Talking About Sex...

“Hey, guys!” Cheryl snagged a chair and settled her curvy little body into it. “Sorry I’m late. I played tennis this afternoon with this yummy-licious new guy from the law firm and I lost track of the time.” She barreled on without taking a breath. “I would have called but my cell’s acting weird. I need to trade it in for a new one, but I hate going through that, you know? New phone, new options, more buttons to figure out. So, I’m thinkin’—” She paused and looked at Katie. “What’s so funny?”

“You.” Katie was so glad she’d agreed to spend happy hour with Cheryl. Nobody could stay depressed with Cheryl around. “You have more energy than a four-month-old Chihuahua. By the way, this is Ava, the person you always get when you call the station.”

“Hi, Ava! It’s good to meet you at last! As for the Chihuahua thing, please don’t tell me I look like one.” Cheryl fluffed her short hair. “A Lhasa Apso’s okay. You can compare me to a Lhasa Apso any old day, but a Chihuahua looks so sort of naked, you know? Which is cute in its own way, but I like to think that I have more—oh, here come your drinks.” She batted her eyelashes at the waiter. “I’ll have one exactly like that, please. Are you a student at the U of A? I ask because lots of the students wait tables here.”

As Cheryl turned to launch into an animated discussion with the waiter, Ava leaned across the table toward Katie. “Is this normal?”

“Completely normal.”

“I was afraid she was on something.”

“No, she’s just being Cheryl. Her courtroom rep is that she wins cases by talking the jury to death.”

Cheryl swung back to them. “You’re explaining me to Ava, aren’t you? Ava, you might as well get used to my motormouth. I’ve been this way ever since I was fourteen months old and I’m not likely to change now. Katie and I recognized each other as soul mates in first grade and we’ve been involved in a conversational marathon ever since.”

“Oh, you won that race a long time ago,” Katie said.

“Hey, you hold your own, DJ girl. The point is, Ava, that Katie’s used to me, but you’re not. If you have something you need to say, just holler shut up, Cheryl and I’ll do my best.”

Katie laughed. “I just want to know if you passed up drinks and dinner with the yummy-licious lawyer so you could meet us for happy hour.”

“I did, but that’s a good thing. I liked being able to tell him I had other plans. It’s good to have them thinking you have a full social schedule, you know? But in any case, I wouldn’t have canceled this to go out with him, because I think that’s just wrong. Men come and go but girlfriends are forever. Am I right?”

Both Katie and Ava nodded.

“Of course I’m right.” She didn’t break stride as her margarita arrived. “Listen, Katie, that show last night was dynamite. Thrusting Skyward. I loved it. What a zinger. I’m going to start field-testing the guys I date to find out how they feel about high-rise buildings. What a great litmus test. I hope that Je—I mean someone from Harkins Construction caught that program. I mean, the whole crew at that job site should be required to listen to that program. They think they’re so macho with their hard hats and their tool belts, but every last man-Jack of them needs to reevaluate their—”

“Cheryl, it’s okay.” Katie didn’t want Cheryl working herself into a lather trying to cover up her little slip. “Ava knows about Jess. In fact, he came to the station after the program last night.”

Cheryl stared at her. “He did? What did he say? What did you say? What did he look like? Is he still hot? Is he married? Was he—”

“Cheryl, shut up.” Katie grinned at her friend.

“Right. I’ll drink my margarita. Start talking. Tell me everything.”

Katie wasn’t about to do that, but she sketched in the outline of the visit without supplying the detail about the kiss. She said they’d agreed to disagree and parted ways. His final vow that things were different and he’d prove it to her didn’t make the edited version she gave Cheryl and Ava.

Cheryl obviously knew she was holding back. Katie could see it in the tiny smile that Cheryl hid behind the rim of her margarita glass. And when Ava left at seven because she’d promised to catch a movie with her usual crowd, Cheryl dropped all pretense of believing Katie’s story.

“First we’re going to order dinner and another margarita,” she said. “And then you’re going to tell me what really happened.”

“I told you what happened!”

“Yeah, right. First we order, then you spill.” Cheryl motioned the waiter over and they each chose a taco salad to go with the second margarita.

“Okay, you can begin anytime,” Cheryl said after the waiter left. For once she didn’t elaborate on that thought or spin off onto a million other somewhat related topics. Instead she sat looking at Katie with that same tiny smile, waiting.

They’d been friends for a long time, and Katie knew that Cheryl would get the truth eventually. She always did. Most of the time she talked a blue streak, which was her natural state, but once in a while, like now, she could create a silence so welcoming, so in need of being filled, that a person felt obliged to confess all. That tactic had also served Cheryl well in the courtroom.

