Second night stand, p.1
Second Night Stand, page 1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2024 by Karelia Stetz-Waters and Fay Stetz-Waters
Cover design and illustration by Venessa Kelley. Cover copyright © 2024 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Stetz-Waters, Karelia, author. | Stetz-Waters, Fay, author.
Title: Second night stand / Karelia Stetz-Waters and Fay Stetz-Waters.
Description: First edition. | New York : Forever, 2024.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023040926 | ISBN 9781538756119 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781538756126 (ebook)
Subjects: LCGFT: Romance fiction. | Lesbian fiction. | Novels.
Classification: LCC PS3619.T47875 S43 2024 | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20230908
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023040926
ISBNs: 9781538756119 (trade paperback), 9781538756126 (ebook)
E3-20240415-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
cover
title page
copyright
dedication
chapter 1
chapter 2
chapter 3
chapter 4
chapter 5
chapter 6
chapter 7
chapter 8
chapter 9
chapter 10
chapter 11
chapter 12
chapter 13
chapter 14
chapter 15
chapter 16
chapter 17
chapter 18
chapter 19
chapter 20
chapter 21
chapter 22
chapter 23
chapter 24
chapter 25
chapter 26
chapter 27
chapter 28
chapter 29
chapter 30
chapter 31
chapter 32
chapter 33
chapter 34
chapter 35
chapter 36
chapter 37
chapter 38
chapter 39
chapter 40
chapter 41
chapter 42
chapter 43
chapter 44
chapter 45
chapter 46
chapter 47
chapter 48
epilogue
acknowledgments
discover more
about the authors
also by Karelia Stetz-Waters
To courageous romantics everywhere.
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chapter 1
Lillian Jackson sat in the corner of the Neptune Bar wearing a suit, contemplating the monoculture of iceberg salad and the Jägermeister shot before her, and wondering where she’d gone wrong. The endorphin high of her ballet audition ebbed into the aches and pains of being a professional dancer.
“Just come with us.” Lillian’s cousin Kia—provider of the shot—folded her elbows on the table. “Y’all just auditioned for The Great American Talent Show. Celebrate! We found this dope place that plays nineties hip-hop.”
We.
Kia never quite got that the dancers of the Reed-Whitmer Ballet Company respected Lillian—their ballet master, lead dancer, and choreographer—but they didn’t like her. They weren’t supposed to. That wasn’t her role.
Across the bar, the dancers of the Reed-Whitmer Ballet Company lingered by the door, obviously hoping Lillian would stay back, but too polite (or well trained) to leave without her.
“They’ll have more fun without me,” Lillian said. “Let ’em have tonight.”
Because tomorrow or sometime when Lillian worked up the nerve, she’d have to tell them the truth: they weren’t auditioning for the show because dance companies auditioned for things. They were auditioning because the company’s financial sponsors, Thomas Reed and Charles Whitmer, had taken Lillian to a rooftop restaurant in LA, praised her dancers and her leadership, then told her the company wasn’t making enough money and they were shutting it down. Then Whitmer had offered a lifeline. We could get you an audition with The Great American Talent Show. If they won, Thomas Reed and Charles Whitmer would keep them on the books.
She should have told the dancers. She hadn’t.
“Don’t worry. Y’all killed it!” Kia’s Afro puffs bounced with her enthusiasm. She’d gotten into the performers-only auditions by printing herself a badge that read INFLUENCER because she was the kind of person who could get in places just by telling people she belonged there. “Plus you’re all dressed to go out.”
To a high-end charity fundraiser. Why had Lillian changed into a white linen suit immediately after the audition? Because a Black ballerina must be professional beyond measure; she heard her mother’s voice in the back of her mind. The rest of the all-Black Reed-Whitmer Ballet Company hadn’t gotten the memo and were sporting their streetwear. Kia wore overalls made out of a recycled billboard by an all-Black artist co-op because that was Kia. Who was impressed by a suit at the Neptune? No one.
Over Kia’s shoulder, Lillian caught a woman in another booth watching her over the screen of a laptop. Okay. Maybe she’d impressed one person. The woman wore a blazer too, but hers was made of some shiny material, oversized with the cuffs rolled up, layered over a zippered hoodie and, beneath that, the hint of a red tank top. Or was it her bra? An elaborate lacework tattoo decorated her chest.
Their eyes met, and the woman swept a hand through her short hair and shot Lillian the cockiest smile she had seen outside of the melodramatic musicals her uncle occasionally dragged her to.
