Chapter 10 #2
“No. It’s not.” Melissa took a long drink of wine. “But fairness isn’t really the point, is it? The point is to make me look bad. To make people question whether I’m doing this for the good of the people, or for myself.”
June was quiet for a moment. “For what it’s worth, I think you handle pressure better than anyone I’ve ever met.”
Melissa looked up at her, eyes still so, so tired. “You barely know me.”
“I know you well enough.” June turned on her stool, facing Melissa fully.
“I know you go in and kiss Lila goodbye when she’s sleeping every morning, even when you’re running late.
I know you hum when you think no one’s listening, but you only do it when you’re happy.
I know you pretend you don’t like sugar in your coffee because you think it’s undignified, but that you really prefer it with.
” She paused. “I know you’re harder on yourself than anyone else ever could be.
And I know that whatever your ex-husband says about you, it’s not the truth. ”
Melissa stared at her. The kitchen was very quiet, just the faint tick of the oven timer counting down the brownies.
“How do you do that?” Melissa asked softly.
“Do what?”
“See me. The real me, not the—” She gestured vaguely. “Not the version I show everyone else.”
“Maybe because I’m not everyone else. And because I’m here when you’re not her.”
The words hung between them. June’s heart was pounding now, loud in her ears, and she knew she should say something to break the tension, to pull them back to safer ground.
She didn’t.
“My marriage was hollow from the start,” Melissa said.
“I didn’t see it then. I thought we were in love, thought we wanted the same things.
But Michael—he wanted a certain kind of wife.
Someone who would support his ambitions, not have her own.
Look pretty on his arm, but be quiet and not contradict him…
and definitely not be more successful than him.
” She laughed bitterly. “The affair was almost a relief, honestly. It gave me a reason to leave that people could understand.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m not, anymore. But the shame—” Melissa’s voice cracked. “The shame of having my private life dissected in public. Of knowing that everyone was reading about my husband’s infidelity and wondering what I’d done to drive him to it. That doesn’t go away.”
June reached out without thinking and covered Melissa’s hand with her own. Melissa’s fingers were cold, trembling.
“You didn’t do anything,” June said. “He made a choice. That was about him, not you.”
“I know that. Intellectually.” Melissa turned her hand over, and suddenly they were holding hands, palm to palm, fingers intertwined. “But there’s always a part of me that wonders. If I’d been different. If I’d been… enough.”
“You are enough.” The words came out fierce, certain. “You’re more than enough.”
Melissa’s eyes met hers, and June saw something vulnerable there. Something raw and unguarded in a way Melissa never allowed herself to be.
“Before I moved back home,” June said softly, “I was with someone. Her name was Ember.”
Melissa’s expression shifted—curiosity, maybe, or something else. She didn’t pull her hand away.
“She was older than me. More experienced. She worked in the restaurant where I was training, and she seemed to have everything figured out. I thought she was…” June searched for the right word. “I thought she was everything I wanted to be. Confident. Talented. Fearless.”
“What happened?”
“She cheated on me. With the head chef. And when I confronted her, she told me it was my fault for being naive. For expecting loyalty in a kitchen, like that was some ridiculous thing to want.” June’s voice was steady, but her hand tightened on Melissa’s.
“She said I was too soft. Too much. That I wanted things that didn’t exist in the real world. ”
“She was wrong.”
“Maybe. But I believed her for a long time. I left because I couldn’t stand to be in the same city as her, couldn’t stand to see her and wonder if she was right about me.” June paused. “I’m still figuring out what I want. Who I want to be. I’m not there yet.”
June felt exposed in a way she hadn’t in months—years, maybe. She’d told Melissa more than she’d told her own mother about what had happened with Ember. She’d let her see the wound that was still healing.
Melissa’s thumb traced a slow circle against June’s palm. “I don’t think any of us know who we are. I definitely don’t.”
“I thought you knew exactly who you are,” June said, the words coming out with a breathless quality.
“Appearances can be deceiving.”
The oven timer went off.
Neither of them moved.
“The brownies,” June said finally, but she didn’t stand up. Didn’t let go of Melissa’s hand.
“Let them burn.”
And then Melissa was kissing her.
Later, June would try to remember who moved first. Whether Melissa leaned in or June did. Whether there was a moment of hesitation, of last-chance pulling back.
There wasn’t.
One moment they were sitting at the kitchen island, hands intertwined, the air between them charged with everything they weren’t saying. The next, Melissa’s mouth was on hers, and June’s world narrowed to a single point of contact.
Melissa kissed like she did everything else—deliberately, thoroughly, with complete focus.
Her free hand came up to cup June’s jaw, tilting her head for a better angle, and June heard herself make a sound she’d never made before.
A soft gasp, half surprise and half relief, like she’d been holding her breath for weeks and finally remembered how to exhale.
