She is GORGEOUS! I don’t think I’ll ever read a Jillian Ashley book quite the same way again!!!
Her inboxes on Twitter and Facebook, not to mention the email inbox for the Lesbeing website were stuffed with messages, so many in fact that she knew she didn’t have time to read more than a handful of them before she had to leave for work. She really had scored the lesfic scoop of the century!
But one email did catch her eye. The one from Jillian.
Hey, Amy! Thanks for sending me the link to our interview last night! I so enjoyed watching it that I actually watched it twice, LOL! Seriously, though, it was such a fun experience and you were an amazing interviewer! Talk to you soon!
And she signed off with a heart-eyes emoji.
Amy reread the email.
Huh! No mention of their date on Friday.
She knew it was only just past eight a.m. but she also remembered Jillian telling her that she always got up early in the mornings. She decided to fire off a quick text.
Hey, Jillian! I just read your email! So glad you liked the interview! I’m really looking forward to buying you that coffee on Friday!
There! Nothing weird about that. It sounded casual, breezy even. Not at all like a text from a woman who was currently panicking that maybe an incredibly gorgeous and talented woman like Jillian Ashley had changed her mind about meeting her in a few days.
She tapped Send. And then tried to not obsess about when—or if—Jillian would answer.
Fortunately, Jillian’s reply came almost instantly.
I am soooooo looking forward to Friday! I hope you have a great day today!
Amy slowly let out a relieved breath. Their date was still on!
Finally tearing her eyes away from her smartphone, she was just about to toast a bagel for breakfast when the device rang. She smirked when she saw the name of the person calling her.
“Bitch! How did you get Jillian Ashley?” Rhonda Kessing screamed in lieu of a normal greeting. Like Hello, for instance.
Amy couldn’t help the self-satisfied laughter which now bubbled up out of her.
Rhonda Kessing was another lesbian blogger and podcaster, based in Chicago, who mainly covered lesbians in pop culture: movies, TV, even comic books. She also had a very popular lesfic review site which many readers of the genre relied on.
Before Covid altered the world, Amy and Rhonda had been guest panelists at a symposium in Miami on lesbianism in the internet age and for some reason, Rhonda had begun considering Amy something of a rival in the relatively tiny sphere of lesbians-blogging-about-lesbians. Amy knew that her scoring an interview with Jillian Ashley would keep Rhonda up for a few nights.
Imagine telling her I scored a date with her!
But Amy wasn’t going to do that. Superstitious by nature, she had never encountered a ladder she refused to walk under. Somehow, telling Rhonda Kessing about her date with Jillian felt like it might jinx it. Rachel, however, was another story; jinxes didn’t work when it came to best friends and Amy planned on telling her later today.
“What can I say, Rhonda?” Amy said. “I guess I just knew how to appeal to Jillian’s good nature.”
Rhonda scoffed.
“What do you have? You got something on her? Was it a blackmail thing? Or did you send naked pictures of yourself?”
Amy gave a faux gasp of horror.
“Rhonda! I’m shocked! I will have you know I run a clean operation here!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lucky bitch! It was a good interview, though. Congratulations.”
“Why, thank you, Rhonda!”
“I mean, there were one or two things I would have done differently, but…”
“Like offering Jillian your firstborn if she revealed the plot of her next book?” Amy asked.