Page 9
Claire watched her peel the foil and untwist the cage. The cork eased free with a soft hiss, and Erin poured without spilling a drop. She handed Claire a glass and dropped into the velvet chair opposite her, tucking one ankle beneath her.
“Merry Christmas Eve, Claire.”
“Merry Christmas Eve.” Claire touched her glass to Erin’s. The champagne felt like an unreasonable luxury under the circumstances. She took a second sip and felt the bubbles dissolve some of the careful architecture she had been maintaining since she walked through the door.
Outside, wind pressed snow against the windows in long, horizontal gusts that made the glass creak. The generator held the lights at half their usual strength, softening every surface in the room until the boutique looked less like a retail space and more like someone’s exceptionally well-appointed living room.
“I want you to know that when I decided to do one spontaneous thing this Christmas, spending the night stranded in an intimacy boutique was nowhere on my list of possible outcomes,” Claire said.
Erin’s laugh was loud and immediate. She pressed two fingers against her mouth as though she could push the sound back in, then gave up. “In fairness, I don’t think it’s on anyone’s list. That’s what makes it extra spontaneous.”
“I had something smaller in mind. A glass of wine at dinner alone. Eating dessert without calculating whether I’d earned it.”
“Earned dessert.” Erin’s eyebrows rose. “That’s bleak.”
“I’m aware.”
They drank. As her glass emptied, Claire noticed her shoulders had dropped away from her ears. Erin sat sideways in her chair, one arm draped along the back, completely at ease in a way that made Claire conscious of her own rigid posture. She uncrossed her legs. Recrossed them in the other direction. And then she stopped arranging herself and simply sat. “Can I ask you something?”
“You’ve been asking me things all afternoon.” Erin smiled over the rim of her glass.
“This is a more personal question.”
“Even better.”
Claire tilted her head. “How does a woman end up owning a boutique like this in the middle of the Colorado mountains?”
Erin pulled her knee up against her chest and considered the question as though no one had asked it before. Which, Claire suspected, was a generosity. A woman running a business this unusual in a town this small had certainly answered that question hundreds of times.
“I worked in sexual health for years before I opened this place.” Erin turned her glass slowly between her fingers. “I taught intimacy workshops, met privately with women, and listened to questions they didn’t feel comfortable asking anywhere else. A woman could spend forty-five minutes comparing moisturizers without a second thought. The moment the conversation turned to vibrators, her voice dropped and her eyes went to the floor.”
“You’re actually describing me approximately two hours ago.”
“I’m describing almost every woman who’s ever pulled into my parking lot.” Erin’s mouth curved, but her voice stayed serious. “The stores they were used to weren’t helping. Too many sit beside a highway beneath an obnoxious billboard shouting ADULT SUPERSTORE at four lanes of traffic. The windows are blacked out, yet privacy ends there. Inside, obscene packaging and products offering plenty of promises but very little useful information crowd the aisles beneath fluorescent lights. Nothing about those places encourages a woman to take her time, ask honest questions, or expect anyone to care whether she leaves with a product she’ll actually enjoy using.”
Claire grimaced into her champagne.
“I wanted a space where a woman could walk in, ask a question about her own body, and not leave feeling worse and more ashamed than when she arrived.” Erin glanced around the boutique, and Claire saw a sense of pride in her gaze. “So I built what I thought women needed.”
“In the mountains of Colorado. Thirty minutes from the nearest town.”
“It made sense at the time.” Erin refilled both glasses. “I was living in New York. And then I met someone from Denver at a conference. I spent a year buying plane tickets I couldn’t afford, then moved out here.”
Claire suspected the move had cost far more than airfare, but Erin had stopped before reaching that part of the story.
“How did that work out for you?”
“The relationship or the move?”
“Either.”
“The move, yes. The relationship...” Erin paused. “She was wonderful until she wasn’t. There was no dramatic ending. She just gradually stopped noticing I was in the room. I became furniture she’d chosen during a more adventurous decorating phase.”
The description landed hard in Claire’s chest. She knew how it felt to be loved as a wife and overlooked as a woman. She knew the loneliness of sharing a bed with someone who needed her every day and desired her almost never.
“My marriage was similar,” Claire said. She hadn’t planned to offer that. “Andrew and I were very good at being married. Holidays, schedules, parent-teacher conferences, dinner reservations for anniversaries we celebrated out of contractual obligation. We performed the institution of marriage beautifully.”
“But?”
