1: Happy, Happy Fourth of July

Let's backtrack a tad, okay? Because this day is really when my life changed and I'd rather start here. I'm not really a time-line kinda gal. It's one of my nuances!

It's the fourth of July and I finally meet Sherri, the girl that I've been talking to on online for the past two weeks. A brunette hottie with a fantastic personality. She had moved to town a few months before with her partner who had joined the Nashville Dream women's football team. Sherri doesn't have any friends. I have a handful. We are a match made in heaven! Two girly girls that want to have fun!

Except I haven't been having any. Especially today. My ex is having a 4th of July party just four doors down in her front yard. It's spilling into the street with football games and obvious fun.

I've been hanging out all day with Julie, who is living with me for a short while. She needs a place to stay as much as I need the company. She is a godsend. When I am too pitiful to even speak, she cooks me dinner, regales me with her stories and keeps me mind off of my ex. Today, her main objective is to keep me busy and stop me from looking out the window at my ex's party. An exceptionally hard task as my front window faces the event.

As much as it was a relief to finally be rid of my ex, it was also extremely painful to extricate myself from a life that I'd known for so long. And so I cried. A lot. It was a different cry than the one that I'd been crying almost every day for years. That was a slow, one tear of sadness falling slowly, cry. This cry was full-on, run to your bedroom and plant your face into the pillow for an hour cry. I was so confused.

How could I miss someone that made me cry everyday? How could I miss someone that I hated? Why was I missing someone that had cut me to the core with her vicious words and had hit me with her hands? Why couldn't my heart understand how much better off I was? My head gets it. What the hell is wrong with me?!

As darkness falls, Sherri calls. She's turning into my subdivision. I haven't been this excited in years. I have a new friend. Someone that really likes me. Thinks I'm funny and charming. Someone that wants to be my friend.

Sherri walks in wearing her hair up and boyishly dressed. Except it's obvious that she's femme. A girly girl in disguise. Her makeup is perfect. Her bra pushes up perfectly. Wearing boy shorts, a tee and sandals, she hugs me as she walks past with a cooler packed with cold wines and beer. We settle in for the evening.

I feel like I have known Sherri forever. She's funny and beautiful, but the most attractive thing about her is that she likes me. The only reason that she is sitting in my big leather chair is because she's enjoying my company. It's the first time in an eternity that I've known for sure that someone likes me.

The next day, Sherri emails me. Lisa's football team is coming over next Saturday night for a party and I'm invited. An entire party full of lesbians. Hot, ripped, athletic women. Women that like to have sex with other women. Would I like to join them? But first, she invites me to go to dinner with them this Friday night to meet a single friend of theirs.

I'll see you at 7:30pm Friday night at South Street, she writes.

I can barely contain myself.