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Elle grinned. “Keeping you on your toes. It’s good for you, Lowe.”

“I’m always on my toes!” Riley called after her. “It’s why I became a pilot! I’m about a foot off the ground already!”

Elle didn’t breathe until she made it to the black car waiting for her in the pickup zone. As she texted her coworkers that she would be a few minutes late, she breathed a sigh of relief, hoping that Riley didn’t know anything.

Because a woman like that was either Elle’s ally… or the biggest thorn in her side.

Arianna unexpectedly ended up on the phone with her mother for the majority of the evening, fielding a never-ending barrage of questions about her personal and professional life that would send any daughter into another planet’s atmosphere. For once, Arianna didn’t have the patience. Not after the first hour of incessant badgering.

She was frustrated enough that she ate a quick meal from the microwave for dinner and decided to hit up one of her favorite haunts near downtown, a place where she could be herself as long as nobody recognized her there. It was the only way to help her not think of Elle, who had canceled their private dinner that night due to having to go to a large company dinner instead.

Along the way, she fired a text to Kaylinn about meeting Elle the following night. She did not receive a response, but Arianna’s sister had said something about going out with friends that night. I’m on my own. All the better for her to buy a drink at the Tiger Lily Lounge and attempt to make some local friends.

If she could hear anyone over the blaring music, anyway.

I’m getting too old for this place. The name and ownership had changed over the years, but the vibe was still the same: twenty and thirty-something women of the queer variety buying drinks for dates and friends, some desperately hoping to make any kind of connection that would either take them to the back alley, the bathroom, or the hourly-hotel across the street. This place and the gay guy bar next door keep that hotel in business. Arianna would know. She had seen a few of those rooms for herself. And the alley. And the bathroom.

She may be seeing someone only in nice hotel rooms now, but it was a big step up from how she conducted her love life before that.

Arianna took her drink toward the back since the bar was crowded with some young woman’s birthday party attempting to buy continuous rounds of shots that the bartenders would eventually have to cut off. That was another woman’s cue to keep herself toward the wall, surreptitiously checking her phone while attempting to look available for a chat from a stranger.

I wonder what Elle would think of this place. Well, that sounded verboten…

She checked a message she finally got back from Kaylinn, but it was summed up with the words “busy meeting a hottie of my own!”

Wasn’t that nice?

Arianna finished her drink and decided to head home. The mild ache in her cranium told her she was too old for this place unless she had someone with her who wanted to be there. At least I tried. She returned her glass to the bar and was forced to head out the back through the alley, where she 100% expected to be amused by couples getting on with the PDA in a semi-private place before deciding whether to head to the hotel across the street.

For the second time that day, she was not expecting to see the back of Riley Lowe’s head – and she was even less anticipating of the woman she saw Riley making out with.

“Kaylinn!”

She was so used to her sister’s English name that she forgot to be shocked in Malay. Or Mandarin. Or whatever language the two sisters shared after a lifetime together.

Riley broke away from Kaylinn, who gaped at her sister’s presence with what could only be a sudden sense of sobriety in her eyes.

“Ari!” she squeaked, unable to get the whole name out of her mouth. Even in the darkness of the alley, Arianna saw a hickey on her sister’s throat. You have got to be kidding me! How was this even possible? What trick of the universe was this? “What are you doing here?”

Arianna was too speechless to immediately reply. For as much as she wanted to stare at her sister, who was the last person she expected to see here on a Saturday night, let alone making out with a woman, there was Riley right in front of her too.

“You two know each other?” Riley asked.

“That’s my sister!”

Riley was instantly taken aback by that outburst. “What!”

“You’re making out with my sister!”

It took her a moment to realize she had screamed that in Mandarin, a language Riley was not fluent in. She got the idea, though! That was shock and embarrassment on Arianna’s coworker’s face – yet nothing compared to Kaylinn, who looked like she was about to pass out.

“I think you should go!” Arianna barked at Riley, who immediately took the hint.

“Sis…” Kaylinn did not look after Riley, who slipped out of the alleyway and back toward the Lion Orchard. That simply left the two Song sisters, who refused to look each other in the eye as they stood in an alleyway occupied by other friends and amorous lovers who thought they were looking at a family spat.

Eventually, they went back to minding their own business. That’s the thing about this place… People silently judged. They had no room to talk, anyway. Any law about public indecency was thrown out the window when everyone in the alley was doing it.

“I…” Kaylinn swallowed so hard that her sister saw the lump go down her throat. The one with a hickey on it! “I’d say that this isn’t what it looks like, but…”