colleagues seemed to think so, going by how they hovered around while hanging on his every word. We didn’t really have much conversation. I’d often tried. But Justin wasn’t much of a listener. And where sex was concerned, he’d thrust into me a dozen or so times, climax, and then fall onto his back and snore.
All in all, it was ordinary. So why was I with Justin? The short answer was that after being single for a long time, I liked the idea of a boyfriend and had convinced myself that passion would eventually grow.
As I sat there wondering about what to wear to the party, I thought about Aggie and how she’d drifted in and out of sleep while I read to her. Then I’d stop, and she’d wake up. She’d then ask me to continue and make me repeat the scenes where Cathy and Heathcliff ran along the windswept, craggy moors vowing undying love for each other. At times, Aggie waved her hand for me to skip a paragraph or page, as though she wished only to relive the passionate, heart-ripping moments. Her appetite for those passages, like the book itself, began to haunt me.
As all these thoughts percolated away, the sound of the buzzer startled me. I rose with a heavy body to answer it.
“Hey. It’s me,” Cassie sang.
“Come on up. The elevator’s not working,” I said.
“Damn. I’ve got my killer heels on.”
“Sling them over your shoulder, then,” I said with a chuckle.
I opened the door and listened as her panting echoed up the stairs.
Cassie pushed open the stairwell door and scowled. “You need”—she leaned against the wall to get her breath— “to move somewhere with a working elevator.”
“That, and somewhere miles away from the drug dealer downstairs,” I said, referring to the comings and goings at all hours of the night, which kept waking me up.
Cassie strolled in, looking gorgeous as always. She had long legs that seemed to go forever, a svelte frame, and high cheekbones framed by bouncy blonde waves. Her big green, friendly eyes, however, were her best feature.
We kissed each other on the cheek and hugged. Friends for ten years, we’d met at a contemporary dance class, after which we became close. We slept over at each other’s homes as teenagers and shared growing pains, laughing and crying together, mainly through Cassie’s considerable sexual awakening.
Being a slow starter, I had been more into books than boys. Then as I developed some curves that even loose T-shirts couldn’t hide, I noticed boys checking me out. Instead of fluttering my eyelashes, I went the color of beetroot. When they handed out the manual for how to be a coquette, I missed out. But thankfully, by the end of my teenage years, I’d lost all shyness around boys. If anything, I probably talked too much.
My mother, who had the same disease, constantly chided me for it. She’d babble on about how men didn’t like women who yapped on and on. I would look at her with a furrowed brow. “The apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree, Mom. You seem to lecture whoever’s within earshot. And you don’t discriminate— man, woman, or dog.” I laughed, thinking of how she would chatter away to our dog when no one else was around.
She’d place her hands on her hips and say, “I’m lucky. I landed a man that likes an assertive woman. But that’s rare. The movers and the shakers, the rich guys out there, aren’t into women who talk too much.”
“Oh well, then they won’t be leaving their shiny designer shoes under my bed, will they?”
She’d give me one of her glares, while my sweet father, who was always on my side, would giggle. I loved him for that. I could have married a loser, and he still would have supported me. But then, Justin was the catch of the century, according to my mom, so she had little to complain about.
Being the one that always got the guys, Cassie had earned the nickname Male Magnet. The leftovers would flirt with me—the short, slightly chubby, dark-haired girl whose dress sense centered around loose and comfortable rather than sexy and showy.
“Why aren’t you dressed?” asked Cassie, her eyes moving up and down my body.
“I just got back,” I said, sighing. “And who has a birthday party on a Thursday, anyway?”
She shrugged. “The rich and idle.”
I entered my tiny kitchen, which could barely accommodate two people. Opening the fridge, I grabbed a carton of juice and poured out