Scarlet broke the kiss with a gasp. She stumbled back, putting a foot of distance between them after she’d wrenched apart. Neera stared at her, her eyes heavy and swimming with desire. She ran her tongue along her bottom lip and closed her eyes like she was savouring that last taste of Scarlet she’d just licked off.
Scarlet was panting. There were alarms blaring in her head. Her gut churned. She’d just kissed Elodie’s daughter. Her best friend’s daughter. It didn’t matter that Neera was different now. That she was entirely womanly and that she had graduated college and had been an adult for a long time. She was still Elodie’s daughter. She was always going to be Elodie’s daughter.
“Neera, I—”
Neera smiled at her softly, her eyes blazing like twin ambers with fire at their depths. “Happy New Year, Scarlet,” she whispered, then she turned and walked out of the kitchen.
It was just a New Year’s kiss. People kissed each other on New Years. I’ve kissed Elodie before. On the cheek. Not on the lips. Just for fun. Because we’re like sisters.
That kiss? There was no way that kiss was friendly. It wasn’t innocent. That wasn’t just a New Year’s thing. But Neera had been drunk. Maybe it was impulsive, and she got carried away. It didn’t mean anything. In the morning, she’d probably wake up and remember almost nothing, or maybe she would remember, but she’d laugh it off.
Scarlet though? She was totally sober. She’d remember. She’d remember that kiss until her dying freaking
breath.
The fact was, she was attracted to Neera. She’d known it since the second she saw her again, rubbing sleep from her eyes, sitting down beside Elodie that Sunday morning. It was the first time she’d allowed herself to notice. The first time they were both single. After her divorce, she wasn’t just experimenting. Bryan was wrong about that. He was maybe right to be angry because she’d always known that she wasn’t someone who should get conventionally married or be in that type of relationship, but her parents were extremely strict, and she was afraid.
After Marla had basically dumped Scarlet as a best friend when she’d been disgusted by her befriending Elodie, Scarlet’s parents hadn’t wanted her to hang out with Elodie either, but she’d refused to listen. She’d lectured them about kindness and about the hypocrisy of that thinking until she’d gotten her way. The one thing she hadn’t been able to do? Be strong enough to tell them who she really was.
That was going to change. She was thirty-eight years old, and she was damn well ready to live life on her own terms. What she was not going to do? Fuck up her entire life and her best friend’s life, and her best friend’s daughter’s life, because she suddenly had feelings she couldn’t seem to control.
That kiss was just a New Year’s, spur of the moment thing.
She couldn’t even begin to consider that it might be anything else.
Chapter 5
Neera
“Hey, sweetie! Just checking to see how rough things are going this morning. How many ibuprofens and how much orange juices do you need?”
Neera groaned as she rolled over in bed towards the wall. She grabbed her pillow and thrust it over her head like she used to do when she was a kid. Her mom wasn’t having it.
“It’s nearly noon,” Elodie prodded. “It’s time to get up.”
“Mom! What does it matter? It’s a holiday. Holidays are meant for sleeping in, especially New Years Day because everyone is hung over.”
“Orange juice? Pancakes? Water?”
“Ugh.” Neera removed the pillow from her head and blinked up at the bright light flooding the room. It wasn’t just the lightbulb that was the culprit. Her mom had opened all the blinds as well. The light pierced her head like a thousand little needles. Opening her eyes was like jumping into a frigid lake.
Holy shit. Last night. Oh, my God. I kissed Scarlet.
Neera jolted upright in bed and studied her mom. Did she know? Had she seen anything? Her stomach roiled at the thought, and the ache in her head got even worse.
“Now is a good time to say that you’re never drinking again and not mean it because it was New Years and if you’re going to have a few drinks to get over all the crap you’ve been through in the past months so you can forget about it and start fresh because it’s a brand-new year, then that’s exactly the time to do it.” Her mom was way too cheerful for someone who had probably spent all morning cleaning up.
Cleaning up.
“Shit,” Neera said as she ran her hands down her face, trying to blink away the throbbing pain going on behind her eyes. “You probably cleaned everything up by yourself.”
“Actually, after everyone left and after you went to bed, Scarlet helped me. She didn’t had very much to drink and neither did I really. We got it all cleaned up before she headed home.”
“Oh, my God.” How could I have kissed her? She wasn’t drunk. She. Wasn’t. Drunk.
Neera had never been the get drunk, lose control, kiss her mother’s best friend type. She had actually very actively not been that type. Until last night. But it was New Years. It was a party. She was clearly drunk, and Scarlet would have known that. It was just a thing people did at midnight. They kissed each other. She could pass it off as that.
Dear God, did I sloppy kiss her? Did I slobber on her? Did I drool? Did I do it badly? Why can I remember kissing her, but not the details?