Paige ran her fingertips over the slightly worn wooden surface of the bar that was in front of her, tapping out a quick rhythm against it with both hands as she tried to steel her nerves.

This was all new to her. She was new to Rosewood, new to the bar scene, and new to being the pursuer, rather than the pursued. Perhaps all the mess with her husband had been worth it, on some level, she thought to herself. Perhaps it was the push that she needed to kickstart her life. Anyway, there she was, sitting at the bar, surveying the crowd, readying herself to take the next step.

She had seen a tip in an on-line forum about the special ladies' nights at the Radley, the first Thursday of every month. That word "special" was with a nod and a wink. It was more like, "Ladies loving ladies'" nights. There was always a good number of straight women there on first Thursdays, for some kind of girls' night out. The straight women invariably traveled in packs; laughing among themselves as they sat on the sidelines taking in all of the the goings-on, as if they were watching some live and in-person reality show being played out at the bar.

But the women who were there alone were fair game – gay, bisexual, or simply curious; the occasional straight girl wondering how the other half lived – according to the information that Paige had read on the web. Paige had had her eye on one lone woman for quite some time, trying to figure out how to make her move.

She cleared her throat as she approached. "Excuse me," she said with a smile. "I was wondering whether I could buy you a drink."

The pale, slender woman turned around and looked Paige up and down. "That's it? 'Could you buy me a drink?' That's your pick-up line?" Her tone was pleasant, if somewhat befuddled.

"I'm not actually all that great at this," Paige confessed. "Besides, I figure, if any of those pick-up lines worked, a woman as attractive as you would've been snapped up a long time ago."

The woman slowly nodded her head with an appreciative smirk. "Better, better," she said, pushing the empty bar stool closer to Paige with her leg. "Mine's a Michelob Light." She turned towards Paige as Paige got the bartender's attention and ordered two bottles. "I'm Spencer Hastings," she said, flirtatiously pulling the hair away from her face and twirling it by the nape of her neck. "And you're… new in town."

Paige laughed shyly at the unexpected greeting. "Paige McCullers," she said. "And now, who's the one tossing out lame pick-up lines?"

"That wasn't a line," Spencer said flatly. "It was a statement of fact. Rosewood's a small town, and I've lived here all my life. Believe me, I know every woman-loving-woman in town."

"Okay, but, how do you know I'm not from out of town?"

Spencer pointed to the bar, where Paige had placed her phone face-down. On the back, in a pocket attached to her phone case, Paige's name tag from the pet therapist's office was clearly visible.

"Oh, yeah," Paige said softly. She picked up the phone and played with it in her hands, hiding the incriminating name tag. "I know it's rude to have a phone out when you're talking to someone face to face, but…" Paige tightened her lips and spilled. "I left my son with my aunt, and I don't want to miss a call, in case anything happens." That wasn't how Paige had planned to break the news that she had a child, but she did want to make it known up-front, in case whomever she met that night had an issue with kids.

Spencer didn't flinch. "How old is your son?"

"Five," Paige said, subconsciously smiling as she thought of Wayne. "He'll be five this summer." She idly picked up her phone, and Spencer leaned in. Paige, confused, gave her a questioning look.

"Oh." Spencer backed away a little. "I thought you were going to show me some pics."

Paige chuckled. "You thought I'd try to use cute pictures of my kid to pick up women in a bar?"

Spencer snorted. "Well, I know somewhere we can go that's a little more appropriate for sharing cute pictures of your kid." She raised an eyebrow, to see whether Paige was interested.

Paige blew out a puff of air. "Uh… okay. Sure. I mean, yeah, we can get out of here."

Spencer smiled, bemused at Paige's flustered reaction. She gestured behind her to what looked like a private room. "I just need to let my friends know that I'm leaving. Wait for me here?"

"Oh, shit!" Paige dipped her head, suddenly realizing that Spencer wasn't one of those women on their own who were at the bar to meet someone. "I…" She shook her head, with a shy apologetic grin. "I didn't know that you here were with a group."

