CHAPTER 21
Larissa shook her head as she packed lunch for Harlow. The waffles were done, and she’d made sure they hadn’t overtoasted in the toaster, which she had yet to master, despite it being hers and also the fact that she had an advanced degree and was well on her way to another one.
She’d woken up with her arm around Harlow.
Not just that; she’d woken up with her arm under Harlow’s breasts, and with her hand dangerously close to cupping one of them.
What had her sleeping body done? She remembered Harlow putting her legs in her lap, and she remembered running her hands up and down them, which wasn’t a common thing with them, but it had happened before.
She’d even given Harlow the occasional foot massage from time to time after she had worked a long day or just needed one.
It hadn’t felt different when Harlow had put her legs in her lap, but she remembered looking over at her when This Used to Be My Playground by Madonna had started playing at the end of the movie and noticing that Harlow had been asleep.
Larissa had tried to wake her up gently by patting her stomach, but Harlow had been out.
Not wanting to disturb her in the middle of an important sleep phase, Larissa had planned a slow escape, but said plan had involved her somehow getting out from under her best friend, around the coffee table, and not hitting the empty beer bottles or stepping on the chip bag that she’d placed by her feet after grabbing it from the kitchen during the movie.
She hadn’t been sure she would make it without waking Harlow, and she remembered a yawn.
Then, she remembered the song from the credits starting to lull her to sleep.
That was it; that was all she remembered.
At some point during the night, she’d moved to lie down behind Harlow, and not only that, but she had reached for her.
She’d pressed herself against Harlow’s back, and when she had woken up, she had breathed in Harlow’s scent.
Harlow smelled of laundry detergent from her shirt and a little of her pink citrus body wash that Larissa had replaced for her recently.
She’d been cleaning up around the house, and when she’d gone into the guest bathroom Harlow used, she had noticed that she was nearly out.
Knowing how busy Harlow was, Larissa stopped by the store and picked up another bottle for her, and she’d smelled it on Harlow’s back and neck when they’d woken up next to each other not even ten minutes ago.
She went with ham and cheese, added mustard because she knew Harlow preferred mustard on that sandwich, and packed some lettuce and tomato separately so that it wouldn’t ruin the sandwich by making it soggy.
Then, she grabbed the chips she’d nearly stepped on the night before, put some in a small plastic bag, and added them to a lunchbox she’d forgotten that she’d even had until she found it under the sink.
There was an applesauce in the fridge, so she put that in there, too, and added a spoon.
Thinking Harlow would need a beverage to go with all that, she added a soda and zipped the bag.
“Hey. Sorry, I took longer than ten minutes,” Harlow said, emerging from the hallway looking like it had taken her an hour to get ready, but it was only about fifteen minutes at most.
“No, you… All good.”
Larissa cleared her throat, taking her in.
Harlow had a blazer on today, which was black, matching her pants.
Her navy blue button-down under it was unbuttoned at the top, and her hair was slicked back mostly, but not completely dry yet.
Harlow had never been one to wear makeup, and she never needed it, either.
Her brown hair framed a near-perfect face with those equally brown eyes, and Larissa needed to stop staring at her best friend’s face.
“So, I’ll be here later. We have that interview,” Harlow said and shoved keys into her bag that she’d picked up off the floor.
“Yeah, the interview. It’s not another throuple,” Larissa replied with a little laugh.
“No? Did you reach out to them with your follow-up questions?”
“I did. Brynn got back to me and said they’d talk about and type up their answers for me by the end of the week.
She was very nice about it. It actually got me thinking about what other kinds of people I might be missing by focusing on just couples.
I mean, there’s polyamory, but there are other spectrums, too.
I hadn’t considered things like demisexuality or the asexual spectrum.
God, there are so many spectrums. I could talk to people from all over all the spectrums. I’m sure there’s a whole other book to write about each, but I could start with–”
“Your Ph.D.,” Harlow interrupted. “You can start with your doctorate.”
“What?”
“You’re doing it again.”
“Thinking out loud?”
“Yes, but also getting distracted by a bright, shiny thing. Lou, you’re going to have years where you can write all the books, okay?
