Sitting on the small loveseat across from the couch, Allison’s spine was like a steel rod. She was pretty sure she had never exhibited better posture in all her life. Her fingers tingled, that feeling of borderline numbness, as they danced nervously atop her knees. Her stomach rolled with every breath, and she was certain that her heart had not stopped pounding since the moment she heard Nora returning from Lucas’s room.
Elena, seated beside her, leaned over and bumped Allison’s shoulder with her own. “Take a breath,” she whispered.
Realizing she had been holding her breath to the point of pain, Allison took Elena’s advice and sucked in a mouthful of air. Her shoulders sagged an inch as he exhaled and she smiled at Elena. “Thanks.”
Nora swept into the room with a calculating look in her eyes. She dropped onto the couch opposite her daughter and Allison and inspected them. “My, you two look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
Elena leaned back into the cushion of the loveseat, her shoulder resting warmly against Allison’s. “Stop taunting us, Mother, and let’s get this over with, shall we?”
“Oh, Elena, I haven’t the slightest idea as to what you are referring.” The sparkle in her eyes, so like Elena’s, gave her away, though.
An annoyed, pointed stare was all she received from Elena. Allison, though, chuckled awkwardly and scratched at the back of her neck as she said, “You’re a bad liar.”
Elena whipped around, eyes wide, as she stared at Allison with a mixture of shock, worry, and something akin to admiration.
“Pardon?” Nora asked, her face hard.
Chest clenching tightly, Allison internally screamed at herself for opening her big mouth in the first place. She swallowed thickly before she answered. “I said that you’re a bad liar.” Her voice shook just slightly.
Nora’s lips parted as the woman made to respond, but Allison cut her off. “I didn’t mean any disrespect,” she said.
That earned her another brow raise, which made Allison’s stomach roll. “Not that I’m calling you a liar or anything. I figured you were teasing or whatever. So was I. But if we’re being real here, I think we all know we wouldn’t be sitting here like we’re facing a firing squad if you weren’t intending to have a little fun at our expense, right?”
Elena, smile tugging around her pearly white teeth, stared at Allison as if she was a revelation of sorts.
“Well, well,” Elena said, turning to offer her mother a smug expression. “It seems Allison here has you pegged rather well, wouldn’t you say?”
Silence grew between them then as Nora narrowed her eyes at Allison. She allowed that silence to grow and fester in Allison’s soul until Allison was so freaked out that her insides squirmed.
She held her breath as Nora and Elena looked at one another, and then Nora began to smile. As soon as Allison saw that slight upturn, she let out a slow, silent breath of relief. Perhaps she would live to date Elena Vega another day after all.
“She certainly seems to match you in boldness, Elena.”
“So, that’s good, right?” The words rushed out of Allison. “I mean, I haven’t failed already, have I?”
“Failed what, dear?”
“The, uh, Inquisition?”
Allison felt Elena’s shoulders next to her shake with laughter.
“Sorry?” Nora asked.
Clearing her throat, Allison tried to covertly dig her elbow into Elena’s side as payback for the laughter. “The uh, the Nora Vega Inquisition.”
Nora smirked and tilted her head. “Ah, I see Elena has made you properly afraid.”
“Oh, I’ve done no such thing,” Elena said.
Allison, though, merely gulped. “Properly?”
“Hmm?”
“You said ‘properly’. So, I should be afraid?”
“No,” Elena said quickly. But her mother’s voice competed with hers. “Perhaps,” Nora said.
“Oh Mother, stop it.”
“Yeah, you’ll probably end up more mortified than scared.”
A voice chimed from behind them, and all in the room turned to find Vivian standing in the open arch of the doorway.
“Vivian, dear!” Nora turned toward Vivian and waved the woman over. “This is a lovely surprise.”
“Yes, Vivian.” Elena’s voice drawled the words out with maximum irony. “What a lovely surprise.”
Vivian grinned as she bent down and pressed a kiss to Elena’s cheek. She nodded at Allison, who offered her a half smile that she was pretty sure came off more as a grimace, and then Vivian turned to kiss Nora’s cheek as well before dropping onto the couch beside her.
