Lin looked up from the couch when I came back home.
She blinked.
“What are you wearing?”
I looked down at myself.
“Clothes?”
“Those are not your clothes.”
“They are now.”
The black pleated skirt sat high on my waist, sharp and structured. The grey shirt was tucked in cleanly, sleeves rolled to the elbows, patterned tie sitting exactly where Leah had left it.
Lin stood and came closer.
“You look…”
“Good?”
“Professional.”
“Eww.”
“Stylish professional.”
“Better.”
She touched the end of the tie.
“Leah did this?”
“She said I normally dress like I don’t care what anyone thinks of me.”
Lin smiled.
“She is very blunt.”
I sat beside her.
“Sooooo… Leah wants to take us out tonight.”
Lin’s smile faded slightly.
“Us?”
“Girls’ night. Drinks. Expensive ones.”
“I don’t know.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged.
“I barely know her.”
“That is generally how knowing people starts.”
“You know what I mean.”
I did.
Leah had arrived quickly and somehow taken up a lot of space without technically asking for any of it. Lin was still watching her, and me with her.
“She’s really not that bad,” I said.
Lin gave me a look.
“She told me my karaoke performance had excellent visual potential and then criticized the angle you filmed it from.”
“The angle was bad.”
“That is not the point.”
“She’s lonely.”
Lin looked at me again.
I pressed on.
“She just moved here. Her apartment is full of boxes. She has work people and her parents’ friends, but she doesn’t actually have friends.”
“She has you.”
“Exactly. That’s how desperate things are.”
Lin laughed despite herself.
“Come on. Please?”
“Mia.”
“She needs a proper night out. No donors, no rich old people, no pretending to care about museum apps. Just us.”
“You really want me there.”
“Yes!”
That came out too quickly.
Lin studied me.
I leaned against her shoulder.
“Please, Lin.”
She sighed.
“You’re doing the voice.”
“What voice?”
“The one where you’ve already decided I’m coming and you’re making me feel guilty until I agree.”
“I would never do anything like that!” I said in a mock-shocked voice.
“You are currently leaning on me like an abandoned dog.”
I leaned harder.
She sighed again.
“Fine.”
I lifted my head.
“Fine?”
“I’ll do it for you.”
“Yay!”
I grabbed my phone before she could change her mind.
Me:
Lin said yes.
The response came almost immediately.
Leah:
Excellent.
Leah:
I’ll collect you both at eight.
Me:
Collect?
Leah:
I don’t want you to get lost.
I showed Lin the screen.
She stared at it.
“I already regret this.”
“You said yes.”
“I said I’d do it for you.”
I smiled.
“Still counts.”
At five to eight, our group chat lit up.
Leah:
Come down.
Lin crossed to the window and pulled the curtain aside.
“No one is there.”
I stood and reached for my shoes.
“Trust in the system.”
Lin looked back at me.
“What system?”
“The Leah system.”
“That is not reassuring.”
I slipped my shoes on and headed for the door.
Lin threw both hands into the air.
“Fine. Apparently we’re obeying vague commands now.”
She followed me downstairs.
The moment we stepped outside, a black Uber rolled up to the curb.
Before it had fully stopped, the driver got out and opened the rear door.
I grinned and climbed straight in.
Lin stopped on the pavement.
“How do you know this is for us?”
I leaned back toward the open door.
“Trust the system.”
Then Leah’s voice came from inside the car.
“She’s learning.”
Lin climbed in more cautiously than I had.
The back was larger than the car Leah and I had taken the night before, with two pairs of leather seats facing each other. Leah and I sat facing backward. Lin lowered herself onto the opposite seat and looked around.
She wore a short black skirt, dark tights and ankle boots, paired with a soft green top that made her look warm and approachable. Her hair was loose, and she had put on just enough makeup to prove she had considered the evening.
Beside me, Leah looked like she had planned the entire night around being observed.
Tailored black trousers. A silver-grey top with one bare shoulder. Pointed black heels. A small structured bag. Sharp eyeliner. A dark lip.
I sat between them in my black pleated skirt, grey shirt and patterned tie, wearing the best outfit I owned because Leah had selected every part of it.
Lin ran one hand over the leather seat.
“This is very fancy.”
“It’s an Uber Black,” I said, with the authority of someone who had now used one twice.
Leah smiled at me.
“No expense spared tonight. We stumbled into some funds, and they should be used to cleanse the palate. They came from a very dirty source.”
Lin looked between us.
“Are you two selling drugs?”
“No,” I said.
Leah crossed her legs.
“Nothing that respectable.”
The Uber dropped us off in Koreatown outside a restaurant with dark windows, brass lettering and a woman at the door holding a tablet.
“Reservation for Takahashi,” Leah said.
Of course she had a reservation.
My girl’s planning skills remained unrivalled.
We were led past the main dining room to a curved booth near the back. Leah took the outside seat, Lin slid in beside her, and I sat opposite them.
Drinks appeared first. Leah ordered several dishes for the table after checking whether Lin ate anything she disliked.
Then she started asking questions.
Not interrogation questions. Not the kind designed to expose an embarrassing answer or give her material for later.
She asked about Lin’s family. Which art periods of history she liked. Whether she preferred art because of the work itself or because of what it revealed about the people who made it. What brought her to New York. What kind of music she listened to when nobody else was around.
Questions that gave Lin somewhere to go.
And Lin went.
At first, her answers were careful and short. Then Leah found the right thread and pulled gently.
Lin told her about a professor who could turn any lecture into an argument about colonial theft. She complained about museum labels that pretended objects had simply appeared in Europe through natural migration. Leah asked a follow-up that proved she’d actually listened rather than simply waiting for her turn to speak.
Lin smiled.
Then she did it again.
She laughed at Leah’s jokes. Real laughs, not the polite little ones she used when she wanted a conversation to end without hurting anyone.
Leah never put me down for an easy laugh. Never used something I had told her privately to make herself look clever. She did not push Lin toward anything she was not perfectly happy to share.
She simply kept the conversation moving and made space whenever Lin wanted to fill it.
I sat across from them feeling stupidly pleased.
My best friend and my new…
Friend?
Idol?
Potential lover?
Whatever Leah was becoming, she and Lin were getting along.
That was what I had wanted.
Wasn’t it?
Lin said something that made Leah laugh, her head tipping back slightly. Then Leah leaned closer and asked another question, and Lin turned toward her without looking at me first.
A small, ugly thing shifted inside my chest.
I took a drink and pushed the feeling back down.
This was good.
They were bonding.
I had made this happen.
Under the table, Leah’s hand settled on my thigh.
She kept looking at Lin. Kept listening as Lin spoke. Her expression did not change.
Her fingers squeezed my leg once.
Firm. Brief.
