swear that she and Mrs. Robbins are picking out china patterns.”
“No one wants china anymore. It just sits around collecting dust.”
I laughed. “Yeah.”
“Do you think this is your forever relationship?”
There was something wistful in Robbie’s voice that made me curious that something was awry in her love life, but as her supervisor, I didn’t want to pry.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to enjoy it while I can.”