I sat at a café not far from Smith, it was just around finals week so the place was packed with college girls buried in books and occasionally taking breaks to flirt with each other. I had one eye on Alex working on her research for her latest projects and another on the window watching for my old college advisor, Dr. Bartley. She hadn't been completely surprised when I had called her asking to catch up and that I had some things I wanted to talk to her about. She had been in her late forties when I was at Smith and had been teaching for half her life already. She was a lesbian-feminist with a wife and four cats who had all the confidence and pride that I didn't and was sure I'd never have. She was smart and not bad looking for a grey-haired middle-aged woman, I had to admit eighteen year old me found herself developing a crush on her teacher that only added another level of confusion to all I was feeling now that I was in an environment where queer girls far outnumbered straight ones, not just in my dorm as at prep school but in the whole college. It was easier to go to a gay bar and drink now that I had no rules and a midnight curfew during the week and none at all on the weekends. Polly had told me that risking some bulldagger molesting her wasn't worth the price of being able to say she had been to a bar, so she chose to go to frat parties in Amherst through whatever means necessary and didn't go to a 21+ club night until the night of her twenty-first birthday. I turned twenty-one in a Northampton dyke bar with a few of my buddies from the team and my third margarita in hand while making eyes at a gorgeous thirtyish femme across the bar.

Gay bars in Northampton didn't card if you flashed a Smith ID, I now understood that it was purely about maintaining the food chain and attracting a certain kind of clientele, one like the woman my wife used to be. Sometimes I would like to have imagined her spying a barely legal Piper Chapman on a Saturday night when she just happened to be in town while Alex wondered how it never did. But if my first encounter with Alex had been with that version of hers, I would have been left eternally unfulfilled. Left wanting just like every other young thing that warmed her bed if she performed well enough at the club to even get an extra hour in Alex Vause's private sanctum. I would have just been another of her nameless hookups. Even if she had wanted to give me more, she wouldn't have been capable.

You can't build a house without a hammer. Not that I would have been ready or able either.

But the kick to my rearranged organs from my two budding interior decorators reminded me of just how far in the past all that was. All that mattered was this moment. I rubbed my belly to quiet the girls so I could have an actual conversation for once without having to get up to pee twice or being rendered breathless midsentence. I was just over twenty-eight weeks pregnant with identical twins, I was lucky these kids were still safe and healthy in my womb but sometimes I just wanted to be free from them, their weights combined were already around Geo's when he was born. I had just gotten them quiet when a woman in grey wool pants and a black sweater walked in. I barely recognized her and she barely recognized me but I was the only woman in the place who even remotely resembled one of the right age.

"Piper, hello," she exclaimed as she carefully placed a yellow ceramic mug on the table, "Would you like something to eat? Now that you're not my student or advisee anymore I can buy you food and it isn't improper," she said with a wink as she touched my lower arm and I looked over at Alex who if looks could kill my college advisor would be dead. But I kind of liked having a middle-aged lesbian flirting with me and it was harmless. I knew who I was going home with.

"Well, I did always wish you would have even gotten me a cup for water back when I was a student," I flirted back, "I always did suspect it was a mutual crush."

"I was married, divorced now but back then I still thought Lisa and I were forever, and you were still struggling with your sexuality. I knew any feelings you had came from your need for self-discovery. If I hadn't then I wouldn't have agreed to continue to be your academic advisor and thesis reader. I knew I could teach you not just the things you needed to learn to thrive academically but in life. And hopefully, I have. I'm so glad you got back in touch, Piper. You look so happy, I barely see a glimmer of the girl who used to cry in my office and look at my carpet. I'm going to get a croissant and then we'll catch up," she paused as if to say this is your last chance to request a snack and I knew if the girls weren't hungry yet, they soon would be. Lately, I could out-eat a teenage boy and even I didn't know where I was putting it nor did I want to eat most of the time, I was merely compelled to.

