“I know there’s one here somewhere.” Marin rummaged through the junk drawer to the left of the sink until she found the corkscrew. She handed it to Charlotte, then turned to get two plates out of the cabinet.
Her stomach buzzed with a mixture of hunger and excitement. Tonight, she would take the first step toward dating a woman, and ... she went weak at the knees just thinking about it. She might absolutely lose her mind when she finally kissed a woman. Sex?Fuck.It was going to rock her world, that was for sure.
She exhaled as Charlotte handed her a glass of wine. “Thanks. How’s your week going?” She kept her tone light because Charlotte had texted her earlier in the week about learning her mom might have been having an affair. Marin wanted to see how she was feeling about things if Charlotte was in the mood to share.
Charlotte’s expression flickered with something Marin couldn’t identify. “I went to the university yesterday. I met Svenson ... except it turns out, I already knew him.”
“What? How?”
“I don’t know exactly ... his face is just familiar to me. I think my mom must have introduced us. I spent a lot of time on campus when I was a kid, and they taught in the same department. Anyway, he confirmed their affair, didn’t even try to play coy with me. I wasn’t expecting that.” She paused to sip her wine. “But he says he was at a conference in Virginia the week she disappeared, and the sheriff’s department confirmed his alibi.”
“So where does that leave you?” Marin filled a plate with pizza and breadsticks and led the way to her living room. It was mind boggling how quickly their friendship had progressed. They’d reconnected less than two weeks ago, but it seemed that the incident on the bus had formed an instant bond between them, one that ran deep.
Hopefully that bond was at least partially responsible for the draw Marin felt toward Charlotte. She wasn’t naive. She’d been attracted to Charlotte from the first moment she’d laid eyes on her, but she needed to move past it once she started dating other women, because Charlotte was straight, and Marin really,reallywanted this friendship to last.
“I’m going to ask my dad about it when we have lunch on Sunday.” Charlotte pressed her lips together. “I’m looking forward to that about as much as you’d expect.”
Marin gave her a sympathetic look. “I bet.”
“I’m still trying to track down my mom’s best friend from back then. Other than that, I don’t know. My mom disappeared before social media or smartphones or even doorbell cameras, so there’s just not much information to track. The sheriff’s report was disappointingly brief. There’s no evidence anything happened to her, but something obviously did.”
“In a way, not knowing almost seems harder than losing her.”
“Exactly.” Charlotte’s eyes glistened with tears. “If she’s dead, I’d at least like to be able to grieve, you know? Instead I’m left wondering if she decided to just leave me behind and start a new life somewhere.”
“That seems unlikely.” Marin sipped her wine, resisting the urge to hug her. It was hard to know where the bounds of friendship lay when her feelings were muddled by attraction. This had always been a problem for her, wondering if she wanted to hug a friend for platonic reasons or because she found her attractive. Consequently, she rarely initiated hugs with female friends.
“It does,” Charlotte whispered, wiping away a tear. “Amnesia is pretty rare in real life, but the PIs my dad hired checked every Jane Doe—living and dead—in the country who even vaguely matched my mom’s description, and none of them were her. So if she’s out there, she never asked for help, which is why I feel like she’s probably dead, but ...”
“It’s horrible not to know for sure. I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks.” Charlotte’s voice wavered. She wiped away more tears, then let out a shaky laugh. “What is it with us? Always with the heavy conversations.”
Marin offered a gentle smile. “I don’t know, but I’m glad we can share difficult things with each other.”
“I am too.” Charlotte blew out a deep breath. “Anyway. Enough of that. Let’s talk about setting up your online-dating profile ... and this new puppy of yours.”
“Both are simultaneously thrilling and stressful,” Marin admitted with a nervous laugh. “The puppy will be lots of fun. I’ve always wanted a pet—a puppy specifically—so I hope she’s really going to enrich my life. At the same time, she’s also going to be a lot of work. I have a feeling I haven’t even thought of half the ways she’s going to trash this apartment yet.”
Charlotte laughed. “I have a feeling you’re right, but she’s cute enough that you’ll forgive her for the mayhem, and I do think she’ll bring more joy than chaos to your life.”
“I won’t be bored, that’s for sure.” Marin grinned. “And one of the students upstairs has agreed to do some puppysitting for me, which will be a huge help. As for dating ...”
Charlotte lifted an eyebrow. “Also fun with the potential for chaos?”
Marin laughed. “Yes.”
She and Charlotte chatted through the rest of their dinner. Once they’d put away the leftover pizza and refilled their wineglasses, it was time to get to the main event. Marin chose a popular online-dating app and downloaded it.
“Here goes nothing.” She clicked the button to sign up. As soon as she’d added some basic information to set up her profile, the app asked her to upload photos of herself, and Marin hit her first roadblock. “I don’t have many recent photos. I’ve taken a few selfies since I got to Vermont. Will those work?”
“Show me what you’ve got.” Charlotte made an encouraging gesture.
Marin opened her photo roll, then handed her phone to Charlotte. “Pick something for me?”
“Um, there’s nothing in here I shouldn’t see, right?” Charlotte flicked her gaze to the phone, then back to Marin.
She laughed. “I’m tragically boring. There’s not much of anything in there at all, let alone anything embarrassing.”
