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How Nat wound up here, drowning in this sea of suits and dresses by Armani and Valentino and whoever-the-fuck, is anyone’s guess. Well, not anyone’s. She knows exactly whose fault it is.

Lottie had asked and pleaded; Nat had moaned and groaned. She should’ve put her foot down at ask number three. Hell, at ask number one. But it was just… the consequence of Lottie’s signature doe-eyed pout that eventually, Nat would cave. At the time, the gala seemed so important to Lottie. She had given some grand spiel about building a career for herself and networking outside of her father’s shadow, and Nat had bought it.

However, the only networking that Lottie seems to be doing is with some airheaded blonde whose annoying, helium laugh is probably audible from the other end of the venue. Or maybe even all the way up in space.

See, Nat had endured, with only an eye-roll, the geriatric captains of the industry jerking themselves off about “leadership excellence”—as if being old and white and balding qualified as wisdom. She survived the mind-numbing presentation about “capital allocation strategies” that sounded like a more pretentious rendition of her high school Econ class. She even stayed patient—well, patient being a relative term when you’re fantasizing about lobbing a spitball at the presenter’s head—when they’d exceeded their agreed-upon two-hour limit for her attendance.

But now, she is fully irritated, borderline pissed, sitting alone at this table while Lottie has been chatting up this girl for the past hour.

Nat doesn’t know a thing about the mystery blonde, but she’d initially been escorted by some dark-haired douche sporting a Patek Philippe—information only known because he made sure to boast about it not once, but twice. The minute cocktail (champagne) hour rang its bell, Blondie cut him loose without so much as a glance back.

Just how Lottie had ditched Nat.

And okay, she’s not Lottie’s real date, like, romantically, because that ship sailed a long, long time ago. Well, aside from a few very brief, very drunken slips here and there that they both pretend not to remember. But still. She’s Lottie’s plus-one for the night, so it would be nice not to be totally ignored.

Nat huffs and sneaks another glance in their direction. Lottie sits only one seat away, but she may as well be on another planet—all Nat can see is her shiny dark hair bouncing effortlessly as she nods along, and the perfect, tan slope of her shoulder and back. Meanwhile, Nat is so fortunately blessed with an unobstructed view of the blonde, who looks like every other golden Upper East Side princess that Lottie indiscreetly ogled at bars over the years. She throws her head back in exaggerated delight at something Lottie has said, in a manner that can only be described as pornographically bad acting. Because, come on, is Lottie that funny? She certainly has never been this much of a chatterbox before.

In worse news, Lottie appears to have achieved a deeper level of engrossment since Nat’s last reconnaissance mission. From this angle, Nat can’t even catch her eye to deploy any of their old silent communication. No silent what the fuck eyebrow raise, no desperate free me, you traitor glare that used to work so effectively during insufferable dinner parties on the rare occasion that Mr. Matthews was in town. Not that Lottie would care if she saw the looks anyway, since her head is all tilted, nodding along like she’s really, really interested in whatever vapid commentary this girl has to offer. Probably about shopping at Bergdorf’s, or summering in the Hamptons.

The more Nat tortures herself to look, the more she starts to wonder if that’s the way Lottie used to look at her back when they were—

She stops that thought in its tracks, drains the hefty contents of her champagne flute in one bitter gulp. She’s a plus-one as a formality, a social accessory, a tool to make Lottie look less pathetically single at a networking event, and nothing more.

What a fucking honor. Maybe Lottie should have brought a date with more social pull anyway—you know, maybe someone who’s not both a woman and at least five tax brackets below the average attendee here.

Groaning under her breath, she kicks the point of her right heel against the left until its buckle gives. She gets the shoe halfway off before it dangles precariously from her toes. Another quick flick of her ankle sends it torpedoing straight into an unsuspecting bare calf.

Lottie flinches. Her riveting conversation clips off mid-syllable. And God, the surge of satisfaction that hits Nat is indecent—because finally, finally Lottie’s gaze has turned away from this girl and redirected where it belongs.

“Oh,” Lottie says, blinking. She ducks over to Nat’s side, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Did you just kick me?”

Their faces are so close that Nat can smell her Chanel perfume everywhere—sweet, expensive, and suffocating. She wants to inhale it, press a showy kiss to her collarbone where the scent is the strongest, half to scandalize the blonde, half to knock Lottie off her perfect, polite axis.

“It was an accident.”

“Mhm,” Lottie hums, unconvinced, rolling her eyes. “You promised that you would sit through this for me.”

“I think my promise has been more than fulfilled. We’ve been here for hours.” Nat’s eyes fall lower, and that’s when she notices it—the manicured, grabby hand creeping up Lottie’s thigh. “Clearly, you don’t need me here anyway. You’ve found yourself a new date.”

Lottie sighs. “Don’t do that.”

“What? I’m tired, Lottie. And my feet fucking hurt.”

“I can see that,” Lottie says dryly. “Since you’re taking your shoes off at the table.”

Nat huffs, suddenly feeling like some unruly child being scolded for not knowing how to behave in polite society. She thought this was the one thing she’d get out of, not being in a relationship with Lottie. “So can we go? Just get her number or whatever, and let’s call it a night.”

Lottie glances back at the blonde, who has been watching their exchange with thinly-veiled curiosity, then back at Nat. “We’re just starting to get somewhere.”

“Does she just not give a shit that your date is sitting one seat away?”

Lottie is silent, her lips pressed together. There is a telltale look on her face that Nat instantly recognizes. The one where she has something to say but is holding back.

Nat narrows her eyes in suspicion. “What did you tell her?”

“Nothing!” But Lottie’s voice climbs half an octave, which is congruent with a confession.

“Oh, so she’s just fine with homewrecking? Being your mistress? Lot. Are you sure that this is the kind of girl you wanna get involved with?”

Lottie rolls her eyes, but seems to concede defeat. “Okay, I told her… that you’re… um, straight.”

Nat stares, her head moving back. Her mouth twists into a slightly-mock-offended circle. The closest she had come to lying that she was straight in recent history was on the cusp of her relationship with Lottie in high school, when the rumors had started, and she’d told various busybodies to fuck off because it’s none of their business. “Wow. Just because I’ve dated men, too?”

This time, Lottie rolls her eyes harder. Nat had forgotten how fun it is to get under her skin. It was her favorite hobby when they were dating. And sort of now, still. It never gets old.

“No. Not because of that. Obviously.” Lottie sighs. “I didn’t want her to get the wrong idea.”

“And what idea would that be?”

Lottie squints. She can tell what Nat’s game is and she doesn’t want to play too much into it. She doesn’t want to give her the satisfaction. “Well, I don’t exactly think it would help my chances to mention that I brought my ex-girlfriend as my date tonight.”

“Mm. Yeah. That would sure be a dealbreaker for me. Too messy, you know? Too complicated.”

“Shut up.”

“Gladly. If we get the hell out of here, like. Now.”

“Nat.”

“You think your girl would still think I’m straight if I shoved my tongue down your throat in front of her? Because I could—”

Lottie slaps a hand over Nat’s lips to shush her. She looks back at her blonde prospect again. Nat wonders if she’s weighing if she can pull off the phone number acquisition in one final, smooth maneuver. “Fine. Five minutes.”

“Fine.”

Nat extends her hand with mock formality. Lottie rolls her eyes, but takes it. They shake on it.

“Pleasure doing business with you, Charlotte,” Nat says, with her poor attempt at a Transatlantic accent. She feels a little too smug.

Though Nat quickly learns that she made a bad business deal.

Five minutes turn to ten and then fifteen, but Nat busies herself at the hors d'oeuvres table so she doesn’t have to watch Lottie playing footsie with some—well, Nat can’t even think of any mean names to call her aside from nepo baby (a little hypocritical, considering her ex Lottie holds the same title), since her new girl isn’t exactly hideous. But she finds enough distraction by moaning into crab rangoons after a server brings out a fresh tray. They give her mouth something to do besides saying things she’ll regret to Lottie.

Speaking of Lottie: she finally shows. About damn time.

“Let’s go,” she says, breathless, with a sense of urgency that was most definitely not present fifteen minutes ago when Nat practically had to stage an intervention to make her consider leaving. The next red flag is when she doesn’t even grab a marinated olive from the table, despite the brand new platter overflowing with them.

Lottie loves olives. She’d steal them from Nat’s plate at dinner and pop them into her mouth like candy. Nat had once watched her get through half a jar of kalamatas while they were supposed to be studying for finals. She remembers being so offended that her distraction tactics of casually kicking Lottie’s textbook shut and running her foot over her thigh were no match for that jar of olives.

“You’re suddenly in a rush.” Nat doesn’t get the chance to find this funny, because Lottie’s hand is around her wrist, weaving her through the crowd of guests like she’s had a vision of a fire about to start in the building.

“Well, you know.” Lottie doesn’t look at her. “I just felt bad about keeping you here so late. I’m sure you have better things to do tonight.”

Outside, Nat is hit with a gust of cold air. Goosebumps rise along her arms. She regrets everything about this dress she’s got on. She pulls her arm back and uses it to hug herself for warmth as she whips around to face Lottie. “I mean, I don’t actually have anything better to do. I was more just complaining to be annoying—”

“That’s okay.” Lottie has already turned away from her, hand in the air to hail a cab. Nat stares at her profile, baffled. The Lottie she knows would be giving her so much shit for throwing a tantrum. It’s not like her to miss an opportunity to bicker with Nat. In the distance, a yellow cab begins to slow down. “I’m sure you can go out for drinks with Kevyn. Or—or Jackie. Jackie is probably on her way to a bar already.”

And sure, Jackie likely is going out. She rarely skips a weekend. That means Shauna is, too. Which means Shauna will drag Tai, who’ll drag Van, and—

Well, none of that matters. Nat hadn’t even been thinking about going out with them, or anyone.

“Uh—okay.” Nat furrows her eyebrows as the cab pulls up to the curb. Lottie opens the backseat door for her, and Nat collapses inside.

The greatest perk of her, well, friendship with Lottie Matthews is that, even in the damndest hours of the night, she doesn’t have to make the hellish journey between a thousand different subway stations to get back to Brooklyn. That being because, in all of their time in the city, Nat has only witnessed Lottie resign to take public transportation a handful of times, usually because she doesn’t want to disrupt the flow of a group outing or because she’s trying to prove some point about being down-to-earth that nobody asked her to make.

Secure in her seat, Nat kicks off her heels and stretches her legs as much as she can against the passenger side. Her feet are finally bare and free from those torturous heels. They throb in relief. Lottie keeps her shoes on, sitting primly. She leans close behind the partition.

“Can you take us to 5th and Bedford in Williamsburg, please? Thank you.”

Nat was going to chalk Lottie’s erratic behavior up to her usual oddities and general strangeness. After all, Lottie is known to disappear into her own head for minutes at a time. But now, Nat is seriously confused. She leans across the middle seat. “Uh, shouldn’t we go to yours first? It’s on the way.”

The gala took place in a hotel ballroom all the way uptown in Morningside Heights since it was hosted by Columbia alums. It would make no sense at all to drop Nat off in Brooklyn only to double back across the city, to the Upper East Side where Lottie lived. Nat could look past the waste of money because Lottie never thinks twice about spending too much, and who is Nat to tell her how to spend her money? But the needless waste of time?

“No, I just—I just want to make sure you get home safe.”

Nat laughs. “Who’s gonna make sure you get home safe, then? Seriously, Lot, tell him to go to yours first.”

Lottie doesn’t answer, or do anything at all to get the driver’s attention. She blinks and remains quiet. When she finally opens her mouth again, her cheeks are turning pink. Nat can see it, even in the crappy dim backlight of the cab. It spreads down to her neck like a rash. “Well, I was going to, um. I was going to stop somewhere in Brooklyn anyway.”

“Yeah? Where?” Nat looks at her, amused. Getting Lottie to step foot in Brooklyn is always a feat that requires a substantial amount of begging. She has listened to the complaints about the smells and the fears of getting robbed even in broad daylight, despite it not being all that different from Manhattan. Nat tells her to stop wearing that damn Rolex out everywhere she goes, but Lottie never listens.

“Just—um, well, the Kmart in Flatbush.”

“The Kmart in Flatbush.” Nat laughs in disbelief as the absurdity hits her. “Are there no other Kmarts closer to you? Like, I don’t know, in the entire island of Manhattan?”

“I like the one in Flatbush.”

“Since when do you spend any time in Flatbush?” Even Nat can’t remember the last time she went to Flatbush.

“Since always.”

“Uh-huh. Okay. What do you so urgently need from Kmart that you can't wait until tomorrow for?”

“Dish soap,” Lottie replies quickly.

“Let me guess: you left a week’s worth of dishes in the sink as usual,” Nat laughs, shaking her head. It’s such a Lottie thing to do—procrastinate on the mundanities until they become an unbearable crisis and then make elaborate plans to fix it.

“You know me. Always forgetting to do the dishes.”

“I think it’s high time you cave and hire some help like your parents had. Poor baby’s not cut out for solo living, huh?” Nat teases, but there’s affection in it. She likes ribbing on Lottie. But only when Lottie gives it back to her. There’s a bunch of low-hanging fruit about the state of Nat’s apartment that she could easily go for.

