L. Marie Adeline- S.E.C.R.E.T

my own memories of that man’s beautiful face between my thighs, of the hungry way he
looked at me, so deliberate, so keen. I thought of his ngers, how they engaged at just
the right moment, and how his rm hands guided and moved me, like I weighed
nothing, like I was made of feathers—
“Cassie, for crying out loud,” Dell yelled, snapping her ngers in front of my eyes.
“You keep on leaving the planet.”
I almost jumped out of my boring brown shoes. “Sorry!”
“Table eleven wants their bill, nine wants more coffee.”
“Yes. Right,” I said, noticing the two girls from table eight blankly staring at me.
Once I’d served the two tables, I went back to my thoughts. Dell had it wrong. I hadn’t
been fantasizing. I was remembering. Those things had actually happened. I was
recalling things that had been done to me, to my body. I gave my head a healthy shake.
If this is what it felt like after Step One, what would it be like with a few more fantasies
under my belt?
One day in early April, on my only day o that week, a cream-colored envelope arrived
in my mailbox. There was no stamp on it. It appeared to have been hand-delivered. My
heart leapt to my throat. I glanced down the street. Nobody. I ripped open the envelope.
Inside was the Step Two card, and the word Courage. There was also a single ticket for a
jazz show at Halo, a bar on the roof of The Saint Hotel, a newly built boutique hotel that
was making its debut during this year’s festival. Though I was no big music bu, even I
knew these were hard tickets to get. I looked at the date. Tonight! This wasn’t enough
notice! I had nothing to wear! I did this all the time, excuses, one after the other,
building and building, until the fear got so big it toppled any plan for adventure. That’s
how it had always worked for me. Somehow opening the door to my apartment to a
stranger seemed easier to contemplate than venturing out into the hot night on my own,
walking into a bar by myself, and sitting there alone, waiting for … what? What would
I do while I waited? Read? Maybe three or four weeks is too much time between
fantasies. Maybe my courage had retreated. Yet Step Two was about Courage, so I
decided to concentrate on that, on staying open, the opposite of my usual way, which
was to begin my day with the word no on my lips. That’s how, hours later, I was trying
on little black dresses, and an hour after that, sitting very still while coats of red lacquer
were layered on my ngers and toenails. The whole time, I told myself I could always
back out if I wanted to. I didn’t have to go through with anything. I could change my
mind at any time.
That evening I grabbed my fantasy folder from my night-stand. What is it about going
out alone, seeing a movie alone, or enjoying dinner alone, that is so dicult? I could
never bring myself to do it, preferring to rent a movie at home rather than sit alone in a
darkened theater. But the alone part wasn’t what I was afraid of. The alone part was
easy; I’d felt alone my whole life, even when I was married. No, I was afraid that
everyone else, all those people, coupled and cozy, would see me as one of The Great
Unpicked, The Sadly Unselected, The Sexually Forgotten. I imagined that they would