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  Her mother froze. “What did you just say to me?”

  “She and I w-were t-together last night,” Chloe stuttered, before getting the words out properly. “I started it. I was the one who seduced her.” She crossed her arms over her stomach, trying to quell its tremor.

  Kai cursed softly before striding to the bar on the other side of the room.

  “Don’t move, Kai. Don’t you fucking move!” Her mother’s eyes were wide and afraid. They blinked quickly as she looked from her daughter to her best friend. “Tell me exactly what happened. Tell me right now.”

  Kai ignored her and grabbed a decanter from the bar. She poured a heavy measure of whiskey into a glass, quickly swallowed some of the liquor before turning to face her best friend.

  “Things just happened. I didn’t do this to hurt you, Noelle.”

  “Do what?” Her mother’s voice was frantic. “What the fuck did you do, Kai?”

  Despite what Chloe had said before, it seemed that she only now understood what her daughter was telling her. Chloe, her daughter, had just been having sex with her best friend.

  “Chloe, go into the bedroom.” Her mother’s voice snapped with anger. Then she flew at Kai, slapping her hard. The sound was loud and echoed in the room. Her sweater jerked up around her hips; her hair was wild as she reared back for another slap. “What the fuck!” She slapped Kai again, and her best friend didn’t try to stop her. “Kai. Tell me you didn’t do this.” Slap. “Tell me!” she screamed, the noise a wailing cry of sadness and betrayal. Her arms windmilled, mercilessly pummeling Kai.

  “Mom, stop!” Chloe rushed across the room, but her mother shoved her firmly back. She stumbled against the couch.

  “I said go to your room, Chloe. This doesn’t concern you!” Her mother screamed at the same time that Kai ducked and backed away from a punch.

  “It’s okay, Chloe.” Kai spoke with effort, trying to hold off her best friend. “Do as she says.” A bruise was already forming on her cheek.

  “I’m not a child!” Chloe righted herself against the arm of the couch but did not go toward them again.

  Neither her mother nor Kai was paying attention to her. It was like her mother had transformed into that girl on the stoop in the long-ago photograph. Her lip was curled in a sneer, and her body was a slim and deadly challenge.

  Chloe was truly frightened. Noelle Graham didn’t seem like her mother anymore, but like a broken woman flinging shards of herself at someone she had once loved, someone who had shattered her completely.

  She flew at Kai in a rage, slapping her friend in the face, punching her chest, arms, and anywhere else she could reach. Kai tried only to hold her off, to avoid getting hit again.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you that you’re fucking my child? She’s only twenty-three, for God’s sake!” Her mother was crying, tears running down her face.

  “Noelle. I didn’t hurt her.” Kai’s voice broke as her own tears began to fall. “I promise. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “Have you always been looking at her like that? Were you grooming her to be your sex toy this whole time?” Her mother screamed more obscenities, cried out each new scenario that occurred to her as she slapped and railed at Kai.

  When her slaps turned into punches to Kai’s face, her best friend grabbed her arms and shoved her back. “Noelle! Please!” Her face was tortured, lips trembling as the tears fell faster.

  Chloe felt as if she was the one breaking apart.

  “There’s nothing you can say to me that will make this right. Nothing!” her mother raged.

  This is all my fault! Chloe stared in horror at the fighting women. She had caused this.

  “Stop it! Stop.” She shoved her way between them, then gasped as a fist smashed into her lip. Her head snapped back, and she tasted blood. She stumbled against Kai.

  Her mother gasped. “Oh my God!”

  Everything stopped for a moment. Chloe’s body dipped, and her vision wobbled. The next thing she knew, she was lying on the couch.

  “Get the fuck away from her,” her mother snarled. “I’ll take care of her myself.”

  “But you’re the one who hit me,” Chloe muttered, putting a hand to her throbbing lip. Her fingers came away stained with blood.

  Nausea seized her stomach. The sight of her own blood sickened her. But she saw that despite her words to Kai, her mother had moved aside to allow her best friend to put a damp cloth to Chloe’s mouth. Her mother tucked a pillow under her head and smoothed her cheek. She sat down next to Chloe.