“So spill,” she said. “How was the first date?”
Elena’s tone deadpanned. “The level of enjoyment just hit a sudden and rapid decline.”
“Oh come on, Elena. You didn’t actually expect me to miss this, did you? It’s been way too long since the last Nora Vega Inquisition.”
“You girls,” Nora said. “You act like I’m going to water-board the poor girl for government secrets.”
“Well, I don’t have any government secrets,” Allison said, the heel of her foot tapping rapidly against the floor. “In fact, I don’t have any secrets at all, so we could probably just, you know, skip this whole thing and it’d be totally fine.”
“Uh-huh.” Vivian leaned back and put her arm around Nora’s shoulders. “We’ll see about that.”
“Or we could see both of you to your vehicles.” Elena pinned her best friend with a glare.
Allison smiled. At least she wasn’t in this alone. She could only imagine the embarrassing crap that Nora and Vivian might ask her.
“In my defense,” Nora said. “I’m only here because I assumed the date would be over by now. I wouldn’t have come otherwise.”
“Yeah, and stop acting like you don’t want us here,” Vivian said with a grin.
“I don’t. Why were you at my parents’ house anyway?”
Vivian shrugged and patted Nora’s shoulder. “I was taking Mom’s dishes back from that lasagna she sent me home with.”
“That was over a month ago. You just now decided to clean those dishes and return them? How convenient.”
“Anyway.” Vivian barreled right through Elena’s snide remark. “I was there when you called, and of course, I wasn’t about to miss this.”
“Elena?” Nora gave a melodramatic gasp. “Were you calling your father to try to get rid of me?”
“Yes.”
Nora pressed a hand to her chest. “I’m hurt.”
“Oh please, you are not.”
Elena laughed, and then, before Nora or Vivian could respond, Allison cleared her throat and leaned forward.
“All right, look,” Allison said, locking gazes with Nora, “I don’t really know how this is supposed to go down, but this whole dragging-it-out business is driving me nuts. You’ve got me here. I didn’t run even though I knew you were probably going to ask me embarrassing things, because, hey, I can respect the fact that you’re curious and maybe even cautious about who your daughter chooses to date. But I seriously can’t take this build-up anymore. So, can we just get on with it? Ask me what you need to ask me, and then this can be over with.”
Vivian laughed. “Oh yeah, she’s definitely a winner.”
Elena pressed her shoulder closer to Allison’s and offered her mother and Vivian the smuggest expression she could manage without contorting her face. “Excellent,” she said with a smack of her lips, “then perhaps we could skip this entirely.”
“Such confidence,” Nora said. “That’s good. You will need it if you want to keep up with my daughter.”
“I don’t doubt that.” Allison let out a relieved breath. “I mean, she’s always pretty sweet around me, but I’m guessing that’s not the entire picture.”
Elena’s smug expression fell away as she gaped at Allison, while Vivian snorted with laughter. “Well, she’s got that right.”
“I didn’t mean that in a bad way.” Allison squeezed Elena’s knee. “I just meant that you’re crazy successful already and you’re only twenty-seven. You’re smart and can obviously handle yourself. I mean, the way you dealt with that guy at the zoo made it seem like that came pretty naturally to you. I’m guessing you can be a shark when you need to be. It’s not a bad thing.”
“Yes, well.” Elena sighed. “It is sometimes necessary and has served me well on several occasions.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“You two haven’t slept together yet, have you?” Nora asked, catching everyone off guard. “That is certainly surprising.”
Vivian burst into laughter again, while Elena’s face flared crimson and Allison gaped.
“Mother.” Elena groaned, shaking her head and pressing a hand to her temple. “Can we not?”
“Oh my God,” Vivian gasped. “Have you?”
“No, they haven’t.” Nora answered before Elena could.
“You cannot possibly know that,” Elena snapped. Nora merely smirked at her.
