Never the Same

by Michele L. Rivera

  “I can explain to you why I went to Hanna’s earlier, but you might not understand,” Paige said.

  “Paige, I tell you that we’re going to wait to sleep together and then you decide to drop by your ex’s? To what? Say hello? You keep forgetting I’ve been following your blog since it launched. I’ve read about your sexual interludes with Hanna, your dependency on them, on her.”

  “I’ve told you that’s done.”

  “And I believed you. So if you have a kosher reason for being at Hanna’s tonight, I’d really like to hear it,” Lennox said.

  “I do. I have one, but—”

  “You don’t think I’ll understand.”

  “Right,” Paige said.

  “Try me.”

  “I had to tell her I was sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?” Lennox asked.

  “I used her for sex after she broke up with me. I did it for the blog. It’s the scenario my readers wanted, and I wanted my readers so I gave it to them,” Paige said. “To have or to be the thing others covet…the feeling is euphoric. I wasn’t willing to give it up. Not even at Hanna’s expense.” Paige shook her head. “I really thought I meant something to them. Until I knew I didn’t. Because you, the song, the way you look at me—” Paige smiled timorously. “Lennox, I had to emend my script to write you into it. But I had to do it with rectitude, so I needed to apologize to Hanna. It’s how I do, it’s who I am, it’s—”

  “Paige, I get why you did what you did,” Lennox said.

  “You do?”

  “Yes.” Eyes shining, Lennox reached for Paige’s hand and weaved her fingers between Paige’s. “It’s why I…like you…a lot.”

  Paige stepped forward, closing in on Lennox. “I like you, too. Lots.”

  Lennox smiled. “Good. I’m glad we cleared that up.”

  “Does this mean I can kiss you?” Paige asked.

  “You don’t have to ask.”

  Paige leaned into Lennox and pressed her lips against Lennox’s forehead. “One peck. That’s all you get.”

  Lennox laughed. “Wow. You just made fun of me.”

  “Whaaat! Me? Nooo. You’ve got the wrong girl,” Paige said.

  “Only I haven’t.”

  “You’re sweet,” Paige said.

  “Maybe,” Lennox said. “Still, you’re so gonna get it for that stunt you just pulled!”

  “I’m gonna get it, huh? And will you be the giver?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s what I’m waiting for.” Paige winked.

  “We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow,” Lennox said. “Go to bed, Paige.”

  “You can come.”

  “I already did.” Lennox winked back.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The phone on Paige’s nightstand buzzed. Paige yawned and drowsily opened her eyes. She glanced at her alarm clock. 6:37 a.m. She grumbled into her pillow and picked up the phone. There was a text from Lennox.

  Good morning.

  A smile spread across Paige’s mouth and she responded.

  Good morning.

  Lennox texted back.

  Did I rouse you from your slumber?

  Paige nodded, still smiling, and typed her reply.

  Yes, you did. But in a good way.

  Without delay, another message from Lennox came through.

  Okay. Then I’m not sorry. Did you sleep well?

  Paige sent Lennox her answer.

  I slept alright. You?

  Lennox responded.

  No. I was restless.

  Paige ran her thumb and forefinger over her chin thoughtfully before sending her text.

  Are you worried about band practice? The gig?

  Lennox responded right away.

  Nope. I just couldn’t stop thinking.

  Paige pursed her lips and wrote back.

  About?

  Paige’s phone buzzed again in her hands with a new message from Lennox.

  What it would be like to taste you.

  Paige’s eyes opened wide and she gasped. All the blood in her body rushed to her cheeks. Surreptitiously, she looked to Keira’s bed where Keira and Marissa were soundly asleep. Paige exhaled and re-read Lennox’s words. Before she could write anything, Lennox texted a question.

  What are you wearing?

  Paige shrugged and texted back.

  Pajamas.

  Lennox was quick with her reply.

  What kind of pajamas?

  Paige lifted the sheets covering her and glimpsed at her clothing. She sent Lennox a message.

  Sweatpants and a tank top.

  At once Paige received Lennox’s next message.

  Do you have on underwear?