” Harlow said. “You can write a whole book on polyamory, if you want, or anything else for that matter, but you’re supposed to be working on your dissertation first; you know, that thing you have to defend if you ever want to be called a doctor, like Aggie. ”
“It was just a comment. I’m not going to let it distract me. Here are your waffles.” She handed Harlow two waffles in a paper towel. “And your lunch. Coffee is in the travel cup already by the door. I used the hazelnut creamer for you.”
“Thank you,” Harlow replied and smiled at her. “I’ll pick you up later?”
“Can you meet me there? I’m on campus today.”
“Yeah? Why?”
“You act like I never work on my damn paper.” Larissa shook her head and laughed a little.
“I’m meeting Aggie for lunch, but I’m going to be in the library for the first part of the day, and I have work after that, so I’ll just meet you there.
The owner wants to have a meeting, so I don’t know what’s going on, but it might be late.
I’ll still leave on time to get to the interview, though. ”
“Janine?”
“She’s still there. Or, she was the other day, at least,” she said with a shrug.
“I don’t know what the owner wants to talk about.
She could be letting us all go and just running the place herself.
It’s hardly ever busy enough to require two people.
I do the stocking in between the few customers we get, and we don’t have a fancy café or anything to keep people there long, so they usually just buy something and leave, or, more likely, walk around and peruse but buy nothing. ”
“Did you just say peruse?” Harlow teased.
“Yes, I did. Problem?”
“No. Just such a fancy word to use when you could’ve said ‘look around’ or ‘browse.’”
“I was in a peruse kind of mood.”
“I guess so,” Harlow said with a laugh. “Thanks for all this. I’ll see you later.”
“Have a good day at work, b–” Larissa stopped herself and looked away. “Just have a good day.”
“Yeah, okay. You too.”
Larissa had almost told Harlow to have a good day at work and used ‘babe’ at the end of her sentence.
“God, what is happening?” she asked no one after she heard the front door close behind Harlow.
◆◆◆
“What do you mean, what’s happening? You two are in love with each other. I told you that already. You coming? I want to get out of here before another student finds me to ask a question. I’m starving.”
Agatha practically shoved Larissa out of her office and into the hallway, shutting the office door behind them and locking it.
“We are not in love with each other,” she argued.
“I’m sorry. You show up at my door, telling me that you two slept together, and–”
“What? No. I said we slept on the couch. We fell asleep on the couch together. That is not the same thing. And don’t say that so loudly. We’re on campus. I don’t need everyone here thinking I slept with my best friend.”
“Maybe if you did already, we wouldn’t have to keep talking about this.”
“This is our second-ever conversation about this. And what is the point of having an older sister if she can’t help me with this stuff?”
“Well, you’re not twenty-one, having your first crush on a girl.
You’re almost thirty-six years old, should be a doctor twice over already, and Harlow might technically be your first love, but under these circumstances, I don’t know that that counts.
” Aggie nodded for her to press the elevator button.
“What happened? Tell me now that I’m actually listening. ”
“You weren’t listening before?”
“No, I was entering the last few paper grades I needed to put in before we went to lunch.”
“Jesus, Aggie,” she replied with a laugh as the elevator door opened. “We were watching a movie last night after Harlow got home.”
“From work?”
Agatha walked into the elevator.
Larissa followed her in and replied, “No. She went to a bar to watch sports or something. She said she had a long day at work and needed to have a beer out. Anyway, she got home late. I was working, and she made me dinner.”
“Again? This woman continually cooks for you. Can she come to my house and cook dinner for us?”
Agatha pressed the button for the lobby floor.
“I’ll ask her, but yes, she cooks. It’s how she pays rent. She’s really good at it. And I went shopping, so–”
“Tell me something.”
“What?”
“When you grocery shop – and I’m talking about when she’s not living with you; when she was with her ex, even – do you still buy stuff for Harlow?”
“Stuff? Like food?”
“Yes.”
“I guess. Not as much as right now because she’s there every night, but yeah, I like to have her favorite stuff there if I can.
She loves cooking pasta dishes, so I usually try to have dry pasta and some kind of canned sauce, just in case.
