Page 62 of Like First Love, Again

Marigold paused. She begged Mia with her eyes to listen. To really hear her.

“You can’t carry a relationship alone, Mia. That’s not how love works. It’s about building something together. You bringyour fears. She brings hers. And if you’re both willing to talk through them, to keep showing up, even when it’s messy, then that’s not failure. That’s partnership.”

Long after therapy, and after Tori had fallen asleep while they were video chatting, Mia sat on the air mattress and scrolled through her phone. She wanted to believe what Marigold said about working through imperfection with Tori, but with her return home less than a week away, the pressure to live up to Tori’s expectations was mounting.

After some unorthodox searches, she ended up on a Reddit thread debating the best way to go down on women. The instructions were confusing and contradictory. Every time she thought she’d found a consensus—like humming or spelling the alphabet with her tongue—two comments later someone else called ita hate crime against the clitoris. What she wouldn’t give for diagrams.

Frustrated with the lack of clarity, Mia considered texting Eric. He’d been pretty okay at it, even though Mia wasn’t patient enough to wait for it to get anywhere. It had always felt fine. She groaned and dropped back on the bouncy air mattress.

She wanted Tori to feel a hell of a lot better thanfine. Mia groaned and pulled a pillow over her face. Forget sex—she was so nervous and in her head, she wasn’t even going to remember how to kiss.

All she could do was run through every possible way she might ruin their first night together. How she’d be awkward and weird and shatter whatever fantasy version of her Tori had been carrying around all these years.

Eyes still closed, she tried using Marigold’s tricks to settle herself. Inhale, exhale. Root herself in the present. Visualize.

She pictured the moment she’d see Tori again. The curve of her smile. The smell of her skin.

Her heart lifted—and then immediately dropped back into her stomach.

Because now that the moment was so close, Mia wasn’t sure she’d even remember how to breathe.

Thirty-Two

Every freaking rain drop that had ever been collected for all time was falling on Miami all at once. Tori circled the airport, her attention darting between the dashboard clock and her text notifications. Mia’s flight should have arrived that afternoon, hours before the surprise welcome home party that had seemed like such a good idea a month ago. A party Tori had planned expecting Mia would have time to decompress before dinner.

But now, hours behind schedule, Tori had been forced to divulge the surprise and make sure Mia wanted to go straight from the airport to shovel chicken piccata in her face. When someone honked at Tori for having the audacity to stop for a pedestrian crossing the walkway to a parking garage, she gritted her teeth instead of flipping them off.

This was not how their long anticipated reunion was supposed to go. She was supposed to whisk Mia home and run a bath with all the essential oils her therapist had turned her on to, and ease her back into a world that had been so dim without her. There was no airport congestion caused by hundreds of delayed flights in her plans—no torrential rain or stress or?—

Mia:Airport transformation complete lol heading your way

Instead of telling Tori that she’d rather postpone the festivities, Mia had insisted she could get ready at the airport. Despite being divorced, Eric had kept her on his fancy airline lounge membership. Tori wouldn’t have believed anything in MIA could be so nice, but the photos of a spa-like, private bathroom complete with shower had looked legit. For the last hour while Tori circled one of the first levels of hell, Mia had made the most of her toiletry bag.

Heart racing, Tori started her final lap around the enormous airport. Palms sweaty and mouth dry, she reminded herself that she wasn’t picking up a stranger. It was Mia.HerMia. And she was home.

Through sheets of rain pelting the Jeep, a blurry flash of red snagged Tori’s attention. Battling aggressive drivers and irate travelers, she crossed lanes of gridlock to get to Mia. Cutting between a van and a sedan, she wedged her Jeep sideways and parked in a no parking zone that was mercifully protected from the storm.

Mia greeted her with a blinding smile before leaving her suitcase on the curb. In a simple black dress, she ran toward Tori while she was still getting out of the driver’s seat. They met in the glow of the Jeep’s headlights while constant honking along with multilingual curses echoed behind them.

Mia slammed into her so hard Tori stumbled back a step, hands locking around her waist. She moved instinctively, holding Mia close enough to crush. She’d been waiting for this moment since Mia left. Waiting for this weight, this heat.

The chaos washed away. All Tori could hear was the sound Mia made when she buried her face in her neck. The flutter of her breath. The tiny sigh that slipped inside Tori’s chest like a key crafted for a lock.

And then Mia’s lips were on Tori’s, soft and warm and hers.

“I can’t believe this is real.” Mia slipped her fingers through Tori’s hair and pulled her down to another kiss. “Am I really here?” she whispered against Tori’s parched lips.

“You’re here.” Tori took a deep breath, losing and finding herself in Mia’s eyes—in the green vines woven through deep, rich soil. Every time she looked at her, Tori’s heart raced even as her soul settled. It was falling and landing all at once. “And I’m never letting you go again.”

Mia grinned before kissing her again. Desperate. Deep. True. Like she was trying to slash her way through skin and bone to get to the very core of her. Like Tori should tell everyone to have a nice dinner on her while she greedily took Mia for herself.

“Okay,” Mia groaned against Tori’s lips like it hurt to pull away. “We should probably go before you make me do something incredibly inappropriate in public.”

Tori laughed—her first real laugh in months. She bit her bottom lip but it didn’t smother her smile. “I guess voyeurism is a lot for a first time,” she joked.

Eyes springing open in surprise, Mia cackled. “Filthy!” She glanced at Tori’s lips, her throat, the collarbones exposed by her loose button-down shirt. Her hot gaze was a slow unraveling, a peeling back of every thread of Tori’s clothes. Every stitch.

“Hey! Ellen and Melissa!” A man shouted at them from an open passenger window. “You wanna move it along so I can pick up my wife too?”

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