Secret Shared: A S.E.C.R.E.T. Novel (5 page)

“Dauphine!”

I nearly fell off my stepladder. “What in the
hell
, Elizabeth,” I said, dropping the jacket I’d been clutching.

“I called your name, like, ten million times!”

My stomach growled so loud we both heard it. Then I saw stars in my peripheral vision and grabbed the glass case to steady myself.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, I just tuned out for a second.”

“Your stomach sounds like two wolves fighting in it. Go get some food. Sit outside in the sun. You don’t officially start until two,” she scolded with the adorable authority of the very young. She plucked my purse from below the glass case, grabbed my arm and shoved me towards the door.

“Return when you are well fortified, missy. And take your damn time.”

“Fine,” I said, still seeing stars.

Next door I nabbed the last empty patio table at Ignatius’s and ordered a hot bowl of gumbo. The Sunday shoppers seemed frantic, or maybe it just felt like that because this was early spring and the first time in a long time that I’d been outside, around people, instead of holed up in my store dealing with inventory. I had also been skipping breakfast, skipping mornings altogether. Maybe that’s why I was losing weight, something I was contemplating when
I noticed him—
him
him—Mark Drury—the lead singer of the Careless Ones.

I’d never seen him with a beard before; I liked it. His band had a regular, early-evening slot on Saturdays at Three Muses. And Mark’s voice was a husky, alt-country dream. Every once in a while, he’d sing a cover of an old Hank Williams song that would make me swoon. He was all limbs and black hair and pale blue eyes. His stooped shoulders were those of a man with an instrument perpetually strapped to his back. And there he was strutting by my patio table and heading inside. He and some of his band mates would hit up the Funky Monkey for T-shirts, jeans and even outlandish wigs if they were doing a show during Mardi Gras. But I always shoved Elizabeth in front of them, too shy to help them myself. The Careless Ones was the only local band I’d go see alone, time spent listening to music being the only time I could really let go and be in my body. Music was the opposite of me. That’s why I was mesmerized by performers like Mark, who could stand on stage in front of everybody and give himself permission to let go.

Talk to him
, I thought to myself.
Just go up to him after the show and tap him on the shoulder and say, Hey Mark, when I feel like drinking alone, I watch you.

Smack. I’d sound like a crazy person.

I love watching you in the dark when I’m by myself.

Ew.

I like to watch you move.

Wrong. All wrong. I truly was turning peculiar.

I tried not to stare through the glass too long as Mark Drury took a seat at the bar inside. I cursed Elizabeth for telling me to leave the store. I cursed myself for wearing a dark blue dress on a hot spring day. But my gumbo had arrived, so I was committed. Plus, what if he had a girlfriend?
You’re just talking to him. You’re just saying, Hey, love your work.

A few minutes later, the bartender handed him a takeout coffee and a wrapped sandwich. Bag pinned between his lips, newspaper held in his armpit, he pulled several napkins from a stainless steel dispenser near the door and headed straight for me. In my head, I was screaming,
Here! Sit with me!
But my eyes were shaded by my giant sunglasses. I was like a fish, mouth opening and closing, pressed up against the silencing aquarium glass.

Then, before I knew it, he was sitting at the table
next to me
, joining some dark-haired woman who had an empty seat at her table. They introduced themselves and fell into an easy banter as they ate. Watching him grin at her, making her laugh, hurt my stomach. I regarded my imaginary rival as discreetly as I could. She was pretty and fit, but I bet she didn’t know that Mark had chosen the band name the Careless Ones from
The Great Gatsby
, a book she’d probably never read, having cribbed notes in junior high from people like me. Bet she wouldn’t even like Mark’s music. Minutes later I watched him say goodbye to her by punching his number into her phone, imagining that he was giving it to me.

What happened to me? Where did I go?

“Are you okay?”

Had I said that out loud? I
had
said it out loud … directly to the dark-haired woman who’d been talking to Mark Drury and was now sitting alone. She stood, picked up a glass of water from her table and moved in slow motion towards me. She placed the glass in front of me, a concerned look on her face.

“Are you okay?” she asked again.

To this day, I have no idea why I said yes when she asked if she could join me; I so rarely spoke to strangers. But as my mother would say, “Some things are fatefully divine and some are just divinely fated.”

IT WAS INEVITABLE
. Will and I both tried to avoid being alone, but the Café Rose was small with narrow hallways and dark corners.

“Thanks for staying late, Cassie,” Will said, the night the drywall got delivered. He’d asked me to watch for the truck.

“I wanted to.”

“Wonder if you could do me one more favor.”

“Sure,” I said. “What is it?”

“You know what it is,” he answered, his voice barely above a whisper. Crossing his arms, he leaned back on the cool glass door of the fridge.

“Is it this?” I asked, loosening the clasp on my apron and letting it fall to the floor.

“Yes. That’s it. Can you do me another favor?”

“I can,” I said, my voice so choked with longing I sounded underwater. I slowly lifted my shirt over my head, my hair cascading through the neck hole. I threw it down to the tiles. I wasn’t wearing a bra.

“Is it this?”

“Yes … you are … so beautiful,” he murmured. My skin had that effect on him and I knew it.

“Your turn,” I whispered.

Without hesitating, he whipped off his shirt and threw it near mine, his hair shocked upwards. Then he shoved off his jeans, leaving his white boxers on. This was our game.

“I won’t touch you. I promise,” he said. “I just want to look at you. That’s not wrong.”

I undid my jeans and stepped out of them, hooking my thumbs in the strings of my bikini underwear. He nodded slightly, aching for me to take those off too. I hesitated, looking out at the pitch-black street. What time was it? How long had we been alone in here like this? I inched my underwear down around my thighs and brought them to the floor. I was now naked.