But tonight, Lottie just sighs. Her head is turned to peer out her window. They haven’t been in the car long, only beginning to pass through the Central Park transverse. Lottie watches the night walkers and the reservoir with unbelievable focus. Nat aches to steal her attention again. Her back finally leaves her seat cushion, leaning forward, elbows resting on the partition.

“Hey, Mr. Driver,” she calls. Lottie looks at Nat like she’s a madman, like she wants nothing more than to swat Nat back to her seat. “Can you take us to Flatbush instead? I think around, uh… Prospect Park, where the big Kmart is?”

The cabbie nods. Lottie shakes her head in disapproval. And Nat feels oddly satisfied that Lottie has no choice but to give her attention instead of the stupid Central Park dog walkers.

“Nat. Your place is first.”

She shrugs her shoulders. “You’re always complaining about scary old Brooklyn. I’m doing you a favor by being your trusted guide, as a Brooklyn resident.”

“It really is no trouble. I already made you spend all evening with me at the gala—”

“Dude. I’ve got nothing better to do. Besides, I think I can lower my utility bill by peeing at the Kmart instead of my apartment.”

“I don’t think that’ll save you all that much.”

“Mm. I wouldn’t expect someone bankrolled by daddy’s credit card to know.”

Lottie laughs. “Touché.”

A ridiculously long drive later, Nat is still unsure why there was no other closer store that Lottie could grab dish soap from. But the cab finally pulls into the dim Kmart complex and parks in a spot near the entrance. The cars in the lot are few and far between. Lottie looks more reluctant now that they’re here.

As she exits, she hovers in the doorway, leaning towards the driver. She glances at the meter, then reaches into her designer clutch and retrieves a hefty wad of bills. Nat doesn’t count the money, but there’s got to be at least fifty in there. “Here. If you could just wait right outside, we’ll only be a few minutes.”

The driver half-nods his head disinterestedly, stuffing the cash into his shirt pocket. He turns up the radio playing Don’t You Want Me by the Human League, then leans back in his seat. Lottie glances at Nat, and Nat at Lottie, before they exchange a mutual shrug and Lottie takes it as her cue to shut the door.

They pass a scrawny man in baggy clothes, who is very obviously tweaked out on something illegal, loitering around the entrance. Lottie shudders in fear and presses close to Nat. Nat has to try not to laugh. The irony of Lottie’s Manhattan upbringing occurred to her: if you were rich enough in New York, even as a native, you actually had less exposure to the city than if you lived in, say, Milwaukee.

“Are you sure this location’s your favorite?” she teases, earning a glare from Lottie. “He’s harmless, dude.” She glances back. The man is now bobbing his head and beatboxing to himself. “In fact, I could use whatever he’s on.”

“Nat.” She feels a light smack on her arm.

Nat shrugs innocently as they step through the automatic doors. Seconds upon entering, Nat squeezes her thighs together and shakes around. “Fuck, I’ve really gotta pee now.”

Lottie looks relieved. “You go do that. I will get my shopping done fast in the meantime.”

Nat hardly nods before trotting off to the bathrooms in the back. Lottie clings protectively to the fur coat she’s got on, feeling almost shameful as she maneuvers through the aisles. For the wide audience of the five sparse night Kmart shoppers, she pretends to consider the merits of different chip brands, then runs her fingers along the cosmetics, all while working up the courage to venture into where women’s hygiene products live in taboo.

She eyes a two-pack of purple razors hanging tauntingly on the shelf before hurriedly shoving it into her coat pocket. Suddenly, she feels like the twelve-year-old who’d sneak razors from her mom’s bathroom cabinet and nick herself in secret because she was too shy to admit that she wanted to shave her legs for the sixth grade dance. She didn’t want to have that conversation with her mom—she didn’t know how to. They didn’t talk about her illness, and they didn’t talk about things like this.

She resumes her humiliating pilgrimage, walking a deliberate and prolonged loop before arriving at her next destination. She hovers in front of the health items. Sitting between travel-sized bottles of lotion and tiny containers of Vaseline is a bottle of Johnson’s baby oil. Just when she’s finally found the courage to reach out to grab it, she realizes she isn’t alone in the aisle.

Fortunately, it isn’t Nat. But unfortunately, there’s a youth with splotches of zits on his face, sporting a red vest, leaning into her personal space bubble curiously. There’s a boyish grin slabbed on his mouth. “Um. You’re really pretty.”

Lottie furrows her eyebrows. It’s not an uncommon occurrence, but she could do without boys still in high school hitting on her. “Thank you.”

His eyes light up like Christmas morning. “Could I get your number?”

Lottie’s mouth opens and shuts as she thinks of how to get out of this without bruising an adolescent boy’s ego for a lifetime. “You’re, um… you’re a little young for me.”

“Age is nothing but a number, I’ve heard.” He tries to shoot her something that vaguely resembles a wink.

“I have a boyfriend.”

This doesn’t seem to deter him much. He checks her out up and down, head to toe. His boyish grin turns to more of a smirk. “I don’t see a ring on your finger.”

Lottie has lost all patience. She stares at him, wordlessly. The intense silence finally gets him to back away. He glances around, studying the baby oil in her hands. He’s physically further away from her, but he’s still smirking like he knows something more—like he can see her intentions. Suddenly, she becomes embarrassed. Her hands retreat from the bottle.

“Is there something you need?” she finally asks.

“Oh. Yeah. We close in, like, five minutes.”

“Hmm. Okay, thanks.” Lottie huffs out a sigh. She bites the bullet, snatches the baby oil off the rack, and makes a beeline for checkout. She figures it won’t be long until Nat is done.

The receipt spits out in an accordion, the cashier barely looking at her, and she mumbles something of an indiscernible thanks to him. And then to her coat—God bless Saint Laurent and its cavernous, fur-lined pockets vast and deep enough to house both the razors and the baby oil, one product on each side. She waits by the exit, checks her Rolex. It’s nearing nine.

“Lottie! Lottie, come here!”

When she looks out ahead, Nat is frantically waving her arm up by the photo kiosk. Lottie feels a familiar flicker of dread. Half the time that Nat is waving her over, it’s to bear witness to something she most definitely does not want to see. Examples include: someone’s vomit streaming on the sidewalk, and a heterosexual couple doing it under a towel at the beach in Coney Island.

Nevertheless, she sighs and trudges forward.

“What is it, Nat?”

“I need you to come to the bathroom with me.”

Lottie blinks incredulously. “You still haven’t gone? What were you doing all this time?” She pictures Nat wandering the aisles, getting distracted by bad liquor or Donnie Darko on DVD.

Nat scowls in a not-actually-angry way. “This place is kinda a maze. I circled, like, five times before asking an employee where it is.”

“Okay. You can’t go to the bathroom by yourself?”

Nat rolls her eyes. “The women’s is closed. Can’t you just do me a favor and be on the lookout while I use the men’s room? You know what happened last time at that bar in the East Village.”

That, they both have burned into their brains. They had gone out for Jackie’s birthday last November, and Nat had foolishly broken the seal after two drinks at the pre-game, which meant every half hour thereafter she’d be disappearing in search of a bathroom. At the East Village bar, there was only one stall per bathroom. The women’s line was a snake wrapped twice around, twenty-odd women with arms crossed, shifting from heel to heel to contain their bladders. Nat was not about to wait in that hourlong queue when there was nobody in line for the men’s room. It was a no-brainer. A practical decision, rather than a transgression.

When no man was looking, she slipped inside of the men’s room. And it would have been totally fine and entirely uneventful if not for the jacked dude who barged inside when she was washing up. He’d cornered her to ask if she was lost, or “one of those girls with a dick.” Which really is insignificant in the grand scheme of things that intolerant pricks of men have said to her. It’s more that Nat threw him a middle finger and got herself chased out the bathroom by the fucker.

“Okay, okay. Fine. Let’s go, fast.”

“Look who’s in a hurry now,” Nat says, grinning as she leads the way to the bathrooms.

Lottie stands guard outside of the men’s room while Nat takes her sweet time. For the first time in her life, she actually washes her hands for long enough to get through Happy Birthday twice.

“Finally,” Lottie says when Nat emerges from inside. “You were taking forever.”

“Well, this dress that you made me wear tonight is kind of a nightmare to pee in, so. That’s on you,” Nat shrugs, drying her wet hands on the red chiffon of her dress while Lottie watches in horror.

“You couldn’t have used the hand dryer inside?”

“Okay, Officer Matthews. I was feeling lazy.” Nat flicks her hands in Lottie’s direction to splash the remaining water at her.

Lottie smacks her wrist away before carefully wiping the droplets off. “Stop!”

Satisfied, Nat swings her arms back and forth. They continue on in a slow stroll through the store, atrocious pace dictated by Nat. She observes the empty aisles around them. It’s even more of a ghost town than when they first got here. She doesn’t think she’s seen a single person in any of the three rows they’ve passed through.

“Did you get your dish soap?” she suddenly asks.

Lottie blinks in confusion, then remembers. “Oh. Yes. Yeah. I got a small bottle.” Nat furrows her eyebrows, but Lottie ignores her and motions for her to walk faster. “Come on, Nat. The store is closing in, like, five minutes.”

“I think I can manage making it to the exit in five whole—”

Right then, all of the lights begin to click off in sequence, one by one.

Jesus Christ. Nat’s not really religious, but she thinks fleetingly of Laura Lee, and what sort of deep cleanse she’d have to undergo to wash off whatever sins she’d committed to get such bad luck. What surprises her more is the distraught look on Lottie’s face. She drains of color and almost immediately breaks out into a sprint toward the exit doors. Nat follows with an unenergetic jog.

The security guards that had been posted by the door are nowhere to be found. The last of the cars in the parking lot are driving out. Truthfully, the severity hadn’t quite hit Nat when the lights turned off. She thought there was no way that they would actually be locked alone in here. Surely there was someone still inside—a straggler, an employee, anyone who could let them out. But when Lottie slams her palms against the glass and yells out for the cab driver, Nat realizes their reality. She sees the space that was once occupied by their trusty yellow cab, now empty.

Nat gives the glass a few perfunctory knocks, as if to humor panicked Lottie, who is banging and slamming and shouting. But Nat quickly resigns, stepping back in sinking defeat. Lottie slaps a hand over her forehead in despair, shoving her hairline back.

“Goddammit! The driver left!”

Nat shrugs. “Can’t blame him.”

“He said he’d wait for us!”

“Technically, he didn’t say anything—”

“To think I gave him an extra ten dollars to wait…”

“Lottie, it’s New York City on a Saturday night. I think he’s got quicker methods to earn ten bucks than to sit in a parking lot all night. If anything, he’d be losing out.”

“God, Nat. Why can’t you just be on my side here?”

“I am on your side. We want the same thing! To leave! Because trust me, I do not want to spend the rest of my Saturday night in a fucking Kmart either.”

“Then what do we do?”

“Don’t you have your little—” Nat waves her hand vaguely toward the phantom object in Lottie’s pocket, wrinkling her nose. “Your tiny radiation brick, your… pocket government tracker, or whatever?”

“You mean my cell phone?” Lottie rolls her eyes. She feels around in her pocket for the tiny Motorola, then sighs. “It’s out of battery. Ugh. Why couldn’t you just give up your stupid protest against cell phones and get one already?”

Nat stares at her incredulously. “Oh, so it’s my fault now, somehow? You’re not exactly making a strong case for me to join the club. You’re always forgetting yours at home, or not charging it. I think I’ll stick to my landline and talking to people face-to-face. You know, like us humans are supposed to do?”

“Okay. Whatever you say, Nat.” Lottie rolls her eyes. “What do we do now?”

Nat shrugs. “They’ve probably got a phone here somewhere, right?”

Half right.

They do have phones at checkout. Well, a phone-shaped device that ends up being a disappointing intercom, with only the measly capability of relaying the sound of one’s own panic to someone else already within the walls of the Flatbush Kmart.

There is, however, a real phone—an emergency phone—visible through the glass of another door. A very real, very not-intercom phone hanging from the wall in plain sight. But it taunts them through the locked door marked for Employees Only.

“Well,” Nat laughs bitterly. “Looks like we’re screwed.”

Lottie makes several attempts to open the door again, twisting and pulling, each more frustrated than the last. When this strategy proves ineffective for the hundredth time, she finally sighs in defeat. From her clutch, she retrieves her little dead brick of a cell phone. She flips it open and begins jabbing and mashing the buttons around. Nothing seems to happen, but Nat decides it’s best not to interfere with her methods of desperation.

Instead, Nat opts to stand around uselessly. She hugs herself for warmth again, rubbing up and down her biceps. Thankfully, it isn’t as cold in the store as it was outside, but the indoor chill is still catching up to her.

“Fuck, why’s it so freezing in here?” she mumbles, mostly to herself.

Nat was sure that she was quiet enough, but Lottie, powered by her heightened forms of all six senses, looks up from her cell phone and stares for a moment. Based on the look she’s receiving, Nat is expecting to get scolded. And she does: “What did I tell you about bringing a jacket with you? It’s fall, Nat. It gets cold at night.”

