move your lips and you say words. You just don’t know how to answer it because you don’t know how to have honest conversations.”
“Hey! I’m having a conversation with you. Insulting me is not the best way to get me to give up information.”
“I’m sorry,” Lane said, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “But, I really don’t think it’s the best idea for you to get involved in such a complicated relationship.”
“It’s not a relationship. I just... Look, I guess it’s messed up for him to get involved with me, and I know it’s messed up that I got involved with him. But I just think it’s something that needed to happen. Sex is...a release. And I think there was some pent-up stuff. That needed to release.”
Lane looked at her skeptically. “If you’re in some kind of hostage situation just blink twice.”
“No, I did this to myself. And obviously I’m feeling a little bit messed up about it. But, it happened. And he didn’t hurt me.”
Lane looked at her out of the corner of her eye. “Was it good?”
“What?”
“The sex.”
Rebecca had to seriously consider how to answer that too. “Is sex ever really...bad?”
“Yes. Sometimes it’s very bad. If you haven’t had that experience, that just makes me mad. So I’m curious. Is having sex with somebody you don’t like actually good? I’ve never done it outside the context of a relationship.”
“Really?”
“Really what?”
“You’ve never had sex with a guy you weren’t in a relationship with.” She hadn’t really considered that. She just sort of assumed that almost everybody else was much more casual about it than she was.
“No. I’ve never really seen the point.”
“Oh. Well, I can honestly say that this was... That... I...”
“That good?”
Rebecca covered her face. “I’ve never felt so good in my entire life. Followed by being incredibly embarrassed and never feeling quite so bad in my entire life.” And then there had been all of that at the hospital. Witnessing the way he cared about his family but didn’t quite know how to build bridges between them.
That made her feel things. Things that weren’t entirely negative. She had felt... Well, in that moment she had felt almost like she understood him.
“Come on,” Lane said, tightening her hold on Rebecca’s shoulders. “You need cheese.”
She propelled Rebecca out of the small space between the bathroom and the main part of the store, and back toward the entryway. Finn was still there, and Rebecca wanted to melt into the floorboards.
“I didn’t see any of this,” he said, climbing back up the ladder and fiddling with another light fixture.
“Appreciated,” Rebecca mumbled.
“Cheese,” Lane said, reaching into the cooler and producing a wooden board with thin slices of meat and some precut cheese, covered by saran wrap. “And a promise of discretion from me too.”
“Thank you,” she said, her throat tightening.
She felt... She felt tender and exposed, but in some ways she did feel better. She knew more about Lane than she had before. And Lane knew more about her. It was strange, to let somebody in on your secrets. Things that you weren’t sure about.
She couldn’t say she liked it. But, she felt like it was the right thing to do in the situation.
“I never noticed how quiet you were during our girl-talk sessions,” Lane said, her voice low. “Actually, I’ve been noticing lately.”
“Some things just feel too personal to me,” she said, not offering any further information.
She could only take so many steps. Could only give away so much. She felt like something had shifted inside of her, as though she were in the middle of an internal sea change. She hated it. All of this. But at least there was cheese.
“Thank you,” she said again.
“For what?”
“For letting me tell you all of that. And for not making me feel bad.”
Lane smiled slowly, stretching her hand out and putting it over Rebecca’s. “That’s what friends do, Rebecca. And I’m really sorry if I didn’t show you that sooner.”
Rebecca was finding it difficult to breathe. “You don’t have to be sorry for anything. If I wasn’t friends with you, I wouldn’t have any friends at all. You were the one that introduced me to Alison and Cassie. You were the first person to really treat me like I wasn’t just someone with scars and a sad past.”
That was one reason it was so hard to share with Lane. She didn’t protect her. Didn’t treat her like she had a fragile sticker affixed to her forehead.