“Oh dear, I’ve been around a long time,” she said. “You two still have that doe-eyed innocence about you—the sweet, timid compliments and the sideways glances and the blushing. Neither of you act as bold as you are, or in Allison’s case, as bold as I imagine you to be.”
“So?”
“So, that sort of behavior dies quickly after having seen one another naked and exchanging fluids.”
“Ew, Mom, really.” Vivian gagged and shook her head. “That was not an image I needed in my mind.”
“Not to mention the fact that Elena’s bedhead could scare the hair off a cat,” Nora said.
Elena’s blush only deepened while Vivian nodded in agreement, and Allison’s lips stretched into a small smile, even as her cheeks burned brightly. The image of Elena’s wild bedhead somehow eased Allison, made those little butterflies that sometimes lived in her stomach when she was near Elena fly madly around.
“Mine can get pretty crazy too,” Allison said. “So no judgment here.”
“Is there a point in there somewhere?” Elena asked, glaring at her mother. “Or are we merely segueing into embarrassing me for no reason whatsoever?”
“I’m only saying.” Nora reached across the small gap between the two pieces of furniture to pat Elena’s knee. “It’s now quite obvious that you two haven’t yet slept together.”
“Does that matter?” Allison asked, taking a steadying breath before slipping her right hand over and onto Elena’s thigh. She squeezed it, hoping to offer her a bit of comfort.
“Not at all,” Nora answered, “though it is rather telling.”
“Of what, Mother?” The blush on her cheeks crept down her neck even more. “Do enlighten us with your apparent omniscience.”
“Nothing negative, dear. It merely implies that one or both of you has prioritized an emotional connection over a physical one.”
“Or it just means that you’re both a couple of cowards who have been too afraid to sow your sweet, sweet lesbian oats.”
“What does that even mean?” Allison chuckled.
Elena rolled her eyes. “I’m beginning to think that you would enjoy sowing a few lesbian oats of your own, Vivian.”
Vivian shrugged and grinned at Elena. “That would depend on the woman, but I definitely wouldn’t rule it out.”
“Of course you wouldn’t.”
“Well,” Allison said, “just to clear the air, I’ve already sown my lesbian oats or whatever, so for me, it’s just about an emotional connection. I mean, not that you can’t have that when starting a relationship with sex. I just didn’t want to rush anything.”
Elena smiled at her, and Allison returned it, squeezing her thigh again, which provoked a conspiratorial smirk between Nora and Vivian. Nora cleared her throat then and asked, “So, do you identify as a lesbian then, dear?”
“Yup,” Allison answered, popping her lips together. “I knew by the time I was like four. Came out to a few kids at school when I was fifteen. They were the only ones I told.”
“Really?” Elena asked, and Allison nodded.
“And how many of these lesbian experiences have you had?” Nora asked, and Elena groaned.
“Um, you mean like girlfriends?”
“I mean sexual experiences.” Elena suddenly looked like she wished she could melt into the couch and disappear. “Elena herself is lacking in experience.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Allison said, trying not to smile at the abashed expression on Elena’s face. Nora Vega seriously had no reservations about getting personal. “It’s an instinctual thing for a lot of people anyway.”
“I agree,” Nora said. “So, how many? One never knows what one might pick up from others.”
“Oh, uh, I’m clean, if you’re concerned about that, and, to answer your question, I’ve had a few.” Allison was feeling a little unnerved by the topic, but she told Elena she wasn’t going to run, so she might as well suck it up and get this over with. “Not a lot, though. My first was a little before my sixteenth birthday, with a girl I went to school with.”
“Ooh.” Vivian waggled her eyebrows. “Please tell me it was your tutor or something, or that it was in the school library or the janitor’s closet.”
Allison shook her head. “I think you’ve been watching too much television or reading too much kinky lit.”
“Guilty.” Vivian winked at Allison. “But seriously, tell us about it. Is this your coming out story?”
“No,” Allison said. “Or maybe. I guess. What even is a coming-out story, because every one I’ve ever heard was never actually about when they came out. It’s always about the first sexual experience or I guess the person just realizing that she’s a lesbian.”