“Not if you drink enough!” Nat argues. It was pleasantly warm outside when she left her apartment. Besides, she didn’t want to carry around a heavy jacket all night if she were going to get drunk anyway. “If you’ve got enough liquor in your system, you can’t feel the cold.”

“And yet?”

“Okay, my buzz wore off a long time ago. How was I supposed to know they’d only be serving champagne?”

“Did you think we’d be doing tequila shots at a professional event?” Lottie scoffs.

“No, but would it kill them to get some cocktails on the menu? A classy martini, maybe?”

Lottie stares at her like she’s mentally cycling through every mean name for Nat in her vocabulary. She exercises enough self-restraint to say nothing instead, which perversely makes Nat want to hear said mean names. She has always preferred Lottie’s anger to her practiced politeness—at least when Lottie’s pissed off, she’s being honest.

Without a word, Lottie sheds her fur coat and holds it out to Nat.

Nat stares at the designer coat dangling from Lottie’s fingers. “Are you—aren’t you cold?”

“I’m fine,” she insists, unrelenting.

Hesitantly, Nat accepts the coat and pulls it over her shoulders. The fur provides instant heat to her skin. And it smells like Lottie. The Chanel perfume is exceptionally strong on the collar. “Thanks.”

Lottie suddenly brandishes the cell phone like it’s Jesus reborn. “Oh my god! My phone turned on!”

“Guess those things’ve got a purpose, after all.” Nat laughs, pulling the coat tighter around herself. “You should call Tai. She’ll get us out of here in no time.”

“Good thinking.”

While Lottie carefully navigates her cell phone with the meager percentage of battery that she has miraculously recovered, Nat continues to fumble with the fur coat. She adjusts the collar, zips it up, and warms her hands by shoving them deep into the pockets. Her fingers graze over something sharp and plastic on one side.

“Damn it. Why is the screen frozen?” Lottie mumbles in frustration. She smashes random buttons on the keypad surprisingly hard.

Nat pulls out the mystery object from one pocket. A pack of purple razors. Amused, she digs in the other pocket and pulls out a small, ovular bottle of… Johnson’s baby oil? Not exactly the typical content of a socialite’s evening coat. And, not to mention, there is no dish soap within reach.

She snorts. “Lottie. Is this what you were so busy buying?”

Lottie glances over from her phone with split-second panic that she immediately smooths over with a sudden bout of nonchalance. She forces her eyes back on the screen. “Mhm. I just grabbed a couple of things. Self-care, you know.”

“Mhm.” Nat hums back, unable to keep the smirk off her face. “Self-care, or prep for a sex date?”

Lottie blushes. The light from the screen goes dark. “Fuck me… My phone died again. Look what you—”

“Me?” Nat is genuinely baffled by this warped logic. “How’s it my fault you didn’t charge your phone?”

“You were distracting me before I could call Tai.”

This strikes Nat as a shocking abuse of cause-and-effect reasoning—that this is somehow all on her instead of on Lottie’s clear lack of dexterity. She should be more concerned about this, or at least the squandering of their last chance for help, but she finds herself mentally preoccupied.

“Looks like we better get comfy for the night…” She holds out the razor pack in one hand, and the baby oil in another. Her shit-eating grin is seconds away from sending Lottie over the edge. “So this is why you were suddenly in such a rush to leave the gala. Wow, Lottie. Just wow.”

Lottie looks like she just might smack her in the face. “Stop it.”

“Am I right? That blonde girl you were hitting on?” Nat asks. She takes the silence as an affirmation that pulls her smirk wider. “Were you planning on hooking up with her after this?”

“Seriously. Quit it.”

“No, you quit it,” Nat says, and Lottie glares at the nonsense of it all. “What the hell were you gonna do with baby oil? Is this, like—God, is this like some kind of new fetish of yours?”

Lottie gapes. “Oh my god. Oh my god.”

Nat grins, finding this all too amusing. “You were gonna rub baby oil all up on her? Slather up her tits?”

“Okay. That’s enough.”

“Is it? Because you were rushing me home to make a pit stop to buy baby oil for your sex date. I think that warrants a little conversation.”

Flustered, Lottie turns half away. “No, it doesn’t.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me what you were gonna do?”

“Because, Natalie. I didn’t think I owed you a play-by-play of my sex life.”

“You don’t. Obviously,” Nat says, holding her hands up in surrender. “I just—we’re friends, aren’t we? We can talk about this. You don’t have to hide it from me when you’re sleeping with someone. You could’ve told me why we were coming here.”

“Nat.” There’s a warning in Lottie’s voice now.

Nat sighs. “I just don’t get it. Why does it have to be some kind of big secret?”

“Because—because you and I, we don’t talk about this.”

“I tell you when I sleep with people,” Nat argues, watching Lottie’s face carefully now. Something is off.

“Yeah,” Lottie mutters. “You do.”

“See, it’s never a big deal.” But as soon as the words leave Nat’s mouth, her eyelashes flutter in slow dawning realization. The way Lottie has been avoiding eye contact, the tension in her voice… “Unless…”

Lottie remains quiet and looking anywhere but at Nat. She fidgets with her gold rings.

“Oh my god,” Nat blurts, surprise overtaking cruelty. “Is it a big deal to you? Does it bother you when I talk about having sex with other people?”

“No. I mean—” Lottie sighs. She looks up, just barely, and there’s a smidge of vulnerability in her eyes. “Does it not bother you?”

“Do you want me to be bothered?”

Lottie sighs again, this time louder. Her face is flushed with pink. She shakes her head. “This is why we shouldn’t talk about this, Nat.”

“You want me to be bothered!”

Nat’s head reels back as an uncomfortable silence comes forward. Lottie’s cheeks go pinker. Her lips are pressed together. It seems like there’s so much going on in her head. So much that she’s never said, and probably never will say.

“Of course it bothers me,” Lottie finally says, her voice quiet. She sounds like she’s trying really hard to stay calm and level. “We dated for a year and a half, Nat. Of course it’s weird for me to hear about who you’re sleeping with.”

Nat stares at her, the baby oil and razors still embarrassingly clutched in her hands. She quickly shoves them back into the borrowed coat pockets. “But you never said anything.”

“What was I supposed to say?” Lottie lets out a brittle laugh. “We broke up. We’re supposed to be friends now.”

“Yeah, we are. And friends can talk about this stuff,” Nat says.

Lottie sighs. “Okay. You’re right. Let’s drop this, please.”

But Nat can’t just drop this. The fissure has been unearthed, and Nat is already in three shovels deep, widening it. “If I’m right, then tell me about your girl, Lot.”

“Stop it. She’s not my girl.”

Nat’s not an idiot. She knows Lottie gets around, she’s got eyes, but it’s never by Lottie’s admission. It always is through the grapevine, in passing: casual stories from the others. She’ll hear it from Tai or Van, and God, even Jackie. Lottie will tell Jackie, but she won’t tell Nat. Lottie doesn’t tell her shit.

“What, are you not telling me because you’re mad that I’m not bothered?” Nat scoffs, but there’s less bite to it now. It starts to feel like she’s poking at a wound that’s already red and raw.

“I never said that.” Lottie isn’t even looking her in the eyes. She can’t.

“You didn’t have to,” Nat says. “I think it’s a little late for me to start getting all jealous about you and other women, Lottie.”

Lottie’s eyes finally find her again, cold and stung. “That never stopped you with Travis.”

“Woah—woah. Why are we talking about Travis?” Nat asks, taken aback. Her eyes narrow. “How is that relevant here?”

“Because it is,” Lottie insists. “Because after you two broke up, you nearly lost your mind over him dating someone else. You tried to ruin his relationship. Ringing her doorbell, calling him from our phones…”

Nat shakes her head, ashamed. That was a low point for her; she can’t believe that Lottie would bring any of this up. “Dude, I was doing coke every weekend back then. I wasn’t exactly operating with good judgment. And,” she pauses, crossing her arms. “I’m sorry, did you want me to try to ruin your relationships, too?”

Lottie presses her lips together. She looks beyond stilted. “Well, it wouldn’t have hurt…”

“So what—you wanted me to be crazy and jealous? You wanted me to stalk your dates?” Nat asks, confused.

“I wanted…” Lottie starts, and then stops. She runs a hand through her hair. “I just wanted you to care. Even a little bit. You moved on like it was nothing. Like… we were nothing.”

Nat can’t believe this. Why is she in trouble for being a valiant and noble ex-girlfriend who didn’t sabotage Lottie’s relationships? She thought that she was doing the right thing, the grown-up thing, the mature thing. She held her head high and endured the group hangouts. She bit her tongue when she spotted Lottie talking to other girls. She joked around with her. She thought that they had this whole friendship thing down.

But now, looking at Lottie’s face, she’s starting to realize how wrong she might’ve been.

“What do you want me to say here?” Nat lets out a bitter, frazzled laugh. “You’re the one who broke up with me, Lottie. Are you forgetting that?”

“No. No, I’m not forgetting that. I think context is important, though.”

“No context changes the facts: you broke up with me.”

“It’s not that black and white.”

“But it is.”

Lottie shakes her head, not having it. “No, you teed it up. You all but forced my hand. Every time I tried to talk about the future—our future, you’d get so dismissive.”

Nat holds back a second bitter laugh. There’s no way they’re actually doing this right now. “You were going to college in another state.”

“New York, Nat. It’s an hour train from New Jersey, not across the country.” Lottie crosses her arms. There’s the same tone of frustration in her voice that Nat heard all those years ago, when they were sitting on Lottie’s bed at the end of that summer before she left for Columbia. “It’s not like you had any reason to stay in Wiskayok, anyway.”

Nat blinks. What was she supposed to do? Follow Lottie around like a dog? “I had nothing going for me, Lottie. You had big plans, and I had nothing. Sooner or later, you would’ve dumped me for some Ivy League chick anyway.”

“Well, thank you for your generosity. Thank you for saving me the trouble by burning everything down in advance.”

Nat’s stomach turns. It’s amazing how easily she could be transported back to eighteen. Back to the stupid kid she was—purposeless and afraid. She hates to be back in this place. She hates to feel like the burnout whose only option was to follow her girlfriend around.

“You know what. Wow. I never realized that being my friend was causing you this much trouble,” Nat says, feeling cornered. “If it’s that hard for you, why are we even bothering?”

Lottie looks at her like the light was pulled out of her eyes. A wounded deer that Nat ran over and left to die on the side of the road. “Seriously?” she asks. There are hints of tears brimming in her eyes. “That’s your takeaway here?” When Nat doesn’t say anything, Lottie nods with scary composure. “Okay. Got it.”

Immediately, Nat’s defenses that were set to maximum fall down below ground. She feels like nothing but a big asshole as she watches Lottie walk away from her.

“Wait, Lot—” When Lottie continues walking without turning around, Nat shuts her eyes in defeat and shoves her hands back in the coat pockets. She grimaces when she feels the cursed objects that provoked this entire argument.

x

Alone with Jelly Bellies and peanut M&Ms in front of a flatscreen television, Nat begins to think hey, maybe being locked in a superstore with everything you could ever need isn’t so bad. She swipes a pair of plastic shades and a yo-yo on top of the snacks. She also nabs a pair of foam slides to replace those debilitating heels. A six-pack of lukewarm Bud Lights directly from the shelf nicely completes her survival kit. She feels on top of the world.

Unfortunately, after approximately one hour and two lukewarm beers, the positive sentiments start to die down. She mostly just ends up twiddling her thumbs and spinning the yo-yo, wondering how Lottie is killing the time.

She powers off the TV and tosses her empty beer can to the floor. She shoves the half-eaten snacks off her lap. She wanders the aisles again, ostensibly in search of more supplies, more treats and trinkets. Secretly, she wishes she could happen upon Lottie in an aisle, but it’s as if the girl doesn’t want to be found.

Just when she’s about to give up and slink back to the liquor aisle for something stronger, she happens upon something that isn’t quite Lottie, but might just be her ticket back into her good graces.

x

“Attention: Charlotte Matthews, please report to Aisle 10. Charlotte Matthews, please report to Aisle 10.”

The announcement pours out distorted through the ancient intercom speakers, but clear enough to fill Lottie’s chosen corner of exile.

“There’s a gigantic, really obnoxious asshole waiting for you, but that asshole is really, really sorry.”

Lottie lifts her head from the knees that she had been hugging tightly. She tries to stop it, but a soft smile tugs at her lips.

“We’re going to be stranded here for a while, so. She promises to stop being a jerk for at least five whole minutes, and she’d like it if you used those five minutes to curse her out like she so deserves.”

A static silence follows. For a beat, Lottie thinks the message is over.

“Also… she really misses you. And she left you a gift in Aisle 1. A peace offering, if you will.”

Lottie unfolds completely now. Her heart flutters helplessly the way it always did when it came to Natalie. The way it had been doing since they were seventeen and stupidly in love.

