Page 54 of The Perfect Deception

If flames had burst forth from her cheeks, Dina wouldn’t have been sur­prised. In fact, she was sur­prised the cof­fee shop’s sprin­kler sys­tem didn’t kick on just to be safe. “It doesn’t mat­ter any­way, be­cause it shouldn’t hap­pen again.”

“Why not? And wait a minute, you can’t skip over the good stuff. I want de­tails.”

“Se­ri­ously?”

“Ab­so­lutely. I’m an old mar­ried lady with a baby. The last time I had sex just for the hell of it, was I don’t even know when. I need to live vi­car­i­ously through my ex­cit­ing sin­gle friends.”

“Then you should go make some,” Dina said.

Tracy threw her nap­kin at her. “Don’t make me beg.”

With a sigh, Dina told Tracy about the phone call, go­ing over to Adam’s apart­ment, try­ing to get him to talk, and how they ended up hav­ing sex.

“And you just left?”

“No, I fell asleep, as did he. Then I woke up. And then I left.”

“Why?”

“Be­cause it’s go­ing to be so awk­ward.”

“I don’t get it,” Tracy said. “Lots of peo­ple have drunk sex. Why is this such a big deal?”

Dina swirled her tea in her cup. “Be­cause we’re sup­posed to be friends who made an ar­range­ment. I was help­ing him seem more re­spectable for his fa­ther, and he was ac­com­pa­ny­ing me to the re­union. That’