Next Time

by Alexander, Robin

  Next Time

  By Robin Alexander

  Next Time

  © 2015 by Robin Alexander

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-935216-71-1

  First Ebook Edition: 2015

  This Ebook Is Published By

  Intaglio Publications

  Walker, LA USA

  www.intagliopub.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  _______________________________________________

  Credits

  Executive Editor: Tara Young

  Cover design by: Tiger Graphics

  Dedication

  For Becky

  Acknowledgments

  I love my editors. Tara and her team are awesome. They still love me, even though I went through comma obedience class and failed. I guess it’s the shock collar next.

  Chapter 1

  “I really appreciate y’all agreeing to be a part of my study,” Olivia Graham said as she placed a recorder and notebook on the table.

  “What…is the study for again?” Payton asked with a blank stare.

  Ryann rolled her eyes and smiled apologetically at Olivia. “I’ll be buying her some ginkgo biloba tomorrow, and later on this afternoon, I’ll hook her up to a car battery. She’s due for a charge.”

  Payton huffed. “In my defense, I’ve been working a lot.”

  “That’s okay,” Olivia said with a laugh. “I’m a psychology student, and my thesis is on the dynamics of lesbian and gay relationships. I’d like to talk about when you first met and what your courtship was like.”

  “I’m sorry about my mental lapse. I do remember meeting you at the New Year’s party and discussing some of this, then someone introduced me to Patrón.” Payton shuddered. “That’s an angry demon in a bottle.”

  “I’m not gay. I don’t know if you remember me telling you that,” Olivia said as she toyed with her pen. “My brother Adam is. I got the idea for this when I reunited with a friend I’d grown up with. While we were reconnecting, I mentioned that Adam had recently married his partner, Eric. Natasha’s reaction wasn’t what I expected. I guess I just assumed since she’d been living in California for years that her opinions would be a bit more progressive. Through this study, I’ve learned that we make a lot of assumptions about geography. So I began to question people about their feelings on gay marriage, and I was taken aback to find so many viewed it as something simply political. I’ve realized from a lot of my discussions that some people tend to think same-sex unions are more about sex than love. My intent is to show that same-sex relationships aren’t that much different from any other, although there are obstacles that you face that I don’t.”

  “Very cool. I’m excited,” Payton said as she rubbed her hands together.

  Olivia’s hand hovered above the recorder. “Are we ready to begin?”

  Ryann and Payton glanced at each other and nodded.

  Olivia pressed the Record button and cleared her throat. “The date is January 17, 2015. I am with Ryann Seely and Payton Foret, they’ve been together three years. Ryann is forty-two, and Payton is forty-one.”

  “Forty,” Payton corrected.

  “Honey, you’re forty-one.”

  “No, I’m not. I was born in…oh, you’re right. Okay, anyway, it was love at first sight. Two souls came together at precisely the perfect moment. Stars collided, the earth shook.” Payton shrugged when Ryann and Olivia stared at her. “That’s how it felt for me.”

  “Ryann, what was your impression?” Olivia asked.

  “We met in a bar. I thought she was extremely attractive, but that’s not really what drew me to her. As we began to talk, I felt like I’d always known her.”

  Payton stared at Ryann. “That’s it? Just a little meat, no lettuce, tomato, not even a pickle?”

  “I answered the question,” Ryann said with a shrug.

  Payton turned to Olivia. “Let me lay down the cheese.”

  *******

  *****

  ***

  New Orleans, January 2011

  “I really appreciate you doing this,” Jana Warren said as she stared out the passenger’s window of a cab. “We’ve done the Skype thing, I’ve seen her, and we’ve talked for hours on the phone, but you can never be too sure these days. I had a nightmare last night that I met her in person, the date was stellar, and we ended up going back to her place. Things were getting intense, then she morphs in to a scary-ass monster and bites half my face off.”

  “Damn,” the cab driver whispered with a chuckle.