Don’t worry, Mia.
The ugly thing loosened.
I reached for another piece of food, trying not to smile too obviously.
Leah was still talking to Lin.
But she knew exactly where I was.
When the last plates were cleared, Leah checked the time.
“I booked us a room next door.”
“A room?” Lin asked.
“For karaoke.”
I looked at her.
Karaoke.
For the first time that evening, I wondered if Leah had made a mistake.
Dinner had worked because Lin could talk. Because Leah could ask questions and listen and make everything feel easy.
Karaoke was different.
Karaoke required standing up in front of people and choosing to be heard.
Even if the people were only us.
I followed them next door, trying to decide whether this was the first crack in the Leah system.
The room was private, with a curved leather sofa, two microphones and a screen covering most of one wall. Drinks were already waiting on the table.
Leah picked up the tablet and handed it to Lin.
Lin stared at the song list.
Then she scrolled.
Her expression changed.
“Wait.”
She scrolled again.
“They have this?”
Leah sat down and crossed her legs.
“I asked.”
Lin looked up.
“How did you know I liked them?”
“I asked Dan.”
I turned toward her.
“You interviewed Dan?”
“I asked him several efficient questions.”
“You researched us.”
“I planned an evening.”
Lin kept scrolling, finding one song after another.
Not generic choices. Her songs. Bands she had mentioned before, albums she still listened to, songs Dan had apparently remembered because he was occasionally useful.
Then I took the tablet.
Leah had filled my section with pop songs from when I was fifteen to twenty. Music I would never have claimed to know.
Except I did.
Every chorus was still buried somewhere inside me. Every stupid line from songs that had played in shops, at parties, in taxis, through other people’s headphones.
Music I did not know I knew until the opening notes started.
“You built a trap,” I said.
“God forbid a girl plan an evening without being accused of treachery?”
“This playlist is devilishly perfect.”
“And that is bad?”
Lin broke the awkward silence by choosing the first song. She tapped the table a few times, and I caught the title “Before He Cheats” just before the music started.
She started cautiously, sitting down with the microphone held in both hands. By the chorus she was louder. By the end she was standing.
Then Leah handed me the other microphone before I could object, and the next song, “You Oughta Know”, stumbled out of me. Words that had apparently survived untouched for fifteen years.
I knew all of it.
Not well.
But completely.
Leah watched us with the satisfied expression of someone whose experiment had produced the correct result.
Then it was her turn.
Leah grabbed my mic and spun it in her hands like a baton. She selected a song from the board, looked at us and said into the microphone, “This is gonna get loud.”
A guitar riff started. She bounced back and forth a few times, before stopping in a wide stance, lifting one hand into the air and screaming,
“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNE PUUUUUNCH”
A bald man in a white cape and yellow suit punched the screen, as the lyrics started, and Leah ignored it completely.
There was no hesitation.
No warm-up.
She hit the first line cleanly and at full volume. Then the lyrics switched to Japanese.
Leah didn’t seem to notice.
She moved through the song like she had rehearsed it for a stage rather than a padded room above a bar.
Her pronunciation was sharp. Her timing was perfect. She even knew where to breathe.
Lin stared at her.
I stared harder.
Of course she could sing.
Of course Leah had anime opening themes prepared.
When the song ended, Leah gave a small bow.
Lin clapped.
I pointed at her.
“You have done this before.”
“Once or twice.”
Lin laughed, “That sounds like an understatement.”
“At my peak, I did karaoke twice a week for five years at university.”
“Competed?”
“Occasionally.”
“How did you do?”
Leah sighed dramatically, held up two fingers in a V-sign beside her cheek and gave the most deadpan kawaii pose imaginable.
“Regional champion twice.”
Lin blinked.
Mia stared.
Leah dropped the pose.
“It sounds much more impressive than it was.”
She selected another song.
Something Blue.
It started slower.
Then she started moving.
I’d seen Leah dance before.
This wasn’t dancing.
Every movement hit the beat. Every glance matched the lyrics. She leaned into the imaginary camera at exactly the right moments, snapped her head with the chorus, played to an audience of two.
It felt less like karaoke and more like watching someone perform on stage.
Lin looked at me.
I looked back.
Neither of us had anything to say.
She finished with the same impossible precision.
Leah hadn’t booked karaoke because she hoped we’d enjoy it.
She had made sure we would.
More drinks arrived. More songs were sung. By the end, we were all dancing.
Eventually Leah checked the time and set down her microphone.
“We need to wrap up. I have somewhere else booked.”
Lin groaned.
“We just got good.”
“We got loud.”
“That is what good sounds like.”
Leah smiled and picked up the tablet.
“One last song.”
Leah selected one final track and tossed the second microphone to Lin.
“Rap battle, bitch.”
A heavy bassline filled the room.
Then the speakers shouted,
“There’s some whores in this house!”
Lin lit up.
Not smiled.
Lit up.
She actually bounced once before snatching the microphone out of the air.
Leah watched her with the satisfied little smile of someone who had selected exactly the right weapon.
Then she looked at me and winked.
Lin launched into her verse with alarming confidence, enthusiastically making demands that would have gotten her disowned back home.
Leah drained the rest of her drink, waited for her cue, then answered with equal enthusiasm, firing the lyrics right back like they were arguing over whose standards were more outrageous.
I just stared.
Twenty minutes ago, these two had been discussing museum ethics over Korean barbecue.
Now they were aggressively rapping increasingly filthy boasts at each other with the conviction of lifelong rivals.
Neither missed a beat.
Neither even cracked a smile.
When the song ended, Lin collapsed onto the sofa, breathless.
Leah collected the microphones.
“Good. Now we can go somewhere respectable.”
Lin stared up at her.
“After that?”
Leah opened the door.
“Especially after that.”
A new Uber Black rolled up just as we stepped out of the karaoke bar.
Lin stopped on the sidewalk.
“We can take normal Ubers, you know. We are not royalty.”
“Today we are,” Leah said.
The car carried us across town and dropped us in front of two steel doors set into a huge concrete block of a building.
No sign. No windows. Nothing that suggested music, drinks or people having fun inside.
Lin looked up at it.
“What is this?”
“Exclusive,” Leah said.
“That is not an explanation.”
“It is the important part.”
Leah stepped out of the car and walked toward the steel doors.
Two men stood beside them in black suits.
Neither looked like a nightclub bouncer. They were too still for that. No folded arms. No scanning the street. No visible interest in who arrived.
One of them held out a small black scanner.
Leah opened something on her phone.
A QR code appeared.
He scanned it.
A soft tone sounded.
Then he looked at her.
“Passcode?”
Leah looked him in the eye.
“Orchid.”
The man said nothing.
No nod or confirmation.
The second guard opened the steel door.