"I'll have a tomato mozzarella flatbread, no onions or peppers."

"Good to know you actually eat these days. You certainly look like you haven't been skipping meals or working out every ounce of fat. Or worse, living on tequila and then going for a five-mile run. I was so worried about you but I knew it would have fractured the trust we had built if I had reported you to student health like I was supposed to per school policy when a student is suspected of having an eating disorder or suicidality, you weren't suicidal so I figured I could take care of it myself by giving you space and opening your eyes to the world. And you're what thirty now?"

"Twenty-nine, next month."

"I forget you were the youngest in your class at the college and all through school if I remember right."

"And the fastest runner and one of the smartest," I corrected boastfully.

"You still are one of the best students I ever had. I knew the first time I saw you in my literature seminar and you expertly broke down a passage I had seen grad students struggle with as a second semester freshman that you were special. And that you managed to graduate magna cum laude with honors despite everything you had weighing on you back then proved it."

A few minutes later she came back with a number on a metal holder and sat down, "So Piper, tell me about your life. Did you ever end up accepting your sexuality? What are you doing with your life? What happened with going to NYU?"

"NYU. Got a job waiting tables, went out to the bars and lived the sex and the single straight girl from good family lifestyle and abandoned that dream. My one goal became to build my career and snag one of Manhattan's most eligible bachelors who could give me a thrilling life. I had privilege, intelligence, a skinny waist and killer legs. The guys flocked to me like a prize heifer at the fair. But they all wanted to fuck me. Then I met a guy who was sweet and convinced me he was different, moved in with the guy and ended up pregnant at twenty-four by a man-child completely unprepared for fatherhood."

"I'm sorry. Are you still with him? Did you keep it," she interrupted as she gently reached her hand towards mine.

"I did. He's three and the light of my life. I wouldn't have made it through the past few years or dared to be my true self if I didn't have him. The guy isn't in either of our lives. But he does have another parent who loves him very much."

"Oh he does, does he? Are you playing the pronoun game," she asked with a mixture of excitement and pride.

"I am," I smiled and finally flashed her my wedding ring.

"You have a wife? Piper! A wife! My God, that's the best news I ever could have heard from you. Even better than telling me you had gone to NYU and wanted advice about getting your first job as a professor," she exclaimed excitedly, her face beaming with pride like a mother whose daughter just told her she finally found the one.

"Yes, and she's sitting right over there," I pointed at Alex, who was hunched over a book a few tables away. Lost in thought, chewing on a red pen and rubbing the wrinkles between her eyes that I found so attractive. She hated them because they made her look old and I loved them because they made her look distinguished.

"Not bad, Piper. You did well. Something about her looks so familiar," she replied as she checked out my wife, "What's her name?"

"Alex."

"What does she do?"

"She's a doctor," I responded coyly because I was beginning to realize Dr. Bartley probably knew Alex in an academic context and quite possibly before I was her advisee, "She actually grew up in Northampton, small world."

"Do you still live in New York City, Brooklyn I think it was, right?"

"We moved to Great Neck almost two months ago," I answered as Dr. Bartley gasped the moment that she realized exactly who my wife was.

"What's her last name," she asked like a mother who just caught her teenage daughter with an older boy she had no business hanging out with.

"Vause. Mine too now," I declared like a cocky adolescent.

"Piper! What are you doing? Dr. Alex Vause, seriously," she gasped.

"Yeah, I know her reputation but she's not like that anymore. She's an amazing mother, better than I could ever be even if I actually tried. She loves me and hasn't looked at another woman in the nearly two years we've been together. She spoils me."

"I'm sure she does. That much I can tell by looking at you, you're positively glowing. You look so radiant, being in love with a woman and finally walking in your truth will do that to you, won't it."

"Sure, we'll go with that," I responded sweetly with a slight hint of sarcasm, not wanting to stoke the fire.