  “I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t mean to hit you.”

  Chloe put a hand to her head and turned away from both of them. “I’ll be okay. Just don’t be angry at Kai.” She touched her mother’s arm but looked at Kai, who now sat at the far end of the couch. “I . . . I was the one who started it. She didn’t have anything to do with this.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t force her to eat your pussy.”

  “Mother!” Chloe blushed so hard that her face hurt even more. She could not bring herself to look at Kai. “Please, don’t say things like that.”

  “I’m afraid the time for being coy has passed, my love.” Her mother closed her eyes and turned her head toward her friend. “Kai, for you, of all people, to do this to me . . .” A sob left her mouth. “This is the biggest betrayal. Even worse than when Evan abandoned me, leaving me to raise Chloe on my own.” She drew a trembling breath and seemed to fight for control of herself. “Kai, when did this start?”

  Chloe opened her mouth.

  “No.” Her mother squeezed her hand tightly. “I’m not talking to you right now.”

  Kai, her face still wet with tears, squirmed in her seat. She stood up and went back to the bar with her empty glass, but she did not refill her drink.

  It was a long time before she said anything. Then she answered, “I didn’t touch her until this week.”

  Chloe’s mother hissed with angry impatience. “But when did you start thinking about her like this? Be honest. I need to know.”

  “It was the day we dropped her off at school in California.”

  Chloe strangled her gasp before it could escape her lips. That long ago?

  Kai stood with her back to the room, her legs spread wide, hands braced against the surface of the bar. She looked delicate in the thin tank top and the peace sign boxers, her skin bleached nearly yellow in the morning light. Her shoulders were shaking as she spoke.

  “Chloe was already moved in. You and Duncan were off somewhere, trying to find out about visitor parking. I waited with the truck in case the cops came over to hassle us for parking in front of the dorms.”

  Then Chloe did gasp. She remembered that day. She remembered it clearly.

  She had just left her new dorm, feeling giddy at finally being in college and away from home. The sun was brilliant in Los Angeles, and everything smelled so different. The air. The trees. It felt like being set adrift in a beautiful foreign place where everything and anything was possible. And that day, as she walked across the lawn in her flip-flops, with her hair in wild twists and the new breeze on her skin, even her infatuation with Kai seemed different.

  Kai was leaning against the large SUV Duncan had rented to take Chloe across the country. One foot braced on the ground, the other against the bumper of the dark green truck. She tilted her head toward the sky. Her hair twisted on top of her head, bound in a tie-dyed scarf, and her eyes closed as she savored the quiet she’d managed to find in the chaos of the campus. Her arms were bare in a white tank top, and a black strap of her bra peeked out. She wore cut-off jean shorts that were loose around her lean thighs and green Converse. Even now, five years later, that image of Kai was so clear to Chloe that she could have seen it only minutes before.

  On that sunlit Los Angeles day, something must have alerted Kai to Chloe’s presence, because she opened her eyes and smiled. Their gazes met across the small distance. Chloe remembered locking with the green and gold orbs, feeling a tigh
tening in her belly, a melting and spilling over of all the love she had for Kai. The other woman’s eyes fluttered away. For a moment, it was like she saw Chloe, really saw who she was, for the first time. Then Kai’s gaze returned to her, startled, almost afraid, before it skittered away again.

  “I saw Chloe surrounded by all the other college girls,” Kai said. “Beautiful women with their booties out in shorts and little dresses. And I remember thinking how much better than all of them she looked. How beautiful and . . . sexy.” Kai cleared her throat, then slowly turned around. She tapped the empty whiskey glass against the surface of the bar. “I left LA as soon as I could and have avoided her for the most part ever since then.”

  “Until last night, when you fucked her.”

  Kai sighed. “Yes, until this week.” Her distinction made it clear that last night was not the first time.

  “Fuck.” Noelle shot to her feet like she wanted to attack her friend again. “Fuckin’ really, Kai? Really?” Chloe had never heard her curse that much in . . . ever. She stepped away from Chloe, her footsteps stiff and awkward. “I don’t . . . I can’t even look at you right now. I really can’t.”

