thank you for the music

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“I would agree that you’re very smooth,” Lottie told the other girl disarmingly, as her hand gently settled into the slope of Lisa’s waist. 

It was surprisingly charming on Lottie’s end. She didn’t think of herself as somebody with a lot of game, and she wasn’t much of a flirt either. Usually, she got by on her smarts more than anything else. She’d had brief flings with athletes whose teams she’d worked for – maybe it wasn’t the most professional dynamic in the world, but it was hard not to feel a little tension when you were constantly caressing their muscles and massaging them back to health. She’d once had the great pleasure of tending to a driver’s hamstring, only to be greeted several seconds later by their growing erection. Sufficed to say, she didn’t get out a lot, which meant most of her relationships – if you could even call them that – tended to be of the workplace variety. 

For now, she thought she was doing a pretty good job of not messing this up. 

The moment Lisa complimented her name and curved her arms around Lottie’s neck, she knew she was a goner. If she didn’t get to kiss this girl soon, she thought she might die. Or, at the very least, show up at Ozzie’s unwanted, with a tub of ice cream that she didn’t plan to share and a miserable attitude that she did. Instinctively, she felt herself edge closer to her, one hand firmly pressed to the small of her back, while Lottie lifted her other hand to gently tug at a loose curl that had fallen into the other girl’s face. Instead of tucking it behind her ear, Lottie let it twirl around her finger, deftly enjoying the silky softness of her pretty blonde locks. 

By the time Lisa asked for clarification, Lottie was so far gone that she’d been daydreaming of making out messy style in the furthest corner of the bookstore. She blinked in surprise, before a wide smile stretched across her face. And, truthfully? Lisa’s rambly tangent only endeared her further to her, and Lottie found herself doing something so entirely out of character and brave – by her standards, at least – that she was positive Felix would never believe her when she told him. 

Right then, as Lisa scolded herself, Lottie kissed her. She surged forward, clumsy in her approach as she silenced the pretty girl in her arms by parting her lips with her own, a content moan escaping her the exact second their mouths made contact. 

Lottie was looking at her right now though, with a heat in her eyes that made Lisa feel warm all over. She barely managed to suppress a shiver when she felt the other woman’s hand on her back, slipping down low, just above the curve of her ass, which she didn’t necessarily believe was curvy at all. She hoped that wouldn’t matter to Lottie.

Her teeth found her bottom lip the moment Lottie twirled one of Lisa’s curls around her finger and she bit down, hard. Lest she let out an embarrassing noise. God, Lisa loved it when people played with her hair, the mere idea of someone gently massaging her scalp with their fingers almost enough to make her limbs dissolve into jelly.

If Lottie didn’t like girls, then that was going to be a huge loss for the lesbian community. Because as much as Lisa liked to have faith in all gay girls, not all of them knew how to make another girl melt in the way Lottie was right now.

Or maybe Lisa was just way, way too easy.

Thankfully, an answer came soon. In a way that Lisa hadn’t realised was even an option.

The moment Lottie kissed her, Lisa let out a surprised noise, a soft moan catching at the back of her throat. Immediately, she relaxed into the kiss, realising it had been way too long since the last time she’d made out with someone. Her eyes fluttered shut and she slid her arms around Lottie, quickly kissing her back.

The bookstore and all its partygoers disappeared around her as she sank right into the feeling of Lottie’s lips on hers. When Lisa kissed someone, she was all too aware that it could be a brief, fleeting thing, so she wanted to be present in it for as long as she was allowed to be. Her hand gently cradled the side of Lottie’s face as their lips moved together, her heart beating overtime in her chest.

“Wow, we’re sort of speedrunning this,” she joked, feebly, breathlessly. “I guess that answers the ‘are you into girls?’ question, but my next move was trying to figure out if you were into me.”

The tip of her nose brushed Lottie’s as she moved in closer, her breath coming in shallow little pants. She lifted her gaze to catch Lottie’s eye, smiling gently.

“Um, again? Maybe?”