“Come closer, Cassie. I want to smell your skin.”

“No touching.”

“I know.”

I took a few steps towards him. Six inches from his bare chest, I stopped. At that distance I could feel our body heat mingling, his hot breath on my skin.

I let my hand travel up to my breast, cupping it for him, letting my thumb circle my nipple. A moan escaped his throat as he extended a hand. I stepped back.

“You promised,” I whispered.

“I won’t touch you. But you can touch yourself, Cassie. That’s not against the rules.”

True.
I let my other hand travel down across my stomach, the muscle in my forearm flinching as I tentatively felt myself, how wet he was making me, relishing how insanely excited this was making him.

“This is too much, I can’t,” he said.

He was crazed. That’s the only way to explain why, with one deft forearm, he swept the condiment table next to us clean of the bowls and utensils, the trays of salt and pepper shakers, the ashtrays that hold sugar packets, the napkin holders—it all went crashing to the floor. Any other time I would have been pissed. But that night I was thrilled by his impatience, his
ferocity
. He spun me around and urged me down onto the table, my arms stretched to hold the edges.

“You said you weren’t going to touch me, Will.”

“I’m not going to touch you. I’m going to fuck you,” he groaned, pulling my knees apart and standing naked between my spread thighs. He now held his heavy erection in his hand, stroking it, his fierce eyes on me as he prodded into my wetness, a hesitant inch, then another one, teasing, making me yearn and reach, asking,
begging
for him to fuck me, to fuck me hard,
Oh, Will
, my quivering thighs bracketing his narrow hips, my nails digging into his forearms as he—

“Excuse me. Is this seat taken?”

Oh shit, my fantasy broke like a bubble. A man—a
real
one—now stood looming over my metal patio table at Ignatius’s, his face shadowed from behind by the high, hot sun.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “The patio’s full and I noticed you have a table for four all to yourself. Very selfish.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry. Yes, of course,” I said, plucking my purse from one of the chairs at my table. I must have looked like a dozy ape, chomping on an ice cube and staring into the middle distance, fantasizing about Will—again. This bad habit had to stop or I would drive myself mad.

“I’ll just eat my sandwich and drink my coffee and read my paper,” he said. “And we can pretend we’re not sharing a table for lunch.”

“Good plan.”

He had mischievous blue eyes, and though normally I didn’t like beards, even short, groomed ones, his was sexy.

“We wouldn’t want to speak or make eye contact over food. That would be weird.”

“And awkward,” I continued. “Not to mention rude.”

“Disgusting.”

“The way people eat together and talk to each other. Over meals!” I added with a shudder.

There was a beat, and then we both broke character, laughing.

“I’m Cassie,” I said, extending my hand. The thought occurred to me that I never would have been capable of such banter just a few months earlier, before I’d been introduced to S.E.C.R.E.T. I had changed.

“Mark. Mark Drury.”

Flaky hipsters have never been my type. But this one had a nice smile and a great Cajun accent. Add those blue eyes and strong, lean hands …

“Lunch break?” he asked, folding his long legs under the table.

“Kind of. You?”

“Breakfast time for me.”

“Late night?”

“Occupational hazard. I’m a musician.”

“Get
out
! In New Orleans?”

“Strange, I know. And you?”

“I’m a waitress.”

“What are the odds?”

There was that smile again.

Naturally, easily, we carried on the conversation, about the instruments he played (he was a singer, played bass, taught a little piano on the side) and the Café, where I worked (he knew it, hadn’t been in a while). The next stage when talking to someone who relies on tourism in this town was to discuss the awful necessity of the awful tourists, before exchanging information about the places these awful tourists don’t really know about. We accomplished that in about twenty minutes, enough time for Mark, who looked a little younger than me, maybe thirty on account of his messy brown hair and his beige leather Vans and his fitted jeans and his faded red T-shirt with the name and number of an auto body shop, to eat his sandwich and drink half his coffee, then wipe his hands on his napkin
and get up to leave. Musicians do have the nicest hands. I’ve heard it said that the hand is part of the instrument …

“Wait,” I said, “do you want to try having lunch together sometime? We can do like today, no talking, no eye contact, just two strangers not eating a meal together.”
Holy shit. Did I say those words?

“Um. Sure,” he said, laughing. “You seem harmless enough.”

Yes, harmless, unless you count the fact that almost two months ago I danced nearly naked on a stage for strangers, had sex with my boss, was gut-checked in the morning by his pregnant girlfriend, then joined a secret organization dedicated to helping women realize their sex fantasies with total strangers. Yes. Harmless.

“Okay, well … give me your number,” I said, digging in my purse for my phone. He took it from me and punched in his number.

“Okay. Nice not really meeting you, Cassie, and not eating lunch with you or talking to or knowing anything about you,” he said, extending a hand towards me.

I laughed as he turned to leave, glancing at me over his shoulder once. Wow. That was so … easy.
Is this what recruiting is like?
I basked for a moment in my newfound courage.
I did that. I actually asked a man out for the first time in my life, a cute one at that.
But why was that almost as hard as half the things I did last year, naked, in front of men I’d never met before? This is the sort of thing—men, dating, sex—that required practice. My year of fantasies had helped me understand that, though it might also have been the fantasy I was having
when Mark sat down that prompted me to do what I did.

I was leaning back in my chair feeling proud, when I heard murmuring next to me. I looked around to see a red-haired young woman, wearing giant bug-eyed sunglasses, staring at me from the next table.

“What happened to me? Where did I go?” she mumbled, looking completely stunned.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

Maybe she was having a stroke, I thought, picking up a glass of water and making a motion to join her. She nodded, rubbing the back of her neck. She couldn’t have been more than thirty, but she was wearing a heavy blue dress, despite the heat, and it made her look older.