Saturday, late afternoon

This was suspicious. It was clearly suspicious. So suspicious, in fact, that even Liza thought twice before jumping at it.

“We shouldn’t,” she said, looking at the note with what she hoped wasn’t a hungry expression.

“Technically, I don’t think we are who’s invited,” Hanna pointed out. “I’m not the one she dragged into a supply cupboard last night.”

Liza sighed. “Nothing. Happened.”

“I know nothing happened.” Hanna walked into the room and sat on the bed. “I just mean that if this is a scam to get into your pants, she probably doesn’t want your wife tagging along.”

Liza set the note down on a side table and sat next to her wife, closer than she had been earlier. She took her hand. “If it’s a scam to get into my pants, then there’s no point in going.”

“There’d be at least some point.” Hanna raised a suggestive eyebrow.

“No. There wouldn’t.” Liza upgraded hand holding to hand squeezing. “The only person I want in my pants is you.”

“Aww, you say the most romantic things.” After ten years, it was easy to tell when Hanna was using sarcasm as deflection. Partly because they knew each other well, and partly because she was seldom not.

“Why do you always do that?” asked Liza, more earnestly than she’d intended.

“Do what?”

Liza bit her lip. This had the risk of going to some places she wasn’t one thousand percent sure she was comfortable going. “Like, last year when we went to stay with Mel down in Devon?”

“What? We had a nice time. We like Mel. Did I give the impression I don’t like Mel?”

The worst thing about it was that Hanna wasn’t being obtuse. She could be, sometimes, but this wasn’t a time. “I know you like her. It’s just that you also kept acting like I wanted to sleep with her.”

Hanna gave a not-exactly-smirk. “To be fair, you have slept with her.”

“A long time ago. At university. And I know you were mostly joking, and I know she is kind of flirty—”

“A lot of your friends are.”

That wasn’t fair. But it also wasn’t the kind of unfair that stung. “No, an average number of my friends are. It’s just that for some reason you can’t get it through your head that I’m not interested in anybody else.”

Hanna shrank a little. And Liza hadn’t meant to make her shrink. A shrinking Hanna wasn’t a happy Hanna, and despite everything Liza still badly wanted her wife to be happy.

“I guess …” Hanna said at last. “I guess I just don’t see why you wouldn’t be.”

“Because I’ve got you. And while you’re annoying and controlling and we’ve kind of barely spoken for the last year and a half—”