I snorted, but I thought about what she meant as we walked into the AT&T store, as I switched out the phone number I’d had since I was sixteen for a new one with a Wisconsin area code because, per the clerk, they were out of 312s, and finally, as we sat down at the nearby semi-classy bar/restaurant for a brunch I definitely didn’t need. When our waiter swept by to take our drink orders, Dahlia managed to convince me to split a blood orange mimosa pitcher, and I was forced to also conquer my fear of day drinking.
“I had a big breakfast, so I’m not really hungry,” I told Dahlia as we looked over the menu.
“Thought you didn’t really eat breakfast,” Dahlia started, then dropped her menu in realization. “Hold up. Did Writer Boymakeyoubreakfast?”
I giggled, feeling light-headed with bashfulness and bubbly. Long gone were the bad feelings about my deadbeat mother; I’d thrown them away alongside my old number. Girl talk was so much morefun.
“He did,” I said, tucking my lips into my teeth. “A full meal. With pancakes. And he made them fromscratch.”
“Fromwhat? You mean... like, not from a box? No Krusteaz? Bisquick? Aunt Jemima? Are you sure he didn’t just add egg and milk and call it a day?”
“I’m sure,” I said. “Like, there was baking powder involved.And buttermilk.” I settled a hand on my chin, reminiscing. “They weredivine.”
Scowling, Dahlia poured herself another mimosa and downed it in three gulps.
“I guess God really does have his favorites,” she grumbled. Then she added wickedly, “Ugh. I justknowhe talked you through it.”
Suddenly, I was back in Mal’s bed again, dusk dyeing his white walls blue. The high points of his cheeks flushed and shining, dark eyes half-lidded, body pressed hot and slick into mine.Just tell me what you want, and I’ll give it to you, he’d said, and I hadn’t known what to ask for, because, in that moment, I had wanted it all. Everything he had.
“That good, huh,” Dahlia said, catching my faraway stare.
“Honestly... yeah.” I clenched my thighs, feeling the ghost of him between them. “I didn’t even know it couldbelike that.”
“Wow. You’re sprung,” Dahlia said. “But, more importantly, sounds like he is too.”
I winced, all of my latent horniness passing like it had been blown away.
“He’s a bit more than sprung, I fear,” I confessed. When Dahlia raised her eyebrows in a question, I told her what he’d whispered to me the next morning when he thought I was still sleeping.
Dahlia’s mouth rounded into an O.
“Oh my,” she said after a moment. Then: “How do you feel about that?”
I gave her a knowing look, and she returned it, and then we both erupted into helpless giggles. I knew Dahlia understood, because she was just like me. Both of us battle worn, reveling in our hard-won independence. Both of us, as she’d said, as I’d said before her, used to moving in fear.
Dahlia wagged her head, her shoulders still shaking, then raised her glass.
“Go ahead, Writer Boy, put your whole heart out there,” she said. “And for you! Cheers to new beginnings. And being brave. And not letting our exes kill our inner goddesses.”
“I don’t have an ex,” I said, probably for the third time this week.
“Didn’t Ezra Adelman pay our doorman thousands of dollars just to ensure you picked up your apology bouquet?” Dahlia said flippantly. “I don’t care if you weren’t sleeping together. That man is your ex.”
“Yes, but...” I sighed, already exhausted by the turn of conversation.
But before I could redirect it, a glass shattered at the bar.
Instinctively, the sparse brunch crowd in the restaurant whipped toward the sound, then lingered when they found the source: a pretty blonde with Farrah Fawcett hair who’d managed to spill the contents of an electric blue cocktail down her ivory sheath dress. She stood, still as a Banana Republic mannequin, in the middle of her mess, staring down at an expanding splotch on her chest as if she were unsure how it got there.
I stared too. Even when a waiter rushed to sweep up the shattered glass, the woman didn’t move, only jolting back to life after he tapped her on the shoulder. She laughed sheepishly, accepting his offered bundle of napkins, and stumbled back to her seat with the jointless fluidity of someone who was totally, gloriously plastered.
“Oh Jesus,” Dahlia observed. “Someone’s having a rough morning.”
I watched the woman hoist herself back onto her stool. One ofher falsies had lifted off the corner of her eye, and she peeled it off and attempted to stick it on the bartender’s forehead, and at that point I sighed mightily and made a decision.
“I know her,” I said.
I didn’t like Ashley Biernacki, but I liked the predatory way the guy a seat over was sizing her up a lot less. I kicked back my chair with my heel and made my stand.
