Chapter 16
Ellie messaged Kelly the next morning, as promised, sat in the armchair near the window.
Becca was understandably still asleep on the other side of the room…
what had happened between her and Ellie when they went to bed had been every bit as intense and passionate, albeit in a different way, as her encounter with Cass.
It took three redrafts to get it right, trying to hit the right blend of honesty without sounding desperate or needy:
Hey Kelly, hope you and Colt are good. We’ve been trying a few things since we saw you, but we’ve realised we’d really like to hang out with you again sometime, see what happens. If you’re open to it let us know, but absolutely no pressure and no rush. Ellie x
The reply came four hours later, long after they’d checked out of the hotel and while Ellie was at the gym. She nearly dropped a dumbbell on her foot when her phone buzzed and she saw the message:
Girl YES. I have been hoping y'all would reach out like that. Colt says hi and also yes (he doesn't get a vote but I like to make him feel included). When were you thinking? K x
When Ellie got home Becca had, of course, read it too. There was an excitement to her, entirely different to the almost crush-like response to Cass, that was palpable and, Ellie realised with relief, she felt the same.
"When?" Becca asked.
"I was thinking we let her suggest. No pressure, remember?"
"Right. No pressure." Becca paused for approximately four seconds and grinned. "But also soon, ideally."
***
As it turned out, the timing worked itself out. A week later, Kelly messaged the group chat with a proposition that neither of them had expected:
So my girls Solana and Brooke are coming to Austin in a couple weekends.
Solana has her perfume launch on the Saturday so we figured we’d go for a gig at Moody Amphitheatre night before.
We got VIP tix. You two wanna come? Would be fun to hang out in a normal setting first, then maybe afterwards we could have our own fun?
No pressure obv but the gig is going to be amazing either way. K x
Ellie looked at the message and then at Becca, who was reading over her shoulder.
"Who are Solana and Brooke? What perfume launch?” Ellie asked.
Becca shrugged. “Her friends, I assume. I’m starting to feel like Kelly’s one of those people where it’s her universe and everyone’s welcome to orbit around her… you know, like we’re her friends now and so all her friends are automatically our friends too.”
"And we'd be hanging out with them? People we've never met? Who presumably know about... us and Kelly?”
Becca thought about it. "Is that a problem? It feels like it should be but I can’t work out why.”
Ellie wasn't sure. On the one hand the idea of meeting Kelly's friends, friends who probably knew the score, who knew what Kelly and Colt did with other people, felt like a step into a world they hadn't explored yet.
On the other hand, Kelly was inviting them to a gig, not an orgy.
It was social. Normal. The kind of thing friends did.
"It's not a problem," Ellie said slowly. "It's just... new. We've kept this so private. Our friends don't know, our families don't know. And now we'd be meeting people who probably do know."
"People who probably know and who clearly don't judge," Becca pointed out. "Kelly wouldn't invite us if her friends were going to make it weird."
That was true. Kelly's whole energy was anti-weird. She was the most naturally relaxed person Ellie had ever met about something that most people would find weird in the extreme.
"Ok," Ellie said. "Let's do it. The gig sounds fun, meeting her friends could be good, and then... afterwards."
Becca smiled. "You’ll tell her yes?"
"You tell her yes. So she knows we’re both keen. It’s got to be both of us.”
Becca typed the reply, and Ellie watched the three dots appear as Kelly started responding, followed by a burst of messages:
AMAZING
You're going to love them
Solana is extra but in the best way
Brooke is the funniest person alive
Dress cute, the VIP section is no joke
Cannot WAIT x
Ellie found herself smiling at the screen.
There was something infectious about Kelly's enthusiasm, something that made the anxiety dissolve and replaced it with pure anticipation which, Ellie reflected, is precisely how fun things should be.
And this was going to be fun, whatever else it might be too.
***
The gig was on a Friday night and Austin was doing its thing even that early in the year: the daytime heat lingering into the evening and not a breath of wind to relieve it.
Moody Amphitheatre was packed, the crowd buzzing with excitement, and Ellie and Becca found themselves feeling slightly out of their depth as they skirted past the normal entrance and headed towards the VIP area.
