by J. D. Killi
Chloe and Freya : First Night Book 1
Lesbian romance stories
Copyright: Published in the United States by J.D. Killi
Published May 2015
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Introduction
BOOK CONTENT
A Note About The Author
Next Steps
Check Out My Other Books
Bonus
- Chloe And Freya
- Fifty Shades of Lesbian : My daughter Friend Book 3
- UnBroken Book 1
Introduction
When Chloe gets turned down by co-worker Freya, the first person she's ever fallen for, she decides to go speed dating. Meeting Rebecca that night changes Chloe's life. Will she have the courage to make the most of this new person in her life? Or will she let her fear get the better of her?
BOOK CONTENT
Chloe never thought it was possible she might fall in love with another woman. Of course she didn’t ever think she’d fall in love with a man, not after what happened between her parents, so it actually made far more sense that she had fallen for a woman. There was still this niggling doubt in the back of her mind that it was going to work, because it was a relationship, and relationships were… well, to her, they were terrifying. Every time she thought about trusting someone that much she found herself shutting down mentally and emotionally. It was simpler that way. Biting hard on her lip she looked over at Freya, wondering what was going through her mind, wishing for some way of reading minds. Until Freya said something Chloe had no idea what her next step should be, as there was a chance Freya didn’t feel the same way.
“We’ve talked before about relationships.” Freya studied Chloe. “You told me you haven’t been in one before and I’d like to know what’s so different about me you decided to take a chance, when that’s something you’ve never done before.”
“I don’t know exactly.” Chloe nibbled her lip as she tried to work it out. “I have wondered if it’s due to your gender, but I don’t think it is. I think it’s more… you’ve always listened to me. There’s never been a time when you haven’t been willing to hear me out when I needed to talk about something and that is something I need more than anything else to feel comfortable with someone. No one else in my life, not even my parents, has done that for me, so I can’t help believing a relationship with you would work out far better than a relationship with anyone else.”
Freya nodded. “That makes a lot of sense.” Their eyes met. “You said you thought you were falling in love with me…”
“Honestly I have no idea what love feels like, but when I see you my heart skips a beat, my stomach gets filled with butterfly, and there’s this voice in the back of my head that keeps telling me I should kiss you.” Unexpectedly Chloe found herself smiling. “I understand if you don’t feel the same way, Freya, but I thought it was better to be honest with you than keep this all to myself. Had I chosen to keep it to myself it would have become something far harder to deal with than it’s going to be now, as it’s not going to be a secret I feel I have to keep.”
“You made a good choice, I think, but I’ve never thought of you as anything more than a friend, Chloe, so, at this point in time, I’m not going to be entering into a relationship with you.” Freya reached out and touched Chloe’s hand. “I hope you understand.”
Even though she was disappointed she nodded. “I understand. The last thing I would want is for the two of us to get into a relationship that one or other of us feels won’t work.”
***
Going speed dating was quite possibly the most stupid thing Chloe had ever done, but she’d decided to go to a lesbian event, to see if it was women in general she fancied or if it was just Freya. There was a part of her who thought it was just Freya. Chloe had never been attracted to a woman before. At the same time it was entirely possible the whole reason she’d never knowingly been attracted to a woman before was because she didn’t know it was possible. When she stepped into the room alone she couldn’t stop herself from thinking she’d made a huge mistake, as she’d never found it easy to talk to people she didn’t know, and they were all gathered together talking. Breathing deeply she made her way over to the event organiser.
“Hi, I’m Chloe.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” The woman smiled at her. “We’re still waiting on a couple of others, so here’s your number…” Chloe took the little paper badge that was being offered to her and attached it carefully to her blouse. “Go get yourself a glass of wine and relax. These events aren’t just places to meet the woman she might want to go out on a date with, but also somewhere to make friends with people you might never have had a chance to meet before.”
Nodding, Chloe smiled. “Thank you.”
Once she had a glass of wine in her hand Chloe did feel less panicked. She stood in a corner and people watched as they waited for whoever it was that hadn’t yet arrived, which helped even more. It gave her a chance to work out which of the people she was looking at would be easiest to talk with and which of them she didn’t think she’d have anything in common with. The woman she really noticed just happened to look like Natalie Dormer, who was someone Chloe was willing to say she had a crush on. A couple of times their eyes met and the woman smiled. Chloe managed to smile back and all she could do was hope it wasn’t too strained, but if it was she could easily explain it was her first time speed dating and she was far more nervous than she expected to be.
“Right, now that everyone’s here I’d like every woman with an odd number to go and sit down.” Chloe glanced down at her own number and found she was one of the evens, so she stayed standing, while the woman she’d noticed went to sit down. “Evens I’d like you to find the number before you - so if you’re number 8, I want you to sit with woman number 7. Once everyone is in position we’ll start. Remember tonight we’re moving clockwise. After the first table it doesn’t matter which number you end up with.”