She’d make it from scratch; her mom taught her how, but she says it has to simmer for a while, and we don’t usually have time for that, so we use the canned one, and she doctors it up to make it taste better.
I don’t know what she does to it, really, but she gave me a list of spices I’m supposed to have all the time, so I keep those there, too. ”
“Larissa…” But the elevator door opened then, so her sister walked out and added, “I love you, but come on…”
“I’m not na?ve. I know how it probably looks to outsiders, Aggie.”
“How many of her exes have dumped her because of you?”
“What? None.”
They left the building and turned right on the sidewalk.
“Oh, yes, they have. You should ask her that. I bet that question would lead to an eye-opening conversation that you two definitely need to have.”
“You want me to just come up to her and ask her if any of her ex-girlfriends have broken up with her because of her friendship with me?”
“No, I want you to word it differently. I want you to ask her how many of her exes have dumped her ass because of her very clear feelings for you, her best friend she practically lives with, even when she lives with a woman she’s having sex with.
” Aggie then pointed quickly at Larissa.
“I fucking knew it! There.” Aggie laughed.
“What are you talking about?”
“I chose the word ‘sex’ very intentionally. I wanted to see your reaction, which was exactly what I thought it would be. You love her, Larissa. Just admit it. The thought of Harlow sleeping with another woman, having hot, up-against-the-wall kind of sex with her, making love to her slowly, or touching her in any way–”
“Okay. God! I get it, Aggie.”
“Get what?”
“I get it, okay? Can we talk about something else now?”
“Something else? Really? Like what?”
“My… dissertation.”
“Do you even want that thing anymore? I was talking to Dr. Harris yesterday, and he said you two had a meeting, and you seemed like you didn’t even care, Larissa.”
“That’s not true,” she defended. “He was looking for an update. I gave him one.”
“And you mentioned the book thing?”
“Yes. I told him I was able to use some of my research from my paper for it and could potentially turn it into a book one day.”
“You didn’t mention you’re hoping it’s one day soon, did you? He asked me if I thought you’d actually finish this semester like he thought you would. They’re not going to let you stay in this program forever.”
“Please, as long as I’m paying them, they’ll let me stay.”
“Not true. If you’re not contributing how they think is good for the program, which accepts very few people every year, they won’t. They do need results, Larissa.”
“I’m working on everything I need to be working on and prioritizing things correctly.”
“You’re sure?” her sister asked. “You came here to talk to me about Harlow.”
“No, I didn’t,” she argued and pulled open the door to the on-campus food court.
“I came here to have lunch. I was working in the library before that, and not on the book thing, like you call it, either. Then, you asked me how I was doing because you said I looked like crap, and I told you I didn’t think I slept well. That’s how we got here.”
They walked inside the building, and Aggie stopped to look at her.
“How did it feel?”
“How did what feel?”
“Waking up with her? I assume you two haven’t ever done that.”
“No, we haven’t,” she replied, shaking her head.
“So, how did it feel, Larissa?”
“Confusing.”
“Why?”
“Because… I was touching her in a way I shouldn’t be touching my friend.”
“You were?”
“Arm under her breasts.”
“How’d they feel?”
“I didn’t actually touch them. God, Aggie.”
Aggie laughed and said, “Her boobs are small. Just curious.”
“Stop talking about Harlow’s breasts. And they’re not small; they’re… perfectly proportioned for her body size and shape.”
“Ah, yes, the sentence all best friends find themselves saying about their best friend counterpart,” Aggie joked.
“I hate you sometimes,” Larissa said with a laugh. “And I’ve been looking into self-publishing. I think I can have the book draft written, get someone to edit it, and then, maybe self-publish it so that I don’t have to wait for a publisher to get back to me or anything.”
“If that’s what you want, go for it. Just make sure you are really prioritizing everything you need to prioritize in the right order.”
“Yes, I understand – I’m supposed to have ‘doctor’ in front of my name soon.”
“No, I meant this Harlow crap,” Aggie said before she pointed to an empty table. “Your personal life, your overall happiness, goes over everything else, Larissa. If it’s Harlow, you have to get that all sorted out. Everything else should come after that.”