Page 18 of Bonds of Shame, Bonds of Lust

"Your hormones," I said, "have been having a very difficult decade. Ricardo's just the first pretty thing they've met with no exit." I slid the phone back. "Look again. Take your time. I'll wait."

I'd have waited all afternoon. I'm a patient woman about exactly one person.

She didn't look. But she wanted to, and had to stop herself, and I enjoyed watching her fight that hard.

"He's twenty-four," she said.

"He's not going to bring flowers and meet your father. Think of him as the male version of me, if it helps."

"That helps and also terrifies me."

"Both correct." I leaned in. "Nobody's proposing anything, Lacey. This is you remembering you have a body and it's yours. That's all."

I want her awake. I've wanted her awake for a very long time.

Ricardo would do it. He'd light her up and hold nothing, no danger of him keeping her, and when he'd done his job she'd still be here, across this table, mine to sit with on Fridays. Neat. I didn't examine it much further than neat. I've never been one to poke at a thing that's working.

"I'll think about it," she said.

"You always say that."

"Because I always need to think."

"Fair." I leaned back. "But don't think so long the answer stops mattering." Then, because I can't always control the cat: "There's always the simpler option, of course. Friends with benefits. Just putting it out there."

For one second she didn't laugh. Then she did.

"Janice. You are impossible."

There it went. Back in its box. Where she keeps me.

I raised my latte, entirely unrepentant. "I'm just saying. The offer stands." It's stood for twelve years. She thinks it's a bit. Or maybe not. I wasn't actually sure.

"Oh, stop." Laughing now, the real one, the one I dig out of her, and I'd burn the café down to keep it going. "The last thing I need is my hormones going off around my best friend."

Only paradise. "Fine. Just buddies." I ran my hand down her arm as I said it, slow, because I do everything I'm not allowed to do slowly. "For now."

She covered whatever went through her and shook her head. What did she feel? Of all the people I could read so easily, Lacey was the one I wanted to and couldn't. Too close.

We talked about other things. I carried most of it, which I don't mind on her empty days. I'd carry her further than that and call it a light afternoon. I have sat across from this woman for twelve years wanting nothing so much as to see her happy.

I could make her happy.

She stood to go looking a hairline lighter than she'd come in. I'd done that. She touched my shoulder on her way past, careless, the way you touch furniture you trust, and went out into the afternoon. Innocent, sweet Lacey, quietly ruining me and not even knowing it.

Wake up, Lacey. Come and see who you are.

12 - DO I DARE

Lacey

I was still picturing Ricardo when I got home. But Janice wanted me to go to the Second Circle. I wasn't lying to her, I really did think I'd die of—embarrassment, mortification? Something, surely. Normal people went to normal bars. Wasn't I normal? I told myself I was ready. Things became ordinary through repetition, I knew that. I had said it to anxious parents more times than I could count. There was no reason it couldn't become ordinary for me too. Janice thought I needed her to chaperone me, look after me. I needed to prove to myself that I could do this kind of thing alone. Right?

No answer.

The next evening, I decided to dare it. I picked a navy dress, fitted enough that I didn't look like I had wandered in from a hospital committee meeting. I did my makeup with care, wore my hair down, and stood in front of the mirror long enough to decide that the woman looking back went places on Saturday nights, or could pass for a woman who did.

"You can walk into a bar and have a drink and talk to a man," I told her.