Spencer put her hand on Paige's arm, giving it a slight squeeze. "I wouldn't have let you buy me a drink if I weren't interested," she said, staring deep into Paige's eyes, to show that she was serious.

Paige chuckled, relieved, and leaned in, with a look of mock-concern on her face. "So, that means you really are coming back from that mysterious backroom?" She was only half-joking.

Spencer rolled her eyes dismissively as she backed away from the bar. "Two seconds," she assured Paige, flashing two fingers as she said it.

Paige stood at the bar, decidedly nervous, peeling away at the label of her beer and taking a sip or two as she waited. She was trying not to count off two minutes in her head, still a little worried that Spencer wasn't, in fact, going to come back. It had seemed too easy. And, even if Spencer really was coming back, Paige worried about where she was going to take her. She wasn't looking for a hook-up, back at Spencer's place. And Spencer didn't seem the type, anyway. If nothing else, she was a honest player, Paige had learned. She wouldn't try to trick Paige into going back to her place; if that were her intention, she would have said it straight out. "Just chill," Paige told herself out loud. She took another swig from the bottle.

Before long, she saw Spencer, now with a shawl around her shoulders, making her way back to the bar. She was half-running, since her good-byes had taken longer than she had expected, and longer than the promised two minutes. She dropped something into her purse as she neared – lipstick, Paige surmised – and closed it up. Putting on a smile, she linked arms with Paige. "Ready?"

Paige nodded.

"Now, just to be clear," Spencer said as they headed towards the exit, "I don't have any expectations for tonight. You seem like a straight-shooter who's easy to talk to, and easy on the eyes. Maybe we'll end up friends, maybe we'll end up more than that. But, tonight, we're definitely ending as friends."

Paige nodded. "Perfect." She couldn't ask for anything more than that. She was respected Spencer's straightforwardness, and she was, frankly, relieved by what Spencer had said. "So, where are we headed?"

"A friend of mine has a coffee shop. It's kind of low-key. Are you up for a little walk?"


"So, you work for Dr. Marx?" Spencer asked as they headed towards The Brew.

Paige sighed. "Uh… For now. I'm temping, actually, while I wait for my credentials to come through. I don't know whether you know anything about Philadelphia, but it can take forever to get the most basic things through the bureaucracy."

"Actually," Spencer said, unlinking their arms and reaching into her purse, "I know a lot about Philadelphia. I've got a few connections who could probably grease the skids for you."

Spencer handed Paige a business card: Spencer Hastings, Attorney at Law. The office was in Philadelphia. "Wow," Paige said, lifting the card up appreciatively. "That's great. Thank you!"

"Now, why do I get the feeling that you're never going to call?"

Paige chuckled nervously. "Do I look like the kind of girl who would never call?"

"No," Spencer countered, "You look like the kind of girl who would never accept anyone else's help, because you think that you have to solve all of your problems by yourself." She stared at Paige, who kind of winced at the accuracy of the description, and then shrugged her shoulders. Spencer rolled her eyes. Tucking the card into the pocket at the waist of Paige's vest, she said, "Well, if you find yourself stuck – or you just get tired of spending all day working for a pet therapist, maybe you'll use this."


Spencer returned to the booth with Paige's cappuccino and a drink for herself that looked complex beyond Paige's comprehension. "So," she said, handing Paige her drink as she sat down, "I was promised some cute pictures?"

Paige chuckled and pulled out her phone. "I'll leave it up to you to judge how cute they are."

Spencer leaned in as Paige scrolled through picture after picture. Paige didn't recognize the scent that hit her nostrils as Spencer closed in, but it felt very familiar to her, somehow. She tried not to let herself get distracted by it.

It was surprising to Paige how quickly the pictures had accumulated on her phone, in just under five years. Paige provided some background on some of them, trying to strike a balance between filling in the blanks and boring Spencer with endless anecdotes about her pride and joy.

Wayne's father was in some of the pictures, and Paige ended up telling Spencer the whole story – how they met and fell in love in college; how they drifted apart; how Paige began acknowledging the feelings that she had for other women, and how it all came crashing down.

