Page 114 of Pierced

The woman in charge of the table looks at me, then at Pierce, then back at me. And she’s just about to open her mouth and save us both from this terrible, awkward moment when a patron comes up and distracts her.

Fate, it seems, will not intervene again. Once is enough, says fate. Now you’re on your own.

“Love is stupid,” I say.

“Is it?”

I nod. “Because…” I swallow hard now. “It’s so messy.”

The corners of his lips lift up, just a little. He nods. “It is pretty messy.”

And then all the messy things that have happened since last summer come rushing back. All the stupid feelings. All the stupid reactions to those feelings. All the wrong words that could come flying out of my mouth are there, hanging in the air in front of me. Whole paragraphs of wrong words strung out in long sentences flow out and shimmer in the cold December air.

All the ways to make this worse present themselves.

And I lose my nerve.

I am not the woman I thought I was.

I have never been that woman. Ever.

I am the wallflower. I am someone who fades into the background. I am the one who turns away and never looks back because I am too afraid to step forward and be seen.

That is what fate is trying to tell me now. That is the final chance I’ve been given.

Proof that people don’t change no matter how many costumes they put on. No matter how many blindfolds they wear. No matter how many cages they put themselves in.

I am just… a tiger, I guess. But in all the wrong ways.

“Well,” I say, wringing my gloved hands together. “It was nice seeing you again, Pierce.”

And then I just accept this fact and turn away.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO - PIERCE

“It was nice seeing you again, Pierce? Are you kidding?” I reach for her gloved hand. I catch it. She looks down at me holding her wrist and says…

“Let go of me, please.”

“No, thanks. Already did that. Didn’t like it much.”

With a knowing smile, the woman working the Christmas present sex toy table asks, in her Parisianated English, “Ah, you two are married?”

“No, we’re not,” Myrtle says.

“You talk like married people. Here. This, you should try.” She holds up a full latex suit, complete with a face mask that has only a breathing tube where the mouth hole should be.

I walk away, pulling Myrtle with me.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“I don’t want to have this conversation in front of Catherine Robbe-Grillet.”

“How do you know who Catherine Robbe-Grillet is?”

“How do I not? She’s like the most famous dominatrix in France.”

“That wasn’t her.”