  Paige grinned and answered.

  Maybe. Do you?

  Paige stared at her cell and received Lennox’s reply.

  No, because you took them off with your teeth. And now you’re kissing me everywhere. And I do mean EVERYWHERE.

  Paige closed her eyes, flooded with a yearning for Lennox. She took a breath and read Lennox’s incoming message.

  Are you as wet as I am?

  Paige swallowed. The pitter-patter in her chest thumped furiously, ready to explode. She glanced at Keira and Marissa for the second time, then at her phone. She shook her head, typed, and sent Lennox her text.

  Wetter.

  Lennox wrote back.

  Yeah? Why don’t we each touch ourselves just to be sure?

  Paige turned to Keira and Marissa, both still sleeping. She put the phone down on the mattress, reached under the covers, and untied the drawstring on her pants. Paige’s phone buzzed again. Marissa rustled in Keira’s bed on the other side of the room. Paige froze. Marissa’s fatigued eyelids lifted and she looked at Paige. Paige’s cellular made another low-pitched noise. Paige cringed. Marissa’s eyes darted from Paige’s phone to Paige’s left arm.

  Marissa gaped at Paige. “Are you sexting?”

  Paige’s mouth went dry. “I…uh…I was…”

  Marissa pointed at Paige. “Dude! No! You are not going to get yourself off with me and Keira in the room!”

  Keira woke up, disoriented. “Guys, quiet.”

  Marissa grabbed onto Keira’s shoulder and shook it. “Keira! Paige was about to stimulate herself with us here.”

  Keira shielded her eyes from the morning light with her forearm. “Ugh! Paige, you know our roommate bylaws. Don’t break them.”

  “You broke one,” Paige said to Keira. “There’s another girl in your bed and I’m present.”

  “Marissa’s our friend. I wouldn’t have sex with her,” Keira said to Paige.

  Marissa stared at Keira. “Really, Keira? Thanks. That was uplifting.”

  “Oh, and you’d have sex with me?” Keira asked Marissa.

  Paige sat up, her eyebrows raised at her friends.

  “Yeah, I would,” Marissa said to Keira.

  “What?” Keira moved further from Marissa, her back pressed into the wall.

  “You’re a total babe,” Marissa said to Keira. “And you’re cool.”

  Paige’s grin was ruptured by her phone whirring against her mattress. She picked it up and read Lennox’s missed texts.

  That was for leading me on last night. You should really start taking my threats more seriously, Paige.

  I hope you had as much fun as I did. XO.

  Paige got out of her bed and walked to Keira’s. “The bylaws thing. I’m sorry. I won’t even think about breaking any of them from this day forth.”

  “Damn straight you won’t.” Keira smiled at Paige. “And neither will I.”

  “Now please go service yourself…in the shower,” Marissa said to Paige.

  Paige gave Marissa a dirty look, then took her bathroom caddy from her dresser and headed for the exit. “Alright. I’m off.”

  “Have a spanking time.” Marissa winked at Paige. “Don’t forget today’s moving day and we have practice. Aphrodite will be in our possession from nine to seven, swamped. I’m begging
you not to addle her with seductive messages.”

  Paige smirked. “You should think about heisting her phone then.”

  “Aargh!” Marissa shook her head.

  Paige chuckled. “You sure I can’t lend you a hand with the equipment?”

  “Bahahahaha!” Marissa held onto her belly, laughing.

  Paige rolled her eyes. “I know. I asked for that. Make your pun,” she said to Marissa.

  “Where to begin?” Marissa squealed. “That was precious!”

  “Leave while you can,” Keira said to Paige. “We’ll fare without you. It’s a band thing.”

  Paige nodded. “Cool. It’s best if I don’t miss my classes and I’ve got a blog post to publish. But good luck.” Paige turned the knob on the door.

  “Thanks,” Keira said to Paige. “Bye!”

  “Bye!” Paige left the suite and pulled out her phone. She sent Keira a message.

  Aha! See? You’re not invisible to Marissa. Just as I foretold.

  Then Paige texted Lennox.