They'd dressed up for it. Not overdressed, but Becca was wearing a top and skirt combination that Ellie had never seen her put together before and that was, to her eye at least, devastating… if Kelly didn’t want her then Ellie certainly did.
Ellie meanwhile had put on a minidress and boots, very different to the jeans and t-shirt she’d worn to work that day, and Becca’s repeated glances in her direction told her that it was working.
They looked good, and they looked like they belonged. Even if they didn’t quite feel it.
Kelly spotted them first, materialising out of the VIP crowd at the bar with a squeal that was possibly louder than the warm up act.
"You came!" She threw her arms around Becca first, then Ellie, and Ellie was struck again by how naturally physical Kelly was, how her warmth was expressed through touch as much as words.
She looked amazing… cut-off denim shorts, a top that left very little to the imagination, cowboy boots that only a native Texan seemed to be able to make look cool rather than costume.
Her hair was loose and she was already a couple of drinks in, her blue eyes bright with excitement.
"Come meet the girls," Kelly added, taking Becca by the hand and leading them through the VIP area to a private box near the front with actual seats and a waitress bringing actual drinks.
The security checked their lanyards discretely with a nod, and they were through. VVIP apparently, not just VIP.
Solana was the first person that Ellie noticed, because Solana was the sort of person you noticed whether you wanted to or not.
She was sitting with her boots up on the railing, a drink in hand, radiating an ease that came from somewhere deeper than plain confidence.
It was the ease, Ellie reckoned, of someone to whom having a box for a gig wasn’t just an option, it was the only option and had been her whole life.
She was stunning, but in a slightly unorthodox way: high cheekbones, dark eyes, bronze skin, dark hair worn loose, it was like she was a melting pot of heritage that all came together spectacularly well.
She stood when she saw them coming and smiled warmly.
"You must be Becca and Ellie," Solana said, shaking their hands in turn once Kelly had introduced her. Her voice carried more than a hint of Texas. "Kelly hasn't shut up about you two."
"All good things," Kelly added quickly.
"All very good things," Solana confirmed, and there was something in her smile that told Ellie she knew exactly what the good things were. Not judgmental, not salacious. She simply knew and, it seemed, firmly approved.
Brooke was different energy entirely… she came barrelling over from the bar with two drinks she hadn't ordered for anyone in particular, thrust one at Ellie and kept one for herself.
"Hi, I'm Brooke, I talk too much and I'm already drunk, and Kelly says you're the coolest couple she's ever met, which given that she lives with a man literally named Colt is a high bar.
" She paused for breath. "What do you do?
Wait, don't tell me yet, let me guess. You…” pointing at Ellie "…something nerdy but well-paid. And you…” pointing at Becca "… something where you help people."
"Tech," Ellie said.
"Therapist," Becca said.
"Called it," Brooke said, looking immensely satisfied. "I'm a genius. Also I'm a bartender, which is basically the same as a therapist except for the worse advice and the far better drinks."
Kelly leaned over to whisper to Ellie, “She’s not a bartender, she owns a bar and likes the power trip of working behind it sometimes.” She grinned. “Don’t tell her I told you.”
Ellie liked them both immediately. Solana had a quiet charisma that drew you in without trying.
She listened more than she talked but when she did talk you found yourself leaning in.
Brooke was a hurricane in human form, funny, loud and entirely without filter.
The dynamic between the three of them, Solana, Brooke, Kelly, was clearly years deep, obvious from how they knew each other’s stories and could finish each other’s jokes.
The gig was incredible. Ellie didn't know the band too well but they were good, one of those live acts that reminded you why people paid hard earned money to see music in person.
And the VIP section, particularly the box, was spectacularly good: close enough to feel the bass in your soul, just high enough to see everything, drinks appearing without anyone seeming to order them and, as Ellie discovered when she tried to pay for some, all included in the entry.
"How did you get these tickets?" Ellie asked Kelly during a lull between songs.
Kelly grinned and nodded towards Solana, who was deep in conversation with Becca about something. "Solana knows people. And by knows people I mean her family basically owns half of Texas."
Ellie looked at Solana with fresh eyes. "Seriously?"
