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I wasn’t going to tell Natalie that.
“I get it,” I said. “I’m more…selective about my attraction.”
“Are you?” she asked, one eyebrow raised.
“Yeah. It’s pretty much exclusively women.”
“Makes sense,” she said, before taking a bite of her sandwich. She was taking this much more casually than I was. I’d come out many times before, and every time I was scared. No matter how much you knew the other person would support you, there was always that little bit of doubt.
“We’re all grown up now, aren’t we?” Natalie said, finishing her sandwich and then moving on to her bag of chips.
“Yeah, we are.”
She didn’t ask anything else, but it was as if we’d left a door open between us. The subject wasn’t closed, just paused for now and we could resume if either of us wanted to.
I looked at the time, and realized I needed to get back. I shoved the rest of my sandwich in my mouth and Natalie looked at me in shock.
“Please don’t choke,” she said.
Somehow, I chewed and swallowed without a problem and grabbed the bag of chips to take back and nibble on at my desk.
“Thanks for lunch. I’ll talk to you later?”
Natalie tossed away the trash and walked with me back to the office.
“I’ll give you updates on my Castleton adventures. I’m off to the café to say hi to Blue,” she said, mentioning my favorite worker at the café who sometimes gave me free lattes.
“Tell them I said hi,” I said.
“I will,” she said. We both paused in front of the office, me with my hand on the door.
“Okay, see you later,” Natalie said, and I went inside, watching her walk up the street through the glass windows.
* * *
“Wow, you really didn’t have to do this,” Natalie said, when we pulled up to Paige and Esme’s place that had a WELCOME HOME banner across the front.
“I didn’t. Blame Paige and Esme and Linley.”
We got out and walked into the house, but everyone was out back, so we walked through, into the little screened-in porch, and out to the back that was right up against the ocean. The view was spectacular.
Paige had the yard area fenced in for Stormy, Esme’s husky. Paige’s cat, Potato, glared at everyone from his prison of the porch.He wasn’t allowed outside without supervision.
“Hey!” Paige said, running over to give me a hug. I’d literally seen her two days ago when we’d been planning this thing, but that didn’t matter.
“Natalie, it’s so nice to see you again,” Paige said.
“Thank you so much for having me, you really didn’t have to go to all this trouble,” Natalie said, holding out her hostess gift. She’d found it on the day she’d come to visit me at work in the gift shop. It was a set of wine glasses that were hand painted.
“Wait, are those grapefruits?” Paige asked as she unwrapped them.
“Yeah,” Natalie said. “Em gave me the tip that you like a good Paloma, so it seemed appropriate.”
Paige beamed and called Esme over to see the glasses. Esme gushed and said hello to Natalie.
“Where’s Linley?” I asked.
“She’s on her way. Just got held up at Sweet’s,” Paige said. “Do you want a drink?”
