The Promise of Lace (15 page)

“There’s a menu on the fridge. I’ll see if I can find some
pajamas that will fit you.”

Dieter stretched hugely and walked over to the fridge. I
took a moment to appreciate the curve and bulge of his ass as he did, then went
to my wardrobe and started digging for pajamas that wouldn’t embarrass either
of us. I found myself some
old
 
pajama
pants that I’d gotten for
Christmas a million years ago that had little pictures of lambs on them. I
pulled on a t-shirt that more or less matched. After a lot more digging I found
some old linen yoga pants with a drawstring for Dieter. They were a pretty
girly baby blue, but I assumed he wouldn’t care about that.

He was sitting naked on my bed, bent over the Chinese food
menu spread out on the coffee table, one finger trailing down it.

“Here,” I handed him the pants. “I think these’ll fit and
they are super, super comfortable.”

“Thanks.”

He fished his panties and his camisole back out from the
other side of the bed and slipped back into them. I watched him dress with
frank appreciation. He gave me a heart-melting grin when he spotted me.

We put Buffy back on, put the bed back up into couch form
and cuddled until our food came. I buzzed the delivery person up and went to
sign the receipt and tip the extremely petite young black girl who handed me
our food with a very cheerful smile for someone delivering food at ten at
night. I noticed that Dieter managed to be in the one small space of my
apartment that could not be seen from the front door while the order was handed
off, but I didn’t mention anything. I unpacked the food and he grabbed plates
out of the cupboards.

We ate.
Watched a little more TV.
I
asked him about his family. He told me that it was just him and his mom. His
dad was living the cliché, schtupping his secretary somewhere out in Los
Angeles and Dieter hadn’t spoken to him since he was seventeen. He and his mom
were on bad terms because he refused to tell her where he was until she said
that she believed what had happened between him and Jocelyn, the evil ex. He
was afraid that she would tell him where he was, so they weren’t speaking.

We kept
talking,
the volume on the
TV kept going down until we finally turned it off. We finished with our food
and put it in the fridge. I gave him my back up toothbrush, the in-package one
that I kept in the medicine cabinet in case some terrible fate befell mine. We
swished mouthwash like a couple from a freaking Listerine commercial and then
went back out to the couch. He moved it into its bed form this time. I hit the
lights.

And we still didn’t go to sleep.

We talked about books. We talked about TV. We talked about
high school. We talked about everything until the dark night visible through
the slats of the window blinds started to turn grey, then pink. I fell asleep
with my head on his chest, brushing against the soft fabric of his camisole and
his strong arm around me.

Chapter Eleven

This time when we woke up together after a night of
revealing ourselves to such an extreme degree, the morning was comfortable.
Peaceful even.
We made coffee. We had leftover Chinese for
breakfast and watched a little bit more Buffy. I didn’t chase him out this
time. He had to get to work. He used my shower and we kissed at the door just
long enough to make him late. He rushed back in when he realized that he’d
forgotten his phone.

I took a long shower, thinking over everything we’d talked
about.
The things that were going on with his mother.
The things I’d told him about how angry I used to get with my sisters when we
were all in high school. How I was genuinely concerned that my youngest sister
might be getting into something shady back in our hometown. I was betting
drugs.

And Jocelyn.
We hadn’t discussed her in
detail. But she had been a huge force in his life. He’d been with her for a
while and she had impacted so many of his habits and likes and insecurities.
He’d obviously been trying to avoid letting her come up in discussion, but she
was there.

And that was something that I did need to talk to Hailey
about, because I had no idea how to deal with all of the information, and after
last night… I was ready to deal with it. I hadn’t felt this kind of connection
with a guy in way too long. I was willing to take a couple of risks for this
guy.

I let the hot water run over my body for a long time, washed
my hair, scrubbed my skin, shaved my legs again, anticipating that it would
come in handy to have them stay as smooth as possible.

I watched a little TV. Worked on my computer for a little
bit. I was procrastinating calling Hailey.
Gathering my
thoughts.
I didn’t want to get on the phone and say something ridiculous
like “I’m like, so totally in love with this guy, OMG.”

For one thing, I wasn’t a fourteen year old who couldn’t
understand the difference between real life and MTV. For another Hailey would
laugh at me until she cried. And for the last thing that’s not what it was, I
didn’t love him, not yet. But I was smitten and I could definitely see myself
falling in love with him. I could see myself doing that so soon that I was
scared.

I dithered a little bit longer, poured myself a cup of coffee
and then grabbed my phone. I swiped the screen, told myself not to tap my
Facebook
app, just
to
freaking
call Hailey while I knew she’d be available for a little longer.

I didn’t realize that it wasn’t my phone until I opened up
my contacts and didn’t recognize any of the names.

Dieter had grabbed my phone before he left for work.

I sighed, annoyed. I had more important calls to make today
than just Hailey, and, one more aggravation of the twenty-first century,
because I could just enter his number into my phone, I didn’t know what it was.

Shit.

I grabbed my keys and my purse, and with my hair still wet,
went down to the garage for my car. Of all the things I didn’t want to do
today, shagging ass to the suburbs was pretty high up on the list, but I didn’t
want to leave Dieter with my phone. For one, I really needed it, for another,
while I was sure he wouldn’t just go through it… it was a really private thing
for someone you had just started dating to just have in their possession for
hours on end. Hailey was going to be obnoxiously texting me and my texts came
up on my main screen, there were a couple of apps that he didn’t absolutely
need to know about at this point in the game. And there were a couple of
organizations and websites that could potentially email me that he also didn’t
strictly need to know about.