  “I’m your wingwoman,” Payton said distractedly as she read an email on her phone. “If I see fur or fangs, I’ll throw you over my shoulder and whisk you away.”

  “You should try it sometime—the online thing.” Jana fidgeted nervously. “Melanie is amazing. We like all of the same things, she loves to cook and going to wine tastings. She’ll devour a whole book in a weekend, sometimes two. She’s fiscally responsible, her retirement plan is kick-ass.” Jana sighed. “She’s perfect…or at least she seems so, but tonight will decide if all of our chatting will pay off.”

  Payton stuffed her phone into the pocket of her jacket and laid a hand on Jana’s shoulder. “Relax. You babble when you’re nervous, then you get mad at yourself and clam up,” she said as she picked a piece of lint off Jana’s sweater. “You look great, and you smell pretty good. You’ll do just fine.” Payton’s advice fell on deaf ears because as the cab pulled up at the curb in front of the bar, Jana began to pant like a dog. Payton pulled a couple of bills from her pocket and handed them to the cabbie. “Give us just a sec, please.”

  “I can’t go in there. We were doing so well online. Why should I mess it up?”

  Payton met Jana’s unfocused gaze. “This is for your own good,” she said and thumped Jana on the ear.

  “Ow! Shit! I hate it when you do that!” Jana shouted and climbed out of the cab.

  “Don’t judge, we would’ve been here for an hour otherwise,” Payton said with a wink for the cabbie, who stared at her in the rearview, then she climbed out of the car. “Jana, open that door and go in, or I will punch you in the forehead.”

  Jana grabbed the lapel of Payton’s jacket and drew her close. “You stay at my side, and if I start sneezing, that’ll be my cue to drag me out of there.”

  “Count on me.”

  There were only a handful of patrons in the club on a Tuesday night. A woman seated at a piano in the far corner of the room played to a few people gathered around her baby grand. There were two women seated at the bar, and without Jana having to say so, Payton knew who Melanie was. She and Jana had nearly the same short hairstyle, Melanie’s was blond, Jana’s brown. They both wore rectangular-framed glasses.

  Payton was transfixed by the pair as they slowly approached each other wearing shy smiles. Then they began to talk at the same time, admitting how nervous they were and how wonderful the other looked. They continued to talk as they moved to a table, and Payton felt it would be weird to join, so she went to the bar close by.

  “I don’t think we’re needed anymore.”

  Payton motioned for the bartender and set her gaze on the woman seated next to her. “Are you Melanie’s wingwoman?”

  “Ryann Seely, recently retired wingwoman,” she said as she put her hand out.

  “Payton Foret, ret
ired, as well, pleasure to meet you.”

  “I’m not the one Melanie wanted. She thinks my partner would make a better bodyguard, but Leigh had to work late.” Ryann glanced over her shoulder at the pair of lovebirds. “From the looks of it, Melanie won’t need any protection or emotional support.”

  “I had to resort to physical…motivation to get Jana to come in here. She was seconds away from a complete meltdown.” Payton winced. “I hate first dates, they’re so awkward. You’re sizing them up, and you know they’re doing the same. You constantly wonder what they’re thinking as you try to make a good impression. It’s kind of like a poker game, no one shows their hand, and the tension mounts.”

  Ryann nodded with a smile. “You sound like someone who’s been fixed up a lot.”

  “I’d like a green apple martini,” Payton said to the bartender when he joined them. “And another of whatever she’s having.” She returned her attention to Ryann and noted the ring on her finger. “I have been the project of a few matchmakers. You’re one of the lucky souls who has found your other half and is living out your happy ever after.”

  “Eight years,” Ryann said with a smile. “It’s a lot of work.”

  “How so?”

  One of Ryann’s brows rose. “You’ve never been with anyone long enough to know?”

