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“Hey, I am not giving up that title!” Krissy insisted.

Becca’s heart skipped a beat. Partly from excitement at the way Krissy was looking at her; partly out of regret that they were only playing around.

“Anyway…?” Krissy prodded.

“Oh, the phone call! Yeah, everything is fine. I can’t play volleyball tomorrow, though.”

“So, everything is not fine,” Krissy said sternly. “After Rachel, you’re our best player. And Rachel has showings tomorrow.”

“Guess you guys are going to really suck tomorrow, then,” Becca said with another smirk. Every Sunday, a group of Becca’s and Krissy’s friends got together to play volleyball in Solana Beach, a town a short drive south from Carlsbad. In truth, collectively, they weren’t very good. Rachel was, by far, the best player and usually the difference maker on whatever side of the net she was playing on. Becca supposed she was the next best player—her height certainly helped—but she was nowhere near Rachel’s league.

She played as often as she could, provided her shifts at the firehouse didn’t get in the way, or, like tomorrow, a command performance at a press conference.

“I have no choice,” Becca continued. She told Krissy about the press conference.

“Ooh,” Krissy said, “so the world will finally get to meet Lesbian Wonder Woman, huh?”

Becca glowered at her.

“And if you keep calling me that, I’ll use my Wonder Woman powers to knock you into the next dimension. Anyway, the good news is, with the press conference tomorrow, the chief thinks all those fucking journalists will stop stalking me at my house.”

“Ah,” Krissy uttered. Suddenly she seemed a little uncertain. “Um…does that mean you’ll want to go back home tonight?”

Becca picked up her overnight bag and headed to Krissy’s bedroom. There was a guest room, of course, but she and Krissy always shared a bed when they had sleepovers.

“Nope,” Becca said, walking. “Why would I leave? There’s going to be pizza here soon, you promised me a back rub and, as a bonus, at the end of the night, we get to have pie.”

“Oh my God,” Krissy exclaimed. “There is such a lesbian joke in there somewhere; I just need to find it!”

***

After eating, they were in Krissy’s living room watching a movie about Anne Lister when Krissy—apparently needing something to do with her hands—started rubbing Becca’s shoulders.

“Fuck, you are tense!” Krissy exclaimed after only a few moments.

Becca nodded.

“I know,” she replied. Before she had even left the firehouse at 8 a.m. this morning, Becca had known that she was carrying a lot of tension and stress from the fire last night. And, god, was that only last night? To Becca it already felt like that inferno had occurred months ago.

The long sleep she’d had once she had gotten home hadn’t helped the tension at all. Then, discovering the press at her front door and learning that she had gone viral online had only made matters worse.

“Come on,” Krissy said, taking Becca’s hand, leading her to the bedroom.

Becca didn’t protest. Anne Lister could wait. Right now, she could use a good massage. When it was this bad, she would normally book an appointment at Massage Envy in Oceanside, but Krissy, remarkably, was an excellent second choice. Becca imagined that massages were just one of the ways her best friend seduced women.

In the bedroom, Becca peeled off her longline sports bra and laid face down on the bed, with her arms by her sides. The sheets felt crisp and smelled like meadow-scented detergent.

“Oh fuuuuck!” Becca moaned a couple of minutes later. Krissy was now straddling her, sitting right on her ass, and had started rubbing a warming massage oil into Becca’s skin between her shoulder blades. It felt amazing! Silently, Krissy worked her fingers over Becca’s shoulders, kneading and pressing. Her touch was firm and sure and after having done this so many times, she knew what Becca liked, knowing where and when to press hard, where and when to go softly.

Becca just surrendered to it all, feeling the tension dissipate throughout her form, helped along by the warming sensation of the oil and Krissy’s expert fingers.

“You should do this professionally,” Becca mumbled.

“What’s funny,” Krissy began, her voice soft, “is that you’re the only one I do this for.”

Becca’s eyes shot open in surprise but closed again almost instantly as Krissy started working a particularly hard knot of tension under her right shoulder blade.

“Liar,” she said, mumbling once again because mumbling was about all she was capable of at this point.