Kia turned around to stare. Then, to make it a little more obvious, she flipped up the lenses of her round, turquoise sunglasses, which she wore indoors for no reason except she was the kind of person who could get onto the set of a TV show by printing herself a badge.
“Oh, I get it.” Kia turned back around. “Send me a pin so I know where you’re going to spend your one night with her.”
Lillian wasn’t that predictable.
No. She was exactly that predictable. And it had been a while since she’d hooked up with a woman.
“I might just go back to the hotel.”
“And get all up in her.” Kia looked at the woman again. “She’s cute. I like her for you.” She flipped her blue lenses down again. “You gonna take that shot?”
Lillian shook her head. Kia took the shot with a satisfied smack of her lips.
“Don’t forget that pin,” she said and ambled toward the door.
chapter 2
Lillian’s gaze drifted back to the woman with the laptop. The woman glared at the screen, muttering to it as though it had personally offended her, but when she felt Lillian watching her, the woman looked up and winked. Actually winked, but something about her expression said, Can you believe I winked at you? Lillian rolled her eyes, but she offered the woman a smile in return.
The woman closed the laptop, rose, and strolled over, her wide hips swaying in tight black jeans. Closer up, the hint of red underneath her sweatshirt appeared to be a corset, revealing the kind of generous cleavage that would make Lillian a lesbian if she hadn’t already been one. Lillian also thought she made out the words COMIC-CON 2015 fading from the front of the sweatshirt. It was like the woman grabbed clothes from three different closets and somehow made them look hot. And cute.
Lillian didn’t usually go for cute, but the outfit and the combination of over-the-top flirtation and her obvious frustration with the work on her laptop made Lillian smile inside. You got a lot going on, girl.
“Not going out with your friends?” the woman asked, trailing one finger along the edge of Lillian’s table.
“No.”
“Couldn’t resist a night at the Neptune?”
The Neptune was very resistible. The woman, less so.
“I’m going to the bar,” the woman said. “You need anything?”
“I’ll have what you’re having,” Lillian said.
“Are you sure? It could be something bizarre,” the woman purred.
“I think
The woman leaned against the bar while she waited, facing Lillian, one foot kicked up behind her, chin dipped down. Her gaze snaked its way through the room. She pursed her lips in a hint of a kiss, then shrugged and broke into a grin that said, Did that work on you?
Lillian shook her head.
And then that wink.
The woman held her palms up as if to say, How about that one? She returned a moment later with two lavender-colored martinis.
“Does that really work on women?” Lillian accepted the drink, smiling to let the woman know she was teasing.
“What?”
“Your act.” Lillian winked with half her face.
“Oh. Yeah.” The woman looked down, shuffling her foot. “It does.” Then she looked up, and in a voice that was all sex and power and confidence and kisses running down a lover’s neck, she whispered, “Does it work on you?”
Her voice made Lillian’s body tingle.
“How can you be that sexy in a Comic-Con sweatshirt?” Lillian asked.
“Comic-Con is very sexy,” the woman said with mock indignation.
“It’s really not.” Lillian patted the table across from her.
The woman sat.
“Thanks for the drink.”
Up close, Lillian saw the lacework tattoo was made up of the zeros and ones of binary code and her dark hair wasn’t black but navy blue.
“You a programmer?” Lillian asked. “Are you working?”
The woman glanced back at her laptop.
“I’m making an app that’s supposed to mix your face with the faces of American presidents. It’s for kids, but how is some ten-year-old going to tell the difference between Andrew Johnson and Herbert Hoover? And it’s not even my project. I’m fixing it for someone who glitched it all up.”
“Should I let you get back to it?”
“No. I can’t take it anymore. It’s so frustrating.” On the word frustrating, the woman slipped from a normal tone to a sexy purr.
“You’re too much.”
The stress of the day felt farther away with this woman looking at her.
“Do you—” Lillian said at the same moment the woman said, “I haven’t seen—”
Lillian tried again. “Do you come here often?”
“I haven’t seen you around here,” the woman said.
They both chuckled.
“You’ve done this before,” Lillian said. “Now can you say that with a wink?”
The woman winked.
“I’m from LA.” Lillian set the words out on the table like playing cards. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”
And hopefully coming back for the show but probably not. The reality of it washed over her. Maybe she should have taken the Jäger shot.
“My kind of woman.” The woman raised her glass.
They toasted and Lillian took a sip.
“Oh my God, it tastes like laundry soap.”
“Crème de violette. You said you’d have what I was drinking.”
“Why are you drinking it?”