  “My longest was ten years.” Payton propped her chin in her hand. “I thought we worked well, but when Courtney turned thirty, everything changed. She told me she wasn’t happy anymore, that she’d taken a look at her life and wondered if what she had was all there was. At first, I thought it was the crisis a lot of people go through when they’re leaving their twenties. A day after that conversation, she left me for a girl who was barely twenty-one. And that is my story.”

  Ryann waved off Payton’s money when the drinks came. “I’m running a tab, and it’s on me. Besides, it’s the least I can do after hearing that sad tale.”

  “Thank you,” Payton said after she took a sip of her martini. “Talk to me about the work you mentioned. Perhaps I did something wrong.”

  Ryann shrugged. “I have to cook when I don’t particularly want to. I watch movies I don’t care anything about, go places that bore me. Leigh does the same. I suppose the work is always remembering that you have to compromise. We live as one, but we really are two different people.”

  Payton shook her head. “I did all of those things. We didn’t talk, though, at least not about things we should have. I guess we got to the point that I thought I knew what she was thinking all the time. I can look back on it now and see that I’d fallen into that long-term relationship trap where I thought I knew her. We didn’t talk about dreams anymore. Know what I mean?”

  “Yeah,” Ryann said after a second or two and took a drink.

  Payton shook her head slowly and stared at her glass. “That was a really painful time in my life, but it taught me so much. I did things I thought I would never do. I always thought if anyone cheated on me, I would never take her back, but I did that with Courtney. When she left, all I could think of was getting her back. I couldn’t remember one negative thing about her, forgot about all the things she did that grated my nerves. But when we got back together, I didn’t see her the same way. All I noticed were faults. She didn’t even look the same to me. She wasn’t as attractive, she wasn’t as funny as I remembered. I saw her with completely different eyes. We didn’t last a month before I called it quits.”

  “We do turn a blind eye to some things.” Ryann looked away when Payton gazed at her. “It’s the whole ‘love is blind’ thing, I guess. Sometimes, cuts are too deep, and you lose your ability to do that.”

  Payton released a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry for being a total downer. I don’t know what got into me.”

  “Don’t apologize,” Ryann said with a smile. “Small talk bores me, that’s why I’m not any good at it.”

  “What kind of work do you do—wait, let me guess.” Payton narrowed her eyes and gazed at Ryann’s hands. They were smooth, her short nails covered in clear polish. She appeared to be in her mid- to late thirties. Her auburn hair was shiny beneath the light directly above her. Payton couldn’t decide whether she considered it short or kind of long. It fell in shimmering waves onto her shoulders when she ran a hand through it. Her eyes were dark brown and almost cat-like, and they disappeared completely when she smiled. She had on a pair of black slacks and high-heeled boots, but the way she gestured when she spoke wasn’t ultra-feminine as her look implied. Beneath her wool coat, she wore a simple white blouse revealing a string of small white pearls around her neck. Her features were narrow, giving her a delicate appearance along with her creamy complexion. “It’s not physical labor. You work at a bank.”

  Ryann’s laugh was lilting as she shook her head. “Math nearly kept me from graduating college.”

  Payton tapped her temple with her index finger. “A podiatrist.”

  “Oh, this is going to go on a long time,” Ryann said with a smile.

  “I give up. Surprise me.”

  “I teach American history at a private school not far from here.”

  Payton threw up a hand. “That was my next guess.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Yes, I am,” Payton said with a laugh.

  “What do you do?”

  “I’m a teacher of sorts, too. I compose the cute, but annoyingly repetitious songs you hear on children’s educational programming. If you want to learn your vowels, I am the go-to woman. What can’t we do with A, E, I, O, U?” Payton sang and drummed a little beat on the bar. “Right now, I’ve got one about Ponkey the Donkey brewing in my head, but I can’t seem to make much use of it.”

  “How’d you get into that?” Ryann asked with interest.