Chloe was number 12, so she went to find woman number 11. It appeared that she was on the other side of the room to the woman Chloe had noticed, but that wasn’t a bad thing, because it would give her time to work out what she was going to say.
***
When Chloe finally found herself sitting across from the Natalie Dormer look alike she was feeling far more relaxed than she expected to be. Speed dating had worked out well for her so far, because there were a couple of people she’d already decided to meet up with, even though there hadn’t been any spark between them. It was just obvious they’d be good people to get to know outside of the whole five minutes and then move on thing. “Hi.” Chloe managed to smile. “I’m Chloe.”
“Rebecca.” She smiled back. “I noticed you noticing me.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you’ve been told this before, but you do look very like Natalie Dormer.”
“It has happened a couple of times. Mom told me I should take up work pretending to be her a
nd I decided I’d rather be a paralegal.”
“What’s it like?”
“Interesting. I get to work on the most fascinating cases. Obviously I can’t talk about them until they’re over, because it could lead to problems for the law firm I work for as well as whoever’s involved, so I talk about them afterwards - as long as there isn’t an appeal. What I have been thinking about doing is writing about what it’s like to go through that process as a paralegal and the sort of work we have to do. What work do you do, Chloe?”
“Mine’s far less interesting. I’m a librarian. I work for the university library, which means I get to deal with college boys hitting on me, and they really aren’t all that imaginative when it comes to their chat-up lines.”
“None of the girls?”
“So far I haven’t. I don’t know if that’s because I don’t read as lesbian or if there’s some other reason for it, but I haven’t ever been hit on by one of the college girls.” Chloe thought for a moment. “I don’t think I have, anyway. It’s possible they did and I just didn’t notice, as they were much more subtle about it than the boys were.”
“When I was at college it was my librarian who got me interested in being a paralegal, so I have a lot of respect for anyone who does the job, because I know you do far more than just help students find books.”
“Really?” Chloe sipped her wine. “Most people look at me when I say I’m a librarian and change the subject. You, on the other hand, seem to assume I’m one of those librarians who goes the extra mile to help the students.”
“Am I wrong?”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’ve always been good at reading people and you have this sort of aura about you that tells me you’re quite easily one of the best librarians at your university, so the students are far more likely to talk to you about something than there are to talk to one of their professors.”
***
“So, what did you get up to last night?” Freya and Chloe had gone back to working with each other the same way they had been before. It was nice. “I found myself babysitting for my brother, again, because he was out with another woman.” Freya shook her head. “Eventually Mom and I are going to have to talk with him about this. Since he lost Mary he’s been out almost every night and I think the time has come for him to accept he has children to look after.”
“Maybe he’s trying to find someone who’ll take Mary’s place.” Chloe was grateful she didn’t have to answer Freya’s question quite yet. “Suddenly finding yourself the single parent of three children under the age of 10 can’t be easy.”
“It’s not, and I do have a lot of sympathy, but I want my life back, Chlo. He’s always calling on me, so I have to be at his place until midnight, which means I don’t have chance to do anything that I want to be doing… and before you say anything I have tried saying not to him multiple times. For some reason he’s deaf to it.” Freya sighed. “That’s why I need to get Mom involved. If I don’t he’s just going to keep taking advantage.” She studied Chloe. “Are you going to answer my question?”
Chloe bit her lip. “I went speed dating.” She said it fast so she wouldn’t change her mind in the middle of the sentence. “It was far more fun than I was expecting it to be and I have a date tomorrow with a woman called Rebecca.”
“That’s wonderful news.” Freya literally beamed at Chloe. “I was worried you might decide not to try with someone else, because of what happened, so I’m really pleased to hear you made the decision to try again.”
“For a little while I did think that was my best option, but then I realised I was just letting my fears get the better of me, so I decided it would be far better for me to do something. If I want to let go of the trust issues I have I’m going to have to try trusting someone, no matter how scary that is.”
“What’s Rebecca like?”
“Well, we didn’t get a lot of time to speak last night, obviously, but the one thing it’s impossible not to notice is how much she looks like Natalie Dormer… when she has dark hair that is.”
“I’m so happy for you.” Freya grabbed hold of both Chloe’s hands and Chloe still felt that frisson, which was something she had, mostly, learnt to ignore. “You’re going to have to tell me everything about it tomorrow.”
“As you asked so nicely.” Chloe shook her head. “There might not be anything to talk about, Frey. We might not click.”