Traffic was ludicrously thick all the way out to the
highway. It was noon on a Wednesday; I couldn’t imagine why all these people
had to be in the suburbs this time of day or why they had to go there so
slowly.

This sucked. The damn thing shouldn’t be this important.
Dieter would figure out that he’d grabbed the wrong phone, and he’d have to
come back to get his own. I didn’t
need
it for any business related things today. I could handle anything I needed to
just as simply from my computer today… but I couldn’t let someone else have my
phone. Just didn’t trust anyone enough for that.

It took me damn near forty-five minutes to get to the stupid
mall. Another 10 minutes to find parking. But I didn’t have to go all the way
to the lingerie store. Dieter was sitting at a Caribou Coffee right inside the
entryway.

Looking at my phone.

Maybe it wasn’t what it looked like, I told myself. Maybe he
was just using the 3G to check his own email.

“Hey!
Dieter!”
I called out.

He didn’t smile when he looked up at me. His mouth was set
tight. He looked upset, not
angry,
the lines of his
face weren’t nearly hard enough for that.

He looked hurt. And just at the edges of that hurt, he
looked panicked like he had been last night, when someone had walked into the
bathroom.

I walked up to him. I wasn’t sure enough of the situation to
sit down, so I just stood at the edge of the table and set my hands on the
surface. He didn’t say anything. He just set my phone down on the table and
slid it across to me.

I did the same with his.

“Lucky we ran into each other so easy, I guess,” I said. He
was still just looking at me in a way that made me really uncomfortable. “Sad
isn’t it? That just not having your cell phone is such a disaster these days?”

He cleared his throat. “Did you tell Hailey that I was some
sort of attention whore pervert?”

It felt like someone had dropped ice water over my back.
“What?
No, of course not.”

He tapped my phone on and turned it around so that I could
see.

My text inbox was open, and I had easily ten texts from
Hailey, the last one was a quick read and it was not a gentle suggestion.

“Okay… then why… but why did you tell her everything about
me?”
 
he
asked.
“Because… I thought… I thought that was… that was all private, Roxanne. I mean,
I… I thought we were… building something.”

“Dieter,” I started, and then fumbled for words. “Dieter, it
isn’t like that. We weren’t making fun of you. Hailey is my best friend, we
tell each other everything. And I didn’t… She’s just like this. She doesn’t
actually mean any harm by any of this… and I didn’t say anything to her except
just the facts. I swear.”

He checked his own phone. “My break’s over. I have to get
back to work.”

“Dieter, come on,” I reached out to grab his arm and he
turned just in time to evade me.

“I just… I told you the one thing that I just can’t handle
is being humiliated in front of people, and I just…I didn’t think I’d have to
specify that I can’t handle being humiliated for your friend’s amusement
either.”

“I never meant to hur—”

“It’s just… it’s a first step, Roxanne. And it’s a first
step that I just… can’t ever do again.
Ever.”

“It’s not like that, Dieter, I swear it’s not.”

“I need to get back to work,” he repeated, and started to
walk away.

“I’ll… I’ll call you later, okay?”

“You do what you need to do,” Dieter said.

He didn’t even look back.

I stood there for a second, shocked, then regained my
composure and hustled back out to my car.

My drive home was even slower than the drive out to the mall
had been. I had this horrible gnawing feeling in my stomach that got worse
whenever I imagined that expression on his face. Hurt.
Betrayed
even.
It was like the look a dog gives you when you accidentally stepped
on its tail.

I gave up a few exits before mine, left the highway and
parked at a MacDonald’s that looked like a great place to get shot. I dug my
phone out and looked over my texts from Hailey from the last couple days.

I’ve been looking up cross dressing
online. You wouldn’t believe
all the
wrinkly old dick
I’m finding.
Do a Google search
before you get too
serious about this guy.

If you want to borrow Noah to
make sure that Panty-boy isn’t gay before you sleep with him, he owes me a
favor.

He hasn’t used the abuse thing
to get away with anything yet has he? Cause every jerk in the history of the
world has used that to get away with shit. We both know you’re too smart for
that.

Shit. No wonder he had been so upset. This was not Hailey at
her best. It would take a lot of explaining to convince
anyone
who happened to read any of these texts why they weren’t
quite as awful as they sounded. I pulled out of the MacDonald’s, trying to
avoid the worst of the broken liquor bottles in the parking lot as I trundled
toward the exit.

I was
pissed
at
Hailey the whole drive home. I put on my throbbing gym music and turned it up
way too high and just raged. I didn’t even approach reasonableness until I
pulled back into my garage. She was my best friend. She’d had no idea that her
texts hadn’t been going to me. She was being insulting and weirdly narrow
minded, even for her, and I was irked that she thought I was so inexperienced
and naïve that my opinion on a guy I had spent a lot of time with and she had
talked to once was meaningless. As though how to deal with the other half of
the human race was some deep secret that the elders didn’t hand down to you
until you had banged the same dude a couple dozen times.

I knew her, and I knew she had the best of intentions, but
everyone knew that best intentions weren’t
Heaven’s
building material of choice.

And on top of all the guilt from over-exposing all of this
information about Dieter, the being pissed at Hailey for not being able to open
her mind like a
fraction
of an inch,
and being angry with Dieter for reading my private correspondence anyway, I was
also torn between being really upset about this whole mess and just a little
relieved.