"The Delgado family. Cattle ranch out west, thousands of acres, old money.
But don't let that put you off… she's the most down-to-earth rich person you'll ever meet. She just happens to be able to get VIP tickets to anything." She paused. “She’s going to be famous, mark my words. We’re in town for her big launch tomorrow, she’s got a perfume coming out. Cimarron, or something like that. Figured we might as well make a weekend out of it.”
"And Brooke?"
"Brooke is Brooke. She's been Solana's best friend since they were kids. She's the most fun person alive, and she will absolutely be the last one standing tonight." Kelly paused and looked at Ellie for a few moments, her expression softening. "I'm really glad you came. Both of you."
"Me too," Ellie said, and meant it.
"And later...?" Kelly left it hanging, her eyes asking the question her mouth didn't.
"Later," Ellie confirmed. "Definitely later. If you’d like that?”
Kelly's smile could have powered the stage lights. “I’d like that a lot.”
***
It turned into one of those evenings that unfolded organically, as great evenings often do.
The gig ended so they got a taxi to a bar, then walked to another, and before long the five of them were deep into an easy, not to mention cocktail-fuelled, conversation that felt like it had been going on for years rather than hours.
Becca and Solana had clicked, Ellie noticed.
Not in any way that would trigger the jealousy-arousal response, there was no flirtation, no sexual charge between them, but rather in a genuine, intellectual way.
They were discussing psychology, talking about Becca's work and Solana's experience building her fragrance brand, about the emotional intelligence it required.
Becca was engaged, fascinated, asking questions that made Solana open up about things she clearly didn't discuss casually with most people.
Brooke, meanwhile, was making Ellie laugh harder than she'd laughed in weeks, telling a story about a Tinder date that involving a man, his horse, and traditional Texan expectations about a man’s priorities. Ellie genuinely hoped that she was exaggerating, but she suspected not.
At one point, while Brooke was at the bar and Solana and Becca were absorbed in their own conversation, Kelly moved her stool closer to Ellie and said quietly, "They know, by the way. About us. About what the three of us did."
"I figured."
"Does that bother you?"
"I thought it would. It doesn't." And it genuinely didn't. There was something liberating about being in the company of people who knew and who treated it as perfectly normal, who didn't need it explained or justified or defended.
Solana and Brooke knew that Kelly slept with other women, knew that Colt was cool with it, knew about Ellie and Becca, and their response to that knowledge was simply to buy another round and tell a funnier story.
It was the most relaxed Ellie had felt about any of this since it had started.
"Good," Kelly said. "Because Brooke will definitely bring it up if she has one more drink, and I wanted to make sure you were prepared."
Brooke did bring it up, approximately one drink later, leaning across the table to Becca and saying with zero preamble, "So Kelly says you're an absolute demon in bed and did things to her she keeps dreaming about and Ellie watches and it's hot as fuck. Is that accurate?"
Becca went scarlet. Not pink. Scarlet. Ellie choked on her drink. Solana closed her eyes in a way that suggested this was not the first time that Brooke had done something like this. Kelly put her face in her hands.
"Brooke," Solana said calmly. "Boundaries."
"What? I said it was hot as fuck. That's a compliment."
"It's fine," Becca said, recovering faster than Ellie. "And yes, that's roughly accurate." She laughed. “Well, I can’t vouch for what she dreams about…”
That drew a laugh from Brooke. “See?" she said to Solana triumphantly. "She's fine with it. Ellie, you fine with it?"
"I'm fine with it," Ellie managed, wiping her drink from her chin.
"Great. Can I ask one question?"
"Brooke…” Kelly started to say.
"One question. How do you sit there and watch and not join in? Because I could not do that. I would last about forty-five seconds."
Ellie thought about the question, which was actually a good one underneath the delivery. "Because watching is the thing," she said. "It's not about restraint or holding myself back. It's about seeing Becca being so deeply desired through someone else's eyes. The watching is the joining in."
Brooke looked at her for a long moment, then said, "That is the hottest thing anyone has ever said to me, and a man once told me he'd buy me a horse."
The table dissolved into laughter, and after that the atmosphere became even easier, the last barrier of formality dissolved by Brooke's complete lack of one.