***
Rebecca was already at the restaurant when Chloe got there, which was a surprise. Chloe was normally the early one, so finding someone else there early was interesting, and the two of them smiled at each other. “You’re one of that type.” Rebecca smiled. “I think this is going to go well.”
“That type?”
“In this world there are four types of people. Those who are early, like us; those who are always on time; those who are chronically late; and the poor saps who are doing everything they can to speed up the people who are chronically late, who are almost always going to end up disappointed.”
“Mom was one of them.” Chloe sighed. The last thing she wanted to talk about on the first date was her parents, but she continued, because it was the only logical thing to do. “In the end she and Dad got divorced because of that… as well as several other reasons.”
“Untidy divorce, then?”
“Yes, very much so, which wasn’t helped by Dad deciding he was going to date the girl who used to babysit us. It made Mom think there’d been something going on for a while, even though there probably hadn’t, which made her… I was ten when they divorced and she used to be terrible for doing everything she could to blacken his name, but at the time it seemed like the way things were done. Dad did the same thing, so we were weapons in a war between the two of them, and that, I think, is why I do have trust issues.”
“Of course you do.” Rebecca reached out and took Chloe’s hand. “I can’t imagine what that must have been like to deal with. Hearing stories like that always makes me grateful for my parents, because they split up, but they never used me and my sisters as weapons. Mom thought it was important they were both a part of our lives, which is something I didn’t know how much I appreciated until he died of cancer a couple of years ago.”
“Dad and I aren’t close, so I don’t know if I’d even be told if something like that happened to him. I hope I would, I really do, but at the same time I don’t know what it would do for either of us. There are times when I think he hates me for ‘siding’ with Mom, because in the end I made the decision I couldn’t deal with it any longer. When that happened I chose to live with Mom. I found it far too hard to stay with Dad and his girlfriend, so there was no chance of me living there. Every time I saw the two of them together it made me uncomfortable. She was about twenty years younger than him and in general I don’t have a problem with age differences - it was just their relationship that felt wrong to me, as though he was taking advantage of her. I don’t know. It could easily have been Mom’s continuous talk that affected the way I saw them.”
***
“Is that Rebecca?” Freya pointed in the direction of the door and Chloe looked over to see Rebecca really was standing there, two coffees in her hands. “I thought you said last night was a mess.”
“Last night was a mess.” Having a bottle of wine had led to Chloe crying on Rebecca’s shoulder over something she thought she’d got over when she was a teenager and found she’d been very wrong about that. “I don’t know what she’s doing here.” Chloe took her mirror out of her bag to make sure she didn’t look a total state. “I don’t know why she’d be interested in someone like me.”
Freya shook her head. “No, you wouldn’t. Go and talk to her. Don’t leave her waiting there when she want to all that effort, because I doubt you’d have told her where it was you worked.”
Chloe realised she hadn’t mentioned it before. Standing, she made her way over to Rebecca and found herself smiling. “What are you doing here?”
“After w
hat happened last night I thought you might have got the wrong… impression.” Rebecca nibbled her lip. “I didn’t have a problem with what happen. I didn’t have a problem with how upset you got over everything, because I think it’s one of those things it’s far too easy for us to think we’re over when we aren’t really. What I am worried about is how you’re feeling right now. You left rather more abruptly than I was expecting and I think it’s because you thought I was going to have a problem with what happened.”
“We can hardly say it was the best first date ever.”
For a long time Rebecca just stared at Chloe. “You’re a woman with trust issues and you made the decision to trust me with the truth when you had no idea if I was going to use it to hurt you in the future. I went to all the effort of finding you to ask you out on another date, preferably one where we don’t end up having the same difficult conversation, so I was thinking I might take you ballroom dancing, if you’re up for it. There’s this lovely place I go to that’s open to having both lesbian and gay couples there. If they could work out how to teach a three way rumba I’m certain they’d be happy to have threesomes on the dance floor too. Unfortunately if you go as a three or a five then someone’s going to be waiting for a partner.”
“You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.” Rebecca handed Chloe the coffee. “I like the fact you were so open with me. I know how hard it must be to come to terms with now, so I don’t want you to feel like you made a mistake, because you didn’t.”
***
Going dancing wasn’t something Chloe had ever done. There had never been someone for her to go with, so making the decision to go with Rebecca had changed her life once again. Ever since she chose to tell Freya how she felt Chloe’s life had become something so different to the one she’d foreseen. Being with someone was something she couldn’t have imagined happening. Being with another woman… she shook her head as she checked herself over in the mirror. She had no idea what she should be wearing, so she’d decided on a dress she never thought she would wear, but it was so pretty she hadn’t been able to say no to buying it. As she brushed her hands down herself she realised she felt pretty for the first time in a very long time and she was getting pretty for Rebecca.