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Heidi could only lift her chin, which barely counted as an acknowledgment of the truth.
And the truth was that she’d embraced straightness only because Tim was as phenomenal as he was. She loved him to death, and there was plenty of pleasure shared between the two of them, but like Carine said, there was something that wasn’t quite right.
“Needling or not,” Heidi said when Carine didn’t add any words to the discussion, “I still need you to give me a sentence or two. I’m probably giving you the easiest pop quiz you’ve ever taken, and the answer’s right in the front of your brain.”
Carine bumped the car door closed with her hip and folded her arms over her chest. “I don’t want to be an obedient little sub right now. I want you to act like you know what I’m talking about.”
“And I want you to act like you’re not afraid to be frank,” Heidi returned. “This isn’t a game. I’m not doing dominatrix mind tricks on you. I’m asking you to communicate with me and operate under the assumption that I can’t see the forest for the trees.”
“You’re doing this because so many women have left you in the lurch before. You’re making this awkward for me and painful because you think I’ll say, ‘Oh, never mind,’ and just throw my hands up and drive home.”
“I had a cleaning lady leave me in the lurch just last week, actually.”
Carine’s expression snapped into a novel contortion of annoyance, which only became sourer when a gold Buick SUV crept toward them in the right lane. The windows were down, and Martha Truss was in the front passenger seat.
“How’d you like that music, Carine?” the busybody crowed.
“It was really nice,” Carine called over her shoulder. “Right up my alley. A little secular for you, though, wasn’t it? You probably thought it was downright nasty like all those movies the theater has played lately.”
If Martha noticed the lack of humor in Carine’s tone, she didn’t show it on her face. Heidi wouldn’t have put it past her, though. She’d spent her entire life in Eastern North Carolina and knew every single kind of brain there.
“That’s all right,” Martha said. “The Lord already took care of everything on the cross, and no sin’s too great. You know that, right?”
Heidi turned her gaze to the stars. People around those parts had a habit of asking each other what they already knew.
“Mm. I know a lot of things, Ms. Martha,” Carine said. “How’s Bibby, by the way? Did he ever get his adoption ban situation cleared up at the animal protection society?”
When Heidi looked down, she found that Ms. Martha’s overcooked smile had shrunk and that she’d very recently acquired a rapid blinking compulsion.
She cleared her throat, raised a hand in farewell, motored up her window, and apparently suggested to her husband, Lawrence, that he put his foot on the gas.
“Now, what were you saying?” Carine asked Heidi before the Trusses had even turned the corner. “Something about wanting to make me squirm in a way I didn’t ask for?”
God.
Heidi let an exhalation out slowly through her nose and reached into her purse for her car keys. “You know, I’m not convinced you realize what you’re asking for.”
“I knew exactly what I was asking for when I suggested we come here tonight. Both of us know we could have dealt with that paperwork anywhere, even over email. I wanted you to come out with me because I just wanted to sit next to you.”
Heidi opened her mouth to rebut, but Carine expelled an emphatic, “Mm-mm,” and shook her head. “Don’t you dare tell me I have scores of friends, and any one of them would have jumped at the opportunity to have drinks and shellfish with me on a Tuesday night. I wanted to come out withyou, Heidi. I wanted to be in the same space as you and be seen in the same space with you, and you know it’s not because I’m climbing any damned social ladder, so don’t even think it.”
Heidi wouldn’t have thought that. If anything, she would have thought that Carine being too familiar with Heidi in public would have been one of the worst possible things for her social status. They were in a place where people like Heidi were certainly allowed to exist but also where their liberties were often treated as lifestyle choices that shouldn’t have been flaunted in public. And they were strongly encouraged to resist engaging in them in the privacy of their own homes, too.
“When I ask you if you like me,” Carine said, “you know exactly what I mean, and I want an answer.”
“What do you hope the answer will get you? Hmm?”
Heidi knew the way things were supposed to work. She was supposed to admit to Carine that yes, she “liked” her, and Carine would want to go home with her, and they’d probably fuck, and then Heidi would wake up in the morning apprehensive that the other shoe was going to drop at any moment. She’d mentally berate herself for ever allowing herself to think soft thoughts about someone she should have walked away from at Clay’s weeks prior.
“What do I want the answer to get me?” Carine snapped. “I want it to get me open access to Heidi Dowd, is what. I want to see you whenever I have a yearning to, and I want to think that when you look at me, you’re happy to see me, too.”
“I’m always happy to see you.”
“You don’t look like you are right now.”
“Perhaps I’m feeling needled.”
Carine rolled her eyes.