“I’m…” Katie drained her margarita glass and set it down on the glass table with a solid click. Between Cheryl’s open invitation to tell all and the tequila fogging her brain, Katie couldn’t hold her tongue. “I’m still into him, Cher.”

“I know.”

Katie sighed. “I figured you would. So when he showed up, I was all quivery, like I used to get in high school. I didn’t want Ava to hear what we said, so I brought him into the conference room and closed the door.” The memory of that got her hot all over again.

“Who made the first move?”

“He did. He…kissed me.” She tried to breathe normally, but telling Cheryl made her relive the moment when his lips had crushed hers, and all the powerful emotions created by that contact came rushing back.

“I take it you didn’t run screaming out of the room. No, you don’t have to tell me how you responded. I can see it in your eyes.”

Katie groaned and covered her face with both hands. “I’m sure he could see it, too.” She lifted her head and looked at Cheryl. “But he did the same damned thing as prom night! Got me going and then walked out the door, saying it wasn’t the place!”

“Well, it wasn’t! You could get fired for a stunt like that!”

“I know, but I wish I’d been the one to call a halt instead of him. I hate that I want him more. It’s humiliating.”

Cheryl fingered the stem of her margarita goblet. “If you should decide to give it another try, I’ll bet you could turn the tables on him. You’re not some shy little virgin now, are you? You have some experience and you—”

“You make it sound like I know all about sex. I don’t. I do research for the show, but that doesn’t mean I have a ton of practical knowledge. It’s not like I’ve tried all those Kama Sutra tips, you know.”

“I said some, not a ton. We’ve both had some, and I like to think we have a few tricks up our sleeve that can turn the average man into a groveling fool willing to do anything to keep us happy. You need to take the offensive with Jess if you want to regain some control. When are you going to see him again?”

“I’m not!” Katie thought the conversation was getting way out of hand. “He’s too hot to handle, Cher. I lose my head when I’m with him. And besides, he’s putting up this hideous building next to the station. How can I get involved under those circumstances? I’m putting him completely out of my mind.”

“If you say so.” Cheryl held Katie’s gaze. “But I wonder how you’re going to do that. With that building going up, he’ll be in your face and on your mind for the next few months. You haven’t gotten over him in thirteen years, so what makes you think you can get over him now?”

“I just will, that’s all.”

“I have a suggestion, but it’s only a suggestion, mind you. Don’t act on it unless it makes sense. But it seems to me that a better course of action would be to make some moves on this guy—on your terms. Get into bad-girl mode and tease him until you have him eating out of the palm of your hand.”

“I don’t want to—”

“For one thing, it would make you feel a whole lot better about past events,” Cheryl said, pushing on, “and for another, if you end up having to tolerate that building next door, at least you’ll have some compensation for the pain. I think it sounds like a fun project, personally. Jess is easy on the eye, and if you could pin him down, he might be one hell of a lover. That intensity of his tells me that he could give a woman—”

“Shut up, Cheryl.” Katie hadn’t interrupted because she had something to say. She had nothing to say. But the longer Cheryl talked, the more Katie wondered if she could pull off such an outrageous maneuver. And that was dangerous thinking.

JESS GOT KATIE’S ADDRESS from her mother, who was thrilled to hear from him and apologetic about the things her daughter was saying about his building. Jess told her not to worry about it, that he and Katie were in the process of working things out. Then he proceeded to Katie’s apartment near the university.

Jess didn’t let too many people know he could pick a lock in under five seconds. He’d learned that trick from his father, one of the few things his dad had taught him during his rare trips back to Globe. By the time Jess had hit puberty and wised up about his dad, Mel Harkins had stopped coming to see him.

That was just as well. Jess’s mom had never admitted that her ex-husband was a thief, but Jess had figured it out by himself when she wouldn’t let him keep the portable DVD player his dad had brought him. His mom had left that perfectly good piece of equipment at a bus stop because she’d said keeping it might get them in trouble.

Since his mom didn’t talk about his dad, Jess didn’t either. If anyone asked, Jess said his parents were divorced and his dad wasn’t around anymore. But Jess had vowed to be the exact opposite of his father—steady and true. Picking the lock on Katie’s apartment door made him feel uneasy, but he couldn’t figure out any other way to guarantee he’d have her attention.

AS KATIE UNLOCKED HER apartment door, she heard music and wondered if she’d left her CD player on. Then she stepped inside and her adrenaline level spiked. At least a dozen thick tapers threw flickering light over her living room.

And there, lounging on her sofa, was Jess. She’d been thinking about him so much that she wondered if she’d conjured him up.