Broken Read online

  Heat flushed me, burning in my cheeks and the tips of my ears. I laughed lightly and pulled away, turning to the table so I didn’t have to show my guilty face.

  “What’s the special occasion, Sadie?”

  “Do you want chicken or lamb?” I fiddled with the containers while I got my expression under control and turned back to him with a smile.

  “Sadie?”

  The hardest lies to detect are the ones surrounded by truth. In school, we’d been paired up and prompted to lie to random answers to a set list of questions. It became a challenge to see if we could fool each other. What was most interesting was not what some of us chose to lie about, but about what some of us chose to tell the truth.

  “I felt like dressing up. That’s all.”

  I felt his eyes on me as I pulled the wheeled table over to his bed and began cutting up his food.

  “Well, you look beautiful.”

  I put down the knife and fork and looked into his face. Love rushed up inside me so strong I thought I might cry from it. I cupped his cheek, one of the few places I could touch him and have him feel it.

  “Thank you, honey.”

  “You always do, Sadie.” He smiled and kissed my palm. “But always especially on the first Friday of the month.”

  Neither of us spoke for a moment. The food was getting cold, but I didn’t care. I kept my eyes on his, and this time, there was no need to lie.

  “I love you, Adam. Only you.”

  After another long moment, he nodded. “I know you do.”

  I leaned in to kiss him. “I heard Dennis leaving. We don’t even have to lock the door.”

  I wiggled my eyebrows suggestively, hoping to make him laugh. He smiled, but it was a faint shadow of his usual grin.

  “I’m starving. And pretty tired.”

  Concerned, I pressed my hand to his forehead. “Do you feel all right?”

  He gave an irritated sigh and jerked his head away. “I feel fine. I’m hungry and tired, I said. I thought we were going to eat and watch a movie.”

  “Yes, but—” But I thought maybe we could fool around didn’t seem quite the thing to say. In our past, Adam had sometimes worn me out with his constant desire, with his need for me. Back then the food would have been left to get cold while we satisfied our other hunger first.

  But this was now, not then, and my ego wasn’t so solid that his rejection wouldn’t wound me.

  “Right,” I amended. “Food. And then a movie.”

  “Why don’t you go change, first,” Adam said, his voice cold. “Maybe take a shower, too. Your perfume’s giving me a headache. I’ll finish watching Baywatch.”

  I wished he’d come out and accuse me. I could defend myself against accusations but could do nothing against his silent conviction of my infidelity. If he’d asked me, I could have told him the truth, all of it.

  He didn’t ask, and so I didn’t tell.

  Chapter

  09

  June

  This month, my name is Sassy. It’s really Sarah, but Sassy suits me just as well. I have hair in multiple shades of blue and green and a penchant for making devil horns with my fingers. I favor striped stockings worn with vintage Converse sneakers and short skirts held together with safety pins, and I’ve a lot of piercings you can see and some you can’t.

  I’ve known Joe for about six months. I’m the computer tech who comes in to service the system his practice uses. I tease him about having to clear his cache of porn and he jokes back about having to wear sunglasses to guard against the atrocities of my fashion.

  I like Joe a lot, and I’m pretty sure he likes me. He’s a good-looking dude, a real smart suit, but he’s got a great sense of humor, too. A rare thing, I tell him, compared to his co-workers. Once in a while he saves a doughnut for me from the box in the lunchroom. I sometimes pick him up a bagel with cream cheese and lox from the deli downtown.

  It’s a good working relationship, but that’s all it is until the day I come across him sitting at his desk staring at his monitor with a scowl so fierce it’s as if he’s trying to burn a hole in it with his eyes.

  “It’s a virus, it’s nothing personal,” I tell him as I set up the scan and prepare to clean his hard drive. “Half the practice got it.”

  It’s going to set him back a day’s work, he complains, and I reassure him I’ll have him up and running in no time at all.

  “If you can do that,” Joe says, “I’ll buy you dinner tonight.”

  It’s not like we’ve never flirted before. I mean, I flirt with most everyone. It doesn’t really mean anything. But this time…well, this time I’m tempted to put on a little extra Sassy charm for Joe. It’s very clear to me, as it’s been for months, Joe’s in terrible need of someone to take care of him. I don’t mean in just a sexual sense, though I’m sure he’s got his share of offers. No, I mean Joe needs someone to ask him how his day was when he comes home, someone to draw him a bath once in a while, cook him soup. Joe needs some petting, something I’m pretty good at, but of course I can’t offer it to him just out of the blue. I tell myself it’s because he seems so down about the computer, and he’s seemed bummed the past couple times I’ve been in, but the flat-out reality is—Joe’s beautiful. He’s got features that line up just right, so pretty. It makes me want to sketch them.

  He’s surprised when I tell him that later over dinner. It only took me fifteen minutes to get his computer working again, and he made good on his word.

  “I didn’t know you were an artist.”

  “I’m not, really. Art’s something I do for fun. It’s not my career.”

  “You don’t have to make a living at it to be considered an artist.” Joe leans across the table, gaze intent upon me.

  I feel the weight of his gaze all over me, covering me like a blanket. I might be out of my league, here. There’s flirting, which we’ve been doing for about six months. And then, there’s flirting with intent, which until tonight neither of us bothered with.

  “So,” I ask him over dessert, a very good cheesecake we share, not because I’m the sort of girl to moan about my waistline, but because we both ate so much we can only stuff in half a piece each. “When you’re not wasting company time downloading Internet porn, what do you like to do?”

  He’s got coffee. I’ve got tea. He stirs sugar and cream into his cup. I watch the dark liquid turn light as his spoon makes swirls. At first I think he’s not going to answer me, but then he does.

  “I like to read.”

  “Don’t sound so ashamed,” I say, teasing. “You do mean other than Internet porn, right?”

  He laughs. Joe’s got a great laugh to go with his smile. The real smile, which he doesn’t use as often as the smarmy one.

  “Yeah, besides Internet porn.”

  We launch into a discussion of literature, lofty and base. I admit a passion for ridiculous science-fiction. Joe prefers mysteries and thrillers, he says because he likes the challenge of figuring out whodunit before the end of the book.

  Dinner’s over and they’re giving us significant looks that say they want to clear our table, so Joe and I finish our drinks and the cheesecake and head out into the night. It’s later than I expected it to be, but conversation with him was so easy and nice it made the evening fly by.

  On the drive home, the car is filled with tension he does nothing to alleviate and I analyze. Do I want to fuck Joe?

  My gut answer is an unequivocal yes. I mean, I like sex. I like Joe. I don’t have a boyfriend and if he’s got a girlfriend, that’s not really my problem since he’s never mentioned her and he doesn’t keep her photo on his desk at work.

  So yes, sure, I want to. I’m not worried it will cause awkwardness at work, either, because I’m pretty sure we’d both take it for what it is. I’m not looking for a boyfriend, even a real cutie like Joe. He’s too much suit for me, with my slightly vagabond lifestyle and eclectic taste in clothes.

  When he pulls up in front of my house, he seems sur