I didn’t mean to be the last one staying after the party. Sandy’s girls’ movie night turned into girls’ gossip and gin tonics night, but soon enough husbands and taxis turned up, taking everyone to their respective beds. Sandy, her neighbor Liz and I just stayed and chatted. Sandy’s husband being gone for the week, the long-haired, curvy blonde’s eyes gazed pensive as she voiced those complaints which most married women seem to share about their sex life. Liz nodded, giggled and sipped the melting ice from the bottom of her empty cocktail glass, before heading back to her husband. I stayed largely silent.

It wasn’t that I was in any particular closet about being a lesbian. But I had never acquired lasting friendships from dating, and I had always been careful about keeping my friends platonic. So it was with the very best intentions of helping to clean up, and not wanting to be drunk home on my own, that I asked Sandy if I might crash on her couch.

We filled Sandy’s dishwasher with plates and glasses, took turns showering and the only reason I went to her bedroom was to ask for a shirt from her closet to sleep in.

Sandy was totally nude, just placing her wet towel on the back of her chair. I got a good look, she let out an “Oops!” and my face flushed a tone of red that must have spoken volumes. We just stood there for a moment, looking at each other, me wrapped in my towel as chastely as its width allowed, Sandy nude, facing me, and studying my expression.

I don’t believe in gaydar, but when I do get the feeling a woman is interested in women, I’m more often right than wrong. I wish that extended to knowing they were interested in me. I never had this feeling with Sandy. Then again, I would have never acted on it.

So it must have been entirely Sandy’s decision to move in close, until her nipples brushed my towel. For a long moment, she held my face in her hands, and then we embraced, and then the flushed feeling extended a lot further down.

She took a step back and I recovered enough to drop my towel at my feet. I looked up and down, taking in her curves, the slight tummy, huge, pendulous breasts, her neck, jaw, face and hair. She got a good look at my slender figure, her eyes oscillating between my slim hips, flat abs and small breasts for a long time before we made eye contact again.

My brain unfogged enough for basic arithmetic. We were both drunk. Sandy was horny, that much was clear from her tales of married life, but presumably she was also straight. We weren’t best friends, but we had been close enough for years that I would not risk it over one roll in the hay. And we might still be able to shrug it off as a joke if I left right away.

These thoughts must have made me shrink back an inch. Sandy’s look was that of a puppy who had been denied a treat, and possibly lightly kicked. I felt sorry immediately. She had reached out to me and taken a big chance, so even the suspicion of rejection hurt.

I moved in on her and wrapped my arms around her. Before either of us might reconsider, I pressed my lips upon hers. We shared a kiss and she grabbed my butt and pulled me closer. I was rapidly metabolising the last traces of mortification, embarrassment and awkwardness into being full-on turned on, through the catalyst of drunkenness. Judging by her rapid, ragged breathing and hot skin, Sandy had got into the same state ahead of me.

There was no talking, and no telling of the intricate intervening poses through which we must have went between standing in a tight embrace and, in my next conscious moment, her lying in the bed, reclining on her pillow, and me sitting on the edge, running my hand over the soft skin of her voluptuous chest. I felt the faint scent of Sandy’s wet pussy, as she must have felt mine, but we both wanted to slow the plunge into carnal pleasure.

“I have never done this before,” said Sandy, and I flashed back to a handful of encounters with women who turned out to be whatever they considered bicurious. Some just didn’t want to label themselves as anything other than acceptably mostly straight. Some thought that by going on a date to them, I agreed to provide drinks, instruction and my body as a free, disposable warm sextoy. One took me back to her apartment, where, at the door, her husband flashed a lascivious grin, and, sadly, more, and after that one I wrote down this phrase in my list of red lights.