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Wrong.
I barely took off my robe.
I wrapped my hand around the knob and froze. I couldn’t even open the door. My curiosity had just … dissolved.
When I got home, I called Matilda and we met the next day for lunch at Tracey’s.
For some reason I felt like I had to apologize.
“Nonsense. Nothing to apologize for,” she said. “Was it a matter of attraction? What do you think we got wrong about your scenario?”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her I didn’t even open the door.
“Truth is, I just … It seemed attractive in theory, but when it became real, I realized it wasn’t something I actually wanted. It just felt like too much. God, does this make me a coward?”
“Coward? Solange, for you that fantasy had nothing to do with bravery and everything to with curiosity. The curiosity just wasn’t there.”
True, but the bigger truth was that Julius’s words had begun to resonate. And in that moment I started to crave something more with my sex, something deeper, maybe more … emotional.
“Don’t give it another thought. I promise we’ll orchestrate a stellar Step Seven do-over. Think about what else you’re most curious about these days and we’ll set it up,” she said.
“It can be anything?”
“Of course,” Matilda said, wiping her mouth with her napkin and setting it down.
The idea came to me so swiftly I didn’t have a chance to temper it or to really think about what I was asking her to do for me.
“Well, it’s not really a matter of what I’m most curious about, but rather whom.”
Matilda looked around the crowded restaurant. She leaned forward.
“Please don’t ask me—”
“Pierre Castille,” I said. “He turned down my last interview request, but something tells me he wouldn’t turn yours down. If my next Step is truly about curiosity, then perhaps you can make him my Step Seven do-over. Part of my fantasy could include doing a feature-length interview.”
“Solange, Pierre is manipulative, unpredictable, dangerous even. And I cannot vouch for your safety, which is the first and most important prerequisite for any S.E.C.R.E.T. fantasy.”
“Who says I’m going to accept the Step?”
She looked at me gravely. Could she tell that even as I said those words, I doubted them? He might be all those things Matilda said, but he was also undeniably sexy. And this wasn’t about love, after all. What was curiosity anyway if it wasn’t sticking your hand in a lion’s mouth? I had based my entire career on those kinds of dares. I had walked away from a step for lack of curiosity before, so who knows what would happen if I were face-to-face with Castille. Maybe I’d walk away again. All I knew was when I contemplated that opportunity, I felt that familiar adrenaline rush flooding my veins. Once that happened, there was no turning back.
Matilda seemed both impressed and angry about my plan. “He’s a dangerous man, Solange.”
“I’m not afraid of him. In fact, he should be afraid of me.” I laughed, trying to turn the tail end of my comment into a joke, but her silence hung heavy in the air.
It was the kind of silence that journalists and salespeople know to leave alone because the next person who speaks loses.
“I’ll tell you something,” Matilda said, begrudgingly, affectionately, “formidable doesn’t even begin to describe you.”
The next day, sitting in Julius’s car en route to a parent–teacher meeting, I fought a weird urge to tell him about the threesome and that it was because of him I’d backed out. Instead, I took in the familiar scent of his Jeep, marveling that the man was on time, a little early even.
“You look nice,” he said. “You’re wearing your hair different. I love it curly.”
“I just haven’t blown it out.”
“That’s pretty,” he said, touching my bracelet and the skin beneath.
We still had an easy intimacy, the kind where a hand on a knee or a casual caress while adjusting a tie wasn’t out of the ordinary, but it hadn’t happened in a while. I debated taking off my S.E.C.R.E.T. bracelet, but with six charms now gracing the chain, I couldn’t resist wearing it everywhere I went.
