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I’d allowed myself wine since I didn’t plan to drive back to Clear Lake tonight, and the waiter came by moments later to take our order.
As we ate and sipped, Angela finally opened up about what had happened with her asshole ex, Kevin. It was clearly hard for her to explain, and hard for me to imagine what she’d been through.
“It was all verbal, all psychological,” she explained. “I still have trouble acknowledging my part in it. But I let Kevin make me feel that way.”
“You’re wrong,” I insisted. “You were the victim. It’s not your fault.”
She shook her head. “Maybe the first few times, but not the hundredth. I’m part of a women’s support network. The hardest part for us, and it was true for me…” She sipped her water. “…Was understanding we have the power to walk away and make a different future for ourselves.” She blinked back a tear. “We just have to overcome the fear of trying.”
“And you made that choice.”
She nodded. “It was hard. So very hard.”
“I’m proud of you.” The strength that had to have taken made me admire her even more.
She gritted her teeth. “And then to top it off, when I left him, Kevin stole my online identity, my website, and my ability to make a fucking living.” Her hand came down hard, rattling the table. “I should never have taught him my trick.”
“Trick?”
She lifted her purse. “A good password is very long—several unconnected words and numbers, too big to commit to memory.” She opened her wallet. “And I only write it down if it’s in code.” She handed me a bill.
It was an uncommon two-dollar bill with a bunch of writing on it.
“We each used a two-dollar bill so we’d remember not to spend it. The words and numbers are in a different order, and all I have to remember is how I jumbled them and where to add capitalization. He must have copied my bill and figured it out. Now I’m locked out of my own site.”
I lifted my wine glass again. “The guy sounds like a total jerk.”
“That’s a lot nicer than what I’d choose to call him.”
“If I ever meet him, I’m going to pound him into the ground.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know about that. He’s mean. It’s probably better you two never meet.”
I changed the subject to her consulting work. We talked, and talked some more about her plans. Then she asked about my family and laughed at my stories about my brothers. All through the meal, the only thing I could think about was what was coming next, and how it would tie everything together.
* * *
Angela
“How much farther?”I asked as Boone dragged me along after dinner.
“Seven blocks.”
After the seductive way he’d looked at me over the table, I was ready to combust. Need pulsed through my lady parts with each step, and seven blocks was going to feel more like seven miles. I knew what the strong man pulling me along could do to resolve my urges, and waiting another minute seemed stupid.
“I can’t wait.” I pulled him toward the alleyway ahead.Cosmosaid men were easily seduced by a woman suggesting she was too turned on to wait any longer for sex.
But he resisted. “It’s just seven blocks.”
“Why so far away? How about here?” Against a brick wall might not have been the most romantic, but immediacy trumped location right now.
“You’ll see,” he said, continuing along without glancing to the side.
It turned out to be four blocks later that he slid a keycard into a door. “Upstairs,” he said ushering me inside the stairwell of the Lazy Dog Inn. “Two-oh-five.”
He could have picked a seedier place, but it would have been hard. Maybe this was a fantasy of his, sneaking his date off to a motel that rented rooms by the hour for a tryst away from the prying eyes of anyone who knew him. Or was he reluctant to be seen around town with me?
I didn’t care. This was an out-of-town date, and that felt special compared to all our after-work meals and shack sexathons.
