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Cat wanted Elena to find someone who was willing to explore all these discoveries with her and embrace them and her for the incredible woman she was becoming. Elena is incredible.

Cat smiled and reached into the drawer of her bedside table. Perhaps Elena wasn’t the only one who needed to explore and discover.

In the middle of the night, Cat’s eyelids slowly fluttered open. She felt something squeeze her forearm and realized it was her own hand. “What the…” she mumbled. Her head rested on her pillow and she looked down where her hand now rested on her stomach. A vague dream was swirling around in her head. She tried to remember what she’d been dreaming about before she’d woken. Fragments began to come back to her.

She was walking and there was someone with her. They had paused to look out over a body of water. Cat recognized the familiar stretch of water as the lake where Lovers Landing, the sapphic Hollywood hideout, was located. She had become friends with the women who owned the resort and had been there several times.

It didn’t seem odd to Cat that she’d dreamed of this particular place because she loved it there. She tried to relax and see if more of the dream would come back to her. Cat was walking with another woman beside her and they were… She tried to remember. They were holding hands!

Cat gasped and sat up in bed. “Who was I holding hands with?” she muttered. She eased back down on the bed and closed her eyes. Her idea was to relax and think back on the dream hoping she could see who was with her. She could see them walking along the beach and she could almost smell the water. The contentment of being with this woman was obvious. She could still feel it even now while she was awake. But every time she tried to look at the woman’s face, she couldn’t see who it was.

Cat sighed and tried to get comfortable again. Maybe if she went right back to sleep the dream would continue. A smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Come on, mystery woman. Reveal yourself.” She closed her eyes and the last thought before sleep came again was: we’re holding hands.

As music began to filter through her bedroom, Cat once again opened her eyes. It was the familiar tune of the song she chose for her alarm. She yawned and stretched her limbs. Suddenly she remembered waking up in the middle of the night to the dream she’d been having. She rolled over and thought back through the parts of the dream she could remember, but the woman’s face was still a blur.

“Oh well,” she said, getting up. It was time to get ready for work. Maybe parts of the dream would come to her during the day. What she remembered most was the happy feeling she had during the dream. She was with someone who made her feel that way. If nothing else, maybe that meant her heart was shedding the pain and perhaps she could be happy like that again with someone new.

It had been a busy morning at the bookstore and now that Jessica had come in, Cat was ready for a break.

“Hey, I’ll be back in a few,” she said to Jessica as she walked through the opening into CeCe’s salon. She looked towards the back but didn’t see her sister.

“She’s in the back room,” Ryan said as he blew his client’s hair dry.

“Thanks.” Cat smiled as she walked by, then she stopped. “Alone?” she asked Ryan.

He grinned and nodded.

Cat walked to the back of the store which was similar to hers. There was a hallway with restrooms and the door at the end of the hall opened into CeCe’s back room. She had made it into the cutest little sitting area and break room for her clients and the other stylists.

“Hi, baby sister,” CeCe said when Cat walked into the room.

“Really? Baby?”

CeCe chuckled and patted Cat’s cheek. “You’ll always be my baby sister. I remember when Mom brought you home from the hospital.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Cat had heard this story a million times and she was only thirty-seven.

“I can’t believe you don’t remember meeting me for the first time,” CeCe teased.

“Someone is in a chipper mood today. Let me guess, Alexis spent the night?”

CeCe smirked. “We spend every night together. There’s no way I’m letting her go.”

“CeCe and Alexis, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g,” Cat sing-songed.

“Don’t be jealous.”

Cat scoffed. “Jealous! Okay, maybe I am a little. Not of Alexis, but the kissing part.”

“She is a good kisser,” CeCe said dreamily.

“Would you say that you and Alexis started out as friends with benefits?” Cat asked.

CeCe furrowed her brow and stared at her sister. “No. We were friends, began flirting, and then we kissed. From there it was on!”

Cat chuckled. “That’s so romantic.”

“It was. I’m leaving out all the good parts because I know your heart is a little tender,” CeCe said, then she gasped. “Wait a minute, has your heart returned from the dark depths?”