“How are we supposed to know?” Vivian asked. “You’re the lesbian here.”
“Well, Elena,” Allison started to say, but Vivian cut her off.
“Elena has been half in the closet, half out of it since college,” Vivian said. Elena scoffed and rolled her eyes at that. “She’s not a reliable source for all things lesbian.”
“Okay.” Allison sighed. “This isn’t my coming out story, I don’t think, but no, the girl was not my tutor and it wasn’t in a library or a janitor’s closet. It was at my house at the time. She was over to study with me, though, so does that earn me some points?”
“A few.” Vivian grinned. “Keep talking.”
“Dear, your rainbow is showing,” Nora said, nudging Vivian with her elbow, and they all laughed as Vivian shrugged and urged Allison on.
“It’s really not that interesting,” Allison told them. “She came over, and we were studying, and then she said that she really liked my hair—”
“I like your hair,” Elena said, and Vivian snorted.
“It’s not a competition, babe. This was like, what, seven years ago?”
“I was only saying,” Elena mumbled, and Allison patted her thigh and smiled.
“Thank you,” she said, before turning back to the others. “Anyway, she said she liked my hair and then she started playing with it, and then I don’t know. Somehow we ended up kissing, and then there was some touching, and then—”
“And then?” Vivian asked, on the edge of her seat.
Allison sighed, scratching at the back of her neck. “And then my foster mom walked in and caught us.”
Both Elena and Vivian grimaced at the image of a parent walking in on such activities. It clearly wasn’t a pretty one. “Yeah.” She nodded. “That was my reaction, too. It didn’t go over too well.”
“I see,” Nora said. “You are an orphan then?”
Elena winced at the question. “Mother, that isn’t really any of your business.”
“It’s okay.” Allison patted Elena’s thigh again. “I mean, I pretty much walked into that one with my comment about the foster mom, so it’s fair game. Besides, I’m guessing that your mom already knew that somehow.” Allison looked expectantly to Nora, who merely arched a brow and tilted her head respectfully forward.
“Quite the perceptive one, aren’t you? I will admit I looked into your background once I realized Elena was developing an attachment to you.”
“You did?” Vivian and Elena said at the same time.
Nora gave them both a deadpan expression. “Are either of you really surprised?” She then turned back to Allison. “So, yes, I was already aware that you are an orphan, or that you were, whichever you prefer.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have preferred either. But hey, it wasn’t like I could do anything about the fact that my parents apparently didn’t want me.”
Elena blanched at that, her body stiffening and the crimson quickly draining from her face. As Vivian sank back into the couch, looking highly uncomfortable, Elena let out a hissing sigh and turned an icy gaze on her mother that told Nora to back off or else. Nora met Elena’s gaze with understanding, her eyebrows drawing together and her lips pressing thin with a sad smile, but she made no sign of dropping the subject. “I can imagine that would be difficult,” she began, “but—”
“But what?” Allison cut her off. Her knees bounced beneath her sweaty palms as she fought the urge to jump to her feet and walk out before she could be turned away. “Is this the part where you tell me that because I’m a poor kid with no family or money really to speak of, I’m not good enough to date your daughter?”
“Ac—”
“Because I don’t really need to hear that. I know I don’t have the best past, but I won’t apologize for that. I’m a good person, and I care about Elena. I wouldn’t hurt her intentionally, and I’d never try to take advantage of her. I respect who she is and how she lives her life. I don’t care about money or upbringing or any of that, and I never got the impression that that mattered to her much either considering she chose me despite knowing that I have never had much of either. So, if she doesn’t want me around, then I won’t be around. But, as long as she chooses me, then I plan on being here.”
Nora cleared her throat roughly and said, “Actually, had you given me a chance to finish, I would have said that that must have been difficult, but you seem to have truly turned things around for yourself quite nicely. That is something to be admired.”
