The three dots appeared almost immediately, indicating Lou was typing. Camille's heart rate spiked in ways that felt disproportionate to a simple text exchange. She was twenty-eight years old, had navigated high-stakes negotiations and media firestorms and the calculated chaos of professional sports. A message about coffee shouldn't make her pulse race like she was seventeen again.
But this wasn't really about coffee. This was about the night in the shower and on the balcony, about Lou's distant eyes at the bar and the ache in Camille's chest that hadn't faded in the three days since.
Lou: Sure. Noon?
Camille: Perfect. See you then.
She stared at the screen for longer than necessary, analyzing Lou's response for hidden meaning. Two words. No emotion. No hint of what Lou was thinking or feeling or wanting. It could mean anything—agreement, reluctance, indifference.
Or it could just mean Lou was as confused as Camille was, navigating territory neither of them had maps for.
Lavender's was exactly the kind of coffee shop Camille had learned to avoid in New York—cozy, quirky, the sort of place where regulars knew each other by name and strangers attracted attention. But Phoenix Ridge wasn't New York. No one here cared enough to photograph her ordering a latte. The anonymity was still novel, still precious.
She arrived early, claiming a table in the back corner where the afternoon light filtered through curtains painted with abstract flowers. The smell of fresh coffee and baked goods wrapped around her like a comfort, familiar enough to settle her nerves slightly. She ordered a vanilla oat milk latte, her actual preference, not the black coffee she'd learned to drink for the cameras, and waited.
The coffee shop was charming in a way that felt almost defiant against the chain stores Camille usually frequented. Mismatched furniture, local art on the walls, a chalkboard menu that changed daily based on the barista's whims. The owner—a middle-aged woman with grey hair with a lavender streak, who was presumably the shop's namesake—greeted customers by name and remembered their usual orders. It was intimate. Personal. The kind of place where secrets might be safe.
Or where they might be noticed by the wrong person.
Camille pulled out her phone, pretending to scroll through emails while she actually watched the door with a vigilance that bordered on paranoid. Every time it opened,her pulse spiked. Every customer who entered was assessed and catalogued: threat level, recognition potential, likelihood of having a camera hidden somewhere on their person.
This was what her life had become. Constant surveillance, even when the cameras weren't actually there.
Twelve minutes. Lou was twelve minutes late.
Camille told herself it didn't matter, that traffic or a last-minute errand could explain the delay. But part of her wondered if Lou was reconsidering, if the text conversation had been enough warning for her to decide this wasn't worth pursuing.
Then the door opened, and Lou walked in, and Camille forgot how to breathe.
Lou was dressed simply—dark jeans, a grey henley that showed the lines of her shoulders, a leather jacket that had clearly seen years of use. Her hair was still damp, suggesting a recent shower. She scanned the coffee shop with the automatic alertness of someone used to reading rooms, her gaze landing on Camille with a focus that made everything else fade to background noise.
She was beautiful. Not in any conventional sense, not in ways Camille had been trained to appreciate. But there was something about Lou that drew the eye and held it—a gravity, a presence, a particular kind of magnetism that had nothing to do with polish and everything to do with substance.
Camille's heart jumped. Her palms went damp. Her body responded to Lou's presence before her mind had time to catch up, desire pooling low in her belly with an urgency that surprised her.
This was what she'd wanted to talk about. This feeling.This wanting. The way Lou had changed everything about how Camille understood herself.
Lou ordered at the counter—black coffee, predictable—and exchanged a few words with Lavender herself before making her way to Camille's table. Apparently Lou was a regular here. Apparently she had a usual order and a usual table and an easy rapport with the owner that spoke to years of quiet, consistent patronage.
Up close, Camille could see the tension in Lou's jaw, the careful neutrality of her expression. She could also see the way Lou's eyes tracked over her face, cataloguing details with the same intensity she brought to reading plays on the ice. Lou was nervous too. The knowledge was oddly comforting.
"Hey." Lou slid into the seat across from her, her leather jacket creaking softly with the movement.
"Hey." Camille wrapped her hands around her latte, needing something to hold. "Thanks for coming."
"Sure." Lou's gaze met hers, then slid away toward the window. "You said we should talk."
"We should." Camille took a breath, organizing thoughts she'd rehearsed a dozen times. "What happened between us—I haven't been able to stop thinking about it."
Lou's expression didn't change, but something flickered in her eyes. "Me neither."
"I've never—" Camille broke off, the words harder to say out loud than they'd been in her head. "I've never been with a woman before. I've never wanted a woman before. I've never wanted anyone the way I want you."
The confession hung between them, raw and terrifying. Lou was very still, her coffee untouched on the table.
"I don't know what this means for my identity," Camillecontinued, the words tumbling out faster now. "I don't know if I'm gay or bisexual or something else entirely. I don't know how to reconcile who I thought I was with who I apparently am. But I know I don't want to stop. I know that whatever this is between us—I want to explore it."
Lou's hands tightened around her coffee mug. "Camille?—"
