Page 73 of Like First Love, Again

She only had time to wash and iron her hair and throw on a simple yellow dress before rushing out of the bathroom while putting on tinted lip gloss. Like a dutiful partner, Tori was standing by the door, gift bottle of wine under her arm, trying not to look impatient.

When Tori looked up from her phone, her face brightened. “Wow,” she breathed like Mia was in something more glamorous than a dress from H&M and flats from DSW. She’d always looked at her like that, Mia realized. Had always made Mia feel like she was so much more than ordinary.

“Ready?” Mia rocked onto the balls of her feet and kissed Tori. Soft enough not to transfer all of her shimmering gloss onto her lips, but long enough so Tori felt how badly she’d missed her.

Tori wrapped her free arm around Mia’s waist, hand landing at the small of her back in the most panty-dropping possessive move. She pulled her in until Mia was flush against her. Until she was aching for more of her. In her life, no one had ever kissed with their entire body like Tori did.

“We don’t have to be there long, right?” Mia was negotiating against herself, she knew. “Like what? An hour? Tops?” She kissed Tori again when all she wanted to do was slip a finger into her belt and unfasten it.

Tori grinned, leaning back to wipe the gloss that had left the confines of Mia’s bottom lip. Mia had the strangest urge to catch it with her teeth, but she resisted. If she gave in any more, she was going to text Daniela and fake food poisoning.

“An hour,” Mia groaned. “I can do an hour.”

She was going for her bag on the little table by the entrance when she noticed a plain parcel she hadn’t put there. “What is that?” She pulled the thin strap of her brown leather purse over her shoulder.

The way Tori bit her bottom lip and shrugged made clear exactly what was in the box. Mia’s eyes widened.

“Is that it?” she whispered, even though they were alone.

“You could open it and find out,” Tori teased.

Attention darting between the box and Tori’s mischievous expression, Mia decided that if she opened the package there was no way they were leaving. “You have an evil side, you know?”

Tori laughed, but didn’t deny it while she held the door open for Mia. Walking out to the Jeep, Mia wondered how someone so sweet could be so filthy. And how the hell she’d gotten so lucky.

Sitting around Daniela’s fire pit, even though it wasn’t nearly cool enough for it, Mia tried to pay attention to her friends. Her gaze kept drifting across the pool where Tori was standing with another group. Mia couldn’t help being mesmerized by the wayTori shifted her weight between her loafers. The way her eyes crinkled when she laughed. The way she slipped her hand into her pocket when she was listening intently.

“So you guys really weren’t together then, huh?” Sasha Delgado broke Mia’s staring.

Sipping her wine, Sasha fixed her dark eyes on Mia. Aware of her surroundings again, Mia registered that half a dozen women were looking at her expectantly.

“What?” Mia looked down at her wine glass only to find it was empty and she was a little buzzed. When the hell had she finished her chardonnay?

“I’m not convinced it wasn’t some kind of long-game kink,” Daniela decided. She noticed Mia looking at her glass and pulled a bottle from a cooler at her feet. “Like some emotional tantric thing.”

Mia leaned over, arm outstretched, so Daniela could refill her glass. She was going to disagree, but everything about her life felt like it had been leading up to Tori.

“I had a threesome once,” Sasha confessed unprompted, drawing everyone’s attention to her.

“What?” Mia chuckled into her white wine.

“Gilbert wanted it for his thirtieth birthday. I mean, he hadn’t shut up about it for the last ten years, so I decided what the hell.” She laughed to herself. “He thought I was setting him up. Like if he went through with it, I was going to leave his ass. He almost fainted when I approached this gorgeous woman at a hotel bar in Manhattan and, well,” Sasha shrugged like she was talking about going grocery shopping, “it was a good time.”

“And you did stuff to her?” Mia was trying to play it cool, but she knew she was failing. Luckily, everyone was too engrossed in Sasha’s story to notice.

“Oh yeah. I didn’t let Gilbert touch her,” she replied with a chuckle. “He had a good time, though.”

“How did you know what to do?” Mia leaned closer, keeping her voice as low as possible.

The rest of the group looked just as interested in Sasha’s response.

“I don’t know.” Sasha let Daniela refill her glass. “It wasn’t all that different.”

Someone practically cackled. “Girl, I’m sorry,” she said in a way that meant she wasn’t at all sorry, “but how small is Gilbert’s dick?”

“That’s not what I meant.” Sasha rolled her eyes. “But you know how it is anytime you sleep with someone new. You don’t know what they like yet.” Her grin said Cheshire Cat and her eyes said she was remembering a moment fondly. “You have to figure them out.”

“Yeah,” another woman said, “but you don’t eat a banana and a peach the same way.”

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