Secret Shared

3 CASSIE

IT WAS INEVITABLE. Will and I both tried to avoid being alone, but the Café Rose was small with narrow hallways and dark corners.

“Thanks for staying late, Cassie,” Will said, the night the drywall got delivered. He’d asked me to watch for the truck.

“I wanted to.”

“Wonder if you could do me one more favor.”

“Sure,” I said. “What is it?”

“You know what it is,” he answered, his voice barely above a whisper. Crossing his arms, he leaned back on the cool glass door of the fridge.

“Is it this?” I asked, loosening the clasp on my apron and letting it fall to the floor.

“Yes. That’s it. Can you do me another favor?”

“I can,” I said, my voice so choked with longing I sounded underwater. I slowly lifted my shirt over my head, my hair cascading through the neck hole. I threw it down to the tiles. I wasn’t wearing a bra.

“Is it this?”

“Yes … you are … so beautiful,” he murmured. My skin had that effect on him and I knew it.

“Your turn,” I whispered.

Without hesitating, he whipped off his shirt and threw it near mine, his hair shocked upwards. Then he shoved off his jeans, leaving his white boxers on. This was our game.

“I won’t touch you. I promise,” he said. “I just want to look at you. That’s not wrong.”

I undid my jeans and stepped out of them, hooking my thumbs in the strings of my bikini underwear. He nodded slightly, aching for me to take those off too. I hesitated, looking out at the pitch-black street. What time was it? How long had we been alone in here like this? I inched my underwear down around my thighs and brought them to the floor. I was now naked.

“Come closer, Cassie. I want to smell your skin.”

“No touching.”

“I know.”

I took a few steps towards him. Six inches from his bare chest, I stopped. At that distance I could feel our body heat mingling, his hot breath on my skin.

I let my hand travel up to my breast, cupping it for him, letting my thumb circle my nipple. A moan escaped his throat as he extended a hand. I stepped back.

“You promised,” I whispered.

“I won’t touch you. But you can touch yourself, Cassie. That’s not against the rules.”

True. I let my other hand travel down across my stomach, the muscle in my forearm flinching as I tentatively felt myself, how wet he was making me, relishing how insanely excited this was making him.

“This is too much, I can’t,” he said.

He was crazed. That’s the only way to explain why, with one deft forearm, he swept the condiment table next to us clean of the bowls and utensils, the trays of salt and pepper shakers, the ashtrays that hold sugar packets, the napkin holders—it all went crashing to the floor. Any other time I would have been pissed. But that night I was thrilled by his impatience, his ferocity. He spun me around and urged me down onto the table, my arms stretched to hold the edges.

“You said you weren’t going to touch me, Will.”

“I’m not going to touch you. I’m going to fuck you,” he groaned, pulling my knees apart and standing naked between my spread thighs. He now held his heavy erection in his hand, stroking it, his fierce eyes on me as he prodded into my wetness, a hesitant inch, then another one, teasing, making me yearn and reach, asking, begging for him to fuck me, to fuck me hard, Oh, Will, my quivering thighs bracketing his narrow hips, my nails digging into his forearms as he—

“Excuse me. Is this seat taken?”

Oh shit, my fantasy broke like a bubble. A man—a real one—now stood looming over my metal patio table at Ignatius’s, his face shadowed from behind by the high, hot sun.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “The patio’s full and I noticed you have a table for four all to yourself. Very selfish.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry. Yes, of course,” I said, plucking my purse from one of the chairs at my table. I must have looked like a dozy ape, chomping on an ice cube and staring into the middle distance, fantasizing about Will—again. This bad habit had to stop or I would drive myself mad.

“I’ll just eat my sandwich and drink my coffee and read my paper,” he said. “And we can pretend we’re not sharing a table for lunch.”

“Good plan.”

He had mischievous blue eyes, and though normally I didn’t like beards, even short, groomed ones, his was sexy.

“We wouldn’t want to speak or make eye contact over food. That would be weird.”

“And awkward,” I continued. “Not to mention rude.”

“Disgusting.”

“The way people eat together and talk to each other. Over meals!” I added with a shudder.

There was a beat, and then we both broke character, laughing.

“I’m Cassie,” I said, extending my hand. The thought occurred to me that I never would have been capable of such banter just a few months earlier, before I’d been introduced to S.E.C.R.E.T. I had changed.

“Mark. Mark Drury.”

Flaky hipsters have never been my type. But this one had a nice smile and a great Cajun accent. Add those blue eyes and strong, lean hands …

“Lunch break?” he asked, folding his long legs under the table.

“Kind of. You?”

“Breakfast time for me.”

“Late night?”

“Occupational hazard. I’m a musician.”

“Get out! In New Orleans?”

“Strange, I know. And you?”

“I’m a waitress.”

“What are the odds?”

There was that smile again.

