Ava opened Moore’s newest chapter. As she read, she couldn’t help but notice something odd.

Kyra followed the Knight’s confident stride through the forest as they approached the hastily assembled campsite.

“Kyra, this is the Knight you mentioned?” One of Kyra’s traveling partners, Percy, spoke up. “You certainly took your time arriving here. the meeting was supposed to begin at sunset,” he snickered.

“We were busy!” Kyra exclaimed, thinking back to the woman that Gloria had dedicated herself to helping for the evening. She certainly was valiant.

“What are you implying?” The knight scowled at him. “I assure you we were simply attending to other matters.”

Kyra nodded along to the explanation.

Percy grinned at the two of them once more. “And did these ‘other matters’ happen to be our dear friend Kyra?”

Kyra tried her best to maintain the Knight’s image by not blushing at the thought, but she upheld it well enough on her own by simply not responding to the absurd accusations.

“I don’t care what you think I was doing with your friend” The knight tried to redirect the conversation to more pressing matters. “Now are we going to discuss the security of my kingdom or not?”

It continued on like that for a while. Throughout the whole meeting, Kyra’s traveling party made crass suggestions about why the two of them had been late to their meeting while discussing the broader matters of the story.

Was Moore… copying Ava? This was the exact experience she had written into chapter two of Greenest Skies, and now here it was again in someone else’s story. It had to be a coincidence, right? Moore hadn’t ever copied Ava before, and a character being teased about ‘romance’ certainly wasn’t a revolutionary idea. Moore definitely could have come up with that by herself, but it was a little bit suspicious. Surely there was no harm in just shooting her a message?

VaguelyPoetic: Hey, Did you get around to reading the second chapter of Greenest Skies yet?

SomeMooreOnTop: not yet!

SomeMooreOnTop: ive been busy with work and family for a few days

SomeMooreOnTop: but!!!

SomeMooreOnTop: ive been meaning to get around to it!

VaguelyPoetic: Okay. Just let me know when you get around to it. I want to know what you think.

SomeMooreOnTop: will do, Miss Poetic!

Ava rolled her eyes, she was just as bad as Paige. Ava reread the message. Maybe worse.

But she said she hadn’t read the story yet, obviously she could be lying, but Ava didn’t have any real reason to distrust her, they were friends, right?

Ava still couldn’t shake the feeling that Moore was just copying her. How much of a coincidence was it? Ava uploads a chapter and within the week Moore writes and uploads an extremely similar scene. Ava shook her head. Of course it was a coincidence. Why would Moore even copy the plot of a story that hasn’t even been finished yet? There were plenty of stories that she could steal from, if she was actually doing that at all.

It was all just a weird coincidence.

Ava slumped in her seat. She couldn’t help but feel guilty that her mind immediately jumped to that conclusion. Moore wouldn’t flat out copy her like that, Ava knew that. Moore wrote much faster than she did anyway, copying Ava would be completely unsustainable at her pace, It just didn’t make any sense.

Ava sighed and sunk deeper into her seat, this time out of relief. Moore was not stealing her ideas. Ava hoped that the stories would diverge from one another soon and save her the worry.

“Ava.”

Ava blinked and turned her focus to Ryan’s disappointed look and the red plastic cup in his hand. “Hmm?”

“What are you doing?”

Ava glanced at her phone, then back at Ryan. “Reading?”

He let out a half-sigh-half-laugh. “God, you’re such a nerd for someone who dresses like a lesbian biker queen.”

Ava looked down at her favorite leather jacket and jeans. Underneath her jacket was even a red and black plaid shirt. She really did look like a lesbian biker. She scowled at Ryan.

“Ava, you know I love you, but girl, you have zero social awareness”

Ava, wondering what he could have possibly meant by that, looked up at the rest of the room to see a party in full swing. “Oh.” She sheepishly tucked her phone back into her purse. “Right, I forgot about that.”

“Good girl. Here– take this.” He placed the (clearly alcoholic)drink on the table in front of Ava. “Stay right here, I’ll be back in a bit.” He turned and left Ava with the drink.

Ava took a sip from the cup. It was trying way too hard to mask how bitter the alcohol was with excessive amounts of sweetener. It was impossible to tell if it was supposed to taste like cherry or watermelon, maybe both. She shrugged and raised the cup to her lips again.

Ava couldn’t help but watch the dozens of people that she didn’t recognize all chatting and laughing with each other. How did Ryan know so many people? Did he even know all of them?

As if on cue, Ryan appeared in Ava’s peripheral vision, holding a replacement for the drink he’d given to Ava.

“Do you even know everyone here?” Ava asked before thinking about it.

Ryan coughed and sputtered out the drink he’d been sipping. Ava was suddenly very thankful that he hadn’t reached her yet or she would have been covered in a sticky alcoholic mess.

Ryan wiped his mouth with his sleeve after he stopped coughing. “No, I definitely do not know everyone here.” He looked around the room. “I do know a lot of the people here, but there’s always an open invitation for people to bring their own guests.” His eyes locked onto Ava, “It’s a good way to meet new people.”

Ava understood the implication.

“I am happy with the number of people I already know, Ryan.” Ava hissed.

“Come on Ava.” The exasperation in his voice was clear. He was tired of Ava’s stubbornness. “It couldn’t hurt to meet a single new person.”

