Nicole never really came out as a lesbian to her friends, family, and colleagues, and now her relationship with Katie is on the rocks. Katie is tired of being a "dirty secret" and moves out of their shared apartment on a hot Friday in August. Devastated, Nicole goes to her grandmother's farm on the shores of Lake Sunapee, a safe place where she spent happy summer holidays as a child. Nicole hopes for a quiet weekend to reflect, but between her gran's new lodger, the sexy redhead Melissa, and Sally and Bud, two of Nicole's childhood friends, she is quickly roped into an evening's entertainment at the Lodge Saturday evening. Her well-meaning friends try to fix her up with a guy, and in the heat of the moment she blurts out she is a lesbian. Havoc ensues. But in a conversation with her grandmother, Nicole begins to understand her secret hasn't been hidden as well as she thought, and she learns she isn’t the first lesbian in her family. With the new sense of freedom that comes from being true to herself, she has only one thing to wish for, and that is to reach Katy and make amends. But is it too late?

Heat Wave: Sunapee

“I sure am,” Melissa said. “Let’s go.”


The first thing I did when I came into the apartment was throw my briefcase and suit jacket onto the couch and go into the kitchen to grab a beer out of the refrigerator. I looked around the kitchen. One thing about living in an apartment was that you had so few windows, and those that were there were usually in the living room or a bedroom, that’s the way most were built. I’d gotten lucky on this one; it was a corner apartment, so there were two sides with windows. Unfortunately, the kitchen was not on one of those walls.


Chapter 12