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S he had expected to have to console Asher after her breakup. Even though it was her friend’s choice, breakups were never easy, and Linden hadn’t known breaking up with Gavin was even on Asher’s mind until she’d mentioned it at lunch. She had only met Gavin a few times. He had stopped by work to take Asher to lunch one day. It had been a surprise, and she and Asher had already had lunch plans, but Linden had understood. When someone got into a relationship, they had less time for friends. He’d seemed like a nice guy when she’d met the two of them for dinner one night. Gavin had been a little preoccupied with his phone for her liking, but his job was intense and seemed to keep him busy twenty-four seven. He’d also apologized for it, so Linden had let it go. He’d been Asher’s boyfriend, after all, so if she hadn’t had a problem with it, Linden hadn’t, either.

What Linden hadn’t been prepared for at all was Asher telling her that not only was she now not in a relationship with Gavin, but she was interested in dating women as well as men. She had never anticipated her friend of ten years to be anything other than straight. When they’d first met, Linden had developed an unrequited crush on Asher, and she had done her best to push it way down so it wouldn’t impact their growing friendship. Knowing she was gay and telling no one, Linden had forced herself to look away from her friend’s eyes back then.

They were this light-blue that sort of just welcomed her when they connected with her own. Linden wasn’t sure that was right, but Asher’s eyes had welcomed her in somehow, and Linden couldn’t not look at them back when they were at the desks on the floor, sitting across from one another. It was as if their boss had known that Linden had liked Asher right away and had wanted to torture her by sitting her right across from the woman so that she’d be forced to look away from her eyes.

Well, there was Asher’s face, too. She was a very beautiful woman and so put-together all the time. Even now, as they sat on her sofa after she’d just ended things with a boyfriend, Asher still looked put-together. She was wearing a nice pair of jeans, was barefoot, and had light-pink-painted toenails on her dainty size six-and-a-half feet. She was wearing an LSU gray T-shirt with the logo in their signature purple with gold outlines.

Linden smiled because that wasn’t Asher’s shirt. She’d gone to Georgia for school. It wasn’t her now ex-boyfriend’s shirt, either. He had graduated from Florida State. That shirt belonged to Linden. She’d left it there one night after staying over and had forgotten all about it. Asher looked good in it. In fact, Asher looked better in it than she did.

Linden stared at her now. Asher had gone quiet when her face had emerged from her hands, and Linden wanted to give her that time to sort through her thoughts and feelings. She had had so many years to sort through her own; about twenty of them since she’d had her Daisy Colter moment in the locker room at fifteen. As she thought back to that crush she’d had all those years ago and how she’d been introduced to Asher’s then-boyfriend for the first time, she knew it had been more than a crush. She had known that for sure when she’d watched him lean over and kiss Asher at the company holiday party. Linden had downed her drink and excused herself then. After that, she’d done everything she could to put Asher out of her mind, focusing on work almost exclusively.

“Okay. So, what do I do now, then?”

Asher was looking at her expectantly as if Linden knew what came next for her when Linden didn’t have a clue. She’d also been too busy taking a trip down memory lane to pay attention to whatever Asher was saying.

“You’re asking me ?”

“Well, of the two of us, you’re the one who has some experience here,” Asher reasoned.

“With women? Yeah, I guess. But only for less than a year. Maybe we should hang out with everyone, and they can help more. They’ve all been out for a lot longer than I have. That’s assuming you’d want them to know, though.”

“I don’t know,” Asher said, shaking her head. “I trust them, and I know they won’t have a problem with it, obviously, but I just acknowledged it with you for the first time. So, I’ll tell them, but I don’t want to make a huge announcement at a bar or anything.”

“So, do you want help meeting women, or are you just looking for someone to talk to about how you’re feeling right now? I’m here for whatever. I want you to know that, Ash.”

“I think I’d like to go on some dates, if I can get them, but I’m not looking to sleep with someone, Linden. This is all so new to me… I don’t know that I can promise anyone anything. If I like them, maybe it’ll lead to a second date, but that’s all my brain can handle thinking about right now, and it can barely handle that.”

“Okay. So, you want to go on a few dates. I can help with that,” she said, feeling useful now. “It’s tourist season. We can–”

“I don’t want to meet some tourist at a bar. I don’t want to just have sex with some woman for the first time and then never see her again, Linden.”

“Hey, don’t knock it until you try it,” she replied, trying not to take offense to that.

“You know I don’t mean that. Your path is yours, Linden. You can… sleep with whomever you want whenever you want. I just don’t want that for myself. I’d like a date with someone who I can have the possibility with should we both decide that we want another date out of it.”

“So, you’re looking for a local, then. We should avoid the Quarter entirely and hit the pubs and bars outside it.”

“Pubs and bars?” Asher said with a sigh. “I’m almost thirty-eight years old. I don’t know that I can meet people in bars. I met Gavin through his work.”

“Well, you can try that again, but it could take a while. I know there are a few ladies who love ladies at our office, but two of them are married, one is in a relationship, and the other is just out of college. So… up to you there, but you gave me crap for Jill, who’s twenty-six. I doubt you’d want to date a twenty-two-year-old.”

“What would we even talk about?” Asher laughed a little. “What would you and Jill talk about?”

Linden shook her head and said, “No, back to you. If you don’t want bars, and you don’t want to date someone from the office, there’s an easier way to meet women.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Well, first, there’s the obvious.”

Asher looked at her, confused.

“The app.”

“Oh, God.” Asher cupped her hands over her face again and shook her head. “I can’t meet someone on an app.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to just have–”

“It’s not Tinder.” Linden laughed. “God, you’re really acting your age, huh?”

“Shut up,” Asher replied with a laugh.

