Guardian Girl (The Chronicles of Staffordshire) by NC Simmons

friendship between roommates. She could not deny that looking at Lenore, thinking about the inseparable bond they birthed in so few months together, made her come alive with feelings she had denied herself for years.
    Lena sat silently, measuring Lenore’s eyes, assessing the swirling joy and terror she felt just being in the presence of the girl who spoke without a filter and meant what she said with each word. Was it… Love? Or was it just two under-sexed, over-horny girls locked up in an all-girls dorm with no boys to pop their virgin cherries?
    Turning inward, Lena retreated to the icy-cold place where watching each twitch on an opponent's face meant the difference between a baseline shift or rushing the net. "Look… Can we talk about this a little bit, Lenore? I mean, before we start planning a wedding date and all, can we talk about this a little bit?"
    Lenore laughed loudly at Lena's quip. "Yes, Lena! Whatever you want! And I do not want to marry you!”
    "Well, that’s a load off my mind. But what do you mean when you say, 'I love you'? If it doesn’t mean… You know… Marriage - which is kinda illegal in this state anyway - then what does that mean to you?”
    "Well, I suppose it means that… The way I feel at this moment… I never want to be apart from you. I feel like I am more complete with you than without you, I feel like you understand me in a way nobody else does. It means that when I am around you I feel something special that nobody else makes me feel."
    Lenore stopped, shot her eyes heavenward, closed them, and finished her thought. "I think it means that I would give my life for your happiness."
    Lena cried. Lenore assaulted her with a barrage of honesty. Years of solitary confinement melted away in the voice and words of her roommate, a girl who just a few months earlier was nothing more than a smiling face on a poster or magazine cover. Watching Lenore through her tears, wiping them as quickly as they came, Lena flashed back to the tingling sensation she felt when Lenore first kissed her.
    "Lenore, I need to know. This is really important to me. Do you really want to find a man and get married some day?"
    "Of course I do! In case you had not noticed, Lena, I do have a vagina. I would very much like to fill it with a man and his child someday.”
    “Uh… Lenore De La Fuente… Did you just say, ‘Vagina’?”
    For a second, Lenore sucked in on her lips in embarrassment. The girls burst, howling at the ultra-dignified model’s use of the “V” word. Calming, Lenore continued her answer through giggles and sniffs.
    "Lena, saying ‘I love you…’ That does not mean that I think we are supposed to live together forever. It just means that I absolutely know, without a doubt, that right here, right now… Forever more… ‘I love you’.”
    “Uhhh… Lenore… That word ‘forever’ kind of sounds like ‘forever’.”
    Lenore flamenco danced around the question long enough. "What I mean, Lena, is that when you kissed me it felt right, and beautiful, and natural. I want to do it again, and again, and again for as long as we are together. I do not think I want to have sex with you, but I certainly would not mind making out with you again. It was… FUN!"
    Lena could not wrap her pea brain around everything Lenore shared. It felt contradictory and confirming and caring and…
    "That was a pretty hot kiss, wasn't it…?”
    "Lena, if you reached under my dress you would have felt how hot."
    It was Lena’s turn to laugh. "So, Lenore… Where do we go from here? Are we really, really in love? And if we are… Does that make us lesbians? And if we’re lesbians, are we ever going to get married? Or are we just having fun until we find men and figure out we’re not really lesbians? And what happens to the other one of us if one of us falls in love with a man? I’m totally confused. I’m just… Totally confused, Lenore.”
    Lenore patted the bed next to her. "Come here, Lena. Do not be