That was apparently enough.
We stepped inside.
The door closed behind us with a heavy metallic sound.
The music reached us first as pressure.
A deep bass pulse moved through the walls and into my chest before I could properly hear the song.
The entrance corridor was painted dark red.
Not bright red.
Dried-blood red.
Low strips of light ran along the floor, barely enough to show where we were walking.
Lin looked around.
“Oh.”
That one sound carried several years of suppressed fantasy.
We followed Leah down the corridor.
The walls were covered in art selected specifically to make normal people uncomfortable. Black-and-white photographs of bodies twisted into impossible poses. Metal masks mounted under red lights. A glass case containing something that looked like a ceremonial knife, though I suspected it was decorative and very expensive.
The farther we walked, the louder the bass became.
Each turn revealed another corridor, another dark alcove, another piece of art that made me wonder whether the building had once been used for interrogations.
Lin was smiling.
Not politely.
Actually smiling.
“This is like Blade,” she said.
“Less blood,” I replied.
“So far,” Leah called back to us.
At the end of the hallway, a woman waited behind a narrow black desk.
She wore a fitted black latex dress with a high collar and a slit running almost to her hip. Long gloves covered her arms. A thin silver chain connected one ear cuff to the collar.
Lin’s eyebrows rose.
Mine probably did too.
The woman looked at Leah.
“Reservation?”
“Takahashi.”
She checked a tablet.
“Three. Private booth, lower floor?”
“Yes.”
The woman stepped out from behind the desk.
“Follow me.”
She turned toward a second set of doors.
The latex caught the red light with every step.
Lin leaned closer to me.
“I think I understand exclusive now.”
The doors opened.
The full weight of the music rolled over us.
Below, the club stretched out in dark levels of red light, black steel and moving bodies.
Leah did not slow down.
The host led us past the bar and onto a raised section overlooking the dance floor.
A bottle sat in ice beside the booth. Three glasses waited on the table.
Lin looked at Leah.
“You booked a table?”
“This is not a drop-in club.”
We had one drink first.
Then the music changed.
Something heavier came through the speakers, all bass and pressure, and Lin looked toward the dance floor.
Her entire face changed.
Not nervous.
Hungry.
She stood before either of us suggested it.
I had expected her to need convincing. Lin usually needed a little push before doing anything that made her visible.
Not here.
She stepped onto the floor like she had been preparing for it her entire life.
Maybe she had.
I knew she had grown up trapped in her parents’ careful little world, watching things like the Matrix, the hidden clubs in John Wick, all those secret places behind unmarked doors where beautiful people did terrible things under expensive lighting.
This was the fantasy.
Not the murder or violence, hopefully.
The rest of it.
The secrecy. The music. The freedom. The sense that normal rules had been left outside with the coats.
Lin moved easily.
No hesitation. No looking around to see whether anyone was watching. She let the music take her and became part of the room like it had been waiting for her.
I followed.
Less successfully.
I had enthusiasm.
Enthusiasm was not the same as rhythm.
Every movement I made felt too large or too late. I became aware of my arms, which immediately made them useless. My hips seemed to be receiving different music from the rest of me.
Lin did not notice.
Leah did.
She moved behind me and placed one hand at my waist.
Then she started dancing with me.
Not beside me.
With me.
She guided my hips into the beat, close enough that I could feel the shape of every movement before I had to copy it. When I went too far, her hand corrected me. When I froze, she moved me through it.
I did not understand how someone knew how to couple-dance on a club floor.
Apparently Leah did.
She kept her own dancing smooth and sexy while somehow making mine look intentional.
People looking at us would not see a woman having a disagreement with her limbs.
They would see Leah wrapped around me, moving us both.
I relaxed against her.
My body stopped trying to solve the music and started following hers.
We kept going until all three of us were sweaty, breathless and exhausted.
Eventually, we all made our way back to the booth and collapsed into the seats. Lin kicked off her boots. I leaned back with my drink pressed against my forehead while Leah somehow managed to sit upright and cross her legs like she had not spent the last hour dancing.
She took a long drink.
“I have ordered alcohol and food to my apartment,” she said. “I vote that we move the party there and wind down.”
Lin turned to look at her.
“You’re inviting me to your place?”
“If you’re afraid I’m going to sexually exploit you, I’m sure Mia will protect you.”
Both of them looked at me.
I rocked my hand from side to side.
Maybe.
Fifty-fifty.
Lin stared at me.
“That is not reassuring.”
“I would definitely object if things got unreasonable.”
“What counts as unreasonable?”
“I’ll know it when I see it?”
Leah smiled into her glass.
Lin pointed at me. “You begged me to come tonight.”
“And look how much fun you had.”
“That is not a defense.”
“It is evidence that trusting me occasionally produces good results.”
Leah stood and collected her bag.
“The car will be outside in four minutes.”
Lin looked between us.
“Did I get a vote?”
“Yes,” Leah said. “You can vote in the car.”
I pushed myself to my feet and held out a hand to Lin.
“Trust the system.”
She looked at my hand, then at Leah walking toward the exit.
“I hate this system.”
She took my hand anyway.
Lin did not object when we arrived.
She stepped out of the car with us and looked up at the building.
“You live here?”
Leah headed toward the entrance.
“How rich are you?”
“Corporate pays,” Leah said. “Ask Mia. She can explain it better.”
Lin looked at me.
“Can you?”
“She needs to find a new place in the next six weeks or she’s out on her ass. She is currently paying exactly nothing for this one.”
Leah gave a small grunt of acknowledgement as we stepped into the elevator.
When we reached her floor, there was a delivery cart waiting outside the apartment.
It was loaded with food.
Meat. Fries. Fried chicken. Dumplings. Several other things designed specifically for people who had been drinking and no longer respected their digestive systems.
Beside it sat a case packed with alcohol.
Wine. Spirits. Cider. Beer. Enough variety to survive differing tastes or a minor siege.
Lin looked from the cart to Leah.
“You really don’t do anything half-assed, do you?”
Leah unlocked the door.
“Not tonight.”
We rolled the cart inside, and Leah arranged everything across the kitchen island with military efficiency.
Food on one side. Alcohol on the other. Plates, glasses and napkins lined up between them.
Then she poured three shots.
“What are those for?” Lin asked.
“Bonding.”
Leah pushed a glass toward each of us.
“Bonding time will commence shortly.”
“That sounds threatening,” I said.
“Ah, you pick up on my subtle hints, good. Bonding time will be rewarding.”
We took the shots.
The alcohol burned all the way down. Lin coughed into her hand. I tried not to react, which made my eyes water instead.
Leah opened a cider for herself and gestured at the cart.
“Pick your poison.”
Lin chose wine. I took a cider too, because copying Leah had produced mostly positive results so far.
