“Why can’t we talk about it here?”
“Because I need to get out of the house, Lou.”
“I’m not keeping you here. I can do the dishes if you want to go.”
“I want you to go with me.”
“Can I pass tonight but promise I will go out with you in the future?”
“The future will need to be narrowed down.”
“This month?”
“Better than thisyear, I guess,” Harlow said. “And, yeah, you’re doing the dishes. I’m going to get dressed.”
Harlow finished her water and stood up from the table. Larissa knew that she had disappointed her, but she didn’t need to go out how Harlow seemed to need sometimes, and she certainly didn’twantto go out. She’d much rather sit on her sofa and read the applications for her interviews.
She’d posted the details online on three different sites as well as a job board for the school, hoping she’d get a wide range of people applying and not just the ones only interested in the small amount of money she’d promised them for an hour or two of their time, and Harlow had helped her write the description because she had told Larissa that her first version sounded toosciency, which Larissa had explained wasnota word.
With these few new applicants, she now had well over twenty people who had applied, and she decided to start with couples because they’d be able to recall the feelings of falling for their partners most easily, in her opinion. She wanted people who had been together for hardly any time at all, people who had been together for a while, and people who had met or gotten together under different circumstances. That would give her a good place to begin, and she could work with what they gave her and go from there.
As she looked at the most recent application, though, her eyes widened. There were three names on it, and the story of how they’d met involved an existing couple asking a third personto join them in their relationship. Larissa hadn’t considered the possibility of including more than just couples or singles in her book, but as the world changed around people, love changed, too – or, maybe, how people allowed themselves to experience it changed – so she made a quick note to include them. Once she was done reviewing every application at least two times, she had a list of ten to follow up on, or, she guessed, tenlove storiesshe wanted to know more about.
She figured that at least a few people would back out, but if she had five to seven interviews to start with, she could always keep the posting up to get more applicants later. For now, she set about writing a templated email that she could send to everyone she wanted to talk to, and she hit send on the emails before closing her computer. Then, she looked up, expecting to see Harlow standing there, telling her that she was about to leave, but Harlow wasn’t there. The house was quiet, too. Larissa checked the clock on the stove when she walked into the kitchen to get the dishes done and only then noticed that it was after ten. They had finished dinner around seven-thirty. She had been at it for two and a half hours and hadn’t even noticed Harlow leaving.
CHAPTER 4
She usually left out the front door since she parked her car in the driveway and not the garage like Larissa, but this time, Harlow decided not to go out the front and used the laundry room door into the garage, getting to her car that way instead. It meant that she had to open and close the garage door, but she had the code to it, just like she had the house keys and knew the alarm code and Larissa’s phone passcode, too. They knew practically everything about one another, and yet, they still didn’t seem to know much at all, which was always interesting to Harlow.
They’d met at a school event through Larissa’s sister, who was a few years older, but they hadn’t gotten to know one another until Larissa had ended up as her TA in a psychology class during the second semester of Harlow’s freshman year in college. They’d been friends ever since, and while Harlow had always wanted more, Larissa had appeared oblivious and so focused on school that Harlow had never told her how she felt. Of course, shehadtechnically asked her out a few times initially, but Larissa probably hadn’t even noticed any of that because Harlow hadn’t exactly been obvious about it, especially the first two times.
“So, do you maybe want to do something later?” she’d asked the first time the day after she had finished classes and was no longer a student in Larissa’s section.
“Um… I was going to head out to get something to eat. Do you want to come with me? I can’t buy you a drink because I’m nineteen, but we could still have fun,” she’d said with a nervous laugh the second time.
“Larissa, do you want to go out with me?” she’d asked a third and final time about four months after they had met.
“What?” Larissa had replied then, looking up from her computer. “Sorry, I just got an email. I wasn’t paying attention.”
That attempt had happened when she had returned to school after the summer to find Larissa in the library, which had been Larissa’s home away from home back then. Larissa had just started graduate school, and Harlow had known that the woman would be busy with studying and teaching, so she’d stopped asking her out after that. Their friendship had been solidified, and after a year, she’d felt like she could finally put away her feelings. She’d had dates and girlfriends ever since, but none of them had made her feel how Larissa always had, and she was beginning to wonder if they ever would.
It was true that the women Harlow had been with had always competed, in a way, with their years of friendship, and even in her most recent relationship, when she had thought she’d been in love, Harlow had known the whole time that if Larissa suddenly woke up and was interested in going on a date with her, she would’ve ended things with her girlfriend sooner. While she wasn’t sure if that made her a bad person, it didn’t really make her a good one. She deserved love, too, though, and there had been women who were interested in her and wanted to be with her over the years. Larissa hadn’t been one of them, unfortunately, having never expressed anything more than friendship to her, so if Harlow didn’t give up on this soonerrather than later, she’d end up in yet another relationship where she would just compare her girlfriend to her best friend, which wasn’t fair to anyone.
She knew that, as much as she’d wanted to get out and have Larissa go with her, she also needed to have some time to herself, out of that house, to be able to think for a bit, so she pulled up to her favorite bar, which wasn’t one she had ever brought Larissa to just for that reason: to have her own space that wouldn’t have memories of her friend being there with her and Harlow having lusty feelings or even romantic, sweet feelings for her while she got tipsier and tipsier.
“Is this stool taken?” she asked a woman who had been facing away from her when she’d first walked up.
The woman turned around then, gave her a very obvious, long once-over, and offered Harlow a smirk in the end.
“Well, my night just got infinitely better. Hello. I’m Ashlee.”
The woman held out her hand for Harlow to shake.
“Oh, hi,” she said. “Harlow. I’m not your blind date, if that’s what–”
Ashlee laughed and replied, “No, I’m not waiting on a blind date.”
Harlow shook her hand and asked, “So, can I sit?”
