Lay All Your Love On Me

Ever since she was in preschool, Lorna Morello fantasized over the idea of someday having a big, beautiful, wedding. It wasn't until she met Nicky Nichols, however, when Lorna finally came to the realization that her future wedding was more than likely going to be with another woman rather than a man.

As a little girl, Lorna spent the majority of her spare time writing out her dream wedding on scrap pieces of paper. Her mother and older siblings found the interest of hers to be quite ironic, honestly—given the fact that their father had walked out on them when Mrs. Morello had not come to the awareness that she had even yet conceived her third child. Despite that, Lorna's heart craved for what her mom didn't have. She wanted to find love and not just any love—true love. Romantic love that was depicted in all the movies she loved to watch through her middle and high school years.

At the ripe age of twenty-two was the first time Lorna remembered truly being blinded by the presence of a woman. Not just any woman, either. Nicky Nichols walked into the family-owned antique shop that Lorna worked at for the middle-aged Russian woman who owned it and the second her brown eyes caught sight of Nicky, she felt her mouth instinctively gape open while the inside of it gradually salivated. Her stomach did summersaults. It hadn't been until she mentioned this to her mother, weeks after the encounter, that it dawned on her she was having feelings she thought she could only have for a man for a woman.

"Lorna," Stansie Morello called out her youngest daughter's name as she stood about her kitchen preparing that evening's dinner. She mixed the tomato sauce in the pot one last time before covering it with a lid. While it simmered on one of the burners on the stove, she turned to give her full attention to Lorna—who'd sat on a stool at the kitchen island, her face resting in her hands and a blatant dreamy appearance melded upon it.

The wooden spoon that had still been possessed by one of her hands Stansie held it and wagged it slightly in front of her daughter. "Ya gotta crush on someone, don't you?" A smile formed when she observed the colors of Lorna's cheeks morph into a bright shade of red—one that merely matched the shade of the sauce she had just been stirring.

Ears processing the question her mother had recited seconds prior, Lorna moved her hands up to cover her heating cheeks. A sheepish grin involuntarily made its way upon her face. Her mind played over and over the vision of that beautiful redhead walking into the small town shop she was employed at not even two weeks earlier. She had no idea who the woman was or even her name and yet, she couldn't keep her thoughts off of her. There was something about her that made Lorna's heart double, even triple, in size.

Wood clacking against the vinyl countertop averted Lorna's focus up on her mother. Her mother who stared down at her with a knowing smile. And seeing the smile on her face only deepened the shade of red her cheeks already were. "What makes ya sat that?" She pushed herself up off of the stool and made her way over to right beside the sink, grabbing a paper-towel from the holder that sat on the corner of the stainless steel surface. The towel was doused in cold water from the sink and splashed onto her face.

Turning the heat knob down for the proper burner on the stove, Mrs. Morello walked behind the younger woman and wrapped her arms lovingly around her from behind. A maternal kiss was pressed to the top of her head as she combed her fingers through the thick dark waves that spilled from her scalp down along the tops of her shoulders. "A mother knows, hon. Plus, that's the same look I had on my face when I first saw your fathah."

"My fathah?" Lorna's eyes immediately perked up; she turned around from the sink and gazed interestedly up into her mother's brown eyes. The same ones she had been graced with. It was rare for her to ever hear anything about the mysterious Mr. Morello slip out of her mom's mouth. In fact, she could count on only one hand the number of times she heard her father brought up in conversation in the twenty-two years she'd been alive.