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Usually with cash, but sometimes by making me come.

Vanessa blew out a breath. No need to be thinking about that right now when there is so much to do. Besides, she was wet enough.

Chloë scoffed.

“What is the point of having a girlfriend who owns a coffeeshop if you don’t get free coffee?” she asked, continuing to place muffins. She looked up again. “Oh, wait…are you guys not yet at the girlfriend-label stage?”

Vanessa was wiping down the espresso machine after spraying its top with some cleanser.

“We won’t be getting to the girlfriend-label stage,” she answered. “Megan and I are just having a little fling.”

Chloë scoffed again. “Okay, fine, I get that. But still, a fuck-buddy with a coffeeshop means free coffee,” she stated, as if it was a fact on par with the Earth is round.

Vanessa said, “I think it’s kind of sweet. She knows how bad business has been during this Covid thing and she doesn’t want to take advantage.”

Chloë appeared to consider that for a moment.

“Yeah, I guess that is kinda cool of her.” She paused for a moment, and stole a glance at Vanessa. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” Vanessa said, placing the dishrag she had used in the laundry bag just inside the entrance to the back room.

Chloë wouldn’t look at her. Instead, she busied herself with pretending to inspect her fingernails.

“How come you and I never…you know.”

What the fuck?

“Um…because it would have been a felony when I first met you?” Vanessa declared.

Chloë gave an exasperated Ugh sound.

“No shit,” she said. “But I’ve obviously grown up.”

Vanessa couldn’t deny that. When she had met Chloë, to help her rebuild leg strength following a mountain biking accident, the then teenager had been this tomboyish waif of a girl with a taste for the grunge fashions of the nineties. Now, at twenty-three, Chloë had left her tomboy phase well behind and developed into this strikingly feminine woman whose most distinctive feature was her platinum-dyed pixie hairstyle and who virtually always wore really cute dresses that showed off fabulously long legs.

Swallowing, Vanessa asked, “What’s this about?” She was almost afraid to hear the answer.

Chloë took a moment.

“Well, other than my recent brief interest in that chick Megan, primarily because she’s fucking hot…” Chloë looked up at Vanessa then, an expression of horror on her face. “Shit! Sorry!”

Vanessa laughed. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Well, other than that,” Chloë continued, “I’m kind of thinking I’m into older women.”

“Oh.”

“Not like grandma old, but your level of old.”

“Great,” Vanessa muttered under her breath.

“But every time I get a chance to flirt with a woman in her thirties or forties, it’s like they’re flattered but it’s also like, ‘Go away, kid,’ you know? So, I’m kind of wondering, with you being an older woman, why you and I never…”

Vanessa took a few seconds to compose her thoughts. This wasn’t how she expected her day at work to start.

“Look, sweetie, by the time you turned eighteen I already thought of you as a little sister. Even when we were all in Vegas for your twenty-first, you were still that sixteen-year-old kid with a busted knee in my mind.” She reached out and touched Chloë’s hand. “The timing just wasn’t right for anything to develop between us.”

“But it might have?” Chloë asked, hopefully.