S.E.C.R.E.T.: An Erotic Novel by L. Marie Adeline

minutes to cool down,
     all the while pretending to look for something.
    “What are you so happy about, girl?” she asked, lisping through her missing tooth.
    “Life, Dell. It’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
    “Not always, no.”
    “I think it’s pretty grand,” I said.
    “Well, goody for you,” she said as I headed back to the dining area. I left her scooping
     out ice cream for a small birthday gathering of bankers.
    My couple, my favorite fawning duo, hadn’t returned since the night Pauline dropped
     her journal. But thoughts of their caresses were now replaced by lightning flashbacks,
     my own memories of that man’s beautiful face between my thighs, of the hungry way
     he looked at me, so deliberate, so keen. I thought of his fingers, how they engaged
     at just the right moment, and how his firm hands guided and moved me, like I weighed
     nothing, like I was made of feathers—
    “Cassie, for crying out loud,” Dell yelled, snapping her fingers in front of my eyes.
     “You keep on leaving the planet.”
    I almost jumped out of my boring brown shoes. “Sorry!”
    “Table eleven wants their bill, nine wants more coffee.”
    “Yes. Right,” I said, noticing the two girls from table eight blankly staring at me.
    Once I’d served the two tables, I went back to my thoughts. Dell had it wrong. I hadn’t
     been fantasizing. I was remembering. Those things had actually happened. I was recalling
     things that had been done to me, to my body. I gave my head a healthy shake. If this
     is what it felt like afterStep One, what would it be like with a few more fantasies under my belt?

    One day in early April, on my only day off that week, a cream-colored envelope arrived
     in my mailbox. There was no stamp on it. It appeared to have been hand-delivered.
     My heart leapt to my throat. I glanced down the street. Nobody. I ripped open the
     envelope. Inside was the Step Two card, and the word
Courage
. There was also a single ticket for a jazz show at Halo, a bar on the roof of The
     Saint Hotel, a newly built boutique hotel that was making its debut during this year’s
     festival. Though I was no big music buff, even I knew these were hard tickets to get.
     I looked at the date. Tonight! This wasn’t enough notice! I had nothing to wear! I
     did this all the time, excuses, one after the other, building and building, until
     the fear got so big it toppled any plan for adventure. That’s how it had always worked
     for me. Somehow opening the door to my apartment to a stranger seemed easier to contemplate
     than venturing out into the hot night on my own, walking into a bar by myself, and
     sitting there alone, waiting for … what? What would I do while I waited? Read? Maybe
     three or four weeks is too much time between fantasies. Maybe my courage had retreated.
     Yet Step Two was about
Courage
, so I decided to concentrate on that, on staying open, the opposite of my usual way,
     which was to begin my day with theword
no
on my lips. That’s how, hours later, I was trying on little black dresses, and an
     hour after that, sitting very still while coats of red lacquer were layered on my
     fingers and toenails. The whole time, I told myself I could always back out if I wanted
     to. I didn’t have to go through with anything. I could change my mind at any time.
    That evening I grabbed my fantasy folder from my night-stand. What is it about going
     out alone, seeing a movie alone, or enjoying dinner alone, that is so difficult? I
     could never bring myself to do it, preferring to rent a movie at home rather than
     sit alone in a darkened theater. But the alone part wasn’t what I was afraid of. The
     alone part was easy; I’d felt alone my whole life, even when I was married. No, I
     was afraid that everyone else, all those people, coupled and cozy, would see me as
     one of The Great Unpicked, The Sadly Unselected, The Sexually Forgotten. I imagined
     that they would point and whisper. I imagined that they would