She placed a large bowl of salty snacks in the middle of the island, then sat across from us.
“So,” she said, folding her hands neatly in front of her. “According to the normal rules of girls’ night, we must now discuss our innermost feelings.”
Lin looked at me.
“Are those the normal rules?”
“I think so. I have seen television.”
“And ideally,” Leah continued, “we will impose some order on them.”
I reached for the snacks.
“You made feelings sound like a difficult project.”
“They usually are.”
Lin took a drink of wine.
“What exactly are we meant to discuss?”
Leah looked between us.
“Everything we normally avoid.”
“I’ll start,” Leah said. “Lin, you get one question. I will answer truthfully, and I will elaborate if you ask.”
Lin leaned forward slightly.
“This is the first free one,” Leah added. “The rest will cost you.”
Lin looked very interested in that offer.
Then she turned to me.
“I’m taking Mia aside first.”
Leah raised one eyebrow.
“To test possible questions,” Lin explained. “In case she already knows the answer. I don’t want to waste this one.”
Leah considered that, then gave a small approving nod and took another sip of cider.
Lin caught my wrist and pulled me a few steps toward the living room.
“Do you know how she has so much money?”
I nodded.
“Kind of.”
Lin narrowed her eyes.
“Kind of?”
“Corporate housing, rich parents, high-paying job. Also apparently museum corruption.”
“Right…”
She thought for a moment.
“What about how she knows all the things she knows?”
I nodded again.
“I kind of know that too.”
“How?”
“Superpowers.”
Lin stared at me.
“That is not an answer.”
“It’s true, though.”
While we were talking, music started playing throughout the apartment. Not loud, but coming from speakers out of sight.
I glanced at Leah, who put her phone away, and continued calmly eating from the bowl of snacks as if she could not hear us.
“Okay,” Lin said. “What about her plans with Dan?”
My eyes went up.
That one landed differently.
I looked back at Leah.
She met my eyes over the rim of her cider.
“No,” I said slowly. “I actually don’t know that one.”
“Okay, Leah. We have one.”
Leah picked up another chip.
“What’s your deal with Dan?”
She paused with the chip halfway to her mouth, then ate it while she considered the question.
“Dan is part of a package deal.”
Lin glanced at me.
Leah continued.
“I know the two of you share him, in a way. I’m not opposed to that. And you both are very attractive and fun to hang out with. If you both have sex with Dan, and I sometimes do too, that does not create a problem for me.”
She took another chip.
“Dan is a great lay, but he is not someone I bring home to my mother.”
Her eyes moved to me.
“Mia is the kind of woman I bring home to my mother.”
Then to Lin.
“And Lin, someone to keep me on my toes. You keep the scale balanced. You are the glue to keep everyone together. Without Lin, everything would fall apart.”
Lin went very still.
“If I had Dan entirely to myself,” Leah continued, “I might sleep with him when I was lonely. Or ovulating. But I would not date him.”
I nearly choked on my cider.
“He is slightly slow on the uptake,” she added, “but he has a kind soul.”
“That is almost sweet,” I said.
“You know it’s true.”
Leah looked between us.
“No. I am here for the package deal.”
The room went quiet.
She took a sip of cider.
“And I’m sorry you had to hear it stated that plainly. I had intended to introduce the idea more gradually.”
“Coach it?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“You were going to coach us into becoming your girlfriends?”
“I was hoping we would become friends, more than friends eventually.”
Lin stared at her.
“That sounds worse.”
“It usually sounds better when I have more time.”
“First freebie done.”
Leah finished the rest of her cider in one long drink and set the empty bottle on its side.
“You know the rules, and so do I.”
She spun it.
The bottle circled across the island, slowing until its neck pointed directly at me.
I swallowed.
Leah looked at me, and butterflies kicked hard in my stomach.
“What do you think about what I just revealed, Mia?” she asked. “Do you hate me for intruding?”
I leaned back in my chair.
Fuck.
Okay.
Game time.
“And if I don’t answer?”
Leah gave me a devilish smile.
“Then you have to do a dare.”
I swallowed again.
I knew this one.
I could answer honestly.
“I would like it if you joined us.”
Lin looked at me.
I turned toward her first.
“Lin, you’re my best friend. I love you, and I care about you more than almost anyone.”
Then I looked at Leah.
“And you… I’ve never met anyone like you. No one has made me feel like I could be better and then immediately shown me how.”
Leah’s smile softened.
“I don’t want to give you up,” I continued. “Even if it’s only because I need to see what you do next. I want to be part of it.”
I took a breath.
“Dan is a good lay, like you said. I don’t want to give him up either. But if sharing him with you means I get you…”
I shrugged, suddenly unable to look directly at either of them.
“That sounds like a deal where I gain a lot more than I lose.”
The room stayed quiet for a moment.
Then Leah smiled.
“Never doubted you, Mia.”
I spun the bottle.
It turned twice, wobbled, and stopped with the neck pointing at Lin.
I looked up at her.
Her eyes were far more worried than I had hoped.
“Lin,” I said carefully, “what is your biggest fear about letting Leah into whatever this is?”
Lin looked down at her hands.
For a few seconds, she said nothing.
Then she took a long drink of wine.
“Leah scares me.”
Leah did not move.
Lin kept her eyes on the glass.
“In a few days, she has you eating out of her hand.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again.
Because that was not entirely wrong.
“And today,” Lin continued, “I realized I might be susceptible to it too.”
She finally looked at Leah.
“I don’t want to become your little slave girl.”
The room went still.
“I’m afraid that is where this would end up.”
Leah spoke before either of us could fill the silence.
“Mia, did you ever feel like Lin had control over you while the two of you were sharing Dan?”
I shook my head.
“No. It was always me.”
Lin glanced at me.
“I made up the scenarios where it felt like I was being controlled,” I continued. “But that was in my head. Lin never actually controlled me.”
Leah turned to her.
“And Lin, did you ever feel like Mia had control over you?”
Lin shook her head too.
“No. Mia has a lot of strange emotions, but she never tried to control me.”
I frowned.
“Strange emotions?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I absolutely do not.”
“You do.”
Leah lifted one hand.
“Focus.”
Lin looked back at her.
“I would have noticed,” she said. “If Mia had been trying to control me.”
Leah nodded once.
“Then explain this to me.”
Neither of us answered.
“For the last three months, Dan has been sleeping with both of you regularly. In the same apartment. Often in front of each other.”
She looked between us.
“And somehow, according to both of you, no one took control.”
Her mouth twitched slightly.
“And I know Dan did not. He is not capable.”
“That feels unfair,” I said.
“It is still true.”
Leah leaned forward.
“So what system did you agree to?”
Lin and I looked at each other.