  XO

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Who’s the girl?” Mr. Galner asked Paige.

  Paige scoffed into the mouthpiece of her phone. “What?” She dug the outsole of her boot into the pebbles flooring the empty playground, a sanctuary following the three grueling classes she took earlier that day. An autumn gale littered the browning grass bordering the sand on which Paige stood with fallen leaves.

  “I’m your father, Paige. I have paternal intuition.”

  “Dad.”

  “Or I just read the post you put up on the interweb today.”

  “But I didn’t write anything about a girl,” Paige said.

  “No. What you did, though, was take down your post deriding bisexuality and publish another one about the ‘necessity for unification within the queer community.’ Hun, you’re a staunchly woman like your Nana Galner yet your viewpoint has changed. Someone or something marvelous had to have been your inspiration. So her name?”

  Paige sighed. “Lennox.”

  Mr. Galner chuckled. “Ah. And this Lennox isn’t a lesbian, is she?”

  “No. She’s bisexual. I’m sorry.”

  “Are you ashamed?” Mr. Galner asked.

  “No!”

  “Why are you sorry then?”

  “Because Mom’s—”

  “Paige, stop it. We did this already with Dr. Lutts. I’m not apologetic about anything pertaining to your mother and neither should you be.”

  Paige sat on the bottom, plastic rung of the jungle gym. “Why do you forgive her?”

  “She is the mother of my child and I have a certain kind of love for her.”

  “So do I. The hatred kind.”

  “You can’t carry around hatred. It will make you look haggard. You’re twenty. You don’t want to look haggard, do you?” Mr. Galner asked.

  Paige shook her head. “No.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Ugh! Dad, I can’t understand how you can feel affection for her.”

  “Love has no why, no how, no who. It just is.”

  Paige’s throat clogged. She stared up, between the leafless branches of the oak tree standing a couple feet away, into the shrinking sunlight. She touched her finger to her lips, forever marked by Lennox’s kisses. Specks of liquid spilled from Paige’s eyes for no other reason than that of knowing. She smiled.

  “Paige, your mother called me yesterday,” Mr. Galner said.

  Paige’s smile transformed into a grimace. She balled her left hand into a fist and dried her cheeks with her knuckles. “What?” Paige asked. “She waited five years to call and you answered?”

  “Yes. She—”

  “Why would you speak to her after what she did?” Paige asked.

  “I needed to hear what she had to say.”

  “And what did she have to say?”

  “She’s a changed person. She regrets how she went about things,” Mr. Galner said.

  “Oh. How nice of her. Gee. I’m all healed now.”

  “You do get your spunk from her.”

  “No!” Paige shouted. “I am none of her!”

  “Will you talk to her?”

  “Did she ask you to ask me that?”

  “Yes. Maybe if you spoke to her, you’d get some closure,” Mr. Galner said.

  “Uh uh. Nope.”

  “People make mistakes.”

  “She is not people,” Paige said. “She is my mother and she left me!”

  “Okay. Paige, it’s okay. You don’t have to call her, but please let me give you her number.”

  “I gotta go, Dad.”

  Mr. Galner exhaled. “Are you still coming to dinner Saturday?”

  “Sure,” Paige said.

  “You can bring Lennox. I’d like to meet her.”

  “Goodbye, Dad.” Paige hung up the phone and folded it in her hands. It rang. She glanced at the caller ID. Her father. She pressed the button that would end the call. Laggardly, Paige got off the monkey bars, pocketed her phone, and lumbered back to her car.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Lennox opened the door to her room seconds after Paige knocked on it.

  “Hey there.” Lennox smiled and the warm gold around her pupils flickered.

  Paige afforded a smile of her own. “Hi.”

  “Coming in?” Lennox asked.

  “I don’t know if I should.”

  Lennox pouted. “Why?”

  “I have a lot of feels right now and you look really hot in that tee shirt,” Paige said.

  Lennox chuckled. “It’s a plain old V-neck.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve never seen you in short sleeves.” Paige raised an eyebrow. “Do you work out?”

  “Wow. You are in such bad need of new lines.”

