“Yes ma’am.” Hayley saluted and shot into the bathroom, locking the door firmly behind her. The mirror told a mortifying story. Her messy bun was a catastrophe, her lips were swollen, her cheeks had never been pinker. How she was going to fix this in a couple of minutes, she had no idea.
She had zero regrets, though.
In her pocket, her phone buzzed. She pulled it out, startled to see a Facebook Messenger chat request notification from D.E. Morales. She thumbed her way through her phone and approved the message.
I hate FB. Can I have your number?
The entire situation was frankly confusing for Hayley, and yet she couldn’t stop herself from grinning like a fool as she sent her phone number to Deborah Morales and hoped it was going to lead somewhere interesting.
6
DEBORAH
Deb held up a black tank top and a plain white t-shirt. “Which should I wear?”
On her phone screen, Paige steepled her fingers together and cast her eyes heavenward. “I am begging the lesbians of my life to remember that I am, tragically, a straight woman. I have inbuilt bad taste because I am attracted to men, Deb. I have no idea what women would like.”
“But you have to have an opinion of what might look good on me,” Deb begged, holding each shirt in front of her. On her bed, her Ragdoll cat, Cory, yawned and rolled over with a chirp. He was thoroughly over her little fashion show. “I can’t trust my judgment right now.”
“Well, that’s not surprising to hear given that I am helping you dress for a date withHayley Miltonof all people.” Paige shook her head, setting her sloppy gym bun bouncing even more than it already had been as she Facetimed Deb from a Planet Fitness treadmill. “Tell me again how that happened?”
“Come on, Paige. We’ve been… I don’t know. Connecting, kind of.” If she was being honest, Deb was having trouble explaining it to herself. It just felt like after Hayley dragged herinto that kiss in the ICU on-call, she owed it to herself to see if there was something actually there between them, more than her long one-sided lust-hate crush.
“You once called her ‘Full Metal Jacket with blonde hair,’” Paige pointed out. “I’ve hardly ever heard you say a positive thing about her.”
“What positive thinghaveI said to you about her?” Deb asked, curious.
“Not to me, per se,” Paige hedged, pressing buttons on the treadmill and increasing her speed. “But I did catch you staring at her ass once after she ripped you a new one and walked off, and you were muttering about how you hated how great it was.”
Deb’s fingers tightened around the shirts in her hands. “Jesus.”
“I guess that does answer the question I had about how this happened, though,” Paige said with a grin. “Your hate for her has never been very straightforward. Can I beg you, though, not to fuck up the relationship between the ER and the ICU again? That was a rough 24 hours.”
“Shut up,” Deb muttered. She looked at the two shirts again. She’d asked Hayley to a casual early dinner at the Indigo Lounge before the evening entertainment began. A Polish DJ was coming in to headline a long night of thumping electronica sets, which Deb felt sure Hayley wouldn’t be into. She was interested, though. She decided to wear the black tank top with her black skinny jeans and motorcycle boots. The Lounge got warm on a really intense dance night, and she intended to dance well into the night after bidding Hayley farewell.
On the phone screen, Paige covered her eyes as Deb shucked off the oversized vintage KISS t-shirt she had on and exchanged it for the tank-top. “Hey!”
“Paige, we’ve seen each other change clothes in the hospital a billion times. We’ve gone surfing together. I know you have abutterfly tattoo on your ass and a navel piercing.” She shoved her yoga pants down and stepped out of them.
“I amin the gym,” Paige yelped. “And why are you wearing Wonder Woman undies?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Deb asked, yanking on her skinny jeans and bouncing to get into them. “Wonder Woman is awesome.”
“I agree,” came a masculine voice to Paige’s left, and to Deb’s horror, a grinning, bearded face entered the phone screen. She and Paige both shrieked. In the next moment, Deb’s screen went blank as the call ended.
She zipped her jeans and sat down next to Cory on the bed to catch her breath after that jump scare. As she yanked on a pair of socks, messages came through on her phone.
That was the gym manager, Paige’s first message said.He asked me to refrain from making phone calls on the treadmill in future.
Deb winced. Then she saw the second message and grinned.
You look great in the black tank top. Straight Gal Approved.
Deb stood nervously outside of the Indigo Lounge, hands stuffed into the pockets of her leather jacket. She was fifteen minutes early, and punctuality wasn’t usually her bag, but somehow this time it seemed important that she be early. Deb wanted to escort Hayley into the Lounge, to hold the door for her and let her choose her seat in the booth. Why exactly she wanted all of these things, she had no idea, since until very recently, she and Hayley Milton had rarely had a civil word to say to each other. But it felt important, so she was going to go with it.
She wanted this to be a nice couple of hours. If nothing else came of it, at least they’d both walk away without any further animosity between them. She hoped.
An LA Metro bus pulled up over on the next block of Broadway and disgorged its load of passengers. The mass of humanity dispersed in multiple directions, except for one slender blonde figure in a floaty blue dress.
