It started off innocently enough. Karen and I flirted often but I don't think either of us truly meant anything by it. It was just for fun. You see, I'm a twenty-four-year-old nerdy girl, single, a little heavier than I want to be and quite the extrovert. I sing karaoke, cosplay at cons, read a ton, and love hanging out. The problem was that I had recently moved here and didn't know many people other than those I worked with. Karen was one of them. She worked with me and was a loud, brash blonde with a knock-out athletic figure. A few years older than me, yet she was so hot that guys always hit on her. One day, about quitting time, a particularly tiresome older fellow from one of our vendors kept hitting on her. I decided to help her out and came over to her, slipped my arm around her waist and laid my head on her shoulder.
"Whatcha doin Babe?" I asked her.
"Not much, Hon." She answered without missing a beat.
"You ready to get out of here?" I asked.
"Yeah, let's go," she replied.
The guy looked like we were grossing him out and left. She grinned at me.
"Thanks!"
"No problem."
After that, the flirting became a regular thing. I called her Babe and she called me Hon or Honey. I would wink at her in an obvious way and she would blow me kisses across the office. I would eye her as she strolled past and lick my lips lustfully. She would grin and look over the tops of her glasses and sigh loudly. Things like that.
But as I said, it was all just for fun. Everyone in our office knew we weren't lesbians, just putting on an act. Then our office won a corporate-wide award for excellence and our division manager took us all out to a local club to celebrate. We ate, drank and sang karaoke. We had a blast. The Accounting manager let her hair down and did a great cover of Janis Joplin, surprising the hell out of everyone. A couple of girls from HR got too drunk and had to be carried out, along with Tommy from IT. He was sitting there one moment and the next he was face first in his plate.
Karen and I had fun. Now I hadn't drunk as much as the others and we were among the last to leave. Karen came up to me and whispered.
"Do you think you could drive me home? I don't want to risk a ticket."
"Sure! No problem."
But on the way there, she fell quiet. When I pulled up in her driveway, she looked at her keys and then took a deep breath.
"I-I was wondering if you'd like to come in for a minute..."
I didn't answer right away and she looked at me.
"Please?"
There were no tears but I sensed that they were being held back just barely.
"Sure," I said.
Inside, her two-bedroom condo was nice. I sat on the sofa and she tried but fidgeted a lot. Finally, she jumped up and started pacing.
"Ally, (my name is Allison, but everyone calls me Ally) you've become a close friend, and I don't have many of those. Very few in fact. And none of them know me, really know me. Everyone just sees the Karen I let them see. In here." she waved at her home, "I'm a different person than out there. I want to let you in, I need to tell things to someone, but I'm afraid that if I do it will ruin our friendship. And I couldn't stand that. But keeping everything locked up inside is killing me!"
I stood and took her hands in mine. "I'm here. Talk to me."
"Are you sure?" she asked.
"Yes, I'm sure. I want to be your friend, and I don't think you could say anything to change that."
She took a deep breath and I felt her hands tremble.