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The last thing she’d anticipated from her night was getting to dance with a beautiful girl while they screamed along to ABBA at the top of their lungs. At best she had assumed Dante might offer up a peck on the cheek out of sheer pity alone while she lingered in the corner, as she always did, watching Annie have the time of her life, surrounded by all her loved ones. Between Dante, Jax and Elias alone, her cousin was always surrounded by handsome men who worshipped the ground she walked on, and that didn’t even account for the endless list of friends and admirers she had. Charlotte Baxter was a far cry from being the girl that danced at parties with pretty girls who somehow, by some stroke of luck, actively wanted to be seen with her. 

Lisa. A pretty name for a pretty girl. Lottie smiled back at her, ready to pitch her voice high above the booming music so she could introduce herself in turn, only for her eyes to widen in surprise as the other woman came crashing towards her. She gasped, her instincts kicking in as she took a sudden step forward, ready to catch her. While the stranger behind her certainly hadn’t meant to bump Lisa, Lottie had witnessed her own fair share of sprained ankles and torn ligaments over the most meagre of stumbles. And as well-equipped as she was to help nurse those types of injury back to health, she didn’t want that to be Lisa’s fate. 

Her hand slipped to Lisa’s waist almost instinctively, arm curling around her as her hand fit steadily at the small of her back. With Lisa’s hands now pressed against her shoulders, the two found themselves practically chest to chest, nose to nose, and Lottie’s eyes were wide with shock. She hadn’t quite banked on both of their reflexes being so fast, and she only hoped her new friend didn’t think she was being overly forward or presumptuous. Before she could try and explain herself, however, the DJ and the Universe decided to really play a trick on her by slowly trickling Taylor Swift’s Lover across the room. 

“Wow! Really smooth. Did you plan this?” Lottie laughed, teasing the other woman. Obviously neither of them could have banked on the sudden shift in vibes, but she figured they could at least joke about it. 

Have I known you 20 seconds or 20 years?  

“I’m Charlotte, by the way! Or Lottie,” she amended, much preferring the nickname. She still held tight to Lisa, forgetting herself entirely, and it took until about 30 seconds into the song for her to realise that she’d begun swaying, guiding the other woman’s body along with her own. 

As Taylor Swift’s most wedding-y love song filtered through the speakers of A Novel Idea, Lisa couldn’t help but think that maybe, if she believed in things like fate and karma, the universe might be trying to tell her something.

“But if I did plan this, it would be pretty smooth, right?” she said, her eyes twinkling as she wrinkled her nose good-naturedly.

Of course she knew the lyrics. She and Rachel had grown up scream-singing the words to Taylor’s greatest hits into their hairbrushes. And, unfortunately, she’d seen a bunch of TikTok edits to her brother set to ‘Gorgeous’. She dutifully forwarded them to him to boost his ego but there were still things a little sister didn’t want to dwell on. She’d never envisioned standing in the middle of a twinkly-lit bookstore on the most romantically charged night of the year (yeah, even beating you out, V-Day!) dancing to a slower ballad, in the arms of one of the most beautiful women she’d ever seen. She certainly hadn’t planned it but, boy, was this scenario not straight out of her wildest imaginings!

“I like that name. Lottie,” she smiled, thinking it suited the other woman well. ‘Charlotte’ was pretty but ‘Lottie’ was fun and her new dance partner had proved to be an extraordinary mix of both.

Heart beating overtime in her chest, she kept her hands on Lottie’s shoulders before bravely stepping forwards, sliding her arms around the woman’s neck. Now they were properly slow dancing. Like, prom slow dancing. Except Lisa wasn’t a teen with braces anymore and there was no chaperone ready to swat at them with a rolled-up magazine and tell them to keep at least three inches apart. 

“Do you like girls?” she blurted out. Immediately, she ducked her head and began laughing at herself. Squinting up at Lottie, she offered her a meagre shrug. “You just never really know! I’ve never exactly slow danced before with a straight girl but I’m not saying they don’t. With their friends or whatever. But I thought I’d better check…” She winced a little. “And if that freaks you out, I’m sorry. Not for being gay, duh. Just for maybe pushing something. Am I pushing something?”

She shook her head, and scolded herself. “Oh, shut up, Lisa.”

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