“It’s pretty.” The woman held her purple drink up to the light. “It smells like flowers. And if you’re seventeen and you and your girlfriend want to steal her parents’ liquor and you don’t want to get caught, drink the crème de violette. No one will miss it. Happy memories.” The woman furrowed her brow. “Happy-ish.” She held out her hand. “Blue Lenox.”
Lillian raised an eyebrow. Blue Lenox? That was as stagey as the wink.
“I doubt that’s your real name,” Lillian said.
“My friends call me Blue.”
“So even your friends don’t know your real name?”
“Does it matter?”
Blue’s eyes were so dark they were almost black, but Lillian still saw a shadow pass over them for a second, and she wished she hadn’t said it.
“And who are you?” Blue asked.
“Lillian.”
They stared at each other for a moment. Blue had a smear of glitter on her cheek.
“It’s nice to meet you, Lillian.” Blue tucked the tip of her tongue between her teeth, her smile opening around the pink tip. She winked again.
“Just to be clear,” Lillian said, “your act doesn’t work on me.” It kind of did. “But you’re good at it, and it’s hot when someone’s good at something.”
“Your act is working for me.”
“I don’t have an act.”
She had so many, code switching so many times she didn’t have a native language. It was almost a relief to be called on it.
Blue cocked her head.
“You are wearing a white linen suit to the Neptune. And it’s after ten, and it’s still ironed. That’s a tour de force of staying on brand.”
Blue touched the cuff of Lillian’s jacket, rubbing the fabric between her fingers. Lillian felt a little shiver go through her as she stared too closely at the touch. She could almost feel Blue taking her delicately between two fingers and rubbing her the way she rubbed the fabric of the jacket.
“Linen-rayon blend.” Blue made it sound sexy.
“You like textiles.”
Blue nodded. “I sew. Impressed?”
The bartender interrupted, a glass of white wine in hand.
“That’s for her.” Blue nodded to Lillian.
“Sorry for the wait,” the bartender said. “I had to run next door for wine. We don’t serve a lot.”
Next door was a store called Quikee Cigarette and Food Outlet, which didn’t bode well for the wine, but it was actually good.
“I guessed you might not have a palate sophisticated enough to appreciate the violette,” Blue said when the bartender had left. “Even though you’re wearing white linen to a dive bar after ten o’clock. So you know I’m a programmer. Can I ask what you do?”
“Please don’t.”
That was what hookups were about. Not being anyone. Just a body intertwining with another body in a dance no one would ever see. She was good at that dance even if her last hookups had been lackluster. Truth: they’d left her with a dull sense of dissatisfaction. But it had been a while since she’d felt a woman’s hands on her, and this woman could push the stress of the day to the back of Lillian’s mind.
But before Lillian could speak, Blue said, “Just to be clear, we’re doing this”—she gestured to the space between them—“because we’re going to sleep together, right? And you’re going back to LA, so no catching feelings?”
“I was going to be a little more subtle.” Lillian laughed. “But yes.”
Blue might like textiles, but she didn’t do strings. She was perfect.
“Good.” Blue folded her hands in front of her. “You want to hang out first? Not talk about what you do for work? Share fries? Dance?”
Blue motioned to the dance floor. The stereo blared a trending dance-challenge song that included the lines Ride the pony. Next we zip, baby, zip. The dancers were lining up and imitating zipping up jackets because that was a sexy dance move. Lillian watched the choreographic horror.
“Zip, zip, zip me up and down? That shred of self-respect people talk about? I still have it.”
Blue looked a little hurt.
“I will dance. One song. Anything but the Zipper.”
What was she doing? Lillian never danced for fun. Dancing for fun was inviting unnecessary injury, her mother, Eleanor, was probably thinking at this very moment. Breaking your body on a grand fouetté en tournant was the natural order. Tearing your ACL because you got knocked down by an errant twerker was unforgivably careless.
“To be denied the Zipper with a beautiful woman.” Blue sighed. “If we’re not going to dance yet, what will we talk about? You know I’m a programmer. But I’m not the least bit interested in what you do. Don’t even tell me.”
“Thank you.”
Blue appraised her for a moment, then asked, “How do you feel about houseplants?”
Lillian made small talk with her lovers. It was crass to suck on a woman’s vulva without first spending forty minutes discussing the weather and the best restaurants in town. (That was not one of her mother’s edicts, although maybe she’d agree in the alternate universe where Lillian talked to Eleanor about anything besides ballet.) The trick to hookup chat was to be friendly without saying anything. No connection. No shared moment. Houseplants were as safe a topic of conversation as any.
“I kill plants.” A dead ficus tree was waiting for her right now.