Aisle 1 is a wasteland of rummaged and half-opened clearance Halloween decorations and candy now that the holiday is over. But there, incongruous amongst the Jack-o-Lantern carnage, sits a Little Tikes table, front and center. Its box had been torn open and discarded haphazardly. But it’s what sits atop the tiny table that steals all of Lottie’s attention:

A jar of kalamata olives and a lavender onesie patterned with little deer.

Lottie smiles harder. She touches the soft fabric of the pajamas. She takes the items along with her on her journey to Aisle 10. But along the way, she makes a quick pitstop of her own.

x

“Lottie.”

The name comes from her own mouth, but even she’s surprised by the softness at which it lands. She, of course, had hope for this outcome—it was kind of the entire point of her embarrassing intercom-blasted apology—but sometimes Lottie could be really stubborn. Nat could be stubborn, too, but she thinks Lottie would’ve hidden from her until sunrise if Nat hadn’t broken the stalemate first.

Lottie looks up in time to see Nat approaching in slow, careful steps. Tortoise steps, as if she’s giving Lottie time to change her mind and run away. But when she gets close enough and Lottie still hasn’t moved or even flinched, Nat speaks again. “I hate it when we fight.”

“Me too,” Lottie says.

Nat takes a deep breath, shutting her eyes as she mentally prepares. She takes a final step toward Lottie. “Look, I shouldn’t have… ragged on you like that. It wasn’t fair.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“We don’t have to talk about who we’re sleeping with. Or talk about why we’re not talking about it. It’s weird for me, too. I just keep talking about it and hoping that eventually, it’ll feel normal to me,” Nat admits, her thumbs twiddling against her indexes. “But I really like being your friend, Lottie.”

“I really like being your friend, too,” Lottie smiles. There’s a hint of sadness in it, but she keeps it wound tightly. “I never meant to make you think otherwise.”

Nat shakes her head fast. “You didn’t. I was just being an asshole.”

Lottie laughs. “Just a little bit.”

“Very, very little.” Nat grins. There is a moment where neither of them says anything. “So, what do you say? Peace offer accepted?” She gestures to the olives and pajamas that Lottie clutches to her chest. “Am I forgiven for being an asshole?”

Lottie bites back a small smile on her lips. “You might be. Under one condition.”

x

“I just think it’s a little bit unfair,” Nat says, eyeing the offering in front of her. “Yours is all cute, and this is…”

“This is what? Are you really shit-talking my gift?”

“Deers are frickin’ adorable. Raccoons are dirty and dig around in the trash,” Nat argues.

“But you both’ve got the same eyeliner!”

Nat’s mouth drops open. She shoves Lottie back playfully. “You’re such a bitch. I don’t do my eyeliner like that anymore.”

Lottie hums, eyes squinting as she inspects Nat like there’s a secret to be found. “I think,” she starts slowly, taking a step closer, “you’re just pretending that this is about the pattern.”

“Okay. Fine,” Nat huffs. “Onesies aren’t really my kind of thing.”

“Your kind of thing,” Lottie mocks, rolling her eyes. “And they’re mine?”

“Well, yeah. I picked one for you because you’d look cute in it. I don’t, um. See myself in one,” Nat explains.

“Well, that’s unfortunate. Because, as I said, my forgiveness is contingent on this.”

Nat picks the onesie up from where Lottie had left it on the same Little Tikes table. It’s light gray and dotted excessively with raccoon heads. “Contingent on me wearing a stupid raccoon onesie?”

“Don’t call it stupid if you want me to forgive you! But yes.”

Nat sighs theatrically. She slings the onesie over her shoulder in reluctant defeat. “The things I do for you, Matthews.”

Lottie smiles proudly. Another point in the category of Nat never being able to truly say no to Lottie Matthews.

x

“Oh my god.”

“Shut up.”

Nat was well-aware that this would be a consequence of putting on these childish pajamas, but she still wishes that she stipulated a no laughter clause to the contract of Lottie’s forgiveness. Yet she finds herself reveling in the fact that it’s putting a smile on Lottie’s face, giving her such immense joy, even if it comes at the expense of her own pride and dignity.

“How can I shut up? I think onesies are definitely your kind of thing, Nat.” Lottie laughs openly, without shame, as if she can’t hold it back. Nat trudges over to sit next to her, with the aggrieved pout of a first-grader returning from time-out. “You look adorable. You should wear these more often.”

Nat rolls her eyes, wanting to say something annoying back, but Lottie pulls the onesie hood over Nat’s head before she can. “Hey!” she protests, shoving it back off.

In the time that Nat was changing in the bathroom, Lottie nabbed a fuzzy throw from the home decor aisle and laid it out over the floor of the electronics section where Nat’s previous setup was. She also changed into her own onesie. Nat still finds her annoying, but she can’t help but smile at the sight of Lottie in her lavender onesie.

“I got you one more gift, since you were such a good sport about the onesie,” Lottie says. Nat wants to roll her eyes again, but she’s more intrigued by Lottie’s hands disappearing behind her back. She nearly spits out a laugh when she sees a large, electric blue bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 “wine” in the world-renowned flavor of Bling Bling Blue Razz.

“Spoiling me with top-shelf wine? You’re too good to me, Lot.”

Lottie rolls her eyes. “I’m still not calling this abomination ‘wine.’”

Nat doesn’t mind because Lottie hands her the bottle while she rips open a pack of red solo cups. Lottie drinking this at all is already the true meaning of a truce, considering how much shit she’d give Nat for bringing this to pre-games. But really, it’s Lottie’s fault because she only found this abomination wine when Lottie rudely requested that she start bringing something other than “boring beer.”

Nat raises her solo cup. She chuckles a little before she even speaks. “To us… being surprisingly decent at being friends even though we used to fuck.”

Lottie snorts out in surprise, her lips twisting into an horrified but amused smile. She holds up her solo cup anyway. “Jesus Christ,” she mutters. “Cheers.”

The rims of their cups knock together before they each take their respective toast first sips. Lottie winces at the sugary sour taste of Bling Bling Blue Razz like it’s poison. Nat chugs it down with no issues.

It only takes one refill for the televisions and racks to start spinning around her a little. She rubs her sleepy eyes and looks at Lottie. “I think I’m wine-drunk already.”

Lottie looks back at her, shaking her head slightly. “This doesn’t count as wine.”

“Fine.” Nat concedes, but grins. “Bling Bling Blue Razz-drunk.”

“Me too.” For all her objections and complaints, Lottie reaches for the bottle to pour another cupful.

“Oh my god.” Nat grins harder, and it already signals to Lottie that she isn’t going to like whatever is about to come out. “I just realized that this is probably, like, a wet dream of yours. Being locked in a big department store with everything you could ever want to steal. And a girl.”

“I don’t shoplift anymore!” Lottie argues, but her thick conviction falters quickly. “Well, not as often...” Nat giggles, fist coming up to her mouth to stifle it. “Besides, this defeats the point. It’s no fun if there’s no one to catch you.”

Nat considers this and finds it to be reasonable, though Lottie’s kleptomania has never been reasonable to her before. It does make her laugh, though.

“Hey.” Lottie furrows her eyebrows, coming to a late realization. “What makes you think that you’d be the girl in my sexual fantasies about shoplifting?”

Emboldened by the alcohol in her system, Nat challenges her: “Are you saying I wouldn’t be?”

Lottie licks her lips, like she has to think about it. “I’m saying,” she says slowly, still thinking, thinking, thinking. “You seem very confident.”

“If it’s not me, it’s another blonde who sorta looks like me.”

“What are you talking about?”

Nat stares at her. “Are you seriously not getting it?”

“No?” Lottie answers genuinely, which makes Nat laugh harder.

“You’ve got a type, Matthews. Blondes.”

“That’s ridiculous! I do not.” Lottie sets her solo cup down beside the throw.

“Really?” Nat laughs in disbelief. “How many non-blondes have you banged in the last year?”

Lottie presses her lips together. “Well, I don’t—I don’t keep track of things like that.”

“So zero,” Nat concludes.

“No, not zero!”

“Zero. Holy shit.” Nat’s eyes go wide. “Would you have even dated me if I hadn’t dyed my hair blonde after freshman year?”

“Don’t be dumb, Nat. I obviously would have.” Lottie shoves at Nat’s chest lightly, but it only fuels Nat’s wildly amused laughter.

“I think it’s all coming together now,” Nat says. Lottie is glaring daggers at her. It only makes Nat bolder. “You probably only want to fuck me again because I went back to blonde.”

Lottie’s face flashes with quick volts—mortification, irritation, defense. “That isn’t—I don’t—you’re unbelievable. It has nothing to do with your hair color.”

Nat shrugs. “Can’t exactly prove that hypothesis, can you?”

Lottie’s at a dead end. Nat obviously won’t take her word for it. She exhales, picking up her drink and killing the rest of it in one go. It’s not long before comes the sudden rush of dizziness, and the sudden rush of ideas that would normally sound really stupid and bad sounding really great.

“I can prove it,” Lottie suddenly says. Her eyes glide over Nat rather intensely, and her heart starts to thump in her chest. Nat glances at her, confused but intrigued. “Let’s dye your hair brown.”

Nat gawks. She had been open for a challenge—hell, she had been pushing for one. But she wasn’t expecting this. “What? Dye my hair here? Right now?”

“Uh-huh,” Lottie says. Her tongue runs over her bottom lip. “If I still want to fuck you when you’re a brunette, you never bring this blonde thing up again.”

Nat’s mouth goes dry. Tongue, lips, everything feels like it’s stuck together. She had been smug about it before, but now that Lottie has all but said she still wants to fuck her right now, she doesn’t know what to do with that information. “And if you don’t?”

“Then you can make me do anything you want.”

“Anything?” Nat’s mouth hangs a little ajar, clearly trying to gauge the boundaries of said prize.

Lottie rolls her eyes, but smiles. “Within safe and legal limits.”

x

They had been dizzy on their feet from the alcohol consumed, but they managed their way to the Hair Care aisle. Beyond the battalion of shampoos and conditioners, they scoured the vast selection of box dye brands and colors. After careful consideration, and the thumbs-up from Lottie, Nat finally landed on a dye from Clairol in the shade of “Natural Dark Brown.” The hair model on the front of the box seems to sport a color that’s both natural and dark brown enough to match the early sprout from Nat’s roots, so she’ll take it. Surprisingly, the second-guessing doesn’t pour in until they’re inside of the men’s bathroom and Lottie is hoisting her up onto the sink counter.

She had just gotten used to the blonde again. Sure, it could be a pain in the ass—all that bleach, toner, and those stubborn brown roots that need to make their appearance every few weeks—but it had been such an integral part of her high school identity. And now her adult identity, too.

“What?” Lottie asks as she snaps on the plastic gloves. “Having second thoughts?”

“No,” Nat says quickly. She fidgets anxiously with the plastic shopping bag they’d rigged around her neck like some kind of makeshift bib, because God forbid this animal onesie get a little dye on it. She sometimes hates that it feels like Lottie can read every thought in her mind. She watches Lottie squeeze the thick pigment cream from its tube into the developer bottle. As Lottie moves closer, the smell of ammonia strengthens. “Just thinking about how stupid I’ll look if you fuck this up.”

“I’m not going to fuck it up.” Lottie’s voice is quieter now, more dialed in on the task at hand. And Nat’s not that worried. Lottie is usually good at things. Besides, it’s pretty hard to fuck up going darker, right? That’s more a concern for going blonde. “Tilt your head forward.”

Nat suddenly realizes that sitting on top of the counter brings her to eye level with Lottie. It might be the alcohol talking, but it’s a little disorienting. She gulps as Lottie slots in the space between her legs.

A gloved hand reaches to tip Nat’s chin down. Nat white-knuckles the counter edge behind her hips, one to steady herself, but also to ensure that she doesn’t make any humiliating moves like grabbing at Lottie’s waist out of instinct.

Lottie gives the bottle one last shake. “Hold still,” she says. She parts Nat’s hair and squeezes and strokes the first cold stripe of dark dye along her root with surprising gentleness. One hand grips the back of her neck and she tries not to think about the gloved thumb brushing her skin. She swallows and tries not to look at Lottie as she works the dye into each small section of hair.

“So, what do you prefer? Peroxide blondes or natural blondes?” Nat asks smugly, fishing for a distraction, because stirring shit with her might be the only way she can get through this.

Lottie looks annoyed by the question, but her focus doesn’t falter. “I don’t have a type, Nat.”

Nat can’t resist the smirk tugging at her mouth. Lottie’s fingers are working through the left side of her hair now. “Really? Because I can feel the horny getting sucked out of you as my hair gets less blonde.”

Lottie’s cheeks turn red. “Turn around.”

Nat feels a shudder escape. “Huh?”

“I need to get the back of your hair,” Lottie says, but her voice sounds different than before. Lower, maybe darker.

Nat drops her feet to the ground and turns to face the mirror. It’s a little jarring staring at her reflection, especially as she leans her stomach into the edge of the countertop, slightly bent over on it, and Lottie comes up behind her nearly flush against her backside. Lottie’s pelvis presses lightly into Nat’s lower back.

