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“You’re not whining. I asked. I want to know about you.”

My heart speeds up.

“Why?” I ask before I can stop myself.

“Because...” Her hands go still. She trails off, hesitating, but when she speaks again, there’s a forced casualness in her tone. “Because I’m interested. So answer my questions and stop whining about whining when you’re not even whining.”

I laugh as she smacks my shoulder. “Okay, okay. What else do you want to know?”

She starts braiding again. “So you said you weren’t close with your aunt. How about your dad?”

I nod and then go still when I accidentally tug a piece of hair out of her grip. “My dad and I were always pretty close, or as close as we could be with him away working so much. We’re still pretty close. He was a fairly serious hockey player when he was young, so he loves that I’m really into a sport too. It’s a big part of our bond. Being on the team here makes me feel close to him even though we’re far apart, and I know he’s really proud of me being captain. We used to spend hours doing lacrosse drills in the evenings during the summer.”

I smile as I think back on warm, dry Alberta nights when we’d wait until the temperature dropped enough for us to exercise without overheating. We’d stay out tossing the ball back and forth until the moths started flocking around the floodlight in my aunt’s driveway.

“That sounds amazing,” Hope says. “I used to pay my brother with rolls of pennies to practice with me when I was a kid. He was terrible at it. Eventually my parents got me a rebounder so I would stop bugging everybody all the time. I was pretty...insistent.”

“You don’t say,” I joke.

“Hey now!” She gives my hair a tug. “Watch it.”

I pretend to wince, but really, I’m just trying not to get turned on all over again. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget the feeling of her hands in my hair when she came.

“Was there anyone else in your family you were close to?” she asks.

That helps cool me down. There’s really only one other person I can think of.

“I was close with my dad’s mom too, but she died when I was ten.” I run one of my hands over the quilt she made me. “She always used to tell me and my dad to keep our heads held high. It was kind of her thing. That’s part of why I like the song so much.”

I can feel Hope’s fingers working down to the tips of my hair. “That’s beautiful.”

“Yeah, she was pretty great. She was, like, a master quilter. All the old ladies would come to her for quilting advice.”

I jump when Hope lets out a sudden shriek.

“Oh my god! We totally desecrated your grandma’s quilt! We had very explicit, sensual lesbian sex on it! Oh my god, what have we done?”

I burst out laughing and twist around so I can face her. “I’m sure she’d approve of you if she was around. She wouldn’t need to know about the...what did you just call it? Explicit, sensual lesbian sex?”

Hope covers her face with her hands. “Okay, fine. I deserve to be mocked for that.”

“Who says I’m mocking you? It was sensual, and very explicit.”

I drop my gaze to her mouth.

Her mouth that made me come so hard I temporarily went deaf and blind.

She leans forward, and I meet her halfway to press my lips to hers. I still don’t think I could ever get enough of kissing her. I’m just about to turn all the way around and climb on top of her when she pulls back.

“Wait! Your hair! I didn’t put the elastic in yet.” She pushes on my shoulder to urge me to turn back around and then fiddles with my hair for a moment. “There we go!”

“How does it look?”

She snorts. “Terrible. I’m so shitty at braiding hair.”

I reach back and grab the braid, pulling it forward so I can see what she’s talking about. “It looks all right to me.”

“You can only see the end part. That part’s all right. The top is, uh, not good.”