There's a fraction of a moment when I wake up that I forget last night, forget where I am, until I clock the different wallpaper, different bed; until I roll over and I see Lou asleep beside me. Gently snoring, her hair all over the place. It's wavier than usual, the ends curling. I have never seen her before she has brushed it before.

This room is lighter. Brighter. More lived in. I didn't take it in last night — I had other things on my mind — but now I take a moment to look around from the comfort of Lou's bed. Her room is at the back of the house, her window facing the lake, and she has a skylight directly over her bed. Sunlight pours through it, turning her sleeping form into a pool of liquid gold. She's on her front, the comforter covering the lower half of her back. I could lose myself counting the freckles I can see.

I don't know what to expect today. If last night was a blip, or if we've turned a corner. When Lou wakes up, is she going to be wracked with regret or will she kiss me good morning?

I slip out of bed. My footsteps are silent on her thick, plush carpet. It's free from dirt and stains, but I see several of her long copper hairs that have woven themselves into the fibers. I pull one out and hold it up to the light and it shines a hundred different colors: orange and bronze and gold and honey, glinting in the sun until it drifts back to the floor.

This won't do. I go back to my room and find something to wear, and I make myself busy downstairs. Breakfast. I can make breakfast. I find the bread, a thick unsliced loaf directly from the baker, and I carve off a few generous slices. I crack a few eggs into a bowl and find a whisk to whip them into a froth, and I open every drawer and cabinet and cupboard until I find cinnamon and vanilla extract and a splash of heavy cream. I dig out a dish to lay the bread in, ready to soak up my sweet, eggy concoction when Lou emerges. Who doesn't love French toast? It's one of my specialties, even better with a drizzle of syrup and a few fresh berries. Which, when I search the fridge, I find. Lou really did stock up.

The coffee machine is brewing. My heart is thudding heavier and harder than usual, caught in this moment where I don't know how things are going to go. If Lou will ask me to leave, or act like nothing happened, or tell me it was a mistake. I find it a lot harder to imagine good things happening. Low expectations, right? I can't be disappointed if I expect nothing. And yet I know that if Lou comes down here with anything but a sleepy, post-sex smile, I will crumble.

I pour myself a coffee. Add plenty of milk and, in the absence of flavorings, I try a dash of vanilla essence. Can't be too different to coffee syrup, I figure, except it gives my coffee a potent, almost alcoholic taste. I almost spit it out, but after a second mouthful it grows on me. I need the caffeine anyway, for whatever is going to transpire this morning. I'm too distracted to do anything but sit and wait, my mug warming my hands as the sun warms the world, until I hear movement upstairs and I spring into action. Pour my eggy cinnamon mix over the four slices of bread, find the perfect pan to fry it up and a couple of matching plates. It's agony waiting for Lou to emerge, but then she does, and the fear melts off my chest.

"Hey," she says, and she gives me a sleepy, sexy smile. "What're you making?"

"French toast."

"It's like you read my mind." She joins me in the kitchen and her arm is around my waist, her fingers resting over my hip bone, and when I turn my head, she's right there. I am a sunflower and she is the sun: I will always look to her, reach for her. I blossom under her touch, anxiety unfurling its tight petals when her lips touch mine.

Okay, she isn't filled with regret. I lean into her, my hand over the base of her spine, and I kiss her back.

When breakfast is ready, we take it out to the table on the dock with fresh coffee and a bowl full of extra fruit. Raspberries and cut-up strawberries and plump blueberries that bleed purple when I pierce them along with a forkful of French toast.

"When you said you had dalliances after James..." My question trails off, hoping she will find the end and pick it up and lead it to an answer.

"With women," she says.

"Okay, 'cause I was gonna say, there's no way last night was your first time with a woman."

She grins, lowers her eyes, shakes her head. "Not my first time, no. My first time in a long time though." She moves a sliver of her toast around her plate, mopping up syrup and juice from the raspberries. "Worth the wait."

"You play your cards close to your chest. I was worried you were going to kick me out for coming on to you."

A laugh bursts out of her like sparks from a firework, bright and explosive. "God, no, Charlotte, I would never. If I wasn't interested, I would have let you down gently the minute I thought you were flirting." She sets down her knife and fork and says, "If you couldn't tell, I'm very interested."