"It's just I met her, twenty-three years ago at a psychology conference hosted by Harvard. She was their star student and getting some research award, I think it was an award for graduating seniors, as a matter of fact. I've seen her quite a few times at women's conferences and such over the years. I've actually cited some of her works in mine and vice versa."

"Did you ever actually meet her," I asked worried that my college girl middle-aged woman crush had made out with my wife before I did. I felt an unexplainable tinge of jealousy at the thought of them kissing or more. Please not more, I thought as I imagined myself permanently unable to have sex again and I really liked sex, especially with Alex.

"No, but I've had plenty of conversations about her over the years. How she would be great if she could just settle down and get her head on straight. Get past her rambling, girl-crazy ways. She's too old for you and I know she got known because she advocated for BDSM and sex worker's rights when nobody in serious academia was. I don't see you being into those things. What do you two have in common? I'm sure she's great. She's smart and beautiful and makes you smile, I just want to make sure you aren't in a relationship doomed to a nasty power imbalance."

"Do you really want to know about my sex life, cause I'll tell you."

"You're seriously into that? I thought I taught you better. It's exploitative and sexual violence. Degrading and the result of unresolved girlhood trauma. I know you didn't have a great childhood but it wasn't that horrific."

"My thinking has evolved. I've researched the other side. Didn't you always teach us to learn about both sides of an issue and be able to understand and argue the merits of either? It's the ultimate expression of trust in another person when done right and it allows me to just relax and feel more present. I could experience it without fear at first and now I just like it. I think it's a viable option when done right."

"And if anybody's going to do it right, it would be her. If you're going to engage in such behavior at least it's with her. Just tell me, how old is she?"

"Forty."

"Well, you always did have a thing for older women and you could get them too. Why don't you bring her over and introduce us. I have always wanted to meet the star of academic lesbian sexual medicine."

"As long as you two don't sit here talking shop."

"I won't but don't think we aren't going to discuss why our shop talk isn't yours too."

"That's what I wanted to talk about anyway," I told her as I held the edge of the table and got up awkwardly as she finally saw my prominent baby bump.

"Well, it looks like you've been busy. Guess you aren't just glowing from being in love."

"I mean technically I am," I asserted.

"Some things never change," she responded through rolled eyes, "You look like you are due any day now."

"Nope still about two months to go. It's twins."

"Congratulations, Piper," she jumped out of her seat and hugged me then motioned with her hand just above my belly.

"Go ahead. Say hello to the future members of the Smith class of 2023," I told her with a toothy grin as I felt my skin warming and brightening.

"Girls," she exclaimed as she pressed her hand lightly against my belly and smoothed her hand over the top of my midsection as Baby A got curious about the unfamiliar touch on her Mommy's belly.

"Yes. We're thrilled. We got pregnant on our first try and then got more than we bargained for. We put in one embryo and got two babies."

"What about your son?"

"I don't think he quite grasps it. He understands his mother is in love with a woman and that mommies and daddies sometimes make babies but somehow his mommies made them. He was happy at first but I don't think he understood it. And he's starting to wonder why he can't play with them and how they'll get out of Mommy's tummy or if they'll go back into Momma's tummy."

"Did you tell him how IVF, I guess judging from your word choice, works?"

"Yeah. We told him they were from Alex's egg and I don't think we should have, it only made him more confused. Sometimes I think we should have just kept it a secret but I was too excited to be having the woman I love's babies, to have this precious, deep part of my wife growing inside me that I wanted to shout it from the rooftops and jump on couches. I thought choosing to spend my life with a woman meant never being able to after nine months of sacrificing your body, mind, and soul to another being and hours of labors not getting the ultimate reward of seeing your lover's eyes in the child you made together. And I couldn't imagine living a life where I never got to feel that but now I do. I couldn't hide it if I wanted to."

"What did I use to tell you when you were so worried that you couldn't be both a successful female athlete and openly love women?"

