Page 33 of Like First Love, Again

Nope. Not my place to ask. We’re just casual friends while she’s in town.

Tori felt the lie like a pinched nerve in her back. She straightened, gave up the self-inflicted rouse, and went to look for Mia.

While she walked through the crowd, rounded the mostly empty tables surrounding the dance floor, and checked the bathrooms, she thought about everything weighing on Mia’s shoulders. Tori had never experienced the loss of a parent, but she imagined the gaping hole losing her own mother would leave in her chest.

Grief, the internet had told Tori, was a strange and nonlinear thing. Mia’s ups and downs were apparently very common. Even having a good time could trigger guilt and sadness.

Tori’s stomach heaved. She heard Mia crying in her office and at home. Imagined her holed up somewhere alone to let it out. Tori’s legs moved faster. They carried her all over the exclusive beachfront hotel until she left the cordoned off reception space and found Mia sitting at an empty bar, staring out into an ocean too dark to see at night.

“Mia?” Tori called out over the rushing of waves. It was going to rain again. The smell of an impending shower was heavy in the air. A thick humidity that would only break when the storm arrived.

At the sound of her name, Mia turned her head. Tori didn’t bother pretending she wasn’t going to take her shoes off and walk across the sand in tailored Dior.

“What are you doing out here?” Tori asked when she reached Mia, her fair skin flushed and her eyes glossy.

“I don’t know,” she replied in something of a sigh.

Tori had expected Mia to make a joke. To deflect. The vulnerable honesty only made her want to pull Mia in and protect her from her own sadness. There was nothing Tori wouldn’t do to chase it away.

Relying on an old tactic, Tori eyed the unattended bar. She looked between the bottle of tequila and Mia until Mia smiled.

“I must really look like a sad sack for you to suggest tequila of your own volition,” she said with a smile igniting her heartbreakingly beautiful face.

“Desperate times call for reckless measures,” Tori decided before peeling off her jacket. She hung it carefully over the back of the bar stool before jumping over the counter to Mia’s outward delight.

“Did you just commit a crime?” Mia covered her mouth, but her smile was etched on every inch of her skin.

Tori reached for the bottle of tequila and found two tall shot glasses. “I better not get arrested. I wouldn’t last in prison.”

“Yeah, right.” Mia laughed. “You’d be running that bitch with prompt efficiency.”

Instead of arguing, Tori poured their drinks. Glass in hand, she doubted the wisdom of her actions and her stomach burned in advance. “I’ve taken more shots in one night than I have in, like, twelve years.”

Mia stared down at her glass. “It’s going to hurt like hell tomorrow, isn’t it?”

“Oh, don’t start considering consequences now,” Tori teased before picking up her shot. “To ride-shares,” she joked and clinked Mia’s drink.

Mia smiled, eyes trained on Tori. “To second chances.”

Three shots later, Tori was drunk and walking toward one of the hotel’s cabanas on the dark beach. There weren’t any signs warning them away from the small structures covered in white linen, so Tori plopped down at the edge of a chaise lounge barely big enough for two.

The ocean breeze on her slick skin was the best thing she’d ever experienced. High heels in hand, Mia laid on the lounger next to her like Cleopatra posing for a portrait.

“I don’t know how you can walk in those,” Tori said while rolling down her pant legs.

“Oh, it’s easy,” Mia said before setting her shoes on a little side table. “I can’t.”

Tori laughed, and before she could say anything else, Mia’s hand was on her bare arm.

“Lie with me?” she asked in such a small voice, Tori couldn’t deny her even if she wanted to. And she didn’t want to.

As soon as Tori was lying on her back, Mia curled in at her side. It didn’t matter that a lifetime had passed them by. That they were in fancy clothes at an extravagant wedding rather than in sweats in Mia’s room. They fit together like they always had. Reflexively, Tori curled her arm around Mia when she rested her head on Tori’s shoulder.

“Is this okay?” Mia’s voice was unsure, nervous, small.

Tori absorbed the question. She could pretend it wasn’t okay. Pretend that she didn’t still crave Mia’s touch. Pretend that she hadn’t already relapsed.

Squeezing her, Tori signaled her consent. Mia relaxed into her like she’d been waiting for Tori’s permission to unclench her entire body. Mind hazy, Tori drowned in the sensation of Mia tucked into her nook. In the warming from the inside out she hadn’t experienced since the last time they’d done this.

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