"That's how I ended up temping." Paige was grateful for the opportunity to let Spencer know that it had been the result of something other than bad planning on her part. "I kind of had to get out of there right away."

Spencer gripped Paige's wrist. "Oh, yeah, of course you did!" Paige nodded, appreciative of Spencer's understanding. "God – you wouldn't want Wayne to be raised by a bigot like that!"

"Exactly! Yeah, once he said what he did, I knew I had to get Wayne out of there. I mean, there's no way he didn't overhear some of the things that Trevor said to me that night."

"Well, you can't beat yourself up over that," Spencer reassured her. "Listen, you did the right thing for Wayne. And for yourself. So, brava for that!" Spencer sat back in her seat and stared off to the side, slightly. "Believe me, I know a little something about bigotry," she said, with only a hint of bitterness in her voice.

"Be… because you're gay?"

Spencer scoffed slightly. "Yeah, I do still get a little of that. But, actually, I was referring to being bi. So, you know, I get it from both sides. I'm not gay enough for some people, and I'm not straight enough for others. And there are a lot of people who are willing to accept someone who's lesbian, but not someone who's bisexual. It's as if they think that I'm trying to get away with something – 'Just choose a side!'" She deepened her voice in a mocking tone for that last quote.

Leaning a little closer, Spencer asked, "Do you identify as…" It wasn't a question that she would ordinarily ask someone she'd just met, but, since she knew that Paige had been in a long-term relationship with a man, she didn't feel that it was out of bounds.

Paige sighed. "Honestly," she said slowly, "I'm not sure I know the answer to that. I mean, I know that there was a time when I loved Trevor. I won't deny that those feelings were real. And the attraction was there on all levels – physically, emotionally, romantically. And yet, I don't really see myself…" Paige raised her hands and let them drop softly on the table. "I don't know. To tell you the truth, I'm kind of new at all this," she said with a shrug.

Spencer smiled. "Don't worry about it," she said, rubbing Paige's arm. "You don't have to declare a major. You love whom you love, it really is that simple."

Paige smiled. They both knew that it wasn't really that simple. But they both really wished that it was.

Over another round of caffeinated beverages, Paige got to know a little more about Spencer. It was nice to have a new friend in a new town. But, as the evening wore on, it was obvious that they were just friends. They were too much alike to pursue anything more than that. And they were both too brutally honest to pretend that there was a chance for anything more between them that.

So, as they gathered their things to leave, it wasn't a shock, and it didn't seem like a brush-off, when Paige heard Spencer say, "You know, I've got a good friend whom I'd like to introduce you to. I bet you two would really hit it off."

"Oh, really?"

Spencer nodded, helping Paige out of the booth and ushering her towards the door. "Yeah. We were best friends growing up – There were four of us. Actually," Spener said with a grin, "she and I actually tried dating not long after I got out of law school, but…" Spencer laughed at the memory. "It was like trying to date your cousin, or something. I don't know." Her body shuddered. "It was just too weird."

"But you still stayed friends?"

"Oh, yeah," Spencer said enthusiastically. "Emily's great. It's impossible not to be friends with her."

The wheels started turning in Paige's head. Emily. Rosewood, as Spencer had pointed out earlier, was a small town. Still, Emily was a popular name. There had to be more than one. "Emily?" she probed.

"Yeah." Spencer's eyes widened with realization. "You know, she's actually got a daughter who's about Wayne's age. They're probably in the same class. Does he go to Rosewood Elementary?"

Paige almost choked. "Emily Fields?"

"Oh, you've met her?" She squeezed Paige's shoulder. "She's great, right?"

"She's, uh…" Paige swallowed whatever she was about to say. "Yeah. Emily's great."

Paige smiled politely. She was grateful for her new, Rosewood friend. If nothing else, finding a good friend had made the evening worthwhile. She had hoped for something more when she first met Spencer, and had hoped again, when Spencer said that she knew someone, but that hope had quickly faded, too. Global warming might be a myth, the Earth might not really be round, and exposure to radon might not actually cause cancer. But there was one thing thatPaige knew beyond a doubt: There was no chance in Hell that Emily Fields would want anything to do with her. Ever.