"That if nobody dared to do it, it would never happen and that I was bolder and more courageous than I knew. That we needed to tell the hard truths about how we create lives that work for all parts of us."

"The personal is political, Piper. Is it anybody's business who did what when it came to creating these two amazing humans you are going to soon bring into the world, no. But if we don't speak our truths then society assumes that we're ashamed instead of the real reason of trying to exist on this planet. How about you guys come back to my house, if we get to chatting I'll cook dinner. Unless you have to get back to your son, which I would completely understand. Your child has to come before anything else.."

"He's currently being spoiled by Nana at her house, I doubt he even notices we're gone."

"Carol," she asked with a shocked tone.

"Uhm, nobody could change that much. Alex's mom, Diane, she loves that boy like he's her flesh and blood. Alex bought her a house just outside of Northampton. More than either of his biological grandmothers ever will," I told her as Alex watched my every move, ready to thrust out her hand or leap out of her chair to protect her pregnant wife at any moment.

We went back to her house, well after Alex pointed out to me that she owned a quarter of the houses on her street, including her neighbor and the house across the street, I didn't think the world could get any smaller at that moment then drinking tea for me and wine for them, eating and playing Scrabble. As the night drew to a close, Dr. Bartley realized we had talked about everything but why I had asked for the meeting in the first place.

"It's getting late and I forgot to ask why you wanted to see me after all these years," she stated as she sat back in a greyish cream colored chair and a cat promptly lept into her lap and starting meowing for his mother's attention.

"Getting together with Alex has allowed me to return to the path I was meant for. I am applying to Gallatin for my Ph.D. next spring and was wondering if you could help me get my application together. It's due next month."

"What do you need?"

"I want to use a chapter from my thesis as my sample but I don't have a copy anymore. Also, I need help with the final edit for my study proposal and the actual application and a reference letter. Nicky and Jamila, from our company, and Lorna, my former assistant, wrote letters and Alex of course put in a good word but I need an academic reference still. I'm pretty much guaranteed to get in but they have to go through the motions and I want to do it for real, the way I would if I weren't married to an esteemed member of the faculty. I don't want to get in as Dr. Vause's wife, I want to get in on my own merits."

"And you will. I'm so proud of you. I love watching all my students succeed but there was always something special about you. You were different. I don't know if it's because I got more attached to you than a professor should or just that you are incredibly bright, determined, creative and passionate. You are a changemaker, Piper."

"Alex also had something, a project we want to start and maybe you can connect us to the right people if you have another moment."

"Of course, Dr. Vause," Dr. Bartley nodded in my wife's direction.

"Again, for the hundredth time tonight when my wife is lying on your couch with her swollen cankles and stinky, bare feet in my lap it's Alex. At a conference feel free to call me by my title if you insist but not here."

"I did not expect you to be so humble, Alex."

"Yeah well, I'm good at disproving people's ill-informed expectations of me. Now for our project, I run an organization that helps single moms in central and western Massachusetts get careers in biotech. I pay for their education, offer career counseling and job placement, living expenses for them and their children and all I ask is that they pay it forward. Previously I had been cooperating with a few community colleges in the area and I still am. However, since meeting Piper and her telling me she believed in my vision for encouraging mothers to get into demand technical fields and that she wants to do something to give back to Smith and women's colleges I have decided I would like to expand my program and pay for one single mother and one queer woman who otherwise would not have the resources to study for an underrepresented career at Smith for up to six years of education."

"Wow. The college would love that. I don't think you would have any trouble getting the necessary approvals. Would you want to be part of the selection process?"

"I was thinking I would nominate them to the admissions committee. However, I'm open to other options as long as I make the final decision about what student I want to invest in. It's my money, the only person other than me who gets to spend it freely is my Piper."

"And what would you want in exchange?"

"Other than my daughters and granddaughters' guaranteed admission into Smith if they so choose?"

"They already have that with Piper as their mother."

