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“Um…”

“My daughter has written four books—four!—and her mother is the last to know!”

And starring in the role of the Martyr…Dr. Leslie Lassiter.

Sally realized she could never tell her mother the truth. If telling Lisa the truth about Jillian Ashley would be like taking out an ad on Super Bowl Sunday, telling her Mom would be like somehow landing on the Moon and spray-painting “Max Tremont is Jillian Ashley” on the surface in letters large enough to be seen from Earth. Especially since her mother wasn’t particularly fond of Max. Leslie never understood why a man Max’s age (which was more or less her age) was such close friends with someone as young as her daughter and so always distrusted his motives, which always made Sally upset. In fact, the absolute only times Sally wished she was straight was when she would think of how fabulous it would be to marry Max and really piss her mother off.

“Well?” Leslie demanded.

Sally sighed.

“Mom, I never told you because…well, because I didn’t think you’d like the books,” she answered. “They’re lesbian romances.”

“I have nothing against lesbians!”

“Mom, obviously I know that! But—”

“Anyway,” Leslie interrupted, “I downloaded the first book.”

Sally almost dropped the phone.

The Jillian Ashley books weren’t just pages and pages of sex, held together by the flimsiest of plots, like most of the erotica lesfic out there; but the sex scenes were…explicit. Sally’s best friend, Lisa, even described them once as “pussy-clenching.” The thought that her mother was going to read them—especially Chapter 25 in Fordham Road!—and think that she wrote them…

Seriously! Fuck my life!

“Mom…I really don’t think—”

“And why did you pick a name like Jillian Ashley? How did you come up with that?”

“Baby name website,” she said, using the same story she had told Lisa. “Anyway, Mom, I’ll gladly explain all this to you some other time, but right now I need to get ready for a date! I’ll call you in a few days.”

Or maybe when your old and senile.

Leslie was reluctant to end the conversation but finally acquiesced and when Sally was finally able to tap the red button on her phone’s screen, she let out a groan.

Seriously! Fuck my life!

***

“I suppose the dream dream is to open my own studio,” Sally told Amy. They were at the restaurant, awaiting the arrival of their entrees, each woman enjoying a glass of the Riesling Sally had ordered a bottle of.

Sally was amazed at how good Amy looked. Her date was wearing an adorable off-shoulder floral print swing dress showing off her tanned legs, and cute high-heeled sandals. Sally had a shoe fetish—both as a shopper and as a lesbian. As a shopper, shoes were her drug of choice and she currently had over eighty pairs, lovingly displayed in an outrageously expensive shoe rack she’d had custom-built in the walk-in closet of her bedroom. As a lesbian, well…sexy shoes on sexy women turned her on immensely. On any given day, if she was out and about, Sally was often driven to distraction by seeing an attractive woman with cute footwear. It didn’t even have to be high heels. Just the other day, Sally had found herself breathing a little more rapidly when she was in the grocery store, standing in line behind a yummy blonde in denim shorts who was wearing a pair of black ankle-strap ballet flats.

“But I’d want my studio to be more of a boutique operation, you know?” Sally continued, answering Amy’s five-year-plan question. “I’d want our focus to be on doing smaller projects for a lot of smaller companies, with one, maybe two big national accounts to help keep the lights on.”

“Sounds awesome,” Amy said. “I like that you’re not all about ‘bigger is better.’ It tells me that your craft is more important than your bottom line.”

Sally licked her lips. She really liked that Amy got her.

“What about you? she asked.

“Well,” Amy began, “I’d like to see my Lesbeing endeavors really take off, you know? But I promise I have altruistic reasons!”

Sally laughed. Amy was so fucking cute when she was excited about something she was talking about.

Amy explained that already, Lesbeing—both the blog and the podcast—was earning her money through advertising that she sold and various merchandise available on the show’s website. But if she was able to increase that monetization, she wanted to use that income to help start a non-profit organization to provide support and counseling for at-risk LGBTQ youth in this part of California.

“I can’t believe how hot you are,” Sally couldn’t help exclaiming.