She didn’t even realize that Lottie had begun applying the dye because she could feel Lottie’s thigh pressing just barely into her ass. Lottie is thorough with her dye job. She runs her gloved fingers through every easily-missed crevice, the patch of hair at the nape of her neck. Nat tries not to think about it, but the dry mouth returns in full force as she stares deeply into the mirror and sees the clear portrait of everything she is feeling. Lottie behind her, hands all up in her hair—fuck.

“Lottie,” she breathes.

“Mm?”

“Are you—are you done?”

“Just about.” One final stroke, another touch-up here and there, and Lottie backs up. Nat freezes in the position she’s in, scrambling to collect herself. “Now we wait.”

Nat turns around and finds that Lottie is still close. She stands there for a moment, pink-cheeked under the harsh bathroom lighting. Nat can finally breathe again when Lottie removes her dye-stained gloves and tosses them in the trash.

“How long is it again?” Nat asks, hands restlessly drumming the marble behind her.

Lottie checks the back of the box before tossing it, along with the empty tubes of cream and developer. “Twenty-five minutes.”

Nat pouts. “What are we supposed to do for twenty-five minutes?”

“You know, we’ve got a whole night here ahead of us.” Lottie runs her hands under the sink.

“Yeah. But there’s something extra claustrophobic about this bathroom.”

Lottie dries her hands beneath the wheezing blower, then ducks under the sink to fetch the Mad Dog bottle she’d stashed away in a plastic bag. “Thought you might want this,” she says.

The fifth is thankfully still half-full. Not that contraband restocks are going to be much of an issue tonight with the surplus of liquor they’re surrounded by. Nat grins, uncapping the bottle and taking a singeing-sweet swig right from it. When Lottie settles in beside her against the counter, Nat wordlessly passes it over. Lottie drinks deep, showing no signs of hesitation. She has stopped grimacing at the taste by now, at least. Either she’s acquired the taste through Stockholm syndrome, or she’s on a healthy road to plastered.

They fall into a rhythmic pass of the bottle back and forth, trading scraps of stupid conversation about nothing important at all. The easy, nothing-talk that makes Nat laugh and start to remember why, sometimes, even through all the weirdness, she considers Lottie to be the closest thing she has to a real best friend out of everyone.

At some point, Nat catches herself smiling at the absurdity of it all—what they’re doing here. They started the evening out at that stodgy business gala, and now, here they are, holed up in a damn Kmart bathroom, knocking back bum wine and playing beauty salon.

She watches Lottie wipe the blue stain from her mouth. “I’m sorry you had to ditch your date to sit in a Kmart with me.”

Lottie waves her off with a hand. “It’s not your fault,” she says, which is new news to Nat—who’d been saddled with all of the blame before.

“Isn’t it, though? I took a million years to find the bathroom, and then I made you come with me and wasted more time,” Nat reminds. “So it’s my fault.”

“Well, I’m the one who dragged you to the stupid gala in the first place, and go to this Kmart,” Lottie says.

Nat grins. This feels like a game of theirs. “Yeah, but I’m the one who invited myself along for your detour, though. You didn’t even want me to come.”

Lottie shakes her head. “Not true.”

“Extremely true. You would’ve been in and out, and off to your date, but now you’re here with me,” Nat says.

Now Lottie shrugs, seemingly unbothered. There’s a faint, peaceful smile on her lips. “You can’t change your fate,” she says. “Besides, she wasn’t really my type.”

“What?” Nat fakes a gasp. “But she’s blonde, she checks all the boxes I know of.”

Lottie rolls her eyes. “She was nice, but… I don’t know, too normal?”

“Right, because dating a normal person is a terrible thing that absolutely nobody wants,” Nat says teasingly.

“There’s nothing wrong with normal people. I’m just saying. The date was probably going to be kind of boring.”

“And getting drunk in a Kmart bathroom is better than a kind of boring date?” Nat tries not to spit out a laugh. A kind of boring date still has an above-zero chance of ending with sex. And based on Lottie’s purchases, it seems that she worked enough magic to make sex an absolute guarantee.

“Getting drunk in a Kmart bathroom with you is better than a kind of boring date,” Lottie corrects.

“Yeah?” Nat has a teasing smile on her lips, but it begins to soften.

“Yeah.” Lottie’s voice drops quieter.

Nat swallows, throat tight, and turns to face her better. She can’t stop watching the micro-shifts in her face: the muscle movement in her cheek, the little twitches and presses in her lips. Up close like this, her eyes look so dark, like deepwater that pulls you in before you realize that you’re sinking.

Hanging out alone isn’t unheard of for them, it’s nothing new. They’ve gotten used to it. They can joke around like this, make flirty comments that are all in good fun and don’t actually mean anything. It only tilts toward dangerous when they’re too drunk and horny and the math lines up: two people, neither laid in a while, out of convenience and familiarity. But this—this doesn’t feel like that. This is a different kind of intensity.

It’s bubbly and good, and it makes her chest feel warm. Talking and laughing the way they always do as friends, but also how they used to when they were more than friends. It all makes her want to pull Lottie by the collar of her onesie and slam their lips together sloppily, messily, letting the dye stain anything and everything.

She finds that Lottie’s eyes drop down to her lips, just for a second, but she knows it. She saw it.

“Lottie…”

The name seems to pull Lottie’s eyes back down to Nat’s lips. She gives it an indulgent few seconds, the air feeling heavy between them, before she snaps out of it and recalibrates. She glances at the Rolex on her wrist, swallowing hard. “I think it’s almost time.”

Nat doesn’t want it to be time. She did before, impatiently so, but not anymore. She doesn’t know how twenty-five minutes escaped them like this, but she wants to live in that moment longer. Just her and Lottie, looking at each other like that.

Secretly, she’s a little grateful that they’ve got no choice but to spend the rest of the night together.

In unison, they hop down from the counter. Lottie steers Nat toward the sink, leaning her back into it while the water runs. The angle is awkward and sort of hell on Nat’s back, but with a little bit of upwards splashing from Lottie and a lot of intense body contortions from Nat, the dye begins to bleed into the sink. Lottie leans close above, wringing color from her hair section by section. All Nat can think is how unflattering this must be, bent like a bridge while Lottie washes her like livestock.

When it’s done, Nat uncontorts her body from the counter. She feels her hair sopping and dripping onto the floor. Lottie admires the first look at her work. She produces a towel, and to Nat’s surprise, she herself brings it around to wrap the hair. It’s a bit of a strange angle too, but Lottie manages to scrunch and wring out the water, smiling softly as she does it. And that’s what they do—look and smile at each other with such tenderness until Lottie gets out every drop of water that she can. When the towel leaves her hair, she can still feel its dampness, but it doesn’t drip.

Lottie undoes the nooselike bib and prompts Nat to straighten in front of the mirror, and she does. The reflection startles her. The dark hair is sobering—it feels surreal to see herself like this again. But strangely, it also feels like letting go. Sloughing off dead skin.

The first time, she’d impulse-bleached her hair after her dad died. It was too brassy and yellow and took a lot of toning and trial and error to fix it. She thought the new hair would make her feel different, sever her from the darkest chapter of her life. But somehow, the opposite happened—the blonde started to feel like it belonged to her dad. Like even from the grave, he still had this hold on her that made her have to bleach her hair to run away from him. So going back to brown hair, stupidly, feels like she’s not giving him power anymore.

“Is it okay?” Lottie asks.

“Yeah.” Nat pivots slowly. She faces Lottie, her palms against the cool marble for balance. Only now does it hit her—they never actually laid out the logistics of this bet. How they’d even gauge Lottie’s supposed desire to fuck her as a brunette. In the sober light of post-Mad Dog clarity, the whole thing sounds a little half-baked and dumb. She can only really think of one method of testing the claim, and that’s… well. Dizzying. “But this isn’t about me. What do you think?”

Lottie swallows hard, like she’s running through the same questions and realizations. “Um.”

Nat’s lips part. She presses her back flat to the counter. Lottie’s eyes drag over her again and again, and for a speck of a second, Nat thinks that Lottie just might step forward and close the distance. But she doesn’t.

“You know, I think you actually might be right,” she says. Nat’s eyes flutter in surprise. “I guess… I do prefer blondes.”

Nat blinks, stunned. She didn’t exactly have a clear picture in her head of what this bet would look like and how it’d all unfold, but it certainly wasn’t this. “Oh.”

“I mean, you look good. You always do,” Lottie tacks on quickly. But it’s a pity compliment.

“Uh. Guess I win?” Nat stares. It doesn’t really feel like sweet victory, though.

“Guess so.” Lottie steps back, as if to put space between them, and Nat pretends not to notice it. “Um, so. Have you decided what you want me to do? Since you won?”

Well, now Nat is strapped for ideas. She was having the intrusive thought that she would ask Lottie to kiss her. But she’ll chalk it up to the alcohol again, because that is clearly not what is going on right now. Either Lottie’s a liar, or she misread something here.

“I… um, I’ve gotta think about it. I’ll get back to you.”

Lottie forces a smile. She gives Nat the towel to dry her hair some more. “Okay.”

x

Nat has successfully, mostly, shooed away any lingering thoughts of asking Lottie to kiss her, or just grabbing her and doing it herself. They returned to the electronics section with Nat reborn as a brunette. After bouncing around a couple of ideas on how they could kill the time aside from drinking, the idea landed right in front of them, hanging off a plastic clip on the edge of the aisle with games & toys: a deck of cards.

Lottie shuffles the deck and stacks seven cards on Nat’s side of the blanket, and then her own. She places the remainder of the deck face-down in the middle. They both look through and sort their cards.

“Got any Queens?” Nat asks.

Lottie shakes her head. “Go fish. Got any ones?”

“Go fish,” Nat says. “Got any sevens?”

Lottie shakes her head again. “Go fish. Got any aces?”

Nat groans and concedes her two aces. “Ugh. Fuck you.”

She hasn’t played this game since she was a kid. Or really, any card games at all, aside from her brief poker phase in 2000 that came with a lot of cocaine, and a lot of money lost from ill-placed bets. She never liked card games all that much, least of all Go Fish. This should be excruciatingly boring, but she finds herself far from bored.

“The deck is almost over and I still’ve got only one Queen. You know we’re not playing Bluff, right?”

“Natalie.” Lottie looks at her in offense. “Are you accusing me of cheating?”

“Well, there are only like five cards left, and I can’t imagine three of the five being Queens. That’s, like, against the laws of probability,” Nat says.

“Just because it’s an unlikely event, doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”

Five more draws, and Nat doesn’t find a single Queen card aside from the one she has in her hand. “What? Show me your deck!”

“My what?”

Nat rolls her eyes and laughs. “That was so dumb I thought that I must’ve said it.” She snatches the stack from a willful Lottie and sorts through it, only to find no other Queens. “How’s this possible? Are you hiding them?”

“Wow. You’re such a sore fucking loser,” Lottie scoffs. “Why would I hide cards?”

“This deck’s a bust, then,” she says. She holds up the single Queen she has—the Queen of Hearts. “There’s only one Queen. The rest are missing.”

“Huh,” Lottie eyes the cards, intrigued. “Should we complain to the manager tomorrow that the deck of cards that we stole is a faulty batch?”

“You laugh, but I bet that’s something your dad would do.”

“No, he’s the one on the other side of it. He buries any lawsuits that come his way with a check.”

Nat half-smiles. Lottie never talks about her dad that much. So the few times she does, it gets Nat thinking. It makes her a little sad to think about the way everything panned out, with Lottie following in his footsteps professionally.

“I think I know what I want,” Nat says while Lottie is distractedly shoving the faulty cards back up in their pack.

“Hm?”

“For the bet,” Nat says. She scoots closer to Lottie on the blanket now that the display of cards are out of the way. Lottie is on her knees, turned to her with a curious expression. Boldly, Nat reaches forward and twirls a strand of Lottie’s dark hair around her index. “I’m gonna make some changes to your hair, too. It’s only fair.”

Lottie’s eyes are stuck somewhere between fear and horror. “I’m not dyeing my hair another color.”

Nat looks at her amusedly. “I never said I wanted you to! While I think you could definitely rock a bottle blonde, I like your hair the color it is. Unlike you, I can admit I’ve got a type.”

Lottie pauses and swallows at this. “You’re still not letting this go?”

“Well, I only said I’d drop it if you won, but you…” Nat pauses. She scans up and down Lottie’s face. She knows very well that she should let this go, but she can’t stop herself from looking for a sign that Lottie was lying. She sees the strain on Lottie’s features. She can’t be making this up.

Lottie sucks her cheek into her teeth and looks off to the side, as if she can’t bear going eye-to-eye with Nat. “What do you want to do to my hair?”

Nat pretends to think, but she’s already got an answer. “I’m gonna give you bangs.”

Lottie laughs, but quickly realizes that Nat is serious when her expression doesn’t flinch. “Why would you want to do that? I haven’t had bangs since college.”

“Well, for starters, they looked cute.” She musses the crown of Lottie’s hair, unleashing a few long strands down the length of her face, and Lottie just lets her. “But also. Maybe I miss banged Lottie.”

