I shook my head. “Like, we leaned against a super-uncomfortable brick wall, side by side, and dozed off sitting up.”
“So romantic,” Diana said.
I frowned. “Kind of the opposite. But I did wind up using his shoulder for a pillow.” Technically, you could probably argue that we’d snuggled.
“And now you’re going on a date,” Josie said.
I put my hands over my eyes. “Let’s not call it ‘a date.’ Let’s call it ‘a coworker assisting another coworker with a family issue.’”
“Sounds like a date to me,” Josie said, and then they slapped a high five.
I pressed my head into a sofa pillow. “I think I just ruined my life,” I said, all muffled.
“It can’t be as terrible as all that,” Diana said.
I sat up. “If the guys in the house find out about this, it will be the end of everything.”
“I think it’s very kind of you to help out your friend,” Diana said. “He can’t help it that he’s so dreamy. That’s not his fault.”
I shook my head. “What was I thinking?”
“I just don’t see what the big deal is,” Josie said. “Who cares who you like?”
“It’s breaking the rules. As a girl, you’ve got two choices. You’re either a virgin or a whore. And guess what sleeping with guys you work with makes you?”
They refused to answer that on principle.
“Not a virgin,” I finally said.
“Why does it have to be one or the other? Why can’t you just be a normal, complex human being?”
“Irrelevant. Those are the rules.”
“But you’renotsleeping with him,” Josie protested.
“But I want to!” I said. And then I slapped my hand over my mouth.
They stared at me. I stared at them.
Then I whispered, “Did I just say that out loud?”
“Whowouldn’twant to sleep with him?” Diana demanded. “He’s like human candy.”
Josie nodded and we all took another gander at his photo on my phone. “Irresistible.”
The way we were joking around about this was comforting in a way. We kept things light. We didn’t talk about the real risk that I was taking to do this—or why, knowing everything I knew, I would have even considered saying yes in the first place.
Something to ponder.
Going to this party could very well cost me my job. And yet I’d agreed to go.
That “yes” had just burbled up out of me.
Why? I’d stayed up half the night on that roof, wrestling with that question. The rookie thanked me at least twenty times before he fell asleep, and promised that no one would ever find out. Ever.
But I knew better. The fire department wasn’t a job, it was a small town. Everybody found out everything eventually.
It’s possible, deep down, there was some self-sabotage involved—some unexamined belief that I didn’t deserve to be happy. Or maybe I was looking for a reason to fail.