“What rules did you make?” Leah continued. “How did you decide what was allowed? What happened when one of you became jealous? How did you resolve disagreements?”
The longer she spoke, the worse it became.
Because there had been no system.
No rules.
No agreement.
We had simply kept doing things and relied on the other person not to break.
Leah watched the realization move between us.
“How,” she asked, “did you manage to keep this going for three months without either of you taking control?”
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came out.
Lin looked down at her wine.
Leah shook her head,
“I think you don’t understand me.”
“When Dan accidentally let slip that he was sleeping with two women, and I saw what you both looked like, I knew I wanted in. Not for Dan. For everything.”
She looked at each of us.
“You’re both worried I’ll take control. After spending three months sharing a man, neither of you thinks the other was in charge. Why would I suddenly be the one in charge?”
She picked at her bracelet.
“I don’t want to replace your relationship. I want to join it.”
Lin waved one hand.
“Okay. Let me think about this first.”
Leah waited.
“I’m not saying you convinced me,” Lin continued. “But…”
She looked between the two of us.
“I can see a path.”
Leah smiled.
Not victorious.
Just pleased.
Lin reached for the bottle and spun it.
It circled the island, slowed, and landed on Leah.
Lin leaned back.
“Tell me how Dan managed to bag you within a few hours of meeting.”
Leah laughed.
“Oh, he got me, did he?”
Lin lifted her glass.
“That is how it looked.”
“If you know anything about me by now, it should be that I’m a woman with agency.”
“I am starting to understand that.”
“I slept with Dan because I chose to.”
Leah picked up another chip.
“He is one of the only people in my company I don’t hate.”
“That is romantic,” I said.
“It gets better,” Leah said as she crunched down on the chip.
“He isn’t aggressive. He is calm. Quiet when he speaks to people. He doesn’t spend every conversation trying to prove he is the most important person in the room.”
Leah paused.
“He has some issues with boundaries, but they are not malicious. Just poorly understood.”
“That is still not sounding especially sexy,” Lin said.
“No. The sexy part was when I heard he somehow had two women willingly sharing him while fully aware of each other.”
She looked at us.
“I needed to investigate.”
“You slept with him for research?” I asked.
“If you want to call it that.”
Leah’s smile sharpened.
“I wanted to try the magical penis that had apparently entranced two women despite all the chaos that non-monogamous relationships usually bring.”
Lin nearly choked on her wine.
“And?” I asked.
Leah considered it.
“Good dick.”
I laughed.
“That is the review?”
“Very good dick?”
She reached for another drink.
“But not magical.”
Her eyes moved between Lin and me.
“The magic was clearly elsewhere.”
Leah spun the bottle.
It circled once, slowed, and stopped almost perfectly between Lin and me.
She looked at us both.
“Shared question, then. How did this escalate? Who tasted whom first? And when did the two of you sleep together without Dan?”
Lin answered first.
“I suppose I tasted Mia first.”
I looked at her.
“Dan had just finished with her,” Lin continued, “and then I went down on him.”
I raised one finger.
“He went to the bathroom first. You might have tasted pee, not me.”
Lin shrugged.
“Oh, there was definitely pee.”
I stared at her.
“But there was also you,” she added. “I can confirm that after the second time.”
Leah’s eyebrows rose.
Lin took another drink.
“And I think we kissed for the first time after he came on both our faces.”
Leah blinked.
“Dan gave both of you a facial?”
“Yeah.”
“I did not expect that from him.”
“Neither did we,” I said.
Lin continued.
“Then Mia licked it off my face, and I kissed her.”
I raised my finger again.
“I believe I kissed you. You’re remembering that wrong.”
Lin frowned.
“No, I kissed you.”
“You absolutely did not.”
Leah lifted both hands.
“Ladies, please. I can only become so aroused during one conversation.”
We both looked at her.
She leaned forward.
“So how long did all this take? Days? Weeks?”
Lin and I exchanged a glance.
“The second day,” I said.
Leah stared at us.
Lin nodded.
“Yeah. It happened fast.”
Leah slowly reached for her drink.
“I am beginning to understand why none of you had time to make rules.”
“Oh, we made rules,” I said.
Leah looked at me.
“In retrospect, I don’t think they mattered.”
Lin nodded slowly.
“They mostly existed so we could pretend we were being responsible.”
“What were they?” Leah asked.
I counted them off on my fingers.
“No lying. No hiding things. No using Dan to hurt each other. No making decisions for the other person.”
Lin added, “And if either of us wanted to stop, we stopped.”
Leah studied us.
“Those are not bad rules.”
“No,” I said. “They just did not explain anything.”
“They didn’t tell us what we were,” Lin said. “Or what counted as too far.”
“Or who got priority,” I added. “Or whether anyone was allowed to be jealous.”
Lin looked at me.
“You were allowed to be jealous.”
“I know that now.”
Leah leaned back.
“So the rules mattered.”
I shook my head.
“The trust mattered. The rules were just words we put around it.”
Leah smiled faintly.
“That is usually what rules are.”
I reached for the bottle.
I was not entirely sure it was my turn.
I was even less sure what I wanted to know.
There were too many questions now.
Questions about Leah. Questions about Lin. Questions about what the four of us were supposed to become if we actually agreed to any of this.
I spun the bottle anyway.
It circled slowly across the island.
For one stupid second, I hoped it would land on no one.
It did not.
The bottle stopped on Lin.
And suddenly, I knew what I had to ask.
“Lin, are you in love with Dan?”
She gaped at me.
“In love? With Dan?”
I waited.
“Mia, just because I dress up for him and sometimes do intimate things with him does not mean I’m secretly crushing on him.”
“You do dress up for him.”
“I like dressing up.”
“For him.”
“For the situation.”
“That sounds like lawyer language.”
Lin exhaled and looked down at her wine.
“Dan is my first serious dick.”
Leah coughed into her cider.
Lin ignored her.
“I’m exploring things I suppressed for a very long time. Things I’ve been thinking about since I was a teenager.”
Her voice softened.
“Dan is someone I like having around. I trust him enough to try those things. He doesn’t make me feel ashamed for wanting them.”
“But you’re not in love with him?”
“No.”
She looked directly at me.
“I care about him. I enjoy him. I would miss him if he disappeared.”
She paused.
“But I’m not building my life around him.”
Something in my chest loosened.
Lin noticed.
Of course she did.
“This was not really a question about me,” she said.
I reached for my drink.
“It landed on you.”
“Mia?”
“The bottle has spoken.”
Lin grabbed the bottle.
“Well, that got serious very quickly.”
She topped up her wine before spinning it again.
“Let’s go with something more cliché.”
The bottle turned and landed on Leah.
Lin smiled.
“So, Leah. How did you pop your cherry?”
Leah smiled back.