“Banged Lottie.” Lottie sounds unamused, rolling her eyes, but the small smile on her lips tells a different story. She pushes the loose strands back out of her face and smooths the dishevelment caused by Nat.

“Yes, Banged Lottie. Do you remember her?”

“I’m still me, Nat. Just… bangless.”

“Hmm. I mean, the banged Lottie Matthews was a sweet, sweet girl. Inexperienced at sex. I recall having to teach her everything she knows—”

“Shut up.”

Nat laughs. “The banged Lottie Matthews wasn’t a player—”

“I’m not a player!”

“—and she definitely would never work for her dad’s company.”

“That’s not fair. You’re not being fair, Nat.” Lottie frowns, and Nat feels bad she said it now. “You know how my dad is.”

“I’m sorry.”

But this has gotten to Lottie, clearly. “I didn’t agree to it because I like it.”

“I know.”

“I only agreed to it because I just wanted him to… see me as something other than the crazy daughter he didn’t want. Someone he could actually be proud of.”

“Lottie…” Nat has the distinct urge to reach out and touch her face. To drag her thumb along Lottie’s jawline.

Lottie shakes her head like she doesn’t want to hear it. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this.”

“You don’t have to prove anything to him,” Nat says. “Or anyone. Least of all me.” Lottie softens, but Nat’s chest still hurts. “I really am sorry. I don’t know why I’m in such an asshole mood today.”

“You’re not actually an asshole,” Lottie holds a small but sincere smile for only a moment before it flattens. “I know you were surprised when I told you that I was taking the job with him.”

“I was,” Nat admits hesitantly. “But not because I was judging. You—you just used to talk a lot about how you’d never. And all the things you wanted to do instead.”

Lottie nods, still frowning. She looks down. “I tried working for other big finance companies. Nothing ever clicked, and my dad kept asking me if I wanted to work for him. I could tell he really wanted me to—to have his kid take over for him someday. And I figured, if I’m going to work somewhere I hate anyway, I might as well make my dad happy.”

Nat looks at her sympathetically. “You’re never gonna be happy if you’re just living his life instead of your own.”

There’s a beat where Lottie seems to think about something deeply, but she shakes it. She puts on a more playful smile. “And is that what you’ve found? Happiness? Because I seem to recall you complaining about the bar a lot.”

Nat laughs in mock outrage, shaking her head. “Okay, that’s only because the crowd there is all former frat boys who peaked in college and can’t stop spilling their drinks everywhere!”

Lottie laughs, too, but it fades quickly. She looks at Nat more sincerely. “So, are you happy, then?”

Over the years, Nat has taken a series of odd jobs. She tried dogwalking and working at a record store. She even had a brief stint in locksmithing, which she quit about two months in. Most recently, she ended up bartending again because she’s good at whipping up drinks quickly and it can pay pretty damn well on a busy night with the rich and drunk New York City tippers. None of those jobs have given her a sense of purpose, though.

Nat shifts uncomfortably. “The pay’s decent, and it’s fun sometimes, but…” She pauses. “I actually quit. Again.”

Lottie’s eyebrows shoot up. “Wait. Didn’t you just ask for your job back like a month ago?”

“I did, yeah.” Nat nods slowly. She thinks about her answer, because she knows how it sounds. Here she is, taking up yet another new job that she’s probably going to quit in a few months. But this one doesn’t give her the same sense of dread that her old jobs did. “I found something else. Something that might actually be… I don’t know, different.”

“Different how? Does it pay more?”

“God, no. I think it actually might pay less without the tips included,” Nat chuckles. “I’m coaching soccer. Well, assistant coaching. At a middle school in Park Slope.”

“You’re coaching?” Lottie looks genuinely surprised. “How did that happen?”

“Funny story, actually.” Nat says, a quirked smile on her lips. “Coach Scott called me.”

“Coach Scott? Our Coach Scott?”

“Yeah. Isn’t that crazy?” Nat says, and Lottie nods. They probably haven’t seen or talked to Coach Scott since graduation day, when they, by Jackie’s direction, forced him to take one last team photo with them. But Nat’s pretty sure that he wanted to. She knows deep down, he missed them when they left. “Turns out he left Wiskayok right after we graduated. I ran into him at a bar, and we got drunk together.”

“You got drunk with Coach Scott?” Lottie laughs.

“I got drunk with Coach Scott,” Nat nods, laughing too. “Anyways, he says we should keep in touch, we exchange phone numbers, and I thought that would be the end of it. You know, ‘cause people always say ‘let’s keep in touch’ just to say it. But a few weeks later, he calls me up all desperate, saying he works at the school, the one in Park Slope, and he had a nasty fall down the subway stairs on the way. He asked me if I’d wanna sub in at practice for the day. I thought he was fucking with me at first—I mean, I haven’t played soccer since Nationals. But I showed up, and these kids were… I don’t know. They reminded me of us when we were that age, you know? So eager and competitive and trying so hard. And I actually remembered more than I thought I would. How to run drills, how to talk to them when they get frustrated.” She pauses, seeming almost shy for a second. “At the end of practice, this one kid comes up to me and he says I explained this passing technique better than anyone ever had. And I just… I felt like I was doing something good, you know? Being useful in some way, not just fucking around with my life.” She suddenly looks a little embarrassed. “Is that dumb? You can tell me if it’s dumb.”

“No, no. It’s not dumb at all.” Lottie shakes her head. Her eyes look soft, almost tearful. “God, Nat. You should see your face when you talk about this. I haven’t seen you look like that about a job in, well… ever.”

“I don’t know if it’s gonna stick, but I hope it does,” she admits.

“I think it will,” Lottie says. “So what happened with Coach Scott? He didn’t come back?”

“Oh, yeah. Well, he ended up being out for, like, weeks—his leg injury was pretty bad, I think he tore his ACL. And he was supposed to get surgery for it, so I was gonna keep covering for him, just until the next semester. I’d been doing it for around two weeks, and the head coach pulls me aside and asks if I want to take over permanently. I was confused because I didn’t wanna short Coach Scott or anything, so I call him up after practice and he goes, ‘Oh, I actually realized I hate coaching and quit.’ Guess he figured all that out while he was on leave.”

“What!?”

“Oh, and also, he’s gay. He moved to New York because he’s gay and wanted to live with his boyfriend,” Nat adds.

“Jesus Christ!” Lottie is fully laughing now. Nat likes the way her laughter sounds. How she looks down and bears her teeth, those cute little fangs, and covers her head with her hands like she can’t contain it. Nat could watch and listen to this all day, forever. “Well, I’m glad this resulted in you getting the job, I guess.”

“Strange how things work out, huh?”

They let themselves laugh again for a second, but when the laughter subsides, all Nat can do is look at Lottie, heart thumping in her chest. She’s not saying she has it all figured out now, but she can’t help but feel like maybe if she were in this headspace before, if she actually had something concrete that she wanted to do and liked doing, that maybe she and Lottie wouldn’t have broken up in the first place.

“Hey,” she says when enough quiet has filled the space. “I won’t make you cut your bangs if you don’t want to.”

Lottie mocks a gasp. “You’re showing me mercy?”

“I’m actually a very merciful person, you know.”

“I know.”

“Is that sarcasm?”

“No, not at all.” Lottie’s smile turns into a sigh as she glances around the aisles. “But since the cards are a bust and the haircut is off the table, what are we going to do now?”

Nat chuckles, patting her back lightly. “Don’t worry. That’s the good thing about Kmart—we’ve got endless entertainment here. We’ll find something else to do.”

“Like?”

x

Nat’s first pitch is the kiddie pool—grab one of those inflatables from Outdoor, fill it up with buckets of water from the bathroom, and have themselves a midnight swim. Rejected for reasons unknown, because that sounds like a kick-ass way to spend the rest of their night.

So they go with her backup plan: movie night in Electronics. The groundwork is already there from her prior solo time, lawn chair out and flatscreen angled just right. Only now, it’s better, with two lawn chairs pressed so close the armrests touch. Better because Lottie is here, watching with her. Even though Lottie isn’t much of a movie talker, she doesn’t mind Nat’s running commentary. She listens to the rambling, every irk and joke that enters Nat’s brain. Oh, and she never once tells Nat to shut up for talking too much during the movie.

They decided on American Psycho. It flashes bright and in too great of color on the flatscreen. Nat can picture the suited men from the gala turning out like Patrick Bateman. There’s a lot of blood and killing; Lottie looks like she wants to look away, but also can’t look away.

Nat glances over. Lottie is so engrossed in Patrick Bateman picking out his next victim. She’s practically biting her nails, but she looks cozy and cute in this getup. Lottie wordlessly convinced Nat to match with her onesie hood pulled up. Nat wordlessly convinced Lottie to match with a pair of plastic sunglasses.

“Ugh,” Lottie winces, eyes squinting. She clutches both arms of her lawn chair tightly. “I just think killing someone with an axe is so brutal. Who would do something like that?”

Nat chuckles. “Is it better if they kill with something other than an axe?”

“You know what I mean—there are levels to it.” Lottie hardly shoots her a glare before reaching down beside her chair. Nat tilts her head, her sunglasses sliding partway down the bridge of her nose. Lottie resurfaces with the jar of kalamatas in her hand, and Nat can’t help but smile. They’d raided the snack aisles for a boatload of candy and chips and ice cream before they started the movie, and yet, all of Lottie’s attention is on the olives.

Lottie fumbles to twist the lid of the jar for a few seconds, and Nat has the sudden gentlemanly urge to take it off her hands and open it for her, despite reality proving that Lottie is a lot stronger than she is. And, without intervention, Lottie opens the jar on her own. Nat keeps watching her anyway. She watches Lottie fish out the dark olives and pop them into her mouth. She watches Lottie suck the brine off her fingers when she’s done—one finger at a time, between her lips. It makes Nat’s mouth run dry.

Noticing her gaze, Lottie turns with an amused smile. “What?”

“What?”

Lottie laughs, short and quick. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?” But Nat knows exactly like what. She hasn’t had a sip of Blue Razz since the movie started, and all she can think about now is Lottie’s fingers inside of her own mouth.

Lottie shakes her head like it wasn’t important anyway. “Thank you for the gift. I enjoyed it very much.”

“I can see that, and you’re welcome. It cost me a small fortune, but you’re welcome,” Nat says teasingly, resting her hand on the arm of the chair.

Lottie lets out a soft giggle before leaning back in her chair, olive jar discarded on the floor. She shifts around to get comfortable again, her arm resettling on the arm of the chair. And suddenly, Nat is fully feeling how close their chairs are, how close they’re sitting. Their forearms are brushing, nearly pressed together. If either one of them were to move a centimeter closer, their hands might be touching.

Nat finally looks back at the TV screen. It’s only then that she realizes how long had passed since she last paid attention to the movie. She has no idea what’s going on anymore. But she soon loses all motivation to find out because Lottie does, in fact, move her hand.

The movement is so minuscule, but Nat feels it. She feels the tip of Lottie’s pinkie against her own. She swallows, trying her hardest not to glance down at their hands, trying her hardest to pretend like she’s paying attention to the movie even though she would most definitely fail any post-show pop quiz that Lottie administered. Experimentally, she moves her own pinkie so slightly, just so the pad grazes the top of Lottie’s nail. If Lottie notices, she seems to do a very good job of pretending otherwise. She doesn’t move a muscle, not even in her pinkie. Still, still, still. They sit like that, so still, and Nat wouldn’t mind sitting like that, but something in her wants more.

That something curves her pinkie around, loops it around Lottie’s. She earns no glance, and maybe she’s grateful for that, because she doesn’t know if she can remain straight-faced if Lottie is staring right into her. But what Lottie does is bend her pinkie down, hooking it with Nat’s.

Nat hears the beat of her own heart. Two thumps at a time, in rapid succession, hardly any pause between. Tonight, she seems to be collecting these little moments that she never wants to end. Only, as soon as she thinks it—that she never wants the moment to end—it comes to a sudden, striking halt. It might be time to recircle the idea of that religious cleanse of her bad luck.

The movie ends, the credits roll, and Lottie pulls away. Hand back to her side, pinkie already forgetting it had been engaging in promiscuity with Nat’s only seconds ago.

Nat couldn’t care less about Christian Bale getting his flowers. She lifts her sunglasses, resting the plastic frames on the top of her head. “Is it time to crack open a second bottle of Mad Dog? I think I spotted an Electric Melon flavor on the way to pick up your sunglasses.” Lottie doesn’t say anything, and Nat can only conclude that the presumption of a second Mad Dog offends her. “Okay, okay. We can do regular red wine instead. Any fancy shit you like. On me, of course.”

Before she can laugh at her own joke, in a surge, Lottie pushes her sunglasses up and says: “I’ll do it.”

“Do what?”

“Or I guess… you’ll do it,” she corrects herself. “You’ll cut my bangs.”

Nat looks at her, puzzled. “You want me to cut your bangs? What changed your mind?”

She shrugs her shoulders. “I owe you for coming to the gala with me when though I know you really didn’t want to.”

“That was nothing. You don’t have to cut your hair for that,” Nat shakes her head. “You should only do it if you want to.”

