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“I love that idea,” she replied. What she didn’t add was that she was currently rethinking her no-sex-on-a-first-date policy. It was a hard and fast rule for her. There were exceptions, of course—Amy had had her share of hook-ups and one-night-stands. But for proper first dates, the kind that were meant to be the start of a relationship, Amy made sure things never progressed to the bedroom.

Now, however, she was wondering if Sally also had a no-sex-on-a-first-date rule, and what she would need to do to get Sally to break it.

Chapter 12

Max was going to kill her.

And Sally had known that Max was going to kill her about fifteen seconds after she walked into this coffeeshop and saw Amy. In that instant, when her eyes had landed on Amy IRL, two things had happened…

The first was that Sally’s heart had thumped hard enough that she felt a rush of warm blood course through her limbs.

The second was that her first thought was, I finally found Her.

Sally had been hoping to feel what she was feeling now on her date with Amy seemingly her entire adult life. She’d had plenty of girlfriends, of course; a couple of them had even been serious enough to make her wonder if marriage was in the cards. In the end, though, those relationships had fizzled out for one reason or another and when Sally was between girlfriends and thus had time to consider things, she had come to realize that those relationships had fizzled simply because there wasn’t anything magical about them.

Because Sally really did believe there was a soulmate out there for her. The one woman who would make her feel the way Hollywood wanted people to believe they should feel in all those silly rom-coms and period romance dramas. This was a thought she had always kept to herself, though, knowing how pie-in-the-sky it all sounded.

But now she was sitting across from Amy in this cool coffeeshop she’d never been to before and everything about their date was firing on all cylinders.

It wasn’t just that Amy was pretty, with chocolate-brown eyes which matched her chocolate-brown hair, lithe figure with small breasts and the most adorable dimples when she smiled. It was something else. Something between them which, like air, was invisible and also like air could only be felt when it was moving. And this something was moving, Sally determined. It was a current flowing between the two of them and it was something Sally had been waiting for all her life.

And Amy was proving to be a very impressive person. Sally almost wished her mother could be sitting here with them and learning that Amy was far more than just a blogger. So far, because Sally had asked Amy to tell her about herself, Sally had discovered all of the important work Amy was doing for a women’s rights organization based here in Carlsbad. The woman truly was in the trenches, helping others and fighting the good fight, trying on a daily basis to improve the lot of women in this region of California and undo a lot of the misogynistic poison of the Trump years. And Sally couldn’t get enough of it. The stories Amy told, running the gamut from frustratingly sad to laugh out loud funny, put Amy’s passion for her work on full display.

It was, quite frankly, sexy as hell.

“I’m having a really good time!” Amy said, with a smile, bringing those dimples to life, after relating to Sally the details of her upcoming meeting with a county supervisor about a women’s rights bill.

“I am too!” Sally replied. “And I usually hate first dates.”

“Same here. It always feels like—”

“An audition?” Sally offered.

“Exactly!” Amy enthused.

“I totally know what you’re talking about! And then you’re always wondering—”

“If the person you’re with is truly being themselves?” Amy suggested.

Sally nodded.

“Exactly what I was going to say!”

They sat there staring at each other for a few silent moments that were not at all awkward.

“Get a load of us…” Sally started.

“…finishing each other’s sentences.” Amy concluded.

Sally’s nipples hardened.

Eventually, she held up her coffee cup.

“Empty,” she said. “Are you hungry? How about we finish each other’s sentences over som

e food?”

“Love it!” Amy said. “Italian? I know a great place within walking distance.”