Having a girlfriend wasn't all that different from having a best friend, Emily found – although maybe that was because she and Jess had always had a bit of unspoken romantic tension in their friendship. One thing for sure, though, was that it was worlds different from having a boyfriend. Her relationship with Mike had been her first and longest-lasting, so she found herself comparing Jess to him from time to time. Mike had always made her feel like she was overreacting to things. As a result she began to bottle up her feelings. This would lead to either an explosion all at once or a slow leak of passive aggression that eventually devolved into a fight.

Jess was so different. When she knew Emily was just grumping she'd laugh it off, but when Em had a serious problem to voice, Jess sat down with her and talked it out.

The first big issue that arose out of their new relationship, unsurprisingly, regarded Matt.

"I know we both like him," Emily said. "And I don't want this to become another Mike."

"I understand," Jess said, her tone uncharacteristically serious. "And I don't think he's gonna stay married forever. So yeah, it's probably a good idea to talk about it."

"So say he were to get divorced tomorrow. Or sometime very soon." Emily looked at Jess from across the kitchen table. "What then?"

Jess traced circles on the table with her finger. "I had an idea about that, but I wasn't sure how you'd feel about it. Or how Matt would."

"Tell me. I won't get upset."

Jess cleared her throat. "Well, we both like him, right? But we also both like each other. And I think he likes both of us…"

Em waited for her to finish.

"I was thinking maybe, y'know, if Matt got divorced and stuff, we could maybe just…all date. The three of us."

Emily tilted her head. "Like…a…threesome?"

"No – well, I mean that could be involved if we wanted to." Jess laughed a little. "But I mean like, a poly relationship. You've heard of those, right?"

"…No."

"You haven't?" Jess pursed her lips. "Wow, I always just assume you know everything. A poly relationship is just a relationship between more than two people. I've read about them online before. I think they're really cool, and they help people to avoid massive, relationship-ending fights about loving more than one person in a romantic way."

Emily made a face. "So basically I'd have to share you."

"But you'd have someone else too! I think it's pretty cool, to be honest."

Emily crossed her arms. "Yeah, it's cool. Until Matt realizes he likes you much better than me and the two of you eventually just push me out."

Jess frowned. "I know I did some hurtful shit like that to you in the past, Em. I'm sorry. If you're not open to it then I'll drop it."

Emily thought of Matt, of how kind he still was to her even all these years later. He'd told her he loved her at the reunion. That was the first time she'd heard that from anyone but her mother in years.

"Maybe someday we could have something like that," she murmured. "But for now can we just…enjoy the two of us?" She started to reach her hand across the table, but stopped midway.

Jess met her halfway, laying her hand on top of Emily's. "Of course. Let's spend some quality time together, girlfriend." The last word was accompanied by a wink. Emily smiled just a bit.


They ended up spending the rest of the night reminiscing about their younger years. They'd started out serious and sentimental – Emily brought up their meeting during that fateful second grade Field Day, and how amazed she'd been when Jess simply laughed off their absolute failure at the three-legged race. They talked about entering middle school together, and then high school. The nights they'd spent agonizing over first-day-of-school outfits. The hours-long phone calls back when every little move made by any of their peers was phone-call-worthy and needed to be discussed at excruciating length. Their last day of eighth grade, where, on a sun-baked bench just outside their middle school, Jess had stunned Emily by coming out to her as bisexual.

As their conversation went on, however, the topics gradually got lighter and funnier. "Remember how we got banned from the Galleria?" Jess' question was punctuated by snickers. "When Josh jammed the escalator?"

"Oh God, how could I forget? As soon as he said 'Hey guys, watch this, I saw it on YouTube!' I knew we were in trouble."

"The whole…escalator…just stopped…" Jess heaved with laughter. "And I was laughing so hard I fell, like, all the way down."

"And took several of us with you."

"I landed on Chris at the bottom."

Emily smirked. "You know we probably could have gotten out of there before security showed up if you hadn't busted ass like that. Instead they found us pig-piled at the bottom. And you were still laughing."

"It was funny!" Jess leaned back on the couch, trying to catch her breath from laughter. "I mean, it wasn't funny when we got escorted out by the mall cops, but – oh my God, remember we tried to go back like a year later? And Josh was like 'They'll never remember us'?"

Emily lowered her head, trying to stifle her own laughter. At the time she'd been furious. But looking back now, it was kind of funny.

"Yeah, I remember. They had all our pictures lined up on the security office corkboard. The second we walked in there those pricks were on us, telling us we couldn't be there."

"And you – you told them, oh my God what did you say exactly? I don't remember."

Emily grinned in spite of herself. "I told them their mall was a rathole anyway. Then I said something like, 'Good thing you guys aren't real cops, or I might actually be intimidated'. "

Jess laughed so hard she snorted. "Fuck, you made me snort." She lifted a hand to her nose and mouth self-consciously. "Sam wouldn't even talk to any of us for like, two weeks afterward."

"Yeah, she gave us that 'I'm not mad, I'm disappointed' Mom spiel and made us all feel guilty as fuck. It wasn't my fault we got banned! I was just responding to the situation."

"I can't wait to see her again." Jess beamed. "Even though I get the distinct feeling we used to just annoy the hell out of her and she probably never really liked any of us."

"Hey, she put up with us. She's still putting up with us. So that says something."

"True."

Even as they laughed and reminisced, at the mention of Sam Emily couldn't help but think about the strange scenario that had played out at Ashley and Chris' house two weeks ago. Hadn't she decided that Chris was clearly bullshitting? That he was scapegoating Sam to cover up some stupid thing he himself was doing? Sam's involvement in the strangeness couldn't be true. She'd never try to rope people in to going back to that frozen hell.

Right?

"Let's do something else." Emily got to her feet, catching Jess by surprise.

"Oh. Okay." Jess stood up as well. "What do you want to do?"

"I, um…" She thought of something. "The other day I found a little list of indoor date ideas, and one of them that I liked was–"

"You were looking up date ideas?" Jess beamed. "That's so cute, Em."

"Shut up. Anyway, one idea that I really liked was, um…" She met Jess' eyes and shrugged. "Taking a bubble bath together?"

"Ooh." Jess was instantly intrigued. "That sounds nice. Let's do it."

Emily smiled a little. "All right. It had a recipe-thing for making the bubbles on your own, so I guess we'll make that first."

Jess slipped her arms around Emily's waist. "Maybe we can play around a little first…get in the mood…" Her words were whispered directly into Em's ear. A tiny shudder of excitement ran through her as Jess' low, sensual voice shifted her thoughts away from all lingering concerns about Sam or anyone else. Why should she worry about any of that? Her senses were overwhelmed by Jess, and only by Jess. She couldn't find the ability to focus on anything else if she tried.

She deserved this, she assured herself. She deserved to shut her worries off for a while and just lose herself in love and lust with her favorite person in the world.