Allison’s chest clenched tightly, her heart rocketing up into her throat and sticking there like a piece of hard candy. Her face flushed bright red, and she felt like the biggest asshole in the history of all assholes. She had practically just given Nora Vega a verbal smack-down for no reason whatsoever. Way to go, Sawyer, she reprimanded herself. “I’m—”But Nora shook her head and waved it off.
“It’s fine, dear,” she said. “I come from poorer beginnings as well, and so I recognize that instinct to assume the worst and to jump to defend oneself. I assure you that I have nothing but respect and admiration for the life you’ve lived. It is, however, quite comforting to know how much you seem to respect my daughter.”
“I’m sorry,” Allison whispered. “I just…I need a moment.” She then raced from the room.
* * *
Elena sighed, shook her head, and rose to follow Allison. “I wish you two could have simply minded your own business,” she croaked before taking off after her girlfriend. Was Allison her girlfriend now?
She found Allison in the kitchen, buckled at the waist. Hands on her knees, she was taking deep breaths, very obviously to keep the tears in her eyes at bay.
“Allison?” Elena whispered as she entered the kitchen, and Allison whirled around.
“Hey,” she choked out. “I just needed to catch my breath.”
“I’m so sorry about this.”
“Don’t be,” Allison said as they gravitated toward one another. “I’m not upset.” Their hands created a perfect puzzle, fingers lacing together between their bodies, as Allison shook her head. “I’m a little embarrassed at the way I went off, but I’m not upset.” She laughed and wiped at her eyes. “It’s just that no one’s ever said anything like that to me about the way I grew up. That they understood or that they respected…it’s just a lot for me.”
Elena placed two fingers under her chin to lift Allison’s gaze. “Some people are quite capable of seeing how strong and magnificent you are, dear.”
“I’m gonna kiss you,” Allison whispered, and Elena had barely begun to smile before Allison covered her lips with her own.
It was chaste but somehow just as intoxicating as all the others. When they broke apart, Elena teased, “You only pulled that whole ‘I-need-a-minute’ scene so that you could get me alone, didn’t you?”
“I wish I was that quick on my feet, babe.” Elena’s flesh tingled at the term of endearment. “But I’m definitely not complaining about how this is turning out. Wanna just stay in here and make out while they wonder if we’re ever coming back?”
Elena chuckled, leaning forward to rest her forehead against Allison’s. “As tempting as that sounds, I guarantee my mother wouldn’t let us off that easily. She would come looking.””
“She’d get an eyeful.”
“Oh, would she, now?” Elena asked, a wave of heat rolling through her lower abdomen.
“Maybe.” Allison shrugged, winking. “I’ve got to admit that I’m pretty interested in seeing your famous bedhead now.”
Elena rolled her eyes. “It’s not a pretty sight.”
“It’s you. So yeah, I’m sure it’s the prettiest sight.”
A throat cleared from behind them, and both women turned to find Vivian standing in the doorway of the kitchen, a smile playing at her lips as she observed their tender moment. “Sorry to interrupt, love birds. But Nora still requires an answer to the what-are-your-intentions-with-my-daughter question.”
Allison squeezed Elena’s hand. “I think I can handle that.”
“You’re lucky,” Vivian said. “She must really like you, because she’s being way less embarrassing than usual.”
“That’s true,” Elena said.
“How many times has this happened?”
“Oh, too many to count,” Vivian said.
“Damn.” Allison looked at Elena. “How many people have you dated?”
“Oh, it’s not just for me.” Elena shook her head. “She does this to everyone—potential employees, drivers, maids.”
“Yeah, she’s thorough like that,” Vivian laughed. “She just likes it best when it involves Elena somehow, because then she gets to watch her squirm. You should have seen some of our teachers at prep school. It was hilarious.”
“Yes.” Elena cleared her throat and shook her head. She gently patted Allison’s arm. “So, as Vivian said, consider yourself lucky.”
Allison took a deep breath and motioned for Elena to lead her back to the living room, mumbling, “Yeah, but it’s not over yet.” The two of them followed Vivian out of the room, their fingers still laced together.
