She nods, her cheeseburger stalled in front of her mouth.
“I mean, what the heck did I think happened in a place called Club Sin?” I try to laugh cavalierly. I am unsuccessful.
She scoots her chair closer, leaning over our table to whisper. “You really pretended to be a naughty maid for some guy you didn’t know?”
Darn. I should have kept my mouth shut. She’s not going to understand. Heck, I don’t even understand.
And yet I did it.
Time to change the subject.
“So, Char, do you think the exam will be tough next week? I mean, we’ve studied pretty hard. I think we’ll ace it, yeah?”
She ignores my question, waving a pointed finger back and forth. “No, no, no, no, no. We’re not done with this. And I have to get back to work soon. So, spill.”
Uh-oh. I was kind of hoping our lunch date would run out so I wouldn’t have to share any more details. What an idiot I was for bringing it up in the first place.
But who else could I tell? Sam from the parking lot?
Charleigh sees the hesitation in my face. “Look, you know I’m not about to judge you. I mean, I might have grown up religious and stuff like you did, but I work in my dad’s freaking pawn shop. You know some of the stuff I see go down there. We do business with every freak and his mother. So, your getting it on with some hot stranger is certainly not gonna rattle my cage.”
I’m so lucky Charleigh’s my friend. We haven’t known each other long, only having met recently through our course, but we hit it off from the get-go, and bonded even more strongly when we realized we had similar upbringings. We are the two students in the class who are viciously serious about learning all we can. The teacher sees this in us. She likes it and helps us whenever we ask, calling us ‘the bookkeeping sisters.’ Charleigh’s the first friend I’ve ever had outside my home ‘community’ and I want so much to be like her. Sure, she had a similar, repressive upbringing like I did. But she doesn’t seem hampered by it.
I giggle, embarrassed. “I wouldn’t say I ‘got it on’ with him,” I say, using air quotes.
She impatiently waves her hand. “Whatever. Tell me, did you like it?” she asks hopefully. Like me, she doesn’t have much experience in these matters.
Did I like it?I’ve been asking myself that question too, every minute of the day since it happened. I know what the answer is, but I strangely keep expecting it to change. As if I’ll suddenly realize the sinful error of my ways and regret the whole thing, admitting just how degrading and humiliating it was. I’ll move through being angry with myself, then forgiving myself, then committing to never doing anything like it again.
But that’s not actually going to happen because Ididlike it. And no matter how many times I give myself the opportunity to change my perspective, to find the harm in what I did, it stays the same. I don’t regret it, I’m not ashamed, and I know I’m going to do it again.
But the confusion, the conflict, won’t stop buzzing around my head like an annoying insect.
I raise my eyes to look directly at Charleigh, whose gaze I was previously avoiding, afraid of the same judgment I’ve been passing on myself. I nod slowly, terrified to say it out loud.
She slaps her hand on the table, startling me and the others around us. “Okay, then. I had a feeling you liked it. Face it, Luci, you’ve left behind your old life, and you’re forging a new one. Now, I’m not gonna say it will be easy, but you’re making it happen.” She sits back in her seat, satisfied with her speech. “I’m here for you, girl. And for what it’s worth, I think this is hot as all get-out.”
Is she a sinner just like me?
The waitress slaps our check on the table and I reach for it before Charleigh can. I have some extra cash now. The least I can do is treat my best friend.
For the first time in my life, I am successful at something, thanks to my course. Not the kind of something where I’m making a cake for the church fundraiser or quilting a square to go in a bigger blanket for someone’s baby gift. No, I am really using my brain now. It’s liberating, finding that I can do things like understand numbers and what they mean for a business.
Sometimes I imagine I’ll even go on to get my accounting degree and after that, become what our teacher calls aCFO—chief finance officer, or something like that. She tells us they have a lot of responsibility and make important decisions for a company. I think that sounds pretty cool.
I look around to make sure no one’s watching and pull some money out of a hidden pocket I created in the cheap purse I got from Goodwill. I spent a little of my seven hundred dollars, surprised to learn that some places don’t like to accept hundred-dollar bills. I guess there are a lot of counterfeiters around, but what did I know? I’d never even held a hundred-dollar bill until twenty-four hours ago. But when I used one at the gas station just that morning, the clerk held it up to the light, looked at me, then turned it over and aimed a little flashlight on it.
That’s how they know whether or not it’s real.
I carefully slip the hundred out of my purse, and lay it on the lunch bill, careful not to take my fingers off it, as if it might walk off on its own.
“What isthat?”
I follow Charleigh’s gaze as she sets down her empty Diet Coke.
“I’m treating today. I… I have a little extra cash this week and want to do something nice for you.”
Her gaze flicks between mine and the money. Like she’s not sure what she’s looking at.