Not embarrassed. Relieved, if anything. Lin had moved away from the serious questions and chosen one Leah could answer without hesitation.
That woman had no shame.
“His name was George,” Leah said. “We were on the Secondary school debate team together. I was 16, he was 17, and he was also on the swim team.”
She paused to take a drink.
“He was one ninety-two, had medium-length hair, and a six-pack that was so tight…”
Leah bit her lip.
I stared at her.
“One ninety-two? Is that some kind of code for hot?”
“Six foot three,” Lin said. “His height.”
She considered it.
“But also, yes. Kind of code for hot.”
“Anyway,” Leah continued, “we had a debate-team weekend getaway. We traveled for an event with a few schools.”
Her smile widened.
“And I pounced.”
Lin laughed into her glass.
Leah leaned back, clearly enjoying the memory.
“Mmm. He was so proportional. Big, but everything scaled correctly.”
“That is the most Leah description of a penis I have ever heard,” I said.
“It was an exceptional design.”
“How many times?” Lin asked.
Leah considered it.
“I think I had him about twenty times that weekend.”
I nearly dropped my drink.
“Twenty?”
“We had limited time.”
“That is not limited time. That is an endurance event.”
“He was on the swim team.”
“So, apparently that transfers?”
Leah smiled.
“It did.”
“Anyway, we dated for a while, but I was unrefined at that age. I think I grated on him.”
Leah shrugged.
“We broke it off about a month later. I think he’s a lawyer now. Probably has some trad wife locked up in his penthouse.”
She took another sip.
“Dodged a bullet there.”
Leah spun the bottle again.
It landed on Lin.
“Best sexual experience,” Leah said. “Go.”
Lin looked at me, then back at Leah.
“Pass?”
Leah’s eyebrows lifted.
“A dare, you say?”
Lin sank slightly in her chair.
“Oh, shit.”
Leah leaned back and looked genuinely thoughtful.
“I did not expect this to happen. What to choose…”
She tapped one finger against her cider bottle.
“Before we continue, ground rules.”
Lin looked relieved by the delay.
“Dares cannot be sadistic or cruel. They cannot leave marks. They only involve the three of us, and they do not leave the apartment. So, no streaking.”
“Why no streaking?” I asked.
Leah looked at me.
“My building is covered in cameras in the public areas. I do not want to sit down with HR on Monday and explain why naked women came running out of my apartment.”
“That sounds like their problem.”
“It would very quickly become mine.”
She looked between us.
“Dares should be about the three of us, and they stay between the three of us. Nothing leaves this apartment.”
Leah paused.
“Not physically. Not digitally. Not spiritually.”
Lin frowned.
“Spiritually?”
“No stories told later. No photographs. No recordings. No weaponizing anything that happens tonight.”
Her eyes moved from Lin to me.
“What happens here belongs to us.”
That sounded less like a game rule and more like a promise.
Lin gave a slow nod.
“Okay.”
Leah smiled.
“Good.”
She rested her chin on one hand and looked Lin over.
“Now I only need to decide what to do with you.”
Leah rested her chin on one hand.
“Lin, earlier you said you remembered what Mia tasted like. You said she had a distinct taste.”
Lin narrowed her eyes.
“I did.”
“Do you think you could tell the difference between Mia, yourself and me?”
Lin stared at her.
Leah smiled.
“In an elaborate blind taste test.”
I expected outrage.
Instead, Lin looked up at her with the calm confidence of someone whose alcohol had finally reached the correct part of her brain.
“Of course I could.”
Then she glanced at me.
“Have you tasted Mia?”
“Yes,” Leah said. “And I tasted nothing except pussy.”
I raised one finger.
“Did you do something after I fell asleep yesterday?”
“Nothing so crude.”
Leah took a sip of cider.
“I had a taste after our encounter at the museum. I was curious.”
Lin’s eyes widened.
“She went down on you in the museum?”
She looked at Leah.
“What kind of Eyes Wide Shut nightmare did you drag her into?”
“That is not too far off the mark, actually.” Leah said, “But let’s not get distracted.”
She looked directly at Lin.
“Is the challenge accepted?”
“Okay, but how?” Lin asked. “I can go down on you two. I can’t exactly go down on myself.”
Leah lifted one eyebrow.
“If I had known oral was on the table, I might have framed the dare differently.”
“The night is young,” Lin said, her voice turning slightly playful.
Leah looked at her with fresh interest.
“I may have underestimated you, Lillian Dwyer.”
Lin smiled.
“By my honor,” Leah continued, “a freak. Handcuffs and leashes.”
Lin’s grin widened.
There was clearly some internal joke there that I had missed.
Leah tapped one finger against the island.
“For this dare, I think we keep it to fingers. Do you prefer Mia or me to do the honors?”
Lin looked between us.
“Mia is the neutral observer. She should do it.”
“Agreed.” Leah stood. “Pants off. I’ll get a blindfold.”
I looked at both of them.
“This is not how I expected the night to go.”
Lin unbuttoned her trousers.
“I suspect you’re not disappointed.”
“When did you become such a pervert, Lin?”
“Always been.”
She pushed her trousers down, then pulled off her underwear with them.
I stared at her.
“Leah only said pants.”
Lin gave me a look that said, Oh, you sweet summer child.
I stood and removed my skirt, leaving me in one of my black value-pack panties.
Leah returned from the bedroom naked from the waist down, holding a black blindfold.
She stopped when she saw me.
“Remind me to take you underwear shopping, Mia.”
I looked down at myself.
“What’s wrong with these?”
“We cannot allow you to keep wearing them.”
“They came in a pack of six.”
“I know. That’s the problem.”
The blindfold was longer than I expected.
Leah wrapped it over Lin’s eyes, tied it neatly behind her head, then guided her hands behind her back. Somehow, with whatever expensive witchcraft she had learned, she secured Lin’s wrists without making it look clumsy or improvised.
“I have a feeling Lin prefers a little limitation during a test like this,” Leah said.
Lin grinned.
She did not say a word.
Blindfolded, hands restrained, smiling like this was the best thing that had happened to her all week.
Leah came over to me with a wet cloth she had produced from somewhere and carefully cleaned my right hand.
Then she lifted it between us.
“This one is yours,” she said, touching my index finger.
She moved to my ring finger.
“This one is mine.”
Then my middle finger.
“And this one is Lin.”
She looked at me.
I nodded back.
It felt less like instructions for a ridiculous drinking-game dare and more like she had just explained the decisive stage of a military operation.
Leah was the general.
I was apparently the soldier sent to execute it.
Lin sat waiting, blindfolded and smiling.
No pressure, then.
I slipped out of my underwear and used my index finger on myself. I was already a bit wet from the general feel of the night, so my hand came away shining.
Then I looked over at her.
