August Heat

by Billings, Hildred

  And that was definitely Siobhan standing in the doorway.

  “I didn’t know today was D-Day.” Arms akimbo, Siobhan patiently waited for Krys to come over and give her a kiss. The boys pretended they hadn’t noticed. Besides, Young was chasing kittens and Quimby decided now was the time to readjust the cat tree. Again. “I see everything is under control.”

  “Think I don’t got this?” Krys might have flexed when she said that. “Kittens? Piece of cake now. They’ll totally be…”

  “Damnit, it’s chasing my shoelace!” Chief Johnson cried.

  Krys flinched. “It’s fine. Like you, yeah?”

  “I can’t tell if you’re asking me how I’m doing, or asserting my appearance, as you usually do.”

  “That one, but I also don’t mind you telling me how you’re doing.”

  Siobhan didn’t get a chance to say. The moment she opened her mouth, the fire bell went off, and nobody – least of all Krys – could get a word in edgewise over the commands of the Chief.

  “Looks like another barn fire off the highway! Come on! Let’s go! Look alive, Madison!”

  “Apparently, I’ve gotta go.” That was said in between bursts of concerns about the cats and Quimby struggling to get into his clothes. “Good thing I had lunch, huh? I hate it when these calls come in right before or, God forbid, during my lunch break!”

  “From what I’ve noticed around here,” Siobhan said as her girlfriend came closer for a hello/goodbye kiss, “anytime you’re not fighting fires, you’re on lunch.”

  “All in a hard day’s work. Where you off to?”

  “Just got back from shoving my hand in places you don’t wanna know about.”

  “Madison!” Johnson shouted. “Stop flirting with your lady and let’s get going!”

  Krys stole that kiss as she turned around and shot for her locker. Siobhan was still on the sidewalk by the time the fire engine, sirens wailing, pulled onto Main Street and made its way toward the fire.

  Now there’s a sight… Krys leaned out the window and blew a kiss to the woman waving back at her. Two seconds later, little Megan Rapinoe bobbed out of the opened window and made her great, grand escape into the depths of Paradise Valley.

  Siobhan took off after her. Eh, they’ll be fine… Krys had a feeling this was only the beginning of the fun they’d have – with or without animals getting between them.

  Or bringing them together, really.

  THE END

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  SEPTEMBER LESSONS

  (A Year In Paradise #9)

  On the first day of senior year in a new school, Alabaman transplant Carrie Sage meets the girl of her lesbian dreams.

  Too bad the mayor’s daughter is a bit too straight to go for a troublemaking Southerner like Carrie.

  Enter Leigh-Ann Hardy, the only girl in Clark High School who knows a thing or two about the girl Carrie crushes after like it’s Valentine’s Day. After all, Leigh-Ann and the mayor’s daughter used to be best friends!

  While Carrie navigates life in a brand-new place that automatically labels her more trouble than she’s worth, Leigh-Ann faces a truth she’s been suppressing her whole life in Paradise Valley.

  She might be a little bit gay. It only took the new girl to make her see that!

  SEPTEMBER 10th

  Hildred Billings is a Japanese and Religious Studies graduate who has spent her entire life knowing she would write for a living someday. She has lived in Japan a total of four times in four different locations, from the heights of the Japanese alps to the hectic Tokyo suburbs, with a life in Shikoku somewhere in there too. When she’s not writing, however, she spends most of her time talking about Asian pop music, cats, and bad 80’s fantasy movies with anyone who will listen…or not.

  Her writing centers around themes of redemption, sexuality, and death, sometimes all at once. Although she enjoys writing in the genre of fantasy the most, she strives to show as much reality as possible through her characters and situations, since she’s a furious realist herself.

  Currently, Hildred lives in Oregon with her girlfriend and dreams of a cat.

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