  “Mom, stop this—”

  “No. Noelle is right.” Kai’s face was wet with tears again; her stoic façade in ruins. “I’ll leave.”

  Chloe jerked to her feet. “No! This is your apartment.”

  But Kai was already slipping past her. She came back from the bedroom within moments in the same jeans and sweater from a few days before. Her feet were still bare.

  Chloe started to go to her. “Baby! Your shoes.”

  Her mother shot Chloe a poisonous look. “Get the fuck out of here, Kai!” she shouted, still staring at Chloe. “And don’t come back until we’re gone.”

  Kai’s eyes darted toward the bedroom, where her shoes were, before she seemed to make a decision, grabbing her keys and rushing from the apartment barefoot.

  “Mother! Her feet! It’s cold out there.” Chloe rushed toward the bedroom to grab a pair of shoes for Kai, but her mother blocked her way.

  “Fuck her feet!” With her hands braced on her hips, her mother stared her down. “Tell me everything that happened with Kai,” she said. “Starting from the very beginning.”

  Chapter 12

  Chloe sipped her mimosa and uncrossed her legs, nodding along, as if she was paying attention to the story her coworker was telling the entire table. She hid a yawn behind her champagne flute.

  It was Saturday, a bright summer afternoon in New York City. Chloe sat with three other women at a sidewalk table of her favorite brunch spot in the East Village. All dozen or so tables were filled with weekend unwinders, and the air sparkled with the sound of people laughing, the tapping of knives and forks against plates, traffic rumbling past on the street only a few feet away.

  She’d been in New York for the past eight months, and she’d gotten to know most of her coworkers well. She spent time after work with the three she connected with the most. Lisa, a self-described man-hungry bisexual. Billie, a Trinidadian lipstick lesbian with a big dick complex. Dion, a German transplant who’d been trying to push up on Lisa for as long as Chloe had known them.

  The eight months had been about more than just work. It had also been a time that Chloe had spent nurturing her relationship with her mother. She’d visited Noelle Graham every month and shown her that she was a woman grown enough to be in love with Kai, not the overindulged and unprepared child she often imagined her mother saw her as.

  During those months, she’d frequently mentioned Kai to her mother, but Noelle had never wanted to talk about her former best friend. That hadn’t stopped Chloe from trying to get them to reconcile. Just a few days before, she’d written her mother a letter, begging her to forgive Kai and laying out the reasons why it was better for the two women to be friends again. She had put everything in that tear-stained letter. Her grief over what she had done. Her love for her mother. Her longing for Kai, which she knew could never be satisfied.

  Before she’d left for brunch that afternoon, Chloe had got a postcard from her mother. “Message received,” was all it said. She put the mimosa to her lips, wondering what her mother meant by that.

  Just then, the waitress stopped by their table to refresh their drinks. The bow-tied butch gave Chloe a flirtatious smile and a wink before moving on to another table. Everyone stopped what they were doing to give her the eye.

  “Chloe, you have got to tell me how you always look amazing, even after working all damn night, then coming back at six in the morning.” Billie pointed her glass of mimosa at Chloe. “Right now you look like we all didn’t bust our asses in the studio until nearly two a.m.”

  Their studio was working on a science fiction TV show on a tight schedule, which meant long hours, lots of coffee, and far too much time with coworkers.

  Chloe didn’t bother to tell Billie the truth, that when she felt her worst was often when she looked her best. And the past eight months had been hell. Between pulling herself together enough to realize what she’d done to her mother’s friendship, apologizing profusely to Noelle Graham, and even plotting to see Kai and truly apologize and face her like a woman, Chloe had had a rough time of it.

  She gave her coworker a flirtatious smile. “You mean this old face?” Chloe tossed her imaginary long hair over her shoulders and batted her lashes.

  “Billie’s right. You are gorgeous every single day.” Lisa glanced at her with a slightly jealous smile. “When you first started working with us, I was sure you couldn’t keep up this supermodel glam. Now, almost a year later, you haven’t missed a beat.” Lisa pursed her thin bright pink lips. “Girl, you have been noticed.”