She was leaning against the kitchen island with her back arched, hips pushed out, watching me over her shoulder.
She gave them a slow, suggestive shake.
I held up my ring finger.
Leah nodded.
I stepped closer and slid my finger down her back, between her butt checks, before turning my hand around and slipping into her.
That was when it hit me.
I had never actually touched Leah like this before.
We had been naked together. She had dressed me, undressed me, held me in bed, kissed my neck and guided me through situations I barely understood.
But this was different.
This was me reaching for her.
Leah let out a soft moan.
“Oh, Mia,” she whispered. “Be gentle. I’m a fragile flower.”
The sarcasm ruined any chance of obedience.
I pressed closer and found something that made her posture break for half a second.
Her eyes widened.
A real sound escaped her this time, low and surprised.
I withdrew my hand and held it up between us.
Leah looked at it, then at me.
She nodded once and straightened.
No joke.
No correction.
Just approval.
I moved over to Lin.
She was kneeling with her hands secured behind her, head slightly bowed beneath the blindfold, smiling as she listened to every sound around her.
I looked down at her pussy, and noticed that she was dripping. She was not just horny, she was in heat.
Whatever combination of restraint, anticipation and trust Leah had created, it had reached straight through every careful layer Lin normally kept in place.
I bent down and inserted the last finger into her, it slid in easily.
Lin gave a small, helpless sound.
Leah stepped beside me and closed one hand around my wrist.
“Samples gathered,” she said. “Let’s put her to the test.”
We stood in front of Lin.
Leah guided my hand toward her mouth.
“Open.”
Lin obeyed.
She took my finger into her mouth and started sucking as if she was giving my finger a deeply passionate blowjob. Tongue sliding around my it, her head bobbing, trying to get it deeper.
When I took it out, she did a low moan, as if we had taken away a favorite toy.
When the second finger went in, she resumed as if her life depended on it.
“Damn Lin, if my finger was a dick, I would have cum all over your face already.” I pulled out the finger and Lin smiled up as me
“Mmm, tasty”
I looked over at Leah, perhaps Lin really could tell?
Last finger goes in and out, Leah asked, “Ready to give your verdict?”
Lin nodded.
“The last one was me.”
She sounded completely certain.
“I have sucked enough dick after getting fucked to know what I taste like. And recently I’ve been tasting it on you, Mia, so its quite familiar to me.”
“The first was Leah. It was unfamiliar. Interesting, but not something I’ve had before.”
“And in the middle was Mia.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“It’s slightly more acidic, it has a special smell, and it has a taste of comfort and home.”
The answer landed more softly than I expected.
Leah looked impressed.
“The girl has excellent taste.”
She reached behind Lin and pulled one end of the knot.
The restraints loosened at once. The blindfold followed, falling away as if the whole thing had been designed for a stage reveal.
Lin blinked up at us.
Still smiling.
Apparently Leah’s rope skills counted as superpowers too.
Leah returned to the kitchen island, sat down and opened another cider.
She did not get dressed.
After a moment, I decided to follow her example.
Lin looked at me, shrugged, and did the same.
Leah took a drink and looked between us.
“Okay. This evening has been very interesting.”
“That is one word for it,” Lin said.
“Would you like to continue getting to know each other, or should I order you a ride home?”
“I can’t stay the night?” I asked.
Leah looked at me.
“That was implied in the ‘continue getting to know each other’ option.”
“Oh.”
I reached for my drink.
“Right.”
Lin was quiet.
I looked at her.
She was staring down into her wine.
“You’re staying, right?” I asked.
Her eyes lifted to mine.
“I think I should go home.”
The disappointment hit before I could hide it.
“Why?”
“I am worried about what I will do if I stay. I felt myself slipping, wanting to go much further.”
“What?”
“I need to think.”
“We can think here.”
“If I stay, I don’t think I will be thinking, at least not with my head.”
Leah said nothing.
Lin turned toward her.
“This is not me rejecting you.”
“I understand.”
“I had a good time.”
“I know.”
“And I meant what I said. I can see a path.”
Leah nodded.
“But I don’t want to wake up tomorrow having agreed to something because I was drunk, horny and afraid of ruining the night.”
“That is very reasonable,” Leah said.
Too reasonable.
Lin looked at me again.
“I’m not angry with you.”
“It feels like you’re leaving me here.”
“I am leaving the apartment. Not you.”
“That sounds like technical wording.”
“It is the truth.”
Leah set down her cider.
“I’ll order the car.”
Lin started gathering her clothes.
No argument. No pressure. No final attempt to persuade her.
Somehow that made it worse.
At the door, Lin hugged me.
“Come home tomorrow,” she said quietly.
“So we can talk?”
“So we can actually talk.”
I nodded.
Then she looked at Leah.
“Thank you for tonight.”
“You’re welcome.”
“And for letting me leave.”
Leah’s expression softened.
“You never needed my permission to leave.”
Lin held her gaze for a second, then stepped into the hall.
The door closed behind her.
I stood there naked, a bit sad.
Leah looked at me.
“You can still go with her.”
I looked at the closed door.
Then back at Leah.
“I know.”
Leah watched me for a moment.
Then she stepped closer.
“I’m very glad you stayed,” she said. “There are things I have wanted to do all night, and I would be rather out of sorts if I could not relieve some pressure.”
I looked at her with wide eyes.
“Are you asking me to sleep with you?”
“Well,” Leah said, taking my hand, “I was hoping to get to know you in the biblical sense.”
She lifted my hand and kissed it.
“I have been very open tonight. More than I usually am. I had hoped it would not damage our relationship, but if you need more time, I won’t push.”
“No. It’s not that.”
Leah waited.
“I was hoping you would ravage me yesterday, but you just wanted to cuddle.”
Her eyebrows lifted.
“I was confused,” I said. “Not unsure.”
“Well, if that is the case, come with me.”
Leah shed her top as she walked toward the bedroom.
She touched something on her phone, and the music became softer, more sensual.
Leah had a sexy-time playlist? I needed to ask about that one later.
I stumbled after her, pulling off my shirt and trying to remove my socks without stopping. I nearly fell into the wall.
Leah did not look back.
She was already stretched across the bed by the time I reached the doorway, posed like some Greek statue of some goddess.
Not sure what she was the goddess of.
Nakedness, presumably.
She patted the mattress beside her.
I sat down.
Leah caught me gently but firmly and pulled me backward onto the bed.
A moment later, she was above me.
Her hair fell around our faces like a curtain, shutting out the rest of the room. She held herself up with one arm while her other hand moved slowly over my body.
“I have wanted to do this since I saw that picture of you and Lin on the bed.”
I stared up at her.
She continued, “I cannot believe you sent that to a woman you had never met.”
“You asked.”
