“We’ll make a fortune,” Becca promised.
Being a lovely evening, they were seated outside, on the patio. Of course, Krissy had been joking when she had told Becca about using her Lesbian Wonder Woman fame to secure their reservation. The truth was, on a Wednesday night, Jeune et Jolie was not exactly overbooked. Nonetheless, their server—a pretty, raven-haired thirty-something with green eyes who caused Krissy’s gaydar to ping-ping-ping—recognized Becca, but was smart enough to put two and two together and not openly flirt with her in Krissy’s presence.
“I’m thinking I should make-out with you right here at the table,” Krissy said jokingly after Grace, their server left to bring them water. “Don’t want Grace getting ideas.”
Becca cocked an eyebrow.
“Grace can have all the ideas she wants,” she said. “But she’s not you.”
Krissy felt as if a warm hand was cradling her heart.
“It still feels surreal,” she said, “hearing romantic things come out of your mouth that are meant for me.”
“It does feel surreal, doesn’t it?” Becca replied. “It’s like when I was twenty-one and I went to Paris. Ever since I was a little girl, I had always wanted to go to Paris and the first morning I woke up there, I felt as if I was in somebody else’s life.”
For the next fifteen minutes or so, conversation was difficult. Grace returned with water and bread; the sommelier appeared to discuss wine choices; Krissy and Becca had to choose their meals from the prix fixe menu…
Finally, though, they were once more free to focus on being with each other.
“I used to daydream about nights like this, Becca,” Krissy said.
“Was I looking this fabulous in those daydreams?” Becca teased.
Krissy laughed.
“Depended on the daydream,” she said. “I mean, sometimes, yeah, we were out at a place like this, but other times we were just getting tacos on the Boulevard and we were doing our Lululemon thing. The point is, we were this.”
Under the table, Krissy felt Becca’s leg press against hers. She knew it wasn’t a sexual overture, Becca’s way of riling her core up. Instead, she knew that Becca was using the point of contact on their legs to communicate to her that she felt the same way.
Krissy swallowed, suddenly feeling very shy.
“I feel like I want to say something, but that it’s too soon,” she said softly, not able to meet Becca’s eyes.
Becca took her hand over the tabletop. Their fingers intertwined instantly.
“Can you believe it hasn’t even been two weeks that we’ve been together like this?” Becca asked.
“I know!” Krissy replied, still looking down at the table. “That’s why I feel it’s too soon.”
“Look at me, sweetie,” Becca said gently.
Krissy did. She almost gasped. The depths of affection she saw in Becca’s eyes made her soul feel blanketed with comfort. In them, Krissy saw care, warmth, yearning, tenderness, devotion. Most of all, Krissy saw…
My future.
“I want to move fast,” Becca said. “Haven’t we wasted enough time?”
Yes, they had, Krissy considered. Four years, to be precise. And in a world in which Covid kept mutating into deadlier forms, and in which office towers and warehouses caught fire that her girlfriend had to risk her life putting out, it was stupid to waste even more time.
“Becca, I love you,” she said.
Becca smiled.
“I love you, too, Krissy,” she replied. “I don’t need us to be together for an entire two weeks or even two more minutes to tell you. I absolutely fucking love you.”
Krissy sobbed. She couldn’t help it. Such a silly quick crier. And thank goodness for waterproof makeup. She managed, however, to rein in her emotions and not dissolve into a weeping mess of a woman here at the restaurant.
Sniffling and dabbing at her eyes with her napkin, she said, “Fuck, that felt so good to say!”