  The three women at the table examined her thick, shining hair, the white cotton dress that came to mid-thigh, and the quartet of turquoise necklaces draped around her neck. She knew her makeup was flawless. She’d seen to that before she left the apartment that morning.

  “I don’t know what y’all are noticing.” She sipped her mimosa and fussed with the menu in front of her, uncomfortable under their regard.

  “No worries, doll face. Pretty girls always make other bitches uncomfortable.” Dion stirred a straw in her screwdriver and shrugged, then glanced around the sidewalk. “It’s a law of the jungle or something.” She stopped the movement of her straw when something made her pause. “Damn!”

  “What?” Lisa immediately turned around to gawk over her shoulder.

  Chloe, who sat next to Lisa, only sighed with quiet relief that their attention had turned elsewhere.

  Dion whistled. “That is one fine mama jama.”

  Lisa laughed. “Mama jama? What are you? Sixty?” But when she saw who Dion was looking at, she lost her cool points too. “God. Damn.”

  Billie and Dion, who were sitting across from Chloe and Lisa, had the better view of whatever was going on. Billie nodded in appreciation. “She’s not quite my speed, but she is wearing that vest and fine face of hers, surely.”

  Over the past few months, Chloe had gotten used to seeing some of the most beautiful people in New York. Models, actors, everyday women who probably had starring roles in many wet dreams. Seeing women like Sanaa Lathan or Samira Wiley was expected, and appreciated, but it was no longer a cause to go crazy, like everyone else at the table seemed to be doing.

  “Come on, Chloe. Even you aren’t too fine to check out this gorgeous sista.”

  She rolled her eyes, annoyed that Lisa would say something like that. But she turned around, anyway, to see what they were all gawking at. Her eyes widened, and she spilled her drink all over herself.

  It was Kai. She stood at a storefront only a few feet away, talking with someone whose back was turned to the women’s table. Yes, she looked incredible. Her thick hair was loose around her face and rippled in the summer breeze. She had on a peacock-blue vest, which was unbuttoned over a V-necked white T-shirt, and jeans that clung to her slender thighs. Her stance—hands in the pockets of her jeans, legs pl
anted wide, head high, and chest up—made the most of her already impressive everything.

  Although she’d known that Kai was in New York, it still startled Chloe to see her. Her mother, who said she wasn’t speaking with Kai, somehow knew that her former best friend was in the city that week for work. When she let that slip, Chloe took it as the perfect opportunity to see Kai and lay everything between them to rest. If only her mother had been able to come to New York, like Chloe had suggested.

  A nervous tremor began in her fingers.

  She’d spent the eight long months crying and praying and straightening her backbone to become the kind of partner the woman she loved could one day see herself with. With a plan and an apology in mind, she had decided to see Kai at her apartment the next day. The next day. Not now. Chloe wasn’t ready to face her yet.

  She blushed and grabbed a napkin, dabbing up the wasted mimosa from her dress. The drink had immediately stained the white cotton yellow, plastering the thin material to her breasts.

  Lisa snickered. “Is she that fine, though?”

  As the women laughed, Kai looked up. Chloe felt her bright eyes on her like a rough caress. Then Kai’s face shuttered to hide whatever it was she was feeling. The woman she was with turned around to see what she was staring at. It was Adi, the friend of Kai’s she’d met in the park months before. She smiled and blew Chloe a kiss. Flustered, Chloe turned away to refocus on wiping the drink from her chest and lap.

  You’re such an idiot.

  She had eagerly embraced her new life in New York and had tried her best to accept that for now, and maybe forever, she could not be with Kai. It was hard. She ached every night for the feel of the other woman’s arms around her, for the sound of her laughter, for things they had not gotten the chance to share together. Though she knew there was a chance she’d run into Kai before she was ready, seeing her on the street just then felt like a punch to the stomach. Chloe reached for her water and gulped it down, trying to control her reaction but not quite succeeding.