11 - THE PROWLING CAT
Janice
I'd had the photograph ready for days. There's a timing to these things. Too early and she bolts; too late and the moment closes. You wait for the day she's soft.
Oh, but she's always so soft, said my inner prowling cat.
Down, girl! I told myself.
Because today Lacey was ready. Brad telling her nobody would want what was left of her. What I felt like doing was driving to wherever Brad was and putting my thumbs through his eyes. Between her dad's moralizing and Brad's… whatever, I doubt she'd ever had a second of guilt-free sex.
"So," I said, and got the phone out, tapped it twice, held it across the table like it was nothing.
She looked. Ricardo. Against the brick wall, guitar, laughing at something off-camera.
"His name is Ricardo," I said. "Twenty-four. Graduate student, music theory. He's not looking for anything heavy. He's kind, he's safe, he's clean, and in all the time I've known him he's never once made a woman feel anything but completely at ease."
She meant to look for a second. Then another.
And there went her throat, pink climbing up out of her collar, and she hadn't the faintest idea it was happening.
I watched it go up her neck and felt it pulse in me, the way it only ever does with her.
Married to a man who told her she was cold.
Cold, for fuck's sake. There is a furnace in this woman and I've watched her hand the pilot light to an idiot.
I imagined what that furnace would be like. I imagined that a great deal.
She surfaced, and I watched the sensible reasons arrive, the whole tedious committee she convenes whenever she feels anything.
I took the phone back.
"Mm," I said.
"Don't."
"I didn't say anything."
"You said 'mm' in the specific way that means you saw something."
"I saw you look at a photograph roughly four times longer than you look at anything." I stirred my latte. "Your neck also went pink."
Her hand flew to her throat, then thought better of it. "My hormones are having a very difficult month."
"Your hormones," I said, "have been having a very difficult decade. Ricardo's just the first pretty thing they've met with no exit." I slid the phone back. "Look again. Take your time. I'll wait."
I'd have waited all afternoon. I'm a patient woman about exactly one person.
She didn't look. But she wanted to, and had to stop herself, and I enjoyed watching her fight that hard.
"He's twenty-four," she said.
"He's not going to bring flowers and meet your father. Think of him as the male version of me, if it helps."
"That helps and also terrifies me."
"Both correct." I leaned in. "Nobody's proposing anything, Lacey. This is you remembering you have a body and it's yours. That's all."
I want her awake. I've wanted her awake for a very long time.
Ricardo would do it. He'd light her up and hold nothing, no danger of him keeping her, and when he'd done his job she'd still be here, across this table, mine to sit with on Fridays. Neat. I didn't examine it much further than neat. I've never been one to poke at a thing that's working.
"I'll think about it," she said.
"You always say that."
"Because I always need to think."
"Fair." I leaned back. "But don't think so long the answer stops mattering." Then, because I can't always control the cat: "There's always the simpler option, of course. Friends with benefits. Just putting it out there."
For one second she didn't laugh. Then she did.
"Janice. You are impossible."
There it went. Back in its box. Where she keeps me.
I raised my latte, entirely unrepentant. "I'm just saying. The offer stands." It's stood for twelve years. She thinks it's a bit. Or maybe not. I wasn't actually sure.
"Oh, stop." Laughing now, the real one, the one I dig out of her, and I'd burn the café down to keep it going. "The last thing I need is my hormones going off around my best friend."
Only paradise. "Fine. Just buddies." I ran my hand down her arm as I said it, slow, because I do everything I'm not allowed to do slowly. "For now."
She covered whatever went through her and shook her head. What did she feel? Of all the people I could read so easily, Lacey was the one I wanted to and couldn't. Too close.
We talked about other things. I carried most of it, which I don't mind on her empty days. I'd carry her further than that and call it a light afternoon. I have sat across from this woman for twelve years wanting nothing so much as to see her happy.
I could make her happy.
She stood to go looking a hairline lighter than she'd come in. I'd done that. She touched my shoulder on her way past, careless, the way you touch furniture you trust, and went out into the afternoon. Innocent, sweet Lacey, quietly ruining me and not even knowing it.
Wake up, Lacey. Come and see who you are.