Naturally, easily, we carried on the conversation, about the instruments he played (he was a singer, played bass, taught a little piano on the side) and the Café, where I worked (he knew it, hadn’t been in a while). The next stage when talking to someone who relies on tourism in this town was to discuss the awful necessity of the awful tourists, before exchanging information about the places these awful tourists don’t really know about. We accomplished that in about twenty minutes, enough time for Mark, who looked a little younger than me, maybe thirty on account of his messy brown hair and his beige leather Vans and his fitted jeans and his faded red T-shirt with the name and number of an auto body shop, to eat his sandwich and drink half his coffee, then wipe his hands on his napkin and get up to leave. Musicians do have the nicest hands. I’ve heard it said that the hand is part of the instrument …

“Wait,” I said, “do you want to try having lunch together sometime? We can do like today, no talking, no eye contact, just two strangers not eating a meal together.” Holy shit. Did I say those words?

“Um. Sure,” he said, laughing. “You seem harmless enough.”

Yes, harmless, unless you count the fact that almost two months ago I danced nearly naked on a stage for strangers, had sex with my boss, was gut-checked in the morning by his pregnant girlfriend, then joined a secret organization dedicated to helping women realize their sex fantasies with total strangers. Yes. Harmless.

“Okay, well … give me your number,” I said, digging in my purse for my phone. He took it from me and punched in his number.

“Okay. Nice not really meeting you, Cassie, and not eating lunch with you or talking to or knowing anything about you,” he said, extending a hand towards me.

I laughed as he turned to leave, glancing at me over his shoulder once. Wow. That was so … easy. Is this what recruiting is like? I basked for a moment in my newfound courage. I did that. I actually asked a man out for the first time in my life, a cute one at that. But why was that almost as hard as half the things I did last year, naked, in front of men I’d never met before? This is the sort of thing—men, dating, sex—that required practice. My year of fantasies had helped me understand that, though it might also have been the fantasy I was having when Mark sat down that prompted me to do what I did.

I was leaning back in my chair feeling proud, when I heard murmuring next to me. I looked around to see a red-haired young woman, wearing giant bug-eyed sunglasses, staring at me from the next table.

“What happened to me? Where did I go?” she mumbled, looking completely stunned.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

Maybe she was having a stroke, I thought, picking up a glass of water and making a motion to join her. She nodded, rubbing the back of her neck. She couldn’t have been more than thirty, but she was wearing a heavy blue dress, despite the heat, and it made her look older.

“Here,” I said, placing the glass in front of her.

She gulped the water back and wiped her mouth, regaining her composure.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s never happened to me before. Maybe it’s the heat.”

“It is quite hot for early April,” I said.

“Maybe.” She took another gulp of water. “Sorry, I don’t mean to intrude, but that thing you did with that guy—asking him out? Very impressive.”

“You saw that?”

“I swear I am never this nosy. But that was hard to ignore.”

A strange compliment from a strange … stranger, but I’d take it.

“It was impressive, wasn’t it?” I said, sounding surprisingly pleased with myself.

“Well … thank you for the water and for your concern. But I’m feeling better. So I’ll just head back to work.”

She pushed up her sunglasses, grabbed her purse, and just at the moment she stood to leave, Matilda arrived. They awkwardly engaged in the “you first, no, you first” dance around the crowded patio table. The woman smashed into Matilda’s left shoulder, then her right. Finally free, it seemed she couldn’t get away from us fast enough.

Matilda and I watched her as she headed into the Funky Monkey next door. Matilda lowered herself into her chair, patting down her hair as though she’d just survived a small tornado.

“Who was that? Or what was that?”

My eyes stayed glued to the door of the store.

“I don’t know. Just a woman … I thought she was ill, so I checked on her,” I said. “But guess what?” I changed the subject with a grin. “I just asked a guy out. And the best part? He said yes!”

“Well, Happy Birthday to you, indeed!”

“Yeah, and that woman, she treated me like I was some kind of celebrity just for asking a guy for his number. It was weird. She looks nothing like me, yet she reminded me a little of me last year. Kind of timid. Kind of sad. Anyway, I feel like my confidence is really growing. I think I am ready to be a Guide. Here,” I said, reaching in my bag for my pledge. “Signed, sealed and delivered.”

“Thank you for this,” she said, putting away my pledge. Her expression was suddenly thoughtful. “I wonder if perhaps we’re looking at a possible S.E.C.R.E.T. candidate.”

“You mean that woman?”

Matilda nodded.

“I don’t even know if she’s single.”

“That’s easy to find out.”

I felt my nerves fire up. “You think I should approach her? What if she thinks I’m crazy?”

“Everyone’s entitled to their opinion. You look great, by the way.”

I looked down at my outfit, nothing too “out there”—slim jeans that rested on my hips and a grey tank top under a cream corduroy jacket. I was never going to be one of those dolled-up babes who crammed Frenchmen on a Thursday night, drunkenly navigating the pocked street in treacherous heels. And I couldn’t for the life of me understand why I should put on mascara to go grocery shopping. But a year of being told I was beautiful and desirable by some of the best-looking men I’d ever laid eyes on made me want to put my best face forward.

“After lunch let’s go next door, talk a bit with that woman.”

“Today? Now?—” It was happening so fast. Why was I so nervous?

“Don’t worry, Cassie, I’ll take the lead, you follow,” Matilda said, scanning the menu.

Oh dear. Here we go.