Lorna had never liked a girl before she met Nicky, let alone touched one. She'd convinced herself at the beginning of their sexual escapades that it was just physical, and that it would be impossible to get through her sentence without another person's touch. But she began to feel herself falling for Nicky, which is why she called it off that day in the chapel, although as usual, she used Christopher as an excuse. And even though she joked with Nicky during her and Boo's sex competition, it was killing her inside that Nicky was sleeping with other girls. Not that she wanted to, she just didn't want anyone else to. She was confused to say the least. When Lorna got thrown into the SHU after Miss Rosa's escape, she had a lot of time to think about things.
First and foremost, she'd never met any lesbians in her neck of the woods. In the Italian community, family was most important, which meant that relationships only occurred between a man and a woman, if only for reproductive sake. Her brother Mikey and her Dad always used homophobic slurs when they were watching the game, as did every other guy on the block. There'd been a female teacher at her high school who ran off with one of the students' mothers, which was highly salacious gossip at the time, but Lorna hadn't paid much attention, after all, she wasn't part of the 'dyke' group.
On her first day at Litchfield, Lorna had been warned by Mr Healy to stay away from the lesbians. As far as she could tell, there was only one lesbian amongst the inmates – Boo. She determined this based on Boo's haircut, tattoos, and the fact that Boo is as subtle as a sledgehammer. She was taken aback when she found out that Nicky was a lesbian, given that she'd had a couple of pleasant conversations with the girl, and it didn't appear that she wanted to get in Lorna's pants. The first time she can remember being attracted to Nicky was when Nicky told Lorna that her red lipstick looked hot, well in as many words. Red had given Lorna the tube of red lipstick, which was left behind by another inmate, as Red noticed that the petite girl was having trouble fitting in. It wasn't so much what Nicky said, but the way she said it.
They were the last one's in the showers that morning, Nicky taking her time, pretending to do something with her hair so that she might grab another minute with the girl that she couldn't stop thinking about. Normally Nichols would have been elbow deep in her pussy by now, but there was something fragile about Lorna that made her take her time. She'd heard Lorna crying at night, and if it weren't for the guards, she would have been there in a second to comfort Lorna. Anyway, that morning in the showers, Nicky was wrapped in a towel, and Lorna, also wrapped in a towel, was focused on applying her lipstick in the makeshift mirrors. As Nicky finished up at the sink, she walked up to Lorna, reaching to place her short wet hair back behind her ear. She stepped closer and whispered gently, "You look hot kid, I could just eat you up", winking as she left. Lorna felt her stomach turn, in a good way. She'd felt this way about guys before, of course, but this was the first time she'd physically felt like kissing a girl. And that's when all the Christopher business started up again. Lorna hadn't mentioned his name before then to anyone in Litchfield, sure she'd thought about him constantly, but she was determined to move on – that was why she was in prison wasn't it? To atone for her misdeeds, try and forget about Christopher and make something of her life? The feeling that she wanted to kiss Nicky scared Lorna half to death. It wasn't natural, she thought. Well, it wasn't for her, anyway. So Lorna did what she does best – she hid her true feelings, and began to make believe that she was engaged to Christopher. Nicky would surely leave her alone if she thought she was engaged, right?