"Alex is their mother, not me. In our family the 'mother' is the genetic parent, the other parent is the mom," I interjected.

"Sorry, their mom. But you know they'll probably want to name something after you," Dr. Bartley nodded at me before looking back at Alex.

"Name it after Piper," Alex muttered without hesitation.

"Then they'll just insist on naming it after both of you. It was only a matter of time before something at Smith was named after a lesbian couple, is that word okay or-"

"No, it's fine. We prefer queer couple but we're two women in love and that's the most explicit way of saying it," I responded before lying back and listening to my wife and old professor talk.

"Okay, I just don't want to get it wrong. But I can help with that and if you want to expand it to other women's colleges just let me know. I'm sure the other colleges in the consortium would jump at the chance for more funding for science and technology education. A lot of them are starting engineering programs that they can barely fund but are sorely needed so they take money from more obscure liberal arts disciplines to feed the well-paying careers of the future."

"I love to read and did a minor in classics. I understand why those programs exist and their purpose better than anyone," Alex asserted.

"The humanities need funding too."

"Whatever I can do to encourage women to have a satisfying life, feed their children and their souls, just let me know. With my amount of wealth and a wife, we're expected to be patrons of something and I want it to be underrepresented students, emerging technological disciplines and underfunded programs at women's colleges."

"I'll get you in touch with our alumni and large gifts departments; since I'm assuming Piper would be part of this gift."

"Yes, of course. We don't want accolades for this but if it raises awareness, we'll take them."

"How much are you looking to donate?"

"A blank check in perpetuity. Just tell me what you need and what it's for and I'll give you every penny if I agree with your proposal."

"Okay. So we'll add the president of the college to this discussion. That's the sort of thing she gets out of bed for."

"Thanks, for all your help. And for taking care of my girl when she was just a scared, insecure baby queer, for encouraging her to be herself and trying to listen to her without fixing her."

"She didn't need to be fixed. Never did, never will."

"I told her the same thing the night we met in person. You want to see someone broken and in need of fixing, just look at me. I'm seriously fucked up but yet UCSF and Harvard awarded me degrees in psychology and medicine, NYU offered me a residency, fellowship, and tenure in psychiatry anyway. Piper, however, just needed someone to release her from her gilded cage and let her fly away. Except she flew onto my finger and refused to leave," Alex added seductively as she tried to convince me to give her my hand but I stiffened my wrist while blushing like I didn't know exactly what she was trying to do. She kept trying and I kept playing hard to get until Dr. Bartley cleared her throat and we were awakened from our game, which by then had turned into Alex running her finger along the skin between my fingers as if she were running them along my slit, teasing my folds open, and my knuckles were my clit.

"As much as I'm glad to see Piper being comfortable with her sexual attraction to women, I don't want to see my former student fucking someone I consider a longtime professional acquaintance on my couch. But good for you for being yourself and for not being afraid to show that pregnant women still have needs and are sensual, alluring, and attractive women. I take back what I said earlier about the power imbalance, I see one but it's not the one I expected to see. Piper has all the true power here. Alex, it's pretty easy to see when you care about her. Just promise me that you won't forget that you're lucky to have her, not the other way around."

"Oh, I remind myself every time she walks into the room. I could never forget that I swear on my mother's life. I plan to do right by her and honor her for the rest of our lives together," she told my old professor while rubbing my ankles and planting kisses on my cheek, ending with one to my nose.

"Good. Now you ladies get home safe," she told us as Alex put my shoes back on my feet, or at least I think I still had feet. I hadn't seen them and barely felt them in going on two weeks. The only feet I was fully aware of at this point were the four kicking and pushing inside me. Alex then helped me up and rubbed my lower back.

"I have precious cargo in my passenger seat, I drive like a granny these days instead of a Formula 1 racecar driver," Alex joked before Dr. Bartley hugged us both goodbye and walked us to Alex's car.