  “I’ve always come up with odd jingles. Mind you, I am not what I set out to be. In my youth, I saw myself writing pop hits. Every time I hear a song on the radio about booty, I grit my teeth and say, ‘Damn, I could’ve written that.’” Payton shook her head slowly. “It just wasn’t in the cards for me. I didn’t know that when I packed my bags and headed for Los Angeles. Courtney was a singer and had her dreams, too, but she ended up doing vocals for commercials. Through her networking, I met someone who asked me if I could write a song for an animation company he was working with. Tex—his nickname because of his accent, and he was from El Paso—is now my agent. They liked what they heard and gave me a shot. I made a reputation for myself pretty fast, and before I knew it, I had more work than I could handle.” Payton held up a finger. “You want to know the real irony? I left Louisiana because it didn’t hold any opportunities for me, and I ended up right where I started. It’s become the Hollywood of the South.”

  “I know. I was late for work last week because a movie was being filmed on the route I normally take. The morning traffic reports are full of warnings to avoid certain areas because of filming. Unfortunately, on that day, I didn’t listen.” Ryann took a sip of her drink. “Music is a great learning tool. I tell my students if they’re having a hard time remembering things that will be on a test to write a song with the facts and memorize it.”

  “That’s how I made it through school.” Payton looked over her shoulder at the pair seated at the table behind them. Embroiled in conversation, they hadn’t ordered drinks. Jana’s gaze was riveted on Melanie. “I think we may have a match.”

  Ryann glanced at them and nodded. “Jana is all Melanie has talked about for the past few weeks. She’s a good woman in case you were wondering. She lives next door to us, we’ve known her for years.”

  “Jana’s good, too. She’s not a play-the-field kind of girl. Once she decides she likes someone, that’s it.”

  “Are you doing the online thing, too?”

  “No, but I probably should. I mostly work from home now. I don’t meet that many people.” Payton sighed. “I say this because I’d love to play the field, I just don’t know where it is. I’m thirty-seven, too old in my opinion to hang out in clubs, hence t
he fix-ups. I haven’t gone on one of those since the last one…two—no, three years ago.”

  “I know a—”

  “No.” Payton smiled and picked up her drink. “No thank you. I’ve taken my love life into my own hands…please don’t read too much into that statement.”

  Ryann laughed and raised her own glass in a toast. “I wish you success.”

  “I wish you continued happiness,” Payton said as she met Ryann’s glass with her own. “How’d you meet the love of your life?”

  “I have a friend who considers himself a matchmaker. He wanted to set me up with a friend of his and threw a dinner party. The woman I was supposed to meet didn’t know Cameron’s plans and surprised Cameron and I both by bringing a date who just happened to be Leigh.” Ryann smiled and ran a hand through her hair again. “The attraction was instantaneous. Cameron said he could see the sparks flying when we looked at each other. The next morning when Cameron woke up, he found Leigh sitting in his driveway, and she asked him for my number.”

  “Y’all were just meant to be,” Payton said with a winsome smile.

  Ryann looked away and nodded. “What type of woman are you looking for?”

  “Is your inner matchmaker asking, or is it curiosity?”

  “The latter,” Ryann said with an impish grin.

  “Looks are important.” Payton put up her hand. “Don’t judge too quickly, I mean that I’d like to be attracted to her physically, but personality is really the key. I’d like someone who knows who she is, who isn’t afraid to self-analyze. Of course, that comes from experience after what Courtney did. When she came back, she said she really didn’t know why she did what she did and claimed that she never stopped loving me. I never could get her to admit why she felt unhappy. Maybe if we had talked before she took off, whatever was going on inside of her could’ve been worked out. I want a woman who isn’t afraid to talk about what she’s feeling. I want to be comfortable enough with her to do the same.” Payton tapped the bar with her index finger as she thought. “My work is important to me. I need someone who will understand when inspiration hits, I need time to work on it. That’s kind of hard to jam into the hours between nine and five. A sense of humor is a must and a good work ethic. I can cope with many things, laziness isn’t one of them. Is my list too long?”