  “What? That wasn’t even a line. Your arms…they’re all, um, muscular,” Paige said.

  “It’s because I was moving equipment and I’ve been drumming most of the day.” Lennox pursed her lips. “Do you have a thing for arms?”

  “Pssht. No.” Paige smirked. “But I have a thing for you.”

  Lennox laughed. “Get in here,” she said and grabbed the collar of Paige’s plaid button-down to pull her inside the room.

  Paige clutched the doorframe. “Hey hey hey. Waaaait.”

  Lennox rolled her eyes but gave Paige a lopsided smile. “What? I can put on a sweatshirt.”

  “Right. Okay. But I still have the feels,” Paige said.

  “Uh huh.” Lennox set Paige loose from her grip. “And did you want to talk about these feelings with me?”

  “Eh.”

  “Alright. Are you…horny?” Lennox asked.

  “Um. I could be.”

  “I could be also. You know, Paige, playing music for hours on end kinda gets me going. And you, well, you definitely get me going.” Lennox bit her lip. “So you should probably come inside.”

  “No,” Paige said.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Huh.” Lennox nodded. “We’ll have privacy because my roommate’s gone,” Lennox said.

  “Where is she?”

  “At her boyfriend’s. For the night.” Lennox grinned. “Soooo…”

  “No. I’ll stay out here,” Paige said.

  “Are you scared?”

  “Yes,” Paige said.

  “Of me?”

  “Of everything.”

  “Paige, will you tell me what’s bothering you? Please.”

  Paige exhaled. “A voice message on my phone.”

  Lennox’s brow puckered. “What does it say?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t listen to it,” Paige said.

  “Then how can you be sure it’s a vexing message?”

  “I have a premonition that it’s about my mother.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s from my dad. He called me today because she called him, and now he wants me to talk to her,” Paige said. “I can’t talk to her.”

  “That’s okay
.”

  “Is it?” Paige asked. “Does that make me a terrible person?”

  Lennox frowned. “No.” She touched Paige’s cheek. “Paige, no. You’re not a terrible person. You’re one of the good ones.”

  Paige smiled, unsure.

  Lennox moved her hand to Paige’s shoulder. “I can listen to the message for you?”

  “Yeah? You’d do that?” Paige asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  Paige pulled her phone from her pocket and gave it to Lennox. “Here you go.”

  Lennox let go of Paige, took the phone, and stared at the keypad. “It’s locked.”

  “Unlock it,” Paige said.

  Lennox peered up at Paige. “I thought you changed the password.”

  “I did.”

  “Right. I sort of need the new code,” Lennox said.

  “Oh! Yes. 0-9-1-2.”

  Lennox went to type in the number but stopped. She looked at Paige. “That’s the day we went to The Bean, the first time we hung out.”

  Paige nodded. “Yup. I only use momentous dates.”

  Lennox smiled, punched in the code, and held the phone to her ear. As she listened, she walked to her desk, picked up a pen, and wrote on a piece of scrap paper. She locked the cell’s screen, folded the note, and went back to Paige. “Here you go,” Lennox parroted Paige and put the phone in Paige’s jean pocket.

  “Thanks for doing that,” Paige said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “What’s on the paper?”

  Lennox flapped the note around. “This?” She put it in the back pocket of her pants. She smirked. “If you want it, you’ll have to step over the threshold to get it.”

  Paige scowled and entered Lennox’s dorm room. “May I see what’s on the paper?”

  “It’s your mom’s number.”

  “Ugh. Forget it. You can have it,” Paige said.

  “Well, you know where it is if you—”

  “Nope,” Paige said.

  “Alrighty.” Lennox sucked in a breath. “What happens now?”

  Paige put her hand up to her forehead and winced. “Lennox, I’m sorry. Can we begin again?”

  “What?”

  “This is our official date and I’ve made it into a debacle,” Paige said.

  “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay.” Paige cleared her throat, cracked her neck, and leaned against the door panel, arms folded across her chest. She pursed her lips and raised her head upwards in an incomplete nod. “Hey, pretty lady.”