She tasted like wine and something sweeter underneath, something that was just Melissa. Her lips were soft, softer than June had imagined—and she had imagined, late at night in her room down the hall, telling herself it was just a fantasy, just a harmless what-if that would never go anywhere.
June’s hands found Melissa’s waist, pulling her closer, and Melissa responded by deepening the kiss. Her tongue traced June’s lower lip, tentative and questioning, and June opened for her without hesitation.
The kitchen fell away. The brownies, the wine glasses, the carefully maintained distance they’d been keeping for weeks—all of it dissolved into sensation.
The slide of Melissa’s fingers into June’s hair.
The press of her body as she shifted off her stool and moved closer.
The small, desperate sound she made when June pulled her in tighter.
June had been kissed before. By Ember, who kissed like a conquest. By girls in college, fumbling and uncertain.
This was different. This was Melissa Brandt, state senator and single mother and the most complicated woman June had ever met, kissing her like she was something precious. Something worth being careful with.
It was terrifying. It was perfect.
When they finally pulled apart, both of them were breathing hard. Melissa’s lipstick was smeared, her hair disheveled, her eyes dark and wide.
“I—” Melissa started.
“Don’t.” June pressed a finger to her lips. “Don’t apologize. Don’t tell me it was a mistake.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Good.” June lowered her hand, let it rest against Melissa’s collarbone. She could feel Melissa’s pulse hammering beneath her fingertips, rabbit-fast. “Because I’ve wanted you to do that for weeks.”
Melissa’s breath caught. “June—”
“I know.” June held her gaze.
Melissa was quiet for a long moment. The oven timer had stopped beeping at some point—June couldn’t remember when—and the kitchen was silent except for their breathing.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Melissa said finally. “I’ve never—” She stopped, shook her head. “I don’t know what this means. What I want it to mean.”
“You don’t have to know. Not tonight.” She paused, licking her lips. “Just… just as long as I’m not just some… experiment you hide away.”
“You’re many things, June Hollis,” Melissa said softly. “But not an experiment.” She pushed a stray strand of hair out of June’s face. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Then don’t.”
Melissa laughed—a real laugh, surprised and almost helpless. “You sound like a twenty-year-old.”
”Twenty-three.”
“You’re so young,” Melissa said on an exhale.
June grinned. “I’ve been told I’m wise for my years.”
That drew a smile from Melissa.
“We can figure it out.” June cupped Melissa’s face in her hand, a gesture that was almost more intimate than the kissing. “Together. If you want.”
“I want.” The words came out rough, unsteady. “God help me, I want.”
June kissed her again. Softer this time, slower, a promise more than a question. Melissa melted into it, her hands sliding around June’s waist, and for a long moment they just held each other in the quiet kitchen, the smell of overdone brownies filling the air.
“The brownies,” June murmured against Melissa’s lips.
“I told you to let them burn.”
“They’re Lila’s favorite.”
Melissa sighed, but she was smiling when she pulled back. “Fine. Save the brownies.”
June reluctantly extracted herself and went to rescue the pan from the oven. They were dark around the edges but salvageable—chewy, the way Lila liked them. She set them on the cooling rack and turned back to find Melissa watching her with an expression she couldn’t quite read.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just—” Melissa shook her head. “You’re remarkable. You know that?”
“I’m really not.”
“You are.” Melissa stood, crossing to where June stood by the counter. She didn’t touch her, but she was close enough that June could feel the warmth of her. “You’re kind, and patient, and you see things other people miss. You’ve changed my daughter’s life already this summer. You’ve changed mine.”
“Melissa—”
“I don’t know what this is,” Melissa said quietly. “I don’t know where it’s going. But I know I don’t want to go back to before. To pretending I don’t feel what I feel when I look at you.”
June’s heart was pounding again. “What do you feel?”
Melissa raised a hand, traced the line of June’s jaw with her fingertips. “Like I’ve been asleep for a very long time. And you woke me up.”
It was the most romantic thing anyone had ever said to her. June felt tears prick at her eyes—ridiculous, she was not going to cry—and she blinked them back.
“We should go to bed,” Melissa said. “It’s late. And tomorrow—”
“I know.”
“But I meant what I said. All of it.”
“I know.” June caught her hand, pressed a kiss to her palm. “Goodnight, Melissa.”
“Goodnight, June.”
Melissa left, her footsteps quiet on the stairs. June stood alone in the kitchen, surrounded by the evidence of their evening—wine glasses, empty plates, a pan of cooling brownies—and pressed her fingers to her lips.
She could still taste Melissa. Still feel the ghost of her hands in June’s hair, her body pressed close, her breath mingling with June’s.
This is going to be an adventure, she thought.
She hoped she wouldn’t regret it.