Ava scowled at him. A certain example immediately came to mind.

“Okay fine, it could hurt, but this won’t be like Sasha!” Ryan promised, “And you can’t let one bad experience put you off of new people all together! How are you going to meet the next miss-Ava’s-girlfriend if you don’t meet new people?”

Ava tried not to picture Paige in her mind.

Ryan grinned at her, as if he’d made an irrefutable point that won him a debate. “Now come on, I have a great starter friend for you.”

Ava tried not to be offended by the implication that she needed a ‘starter friend’ as Ryan grabbed her hand and dragged her across the house to god-knows-where and god-knows-who.

Ryan pulled Ava up a flight of stairs and through two doorways before he seemed satisfied dropping Ava off on a balcony with another woman. She looked nearly a decade older than Ava. 

“Ava, this is Danielle.” He gestured towards the woman, who was in the middle of drinking from her own plastic cup. “Danielle, this is Ava.” Ryan smiled to himself, content with his introduction and left the balcony, presumably to rip another introvert from the safety of their corner and abandon them at the mercy of someone else like Danielle. 

Danielle was a beautiful woman. Dark brown hair, piercing green eyes, a killer figure, she had it all. Ava was pretty sure that Danielle was what some people might call “milfy”.

Danielle tracked Ryan with her eyes until he was out of sight before turning to Ava with an amused smirk on her face. “Did he decide that you weren’t making enough friends?”

“He called you a ‘starter friend’” Ava huffed and took another drink. Getting drunk was beginning to sound better and better as the night went on.

“Did he now?” Danielle chuckled to herself.

Ava stood awkwardly, completely lost on what she was supposed to do here. What was she supposed to talk about? She didn’t want to sound rude, but she didn’t particularly care about talking to this woman. Ryan had just dropped her off and expected her to make friends like a kindergartner asking the nearest person if they wanted to be friends.

Danielle took charge of the conversation. Ava didn’t know whether to be thankful or not for Danielle’s forwardness. She was a curious woman, seeming to enjoy asking Ava about herself, things like how she knew Ryan(“we met at a mutual friend’s game night several years ago”), what she was doing at the party(“Regretting agreeing to help Ryan set this whole thing up”), where she was from(“A small town just outside the city”). They were all surface level questions that Ava answered with ease until Danielle threw a curveball.

“So. Ava. What do you do?” Danielle asked, leaning her elbows on the balcony’s railing and fiddling with the cup in her hands.

Ava shrugged. “Accounting. I’m an accountant.”

Danielle scoffed. “That’s your job. What do you do? For fun? Surely you don’t just work.”

Ava looked down at her drink, pondering if she’d had enough to drink to talk about her actual hobby and not her pre-programmed excuse hobbies. No. Definitely not drunk enough.

“Writing. I’m a writer.”

Danielle’s eyes lit up at the word. “A writer hmm?” She grinned at Ava, who was deep in the process of mentally cursing out her lips for betraying her. “What sorts of things do you write?”

Ava sighed, she was in too deep to back out now. “Romance,” she admitted. “Trashy lesbian romance.” Ava caught another amused look on Danielle’s face and decided that she needed to clarify. “I write other things too!” Ava looked back down at the cup in her hand and softened her voice to a whisper “But recently it’s just that.” Ava tried (and failed) to hide her shame.

“Hey.” Danielle called for Ava’s attention. “Don’t be embarrassed. After all, you’re looking at an avid trashy lesbian romance enjoyer right now.” Danielle winked at Ava.

Ava recoiled she wasn’t– 

“Are you… flirting with me?” Ava asked.

“How could you tell~” She drawled and leaned towards Ava.

Ava’s brain fizzled. She was just an accountant who wrote as a hobby. That wasn’t desirable, she wasn’t desirable, was she? “I– You– That–” Ava shook her head. “Sorry but I… already have someone…” Ava trailed off as she rebuffed the woman.

“Oh!” Danielle perked up, seemingly unfazed by the rejection. “You’re writing romance for your girlfriend! How cute! What’s she like?”

Ava shrank back into herself. “Well it’s not– She isn’t– We aren’t–” Ava took a breath to regain some semblance of composure. “We aren't actually together, I just- I like her a lot.”

“Oh. I see.” Danielle smirked. “You’ve got a crush.”

Ava nodded sheepishly.

“Have you said anything to her?”

Ava felt her face redden. “What? No!” She hissed. “What if she says no? She’s my best friend and I can’t risk that falling apart because I caught feelings!”

Danielle furrowed her brow and frowned slightly, looking unamused. “What’s her name?”

“Paige.”

Danielle continued her harsh stare at Ava. “You like Paige, yes?”

Ava nodded.

“What is stopping you from being with her?”

“She doesn’t like me back.”

Danielle sighed. “How do you know? Has she explicitly told you that she doesn’t like you?”

“Well… no but–”

Danielle stopped her. “Then you don’t know. The only surefire way to know if she likes you or not is to ask her.”

“But–”

“Bad girl!” Danielle gently swatted Ava’s forehead with the back of her hand. “No being a useless lesbian! In the real world we are open and honest with our emotions. Okay?”

Ava downed the rest of her drink. “Okay. Fine.” Ava conceded, hoping to change the subject, she wasn’t taking romance advice from someone that she just met.