“I applied a little pressure.”
“You were very persuasive. Lin and I both thought so.”
“You barely knew me.”
“I knew you were hot.”
Leah smiled.
“That was enough?”
“No.”
Her hand paused.
I reached up and touched her face.
“But it made me curious.”
“Curiosity is dangerous.”
“So are you.”
She leaned closer.
“That has not stopped you yet.”
“No.”
Her lips hovered just above mine.
“It really hasn’t.”
Leah had bitten my ear. Kissed my face. Touched me in ways that made my thoughts stop working.
But I had never kissed her.
I lifted my head slightly and parted my lips, hoping she understood what I was trying to say without making me say it.
She did.
Her mouth met mine and pushed me back into the pillow.
She tasted like pear and strawberry.
Not even a trace of alcohol.
How the fuck did she do that?
I pulled back just enough to speak.
“I swear, if your pussy tastes like peach, I’m going to assume this entire thing is a delusion.”
“There are pills that can do that you know,” Leah said.
My eyes widened.
“They upset my stomach, so I don’t use them.”
Rich people were insane.
“I’ve wanted to try this properly for a while,” she said.
Then she moved lower.
The shift in weight sent a slow jolt through my spine as her thighs bracketed mine, her warmth radiating against my skin before her hands even made contact.
I wrapped my legs around her almost immediately, locking my ankles behind her back, pressing my hips up just enough to make it unmistakable.
I wanted her there.
Her fingers found me first. Slow. Deliberate.
One traced the damp seam between my thighs, sliding up and down with a feather-light pressure that drew a soft, involuntary moan from my throat.
Then came the heat of her knuckles, parting me gently before one finger slipped inside. The stretch was immediate, intimate, sending a shiver straight to my ribs.
She followed with a second, filling me completely, while her thumb found my clit, sweeping back the hood with a tenderness that felt almost reverent.
Then her mouth closed over me.
Wet. Warm. Impossibly soft. The contrast made my breath hitch, fingers working inside, lips pressing out, tongue fluttering just enough to make my toes curl and my thighs tremble.
It was a quiet symphony of pressure and release, each sensation compounding the last.
Her two fingers inside began to curl upward, circling a hidden knot of nerve endings that had been dormant until now.
Every stroke there sent fresh electricity through my core, while her pinky dragged lazily along the cleft of my ass, a teasing brush that grounded me even as it pulled me further apart.
How was she doing all of this at once? It felt like her hands and mouth were guided by separate minds, each playing its own instrument in perfect harmony.
The tension coiled tighter with every passing second, winding up inside me like a spring drawn to its limit.
My moans grew louder, less controlled, spilling into the quiet room as I dug my fingers into her shoulders. She didn’t stop. She couldn’t have stopped if she wanted to. Not when my body was already arching toward hers, pleading in the only language I still knew how to speak.
Then it broke.
A white-hot surge erupted behind my eyes, flooding every nerve ending at once.
I clenched around her fingers, pulsing in rapid, uneven waves as my stomach contracted so hard I thought my ribs might bruise from the inside out. I pressed her face against me, to anchor myself as the pleasure crested and crashed over me again and again.
Time fractured. It felt like an hour.
It probably lasted ten seconds.
Either way, I was trembling, breathless, completely undone.
When the last tremor finally faded, my legs slowly lost their grip.
She lingered for a moment longer, her breath still hot against my skin, then pulled back just enough to look up at me.
Her cheeks were flushed, her lips glossed with moisture, a few stray strands of hair clinging to her damp face.
She smiled, slow and satisfied, and whispered against my thigh, “Did you enjoy that?”
I dropped my head against the pillow.
“Fuuuuuck!”
Leah waited.
“How are you so good at everything?”
Her mouth curved.
“I came so hard I may have lost basic motor function. You might have ruined me for everyone else.”
“So good?”
“How did you do that?”
Leah moved back up beside me.
“I become obsessive.”
I looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“I had a whole different evening planned if Lin had said no to coming. I saw you at the restaurant when you felt ignored. I… panicked, gave your leg a squeeze, hoping that would solve it.. I think it did.”
She looked back at me.
“When we went on the dance floor, and I saw you struggling, I did my best to make you comfortable. I knew the club was not ideal for you, I was really worried you would hate me for bringing you there”
I gave her a kiss. I had spent the entire evening assuming Leah was effortlessly in control. She’d been worrying just as much as I had.
“You were amazing today, I had the most perfect evening. But what would we have done if Lin said no to coming?”
Leah picked at her Hello Kitty bracelet, and looked away from me “I’ll keep that a secret for now. Save it for a date night.”
I smiled at her, and touched the bracelet, “Why do you wear this? It does not match anything else you have, and you are definitely not a hello kitty girl”
Leah lost her smile for a moment. “I got this in a competition during a convention in Tokyo. It was karaoke. I thought I was good. But then I heard the finalists.”
She turned her head, as if she tasted something bitter.
“It wasn’t humiliating. It was… educational.
I stopped measuring myself against the people around me and started measuring myself against what was actually possible.”
She tapped her bracelet.
“This was a participation award. Every time I think I’m exceptional, I look at this.”
I hugged her close and she settled against me.
“That sounds exhausting.”
“I cannot butcher a chicken. My domestic cleaning skills are inconsistent. There are several basic household tasks I perform badly.”
“That is comforting.”
“But I never want a partner to leave unsatisfied.”
She traced one finger along my side.
“So I learned.”
I decided to change the mood.
“Teach me.”
Leah looked at me.
“I’m serious. I want to know how to do that.”
She smiled.
“If I have one skill I claim to be good at, it’s sex,” I continued. “But after that, I feel like I’ve been playing in the amateur league.”
“That is unnecessarily harsh.”
“If I can’t make you come like that before dawn, I’m going to consider the entire night a disappointment.”
Leah rolled onto her back.
“We can’t allow that, can we?”
She spread her legs and looked at me.
“Come here. I’ll guide you through the basics.”
The rest of the night became a blur.
Instructions. Corrections. Leah’s hands moving mine when I lost the rhythm. Her voice changing whenever I did something right. The occasional laugh when I became too eager and forgot whatever lesson she had given me thirty seconds earlier.
At some point, the music stopped.
At some point, the sky changed color.
I woke to an empty bed and the smell of breakfast coming from the kitchen.
Fresh clothes had been laid out for me.
Not my clothes.
Better ones.
There was a note on the table.
I have yoga.
I’ll contact you later.
Please accept breakfast and this outfit as an apology for leaving you alone this morning.
Love, Leah.
My jaw ached.
Breakfast was incredible.
The coffee was even better.
I dressed in the clothes she had chosen, ate everything she had left for me and headed home to Lin.
More certain than ever that I was not giving Leah up.