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“Cassie,” she said, gently tugging me by the forearm to speak directly into my ear. “It will be okay.<br />
I promise you.”<br />
“No, it won’t, Matilda. I’ll call you tomorrow,” I said, my tone flat, my expression deadened.<br />
She looked from me to Jesse. “Take good care of her.”<br />
He nodded, his hand at my back, my own arms wrapped around my body like I was one big wound.<br />
Jesse held the door open for me and we were both hit with the first fall chill of the year. Silently, we<br />
walked down Royal to Saint Louis, where his truck was parked halfway up the block. My body,<br />
drained of all emotion, felt like flesh pressed against bone beneath a dress I couldn’t wait to rip off<br />
and burn. Will knew my secret and he didn’t want me anymore. I could hardly take the new job at the<br />
new restaurant named after me. How would we cope, him knowing what he knew, me feeling how I<br />
felt?<br />
Jesse and I didn’t say a word to each other as he drove the narrow streets of the French Quarter,<br />
drunk tourists tumbling in front of our slow-moving truck. We crossed Esplanade and Elysian Fields,<br />
and pulled up next to the Spinster Hotel on the corner of Mandeville and Chartres, where the<br />
Delmonte sisters were still up, no doubt, watching and waiting for me to come home. Would they<br />
notice that the man dropping me off was different from the one with whom I had left? And indeed,<br />
what did this say about me? It said nothing, I decided. It said that I had accepted help when I needed it<br />
the most, and in doing so changed my life. I forged real bonds, including with men, and definitely with<br />
the one sitting next to me now, looking at me with soft eyes.<br />
“Here you are. Want me to come up? Make you a cup of tea? Tuck you in? I promise that’s all I’ll<br />
do. I know where your head’s at.”<br />
I wanted to say, Yeah, it’s where my heart is, with a very hurt man who left me feeling broken and<br />
dirty. A man I loved who I thought loved me, unconditionally. But I was wrong. Of course there were<br />
conditions. There are always conditions when it comes to men and women and love and sex. But if<br />
for Will to love me like he once did, I’d have to be like the old me, then Will could keep his love. I<br />
would never again go back to being that tiny, chaste, timid woman. Never.<br />
I looked at Jesse’s face, his eyes mellow in the dark of the truck’s cab.<br />
“Well? What say you, Miss Robichaud?”<br />
That’s when I felt it; it started behind my belly button and worked its way up, settling around my<br />
heart: defiance. The necessary kind, the kind that pushed back on whatever judgment I’d seen in<br />
Will’s eyes, a look that had made me feel undesirable, unworthy of love. That wasn’t coming from<br />
him; that feeling was in me already, and it was time, time to let all of that go: No more judgment, no<br />
more limits and no more shame, Cassie. Starting now.<br />
I turned to Jesse. I turned to face the man who knew my darkest parts, my fears and desires, and<br />
wasn’t turning away.<br />
“Actually, I would like it if you came up, Jesse. I’ve had a hell of a night … and I think I could<br />
really use a friend tonight.”<br />
He wet his thumb with his tongue and rubbed stray mascara off my cheek.<br />
“Then use me, darlin’,” he said. “Use me.”