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Midtown fans! Get your Midtown character guide here!

Do you miss The L Word? Well do we have a solution for you! TLL is happy to introduce Midtown, a fictional lesopera. Midtown is a weekly look into the lives of lesbian women in Atlanta written by Alix from the blog A Brown Girl. A new installment of Midtown will be published every Tuesday on The Lesbian Lifestyle. Please check out Alix’s blog and drop her a comment to let her know how you feel about the ladies of Midtown.

New to Midtown? Start with Part 1

A honking horn woke Ki from her sleep. She sat straight up in alarm. She looked over at Brie. Her face looked peaceful. She was softly snoring, her lips slightly parted, her hair spread out against the white pillow case.

After 30 seconds, the horn honked again. Ki slipped out of the bed to take a look out of the window. She heard footsteps on her stairs, then she heard the front door slam, and seconds later, she saw Taylor ran into the street. A honking dark car sat waiting. Ki frowned up her face. Taylor opened the door and got in.

She was confused. That had to be Rob, but wasn’t Taylor here for protection?

When Ki turned back to the bed, Brie was sitting up,watching her. She was rubbing her eyes, forcing herself awake. “What’s wrong?”

“I just saw Taylor running from the house. I assume that was her girl honking outside. She left with her.”

“Wait? That woman beater was outside my front door? She’s such a fucking idiot. What is she thinking?” Ki slid back into the bed with her. “I wonder why Ed let her go…” Ki started smiling. She had heard a few moans and groans through the night.

“Umm, I think Ed was a little busy.” Brie looked confused. Seconds passed before realization showed on Brie’s face.

“Woooow!” She stretched the word out into one long breath. “It’s about time! She’s been in love with Ed forever. I really can’t imagine feeling like that about someone and keeping it a secret. It’s love. Who doesn’t want to be loved?”

This conversation made Ki uncomfortable. She was in the bed with the one she loved, yet there was no chance she would ever tell her. The feelings obviously weren’t reciprocated, so what was the point of embarrassing herself? Ki wrapped her arms around Brie and lay back down. It was hours before she finally fell asleep.

Ed woke in a start, confused about the dream she just had. Actually, it wasn’t a dream, more like a nightmare. She saw blood and a casket, but never saw the face of the person in the casket. She saw all of the people she was closest to, dressed in black, looking sad, but obviously more concerned about her than they were about the person in the casket. They rallied around her, offering her support. It freaked her out; reminding her of the last funeral she went to. Her father’s.

She barely recovered from that one. He had lost a battle with cancer while she was in her junior year of college. Ki, Brie and Ash had been by her side during her mourning. It was them that kept her from flunking out of school. Actually, it was them that kept her alive. She had stopped eating, stopped sleeping. She stopped doing everything. She had become a zombie.

They coaxed her out of it slowly, with constant nagging disguised as pampering. Still it wasn’t until Ash snapped at her one day and started crying that she realized how her behavior was affecting everyone around her.

She gently shook Ash, who lay sleeping quietly next to her. They had to get up early to open the store. They moved quietly through Ed’s bedroom without turning on the lights. They didn’t want to wake Taylor.

Ash expected there to be some kind of awkwardness after last night, but there was none. Ed had been sweet to her so far, so she decided to follow her lead. She wanted to question what this meant, but she didn’t want to ruin the moment. Were they headed towards a relationship? Did the sex imply commitment? She knew better than to ask. She just let the questions fill her head as she busied herself making schedules for the next few weeks. She found it hard to concentrate; every other thought brought her a visual of the night before.

Ed watched Ash blush. She wondered if Ash found it as hard to concentrate as it was for her. She couldn’t keep her eyes off of her. She watched her eyes squint at the paper in front of her. She watched her smile at one of the employees. She watched her recommend a book to one of their customers. Her head was full of Ash today. How was she ever going to get anything done?

“Ed? Wasn’t Dae supposed to be here 30 minutes ago?” Ash asked, jarring her from her day dream.

Ed nodded. “She hasn’t called?” As soon as Ed went into her pocket for her cell phone, Dae burst through the store’s glass doors. She ran through the store, coming to a complete halt in front of Ed.

“I thought she’d be safe with you. You were supposed to keep her safe. You were supposed to keep her safe. This is all your fault! How can you possibly work right now?” Dae’s voice was low with a sharp edge.

“Has Taylor been hurt?” Ed felt immediate guilt. Her she was basking in her morning after glow, she hadn’t even thought about Taylor all day.

“Hurt? Try dead. D-E-A-D!”

“Wait? What? She was fine when I left the house this morning.” Ed thought back to the lump she saw in the her bed. She hadn’t actually seen Taylor this morning.

“She called me last night, saying that she overheard you and the little woman getting your freak on. She went back to Rob. How could you not even know she was gone? I thought you cared about her?

Rob picked her up from your house last night. They got into a huge argument. Taylor tried to fight back this time. Rob wasn’t having it. She hit her so hard, she fell and hit her head on the corner of a table. It was quick.”

Ed walked out of the store without speaking to anyone. Ash overheard the conversation. She knew how Ed would take this. She didn’t handle death well. She knew that Ed would blame herself. She thought back to how Ed handled her father’s death. She irrationally blamed herself for her father’s cancer. She could only imagine the time it would take Ed to recover from this. If she ever did.