“I do want to.”

“Are you sure?”

“Really, really sure.”

Nat chuckles. “Okay. Well, I’ll go scan the aisles for a pair of scissors. And if you change your mind again before then, we don’t do it.”

x

Lottie doesn’t change her mind.

She had a lot of time to reconsider, too. It took Nat a solid few minutes to hunt through aisles for a toothed comb and good scissors—because Lottie forbade the use of the perfectly functional neon scissors from the clearance Back to School section, even if just for bangs. Nat also swapped their lawn chairs out for something better suited: a medium oak dining chair for herself, taller and height-advantageous, and a small rolling office chair for Lottie. She arranged them close, facing each other. Then only does she summon Lottie to witness her makeshift barbershop.

As her beckoning call, Nat snip-snaps the air like she’s Edward Scissorhands. She wields a pair of good, non-school, non-vibrant silver scissors, which are small, but dangerously sharp. Lottie shakes her head with an airy laugh before taking a seat on the office chair. Nat settles on the seat opposite, using her feet to scoot forward until her knees slot in against Lottie’s. The wooden chair’s height lifts her just enough so she can tilt Lottie’s chin up with a finger.

Lottie’s hands come to rest loosely on Nat’s thighs to steady herself. Nat twists to the nightstand she’d placed beside the chairs, swapping out the scissors for the comb. Her hand rises to hover near Lottie’s temple, ready to brush her hair into place. But she pauses and draws it back.

“Last chance to back out,” Nat warns. She tries to not think about how and where Lottie is holding onto her.

Lottie shakes her head. “I trust you. Just… don’t make me look like Peppermint Patty.”

Nat chuckles softly. “See, Peppermint Patty you could fix ‘cause they’re just too long. I was going more for Marcie… or Didi Pickles.”

“Didi Pickles? You’re openly admitting to sabotaging me?”

“I have to do something to chase all the New York girls away from you,” Nat teases, and Lottie rolls her eyes.

“Wait. Nat.” Lottie pauses, her throat bobbing. It’s this moment that Nat realizes how close their faces are. So, so close. She could kiss her so easily. She looks up and hums inquisitively. Lottie lets out a nervous, breathy laugh. “The last thing you say to me before I give you free reign over my hair can’t be that you’re going to make me look like Didi Pickles.”

“Oh.” Nat laughs too, breathily. She thinks for a moment. “Then I’ll say… I couldn’t make you look bad if I tried.” Lottie’s cheeks look pinker. “But I won’t try, I promise.”

Lottie looks at her with warm, half-lidded eyes and a soft smile as Nat leans forward with the comb. Gently, Nat carefully sections the frontal hairs and brushes them down so they fall long over her face. She reaches, once on each side, to tuck Lottie’s hair behind her ears. Her fingers threaten to linger over Lottie’s ears for longer than necessary, but she exercises enough restraint to push forward with her mission.

A few more runs of the comb through the fringe smooth every strand into silky alignment. Nat gathers the pieces together between her thumb and forefinger, lifting them slightly. It’s enough to finally again reveal Lottie’s face, her starry brown eyes looking up at Nat. Lottie seems to be trying to stifle her smile, but it peeks through. Nat just wants to rub her thumb along Lottie’s bottom lip.

She swallows hard, not wanting to botch this. She sets the comb down and picks the scissors back up. Mentally, she measures the estimated length one last time, trying to envision the arch she’s creating. She sees the focus and precision in her head, and she brings the tip of the scissors to the very end of the fringe, right below where she twists the hair. She holds her breath, spreading the scissors open with her fingers, just about to make the cut. Then she feels Lottie instinctively squeezing her thighs tighter, holding onto her. Part of her is reeling from the touch, but the other part of her knows that Lottie is more nervous than she is.

“I’ve got you,” she reassures her.

Lottie’s eyes seem to understand. She has a trusting smile, and Nat smiles back. She repositions the hair between the blades of the scissors. One, two, snip.

Lottie’s breath hitches at the cut, but she relaxes again when she sees Nat smiling too, and not looking at her in sheer horror. With her fingers, Nat pushes away the large fallen pieces and brushes out the new bangs so they fan out perfectly over Lottie’s forehead. She trims a few edges, eyeing closely to ensure that they’re even. Then her head moves back, and she admires her own work for a moment before, with her free hand, grabbing a small hand mirror she found from the table. She holds it up and flips it so that Lottie can see herself.

“See?” Nat says, softly. “So much prettier than Didi Pickles.”

Lottie laughs quietly. Nat’s tone is teasing, but she can’t stop staring at Lottie. She wants to memorize every detail of her perfect face.

“Thoughts, comments?” Nat asks as she sets the mirror back down. She lifts the scissors up partway. “Any adjustments?”

Lottie shakes her head. Her eyes don’t once leave Nat’s face. “They’re perfect.”

Pleased, Nat smiles. She then notices the stray wisps of hair scattered across Lottie’s skin. Her thumb comes up to Lottie’s cheekbone, the plane just beneath her undereye, and slowly brushes them away.

And with Lottie holding her thighs, looking into her eyes like this, Nat allows her thumb to linger on Lottie’s cheek. Slowly, so painfully slowly, she leans forward and blows, ridding her cheek of any remaining hairs.

“There,” she whispers. She admires the soft new line where Lottie’s bangs and for only a moment before all her attention goes to Lottie’s eyes. Exploring them, staring into them, trying to read them. “You look like you again.”

Lottie’s pupils dilate, but she stays perfectly still.

“My Lottie is back.”

The lamplight turns Lottie’s eyes to honey. They shine. Sometimes Nat has to wonder how a fucker like Malcolm Matthews had a daughter so effortlessly pretty. Lottie’s hands slide higher up Nat’s thighs. “I’ve always been right here, Nat.”

This—this is unmistakable, isn’t it? Nat swallows hard, looking at the way Lottie looks at her, looking into those deep browns that she always gets lost in. She sees their flicker down to her lips, and she’s positive that, as it has gone this entire night, Lottie will look away again like it never happened.

But she doesn’t. She kisses Nat, quick and sure, like she’s finally done running. Nat’s breath hitches into her mouth, and the scissors go clattering to the floor. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care about anything other than this. This—kissing Lottie back harder, pressing her hands into her cheeks.

It’s a complete frenzy. Lips meeting lips, separating, reconnecting with increasing urgency. Tongues getting involved, going in, swiping whatever they can. Nat’s hands travel down Lottie’s cheeks, along the sides of her neck. She encounters the soft terry cloth of the onesie. The cool metal of its zipper.

“We should stop,” Lottie manages between kisses, though she fails to implement her own suggestion.

“I don’t wanna stop,” Nat replies, punctuating her point with another kiss. Again. Again. Quick pecks, then deeper.

The kiss that follows is slower, more indulgent. Nat bites down on Lottie’s bottom lip, tugging at it with her teeth. Lottie gasps softly, then shudders, nails digging into Nat’s thighs. She finally finds the strength to pull away, but everything in her half-lidded, hazy eyes looks like she would do anything to go in again.

“Seriously Nat, we shouldn’t,” she declares, and she says it with almost enough conviction to sound sincere.

Nat laughs a confused, breathless sound, bringing her hands back up to rest on Lottie’s cheeks. “Why not?”

“Because…”

“Because?” Nat questions, tilting her head. The pad of her thumb drags the corner of Lottie’s lip. “Because you don’t want to kiss me anymore since I’m not blonde?”

It’s supposed to be dumb teasing, but Lottie doesn’t react. She looks no less serious than before.

“Because I always want to kiss you,” Lottie admits quietly.

Nat narrows her eyes. Her hands drop to her sides. “You… always want to kiss me?”

She thinks Lottie might take it back, but she doesn’t. Lottie nods. It’s not that big of a deal though, is it? Obviously they like kissing each other. They’ve been doing it for fun after they broke up, because kissing each other and having sex with each other is fun.

“I mean—okay,” Nat says. “I want to kiss you, too.”

“No,” Lottie says, and she blinks like it hurts when she says it. “I want to kiss you all the time, Nat.”

Nat blinks. Lottie says it confusingly, because Lottie is confusing, but she thinks she gets what this is. “All the time?”

“All the time.”

“When did you… when did you start wanting to kiss me again, all the time?” Nat asks, feeling breathless.

“I don’t think I ever stopped wanting to,” Lottie admits. She sees the surprise on Nat’s face, and loosens her hold on her thighs. “Which is why I can’t do this anymore, not just for fun.”

“Lottie…”

Lottie wets her lips with her tongue. She shifts away, standing up from the office chair. She takes a moment to breathe before facing Nat. “Let’s just… let’s just take a beat, okay? Let’s just think. Sleep on it, maybe.”

Nat wants to tell her that she doesn’t want to think. That Lottie thinks too much. That they should just think with their mouths and hands, and let the rest work itself out. But she finds herself nodding like some kind of reasonable person and says “Okay” and “Whatever you want” because she also doesn’t want to hurt Lottie.

She didn’t know until today—until this very moment, really—that Lottie still felt this way about her. In hindsight, she should have known. Maybe she’s being a revisionist now, but suddenly she sees it in the replays of every little moment they’ve had over the past seven years. The looks and touches that Lottie would give her. How Lottie would take care of her when she drank a bit too much, hold her hair when she was throwing up. Nat had brushed it off as Lottie being Lottie. She cared about everyone. And she always got attention from other girls at bars, even if she would pretend otherwise when Nat came around. Nat didn’t know that Lottie still wanting her was even an option on the table—it was so far in the past, and Lottie could have anybody she wanted.

But she wanted Nat. She wants Nat.

Nat can’t find a peaceful place to set that truth down. Of all the moments tonight, this is the first that she becomes unsure that she can make it through however-many hours they’ve got left until Kmart rescue sets out for them. Because how is one meant to sit here idly, pretending nothing has changed, with the knowledge that Lottie Matthews, for reasons unknown, still wants you?

x

They opted for a sleeping arrangement much comfier than a stray blanket on the floor, borrowing a full, camping-grade sleeping bag from Outdoor.

Nat lies flat on her back, eyes on the ceiling. She has to squash whatever urges she has to roll closer to Lottie, because she knows that Lottie needs her space—to think, to stop thinking about Nat, or whatever. But she’s done her fair share of poking the bear tonight, so she has decided to keep it cordial.

“You know, I’m starting to think this was actually a good thing,” Nat says, grinning over at her. Lottie also stares at the ceiling, hands folded neatly on her stomach. “Unlimited food, alcohol, snacks, entertainment. I wouldn’t mind being stranded here forever.”

Lottie shifts as she chuckles. “There are definitely worse places to be stranded.”

“Definitely. People always ask hypotheticals about being stranded on an island, but that’s not so bad either, is it? You could drink coconut water and swim in the ocean. As someone who hasn’t vacationed much, an endless vacation doesn’t sound too bad,” Nat says.

“Mm.” Lottie hums thoughtfully. She finally breaks her fixation with the ceiling, turning her head slightly to look at Nat. Nat looks at her, too. “When you were younger, did you ever think about running away from home?”

Nat chuckles. “All the damn time. I did when things were bad with my dad. And after he died, I thought about it more.”

“More?”

Nat nods. “Yeah, surprisingly. I thought that if I ran away, maybe my mom would notice that I was gone and… I don’t know. Maybe she’d start to care. Realize that she still had me, even if she didn’t have my dad.”

“I’m sorry,” Lottie says, frowning.

“It’s whatever. There comes a point where you realize that no matter what you do, they’re never gonna care,” Nat says. “What about you? Did you ever think of running away?”

“I did. I thought about how easy it would be to run away. My parents wouldn’t have realized I was gone,” Lottie says, smiling softly.

“I would’ve,” Nat says, looking at her sincerely. She knows what she told herself. Cordiality. Giving Lottie space. But more than ever, she wants to reach out and touch Lottie’s hand. Squeeze it to reassure her.

Lottie smiles. “You were in all my dreams about running away.”

“You had dreams about running away with me?” Nat asks, her smile curious.

“All sorts of them.”

Nat is intrigued. She smiles, shifting onto her side now. “Where did we go?”

“The middle of nowhere,” Lottie says. She mirrors Nat, shifting onto her side, hand below her cheek. “When we were in Seattle for Nationals, I would have this dream where our plane home got lost and took us somewhere in the middle of nowhere. We were really scared at first, stuck in some kind of forest, but then it started to feel peaceful.”

“Peaceful?” Nat laughs, raising her eyebrows. “That sounds like hell.”

“Are you shitting on my dreams?”

“No, no. I’m open to it. But what did we even eat out there?” Nat asks.

“I don’t know. We made it work.” Lottie laughs softly. She gazes into the blues of Nat’s eyes. “But we didn’t have to worry about anything out there. We didn’t have to think about your dad or my dad, or our futures and how fast our lives were changing. It was just you and me, and our friends. Wearing no clothes, sleeping under the stars, swimming in a lake. I kept thinking—I could be happy like this forever.”

Nat smiles faintly. She almost wants to cry, thinking about Lottie ever feeling that way. Thinking about herself feeling that way, too. “I think I’ve learned that we don’t have to run away to be happy. We can be happy right here, right now.”

