Amy holds herself so still. She’d be a statue if it weren’t for her fast breaths and her pulse thrumming below her jaw. Her lips part, I tip my chin up. All she’d have to do is bend, an inch and I’d be kissing Amy Chambers.

“You’ve been drinking,” she says, barely a whisper. Of all the possible objections she could have, she’s chosen my sobriety.

I shake my head, a lock of hair sticks to my lip. “Only two sips. I’m not drunk. I promise.”

Slowly, like she’s afraid she’ll scare me, she lifts her hand, brushes my hair off my mouth with the pad of her finger.

“You’re queer.” She doesn’t ask.

“I’m...” My heart beats so hard I could choke on it. “I want you.” And maybe if we do this I can get it out of my head. I can’t keep blaming her for my infatuation.

“Did you ever think about if I want you?” she asks in a flash of teeth, sharp.

An immediate blush crawls up my face. “Oh god.” I step back. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Last week.” I recalibrate that moment between us, the seconds that felt like forever when I was so close to her, I was holding her exhales in my mouth. Just like in my youth, I obsessed over that moment when in truth it probably meant nothing to her. “I thought...maybe you...”

She grins, her mouth morphing from something I could cut myself on to something I want to fall into. “Come here. Of course, I want you.”

She plunges her hand into my hair, closing the gap between us, and she kisses me. Just like that, like kissing me is the natural conclusion to this, a fight about seating charts. She kisses me like she has no idea that this kiss feels like my first one because in a way it is. My first kiss when I know who I am, better than I ever have before.

Her lips are warm and soft. Her fingers sift through my hair, her nails scratch softly over my scalp.

I’m an implosion. A series of powder kegs igniting inside me, until I’m nothing but blood and heat and heart.

A moan cuts through the thumping in my ears. Me. I’m moaning against Amy’s mouth, and she smiles into her next kiss. Opens my lips wider with her own. Her tongue brushes mine.

“Holy fuck.” I barely recognize the sound of my own voice.

“You’re shaking,” she says. My fingers tremble against her jaw.

“I...” I’m dizzy. The room spins with my lust but as long as I’m holding on to her, I know I’ll be okay. “I really like kissing you.”

I pull her mouth back to mine, not giving her a chance to respond. But my legs really are shaking, lust or not, so I walk backward until my ass hits the chef’s table again, spreading my legs so her hips fit between my thighs. My pulse throbs in the tips of my fingers, in my breasts. If she brushed the knuckle of her index finger along the seam of my panties a few times, I’m sure she could get me off. That’s all it would take.