“It’s a matchmaking app. I use it for dates where I’m hoping to get something else out of it, but I’m upfront about it in my profile that I’m not looking for a relationship; just meeting women for a date and maybe some fun should it turn into that. Your profile can be set up to say you’re looking for whatever you want.”

“I’m not sure what I’m looking for,” Asher said as she looked back over at her.

Her eyes weren’t welcoming anymore. They looked lost and a little sad. Linden wished she could take that sadness away from her and help Asher find whatever it was she was looking for.

“Well, when you tell everyone, I’m sure they will have someone to set you up with. That seems to be the lesbian way. Melinda might know someone, for example.”

“I don’t want to be set up, either.”

“Okay. What is it you want, exactly? You’ve only given me what you don’t want so far, Ash.” She chuckled.

Asher stared at her for a long moment before she turned away to face her front door. Linden wasn’t sure what to make of that, but she knew this woman well enough to know that, sometimes, silence was the best way to get Asher to say what she needed to say after she processed it herself first.

“I guess I just want to walk somewhere, and a woman comes up to me, starts a conversation, we laugh a lot, and it’s cute, and then, she’s asking me out on a date, and I’m accepting. We go for coffee first, and it’s nice. There’s more laughing, and she’s pretty, and I’m feeling butterflies, and we go to dinner next. There’s a first kiss, and it’s sweet but not passionate or heated. Then, there’s another date where we kiss, and it is passionate and heated, and we decide what we want to do from there.”

“So, it sounds like you know exactly what you want, and it’s a romantic comedy complete with a meet-cute scenario and the swelling music there at the end, right when you’re about to–” Linden stopped herself. “Well, you know.”

“It’s too much to ask for, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know. I think Melinda and Kyle might have had a similar situation. They met in the real world, not on an app, and no one set them up. Sophie and Bryce kind of had that, too. They met in a bar, though, and Bryce was a tourist. You don’t want that.”

“I just… I don’t know if I’ll like it, Linden. I didn’t know this part of myself was in there.”

“But you know it is now?”

“Yes,” Asher said. “And I want to explore it.”

“Okay. So, I think the best thing to do for now is to set you up with a profile. You’re in control then. If you don’t do anything with it, you don’t, but you have it, and women can see you and send you messages. You’ll have to accept them in order for them to keep messaging, so the pressure is off that way, and you can take your time with it. In the meantime, if you meet someone in the wild, you can pursue that if you want.”

“In the wild,” Asher said with a laugh.

“Oh, no… That’s your drunk laugh.”

“My drunk laugh? I don’t have a drunk laugh.”

“Yes, you do,” Linden said, laughing. “We go through this every time. You get tipsy. I tell you that you have a drunk laugh. You deny it.”

“Well, I don’t.” Asher laughed again.

“Yes, you do. Did you have the whole bottle of wine?”

“No. Gavin had half a glass. It’s still on the dining room table.”

“Okay. Let’s get you to bed. It’s late anyway, and we have work tomorrow.”

“Are you staying?” Asher asked as she stood.

“Yeah, it’s easier,” she said. “Let me help you upstairs, though,” She stood up and helped Asher, who had wobbled a bit. “You always were such a lightweight.”

“I drank my feelings tonight. Leave me alone,” Asher replied. “Shit. The guest room has a bunch of stuff in it.”

“Huh?” Linden asked as they walked up the stairs with her behind Asher, holding on to her hips just to be safe.

“My mom dropped off all my old stuff. They’re moving and didn’t want to lug all my things from high school with them. It’s boxes and boxes of trophies, photo albums, and stuff like that. I threw it in there until I could sort through it and put it away.”

“You just wanted to brag about all those trophies and certificates, didn’t you?”

Asher laughed when they arrived upstairs and said, “No. But it’s boxes of stuff, and I was too lazy to carry it up the stairs when she brought it by last week. If you want, I can help you move it all out of the way, but the bedding might need to be changed because I kind of tossed stuff on there.”

“It’s fine,” Linden replied, turning them until they were standing in Asher’s bedroom. “I’ll just go home. I’m too tired to be your mover for the night.”

“Just stay here,” Asher said, pointing to her bed. “I’ll pass out in a few minutes anyway.”

“I live, like, ten minutes from here. I’ll order a car. It’ll be fine,” she said as she pointed Asher’s body toward the bathroom. “You go in there and take care of whatever.”

“Linden, find clothes in my drawers and stay here. I can just drive us to your place tomorrow, and you can change. You don’t have an early meeting, do you?”

“No, not until ten.”

“Okay. Then, let’s just get some sleep.”

Linden hadn’t ever slept in Asher’s bed before. On the rare occasion she’d stayed over, she usually slept in the guest room, and that was because they’d been drinking or hanging out late, and she hadn’t wanted to go home. She even had a drawer in that room with some extra clothes and a toothbrush in the guest bathroom. The guest bedroom mattress didn’t provide the best night’s sleep. Asher’s bed looked much nicer than even her own. She had probably spent thousands on it and found the perfect mattress for herself, while the guest room had gotten whatever they had on sale. Linden stood still as Asher walked into the bathroom. It took her a full minute to decide to go downstairs and grab the clothes from there, along with her toothbrush, but when she opened the door, she could only see boxes upon boxes.

“Good Lord… How many trophies did she win?” she asked herself.

She couldn’t even see the dresser behind them, so she went into the bathroom and found her toothbrush, leaving the cluttered bedroom and making her way back up the stairs, where she found a shirt and some sweats in Asher’s dresser and changed. Finishing up right when Asher emerged from the bathroom, she held her toothbrush up as if silently asking if she could go in and brush her teeth now.

“So, you saw the boxes?”

“Yes. How many of those are filled with trophies?”

“Oh, at least five,” Asher joked with a wink.