Lottie thinks deeply about this. “Can I tell you a secret, Nat?”

“Isn’t that the point of tonight? Get everything off our chests?” Nat chuckles. “Yeah, you can tell me anything.”

“The reason I wanted to go to the gala so badly was because I told myself that it would be my final attempt to find a job in finance,” Lottie says. “That if I didn’t meet someone I liked, that I would quit the whole thing, just like that. Quit my dad’s firm, no looking back.”

“Shit. Well, did you find anything you liked?” Nat asks.

“Obviously not. I fucking hate finance,” Lottie laughs, and Nat laughs too. “But after the gala, I was talking myself out of it again. I thought I’d try, one more time, to see if I could find another job I liked.”

“Lottie, you’re too stupid rich to not pursue things you like. I’m barely scraping by, and even I did it,” Nat says, smiling though she’s serious.

“I know, I know. Talking to you changed my mind tonight,” Lottie says.

“Me?”

“Yes, you. You don’t give yourself enough credit, Nat,” Lottie says.

“Okay, okay. We’ll address my insecurities and doubts later. What are you going to do instead of finance?” Nat asks.

“I haven’t told my dad yet, but I applied to the Master’s program in psychology at Columbia,” Lottie reveals.

Nat grins. “Psychology, huh? That’s really cool, Lot.”

“I hope so. I don’t know what I’d do with the degree yet, but I just… spent so much of my life doubting my own mind, feeling… crazy. Maybe if I could help people going through similar things somehow. I don’t know,” Lottie tries to explain.

“Well, I think that sounds like a great idea, whatever you end up doing with it,” Nat says. “Dr. Matthews, a master of psychology.”

Lottie laughs, shaking her head. “I haven’t even gotten in yet.”

“You will. You already did it once. Plus, you’re you,” Nat says confidently. “When do you find out?”

“I think in April. I don’t even know what I’m going to tell my dad if I get in.”

“The truth?” Nat suggests, raising an eyebrow.

Lottie lets out a hollow laugh. “Right. ‘Hey Dad, remember how you’ve been secretly hoping I’d stop being crazy and take over the family business someday? Yeah, well, I’ve decided I’d rather study while people’s brains are as fucked up as mine instead.’”

“Okay, well, maybe don’t lead with that,” Nat says, grinning. “But seriously, Lot. What’s the worst that could happen? He cuts you off?”

“Maybe.” Lottie’s voice gets smaller. “He’s not exactly known for to be understanding when it comes to… deviation from the plan. Case in point: when he found out about my diagnosis. He was livid. He could barely look at me.”

“Screw him. You’re smart, Lottie. You’ll figure it out. And hey,” Nat says, “in the off-chance he really does cut you off, if you can find it in your heart to tolerate Brooklyn, you’re always welcome to crash at mine.” Lottie smiles fondly, shaking her head. “But I think the most likely outcome is that it’s totally fine. He’s disappointed in you, but he gets over it eventually when he sees everything that you accomplish.”

“Thanks, Nat.” Lottie smiles at her, soft warmth in her eyes. She draws her lips in, and just keeps smiling.

The silence stretches, but it isn’t exactly uncomfortable. Nat likes looking at her. She likes how Lottie’s palm squishes against her cheek. She likes the flutter of Lottie’s eyelashes. She likes how warm her brown eyes are. She likes how cute her new bangs look—not to brag, but Nat did a damn good job with those.

“Nat,” Lottie says finally. She seems to be gathering courage. Nat is surprised that she broke the silence. Lottie usually lets Nat be the one to say stupid shit that kills the calm. “You haven’t asked me about what I said tonight."

Nat plays with her sleeve, pulling at the gray fuzz. “You’ve said a lot of things tonight, Lot.”

Lottie gives her a pointed look, cutting through the dodge. Nat wasn’t playing dumb—well, she sort of was—but it was mercy again. As she’d self-declared twenty minutes ago: no more poking the bear, unless the bear poked first.

“You know what I’m talking about.”

Nat sighs. Does she consider this as the bear poking? Because now it feels like Lottie really wants to talk about this some more, which is unusual for her. “Yeah. I do. I just didn’t know if you wanted to. I didn’t want to make you.”

Lottie’s lips twist a smile. “When has that ever stopped you?”

“Hey,” Nat frowns. “I do care about your feelings, Lottie. You know that. I want to talk about what just happened, but if it’s too weird, we don’t have to.”

“I just want to ask one thing.” Lottie swallows, again with courage-seeking eyes. “Do you wish I hadn’t said anything? About how I feel?”

“No,” Nat replies, with no hesitation. “I don’t wish you hadn’t said it.”

“Really?”

“Really. I just…” Nat trails off, trying to find the right words. “I guess I’m still processing what it means.”

Lottie nods. She glances down, fidgeting her fingers together. “What does it mean to you?”

Nat considers this. She isn’t sure the extent of Lottie’s resurfaced feelings, ones that have apparently always been there. She’s been so focused on not pushing Lottie, on being careful with her feelings, that she hasn’t fully examined her own. “I don’t know,” she says honestly. “I mean, I know what I want it to mean. But I also know that wanting something and it being real are two different things.”

“What do you want it to mean?”

Nat could easily deflect here, crack a joke like she’s usually inclined to do. They would go back to the scheduled plan of sleeping this off and talking (or not talking) about this tomorrow, when rescue comes to free them from this Kmart and they can evaluate the weight of their decisions in the flow of the real world. But Nat also likes this bubble of honesty that they’ve created. One where they can say the things they’ve been wanting to, the latent things.

“I want it to mean that this isn’t just nostalgia,” Nat says. “That it’s not because we’re stuck here together, feeling all sentimental. I want it to mean that maybe we could actually…” She stops herself, shaking her head slightly. “But I also don’t want to hurt you again. Or get hurt again myself.”

“I get that.” Lottie nods.

“Lottie, I don’t want you to get it,” Nat says, half-smiling. “I want you to tell me what you think.”

“I don’t think anything.”

“Nobody thinks more than you do,” Nat chuckles lightly.

Lottie breathes sharply. She looks up. “It’s not new. Not for me.”

“But why now, instead of all those times that we’ve—you know,” she vaguely gestures her hand and hopes that Lottie gets the message.

“I knew if I said anything, I would risk losing you. Having some of you was better than having none of you,” Lottie tries to explain. “But I almost did… tell you, so many times.”

Nat’s heart aches. Part of Nat just wants Lottie to lower her guard and let her kiss her again. “You did?”

“Remember that time when it was just you and me, on the rooftop of my building, after a night out?” Lottie asks.

Nat thinks, then her face twists into a crazed smile. “You mean the time we fucked on your roof after coming back from Rocco’s?”

She remembers it crystal clear, like she could still feel the breeze on the rooftop, Lottie’s hands in her hair, clinging to the warmth of each other’s skin. They had made drunken mistakes like that many times before. Even then, it had felt a little different than the other times, but it still ended the same. A forgotten thing, a mistake. But Nat doesn’t want this to be one of those mistakes—one that they pretend never happened the morning after.

“Yes. That time.” Lottie blushes. “I wanted to tell you then. That I loved you.”

Nat can hear her own heartbeat. When all those mistakes happened, she had never thought much before, during, or after. But she is thinking now. Clearly. About all of it. Every moment. And she thinks that this has always been inside of her.

She had assumed it was too late. That Lottie would never feel this way about her again.

“And now?” Nat asks, breathily.

“I still love you,” Lottie admits. “I think I always will.”

Nat should have predicted it, but everything with Lottie feels unpredictable. She feels like the air has been sucked out of her lungs. Her voice is low and rasped, hardly able to produce a sound. “Come here.”

“Nat… Don’t, if you—”

Nat rolls her eyes playfully. “Fine, I’ll come over to you.” She scoots closer on the wide sleeping bag, until she’s oceans away from her half, all in Lottie’s space. She adjusts to lie down on her back, beckoning for Lottie to lift her upper half. Just enough for Nat to pull her in to rest her head on her chest.

“Hi,” Nat whispers, looking down at Lottie with a small smile on her face.

“Hi,” Lottie whispers back, looking up, shyly biting down on her lip.

Nat’s arm is around Lottie’s back, holding her. She begins to trace lines on the back of her onesie. This feels strange to do again, because she can’t remember if they’d ever done any post-coital cuddling since the breakup. But it feels really right. Like Lottie fits into place on her chest. “Since you need me to spell it out for you: I love you, too. Obviously.”

For a long stretch of seconds, Lottie stares, stunned. Her pupils dilate and contract like the three words are too big for her brain to hold all at once. She can’t believe what she’s hearing. There is a second where it looks like she might cry, but she blinks it away, trying to slap on an air of unaffectedness that doesn’t shout about how her entire world has shifted. She forces a playful scoff. “Forgive me for needing you to spell it out for me. You told me you never get jealous of me with anyone else just today.”

Nat rolls her eyes, hand sliding up to hold Lottie’s upper back. She traces the outline of a deer on Lottie’s pajamas, close to her shoulderblade. “That’s kind of a thing you train yourself to say when you have an annoyingly pretty ex-girlfriend who’s got no shortage of women lined up to sleep with her.”

“Shut up. Says you.”

Nat pulls back a smile. She looks more serious. Lottie tilts her head up to listen better. Nat tries her best to focus, even though she has become extremely aware of the fact that their faces are inches apart, “In the theme of honesty, I was pretty fucked up after we broke up, too, Lot. But I forced myself to get okay with you moving on because we were friends, and I didn’t want to screw that up. You still being in my life was way too important for me to screw up.”

Nat thinks she might have said something right, because Lottie’s hand that was glued to her side comes up to rest over Nat’s hip. She grins a little. “Also, if we’re talking about telling lies, should we talk about what you said in the bathroom?”

“No, we shouldn’t.”

“What happened to honesty, Lot? That really bruised my ego. I think I deserve an apology.”

“Sorry. I just—I didn’t know if I was making it all up in my head. I knew that if I said yes, things would only get more intense. I wouldn’t have been able to take it if I was wrong. I was saving myself, if anything.”

“Were you? Because if you admitted it back there, we could’ve put that baby oil to good use in the bathroom,” Nat jokes.

Lottie smacks her chest lightly. “Shut up. Are you ever going to let that go? It’s not that weird.”

Nat chuckles again. “Not weird—hey, I’m telling you I’d be into it. Small tip, though: you’re supposed to use coconut oil instead of baby oil. Better for the sensitive areas.”

“Speaking from experience?” Lottie eyes her, smiling.

“No. Just things I’ve heard.” Nat smiles feebly. She pulls Lottie in closer to her body, then glances down again. “So, does this mean I actually lost the bet?”

Lottie laughs lightly, but looks up at her sincerely. “You were always going to lose, Nat. I do have a type, and it’s just you,” she whispers. “Only you.”

Nat’s cheeks burn red. Lottie is a woman of few words, but boy, does she make them count. Nat has already lost track of how many times she’s been left speechless tonight, pushed into a trance where she can do nothing but stare at Lottie, dumbfounded. “Lottie, if you keep saying shit like that, you’re gonna have to let me kiss you again.”

Lottie’s lips twitch like she’s fighting off a smile. “Then maybe I should keep talking.”

That does it. Game over. Nat won’t even pretend to have self-control anymore. She dips her head and catches Lottie’s lips at a slight angle. It’s different than before—gentle and unhurried, the faintest slotting movements of their mouths. Kissing just to feel each other’s lips. To be closer to each other. One of Nat’s hands tightens around Lottie’s back to pull her closer. The other comes to rest on the side of her face, fingers brushing her jaw.

Lottie tilts up into her, and Nat leans back. Lottie’s hand on Nat’s hip traces circles, supplying Nat’s brain with a lot of predictable ways that this could go. She could pull Lottie on top of her, clash their tongues and teeth, or hell—reach for that baby oil. But Nat likes that this is different. Don’t get her wrong: her desire to jump Lottie’s bones will never go away. That’s just physics, the way her body gravitationally responds to Lottie’s proximity. But she’s had the physical. There’ll be plenty of time for more of it when they get out of here.

She pulls back slowly. Their foreheads and noses rest together.

“We should probably get some sleep,” Nat whispers hoarsely.

“Probably,” Lottie agrees.

Nat tilts her head up. She brushes Lottie’s bangs out of the way and presses a warm kiss to her forehead. And she just rests there. While her own fingers trace circles on her back. While Lottie’s arm drapes around her stomach. Nat can hear her breathing. Would lose all sleep to listen to it all night.

Yeah. Right now, Nat wants to savor this. The tenderness. The sugary sweetness. All the things they hadn’t gotten to do—all the things they thought they lost forever when they broke up seven years ago.

“Lot?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m really glad we got stuck in this stupid store.”

She feels Lottie’s laughter more than she hears it. “Me too.”

Nat is careful to not move too much as she reaches down to pull the blanket over both of their bodies. She pulls Lottie in closer, snug against her chest. Stares up at the ceiling, and shuts her eyes. She has never been one to be very certain of her future, but she has a good feeling about tomorrow.