"I got that impression. Nobody does things like that with their tongue if they're not interested."

She catches my bare foot between hers, her toes tickling the back of my calf. "You turned up last week and shook everything upside down," she says, almost to herself, eyes on her plate as she tears into her second slice of toast. "It was fate, I think, that you ended up needing somewhere to stay."

I don't ask what happens next. When I am gone in a week. If this is just another fling, another dalliance. Because that's all it can be, because I will be gone and she will be here, but I don't do flings. I only ever know how to throw myself in at the deep end so I don't want to think about the future; I want to focus on the now. Lou sitting opposite me with the sun on her face, her feet teasing mine.

"So, are you bi? If you don't mind me asking. Not that you, like, need to label yourself or anything."

"I think so," she says after a long pause. "That's the word I tend to use, though I've only ever been attracted to one man and I don't ... I don't know if I would be, if he was still here."

"Oh."

"Mmm." Her fingers tangle in her hair, strands catching on her rings and floating off when the breeze picks up. "A few years into our marriage, I started realizing my feelings had changed," she says. Her words are quiet. Slow. Considered. "James was a wonderful man. A good man. But I didn't love him anymore. Not like that."

"Did you ever tell him?"

She shakes her head. "I was still, I don't know, figuring things out when he died."

"Oh, god."

"The most awful thing was that in the midst of the shock and the anger and the fear and the grief, there was this little flicker of ... relief." She wiggles her fingertips. "God, that makes me sound awful. I had a lot of guilt, too. Like I had brought this upon him by wishing I hadn't rushed into marrying him just because I got pregnant."

"You don't sound awful," I say, reaching across to take her hands. "You sound human. And, I don't know, confused."

"I was. Very." She lifts her gaze to mine. "I'm not anymore."

I am filled with so many butterflies I swear I could take flight. I am light enough to float to the clouds, anchored only by Lou's hands, by the weight of her words.

The moment is interrupted by the ringtone of Lou's cell phone. She turns it face up and her expression lightens. "It's Issy," she says, swiping to answer. "Hi, honey." She stands, squeezes my shoulder as she walks up the jetty to the house, chatting away to her daughter. I lean back in my seat and blow out a long breath, emptying my lungs of air. I keep having to remind myself that Lou is a mom. That she has a teenager — her daughter is an entire adult of her own, and I bet she has her shit together way more than I do.

*

I check my messages for the millionth time. Still no reply from Gaby. I don't know whether to be pissed off or offended or concerned or upset; I want to send her another message, to see if she's okay and prompt her to think of me, but if she is already trying to slice me out of her life then bugging her might only speed up that process.

I'm staring at my last text to her when my phone buzzes in my hand with a message from Riley: i'm thinking of doing a run over to fisher view on the other side of the lake this morning, wanna join? it's a longer route (about 4 miles each way) but there's a cool scenic track off of the highway and there's decent cloud cover today.

I could do with a run. Fresh air. Clear my head. Give Lou some space, some alone time to chat to her daughter. Sounds good! I text back. Wanna meet in town?

actually ill come to you, Riley says. makes the run a bit shorter lol. is 20 min too soon?

that's perfect, I send, and I gather up the remains of breakfast. Lou's in the window seat, animatedly chatting away to Issy while I wash the dishes and stack them on the draining board to dry. She waves at me, mouths at me not to bother, that she will do it later, but I pretend not to understand. I know she says this isn't a transaction, that I don't owe her anything, but I can't do nothing. Plus, I mean, things are different now. We slept together. We're sleeping together. I'm not just a houseguest anymore.

I change into some of my new running gear and tie up my hair. It's only recently that it's grown long enough to tie up after I made the poor decision to get a bob at the start of the year. It didn't suit me, and it frustrated me that I had to use bobby pins to keep it off my face. Now it's almost back to my shoulders, where I like it.

When I go back downstairs, Lou glances at me and then does a double take when she notices the tight lycra of my pants, the brand new cropped running top that's basically a sports bra, leaving my stomach exposed. I jog on the spot and mouth, "I'm going for a run."

She gives me a thumbs up. When there's a knock on the front door, she exaggerates her confusion, listening intently to whatever Issy is saying. I open the door, indicate Riley with a sweep of my arm, and whisper-yell, "We're going together."

Lou's face clears. Another thumbs up. She returns to her conversation; I pull the door shut behind Riley and me once I've looped my sling bag across my body and made sure I have a full bottle of water, something to eat, and plenty of charge on my phone.

"Ready for this?" Riley jogs on the spot outside the house, her thick curls bouncing between her shoulder blades. Her car is parked at an angle outside the house, like it's been dumped.

"Absolutely not." I laugh as I stretch in the middle of the driveway, limbering up my body for the longest run I'll have done in years, if I survive all eight miles of it. I'm feeling pumped up though, full of energy and adrenaline, and as we set off, we agree to take it easy this time. No racing. No attempts at personal bests. Just a friendly run. Maybe even a jog. Low key. We even chat for the first couple miles, getting steadily breathier until the road starts to slant upwards and neither of us have the energy to talk. Our paces are well-matched, even when the track to the left of the road gets steep and uneven, and when we make it to the lookout at Fisher View after four miles at a steady nine minute pace, I don't feel like death.

The lookout looks way better this time around. Last week it was gray and cold and rainy, a hazy mist starting to descend over the area, but today it's clear and picturesque. Blue sky, blue water, almost cartoonishly puffy clouds moving at an imperceptibly glacial pace. My lungs are tight but not screaming, and my feet don't feel like they're about to snap off my ankles.

"Good shoes make a difference, right?" Riley says as we take a break to take in the view.

"I feel like a different person," I say, admiring my feet as I suck in deep lungfuls of nature's crisp air and survey the last of summer's stragglers on the water. "You're so lucky to have this on your doorstep."

"I am." She sighs happily, standing with her hands on her hips and her head tilted back, eyes closed, a pretty smile on her face. She really is beautiful. Robbie's a lucky guy. "Hey, so, I don't know how long you're staying in town, but if you're still here in a couple weeks, you should totally come over for Robbie's birthday on the nineteenth. Nothing crazy, we're just gonna have a barbecue on the beach, drinks, music, you know. I'd love it if you could come, if you're here."

"Yeah, definitely," I say. "To be honest, I'm not really sure how long I'm staying but if I'm here, I'll be there."

"How's it going with Lou?"

Do not blush do not blush do not give anything away! "Really good. She's awesome. I still can't get over how generous she's been."

Riley wiggles her eyebrows at me. What? There's no way I said anything that could lead her to that conclusion.

"What?"

"Oh, come on, I saw the way she looked at you when I came in earlier!" she cries out, giddy with glee. "She totally has a crush on you. I don't know if that's your thing or whatever, but if you're looking for a reason she's so good to you, that's it."

My shock is genuine. More from the fact that Riley picked up on a look that easily than her actual revelation, because obviously I know Lou has a crush on me. What the hell am I supposed to say now? I'm not about to open my big mouth — for once in my life — and tell Riley that we fucked last night, but I know I'm a terrible liar.

"She's just a good person," I say at last. Riley laughs.

"Listen, yeah, Lou is awesome and I love her, she's basically my aunt, and I'm not saying she's not a good person because she's the best, but she usually keeps herself to herself. She can be pretty standoffish." She holds up her hands, eyes wide, and says, "Not in, like, a dickish way. She's just, you know, she's Lou. It takes her a while to warm up to people. Then you rock up in town and, like, two days later you're living in her house and wearing her clothes and she's talking about you to Mom."

Wait, hold up. "She talks about me?"

Riley laughs again. "Dude, I've overheard like three different conversations between Mom and Lou where you've come up. In a good way, I promise. Trust me, I know Lou. She only comes out of her shell when someone piques her interest. And that, my friend"—she points finger guns at me—"is you."

I can't say anything. My tongue is tied. I let out an awkward laugh and swig my water and say, "I'm ready to head back."

Riley's grinning as she falls into step with me, close enough to nudge me with her elbow, and in a sing-song voice, she says, "You like her too-oo."

*

everyone needs a riley i think!