“Thanks,” said Jennifer, taking it. And then after she’d left Audrey to stand in silence for three seconds, she continued, “You going to ask?”
Normally when Jennifer was gnomic, Audrey didn’t have much patience for it. But she tried to be patient this time. “If you mean,am I going to ask what specific condition you’re medicating forthen no. I don’t think so, actually.”
“Suit yourself.” Jennifer returned her attention to her monitors. “But since you’re probably wondering anyway—”
“I’m really not.”
“—I’m on a low-dose SSRI for anxiety. No idea if it helps, but I’m used to it. Up to you if you think that explains why I’m such a bitch.”
“Again, could have expressed that without using a gendered insult,” replied Audrey, feeling that they’d both be more comfortable if the conversation went back to more familiar ground.
“Fuck off.”
Audrey hovered. In a way, fucking off was probably what she should be doing. Except since she’d tacitly admitted to herself that bringing Jennifer her pills had been a thinly disguised excuseto see her and maybe talk and/or bang, it seemed cowardly to back out now.
“While I’m here…” she began.
Jennifer looked around, a deep suspicion settling onto every part of her face that suspicion could reasonably settle on. “Yes?”
“Well—the thing is—you know how I sort of quit baking for a while because…”
“Because of your ex?” Jennifer rolled her eyes. “Fuck, is this because I called you impressive? If so, I fucking take it back.”
This was going less badly than Audrey had feared. Actually now she thought about it, it had been going less badly than she’d feared for a while. She’d even been let into the trailer without the usual twenty minutes of sexually charged hostility. “No, it’s not that. It’s just…one of the things about that particular ex was that she wound up making me feel like I was the junior partner in the relationship. And I really don’t want to be going there again.”
“Hold it, Lane”—Jennifer had swivelled fully around to face Audrey and extended an admonishing finger—“we do not have arelationship. We just…we sometimes fail to not fuck.”
There was a framing issue there that Audrey felt could be revisited at a later date. “Right, but at the moment it feels a bit like it’s more that you fail to not fuck me, and I think I’d quite like to be able to fail to not fuck you at some point.”
Jennifer checked an imaginary watch. “I’ve got ten minutes if you have.”
Even though she’d been expecting Jennifer to try to shock her, Audrey was still a little bit shocked. Not by the suggestion, so much as by how little swearing or telling her to leave had gone with it. “I mean in general.”
“I mean in particular. We’re both busy women—we need toline up our windows where we can.”
An unhelpfully easily distracted part of Audrey’s brain suggested that there wasn’t anything she needed to say now that shecouldn’talso say after a short sex break. But she tried her best to ignore it. “I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
Suspecting that she might need to conserve energy for an argument, Audrey leaned against the wall in a way she hoped looked casual. “Really, though. I need to know that this isn’t going to consist entirely of you showing up on my doorstep and saying, ‘I’m horny, let’s bone.’”
Jennifer looked Audrey up and down, then made a show of examining her immediate surroundings. “Sorry, who is in whose workplace right now?”
“That’s different,” Audrey replied, only afterwards realising that she couldn’t quite articulate why.
“Is it?”
“I was doing you a good turn. I wasn’t just showing up to—”
“To say, ‘I’m horny let’s bone’?” asked Jennifer in a tone that suggested she’d rather never hear or speak that particular combination of words ever again.
“Exactly.”
Jennifer shrugged. “You could have done that, though.”
“Sorry. What?” This was veering further and further off-script as they went. Audrey had come in expecting to be told to leave, repeatedly. Not to be told that she could come back any time for a casual hookup.
“I mean, I never said this had to be one way. There is absolutely nothing stopping you showing up at my office and saying, Hi, I’m at a bit of a loose end, do you fancy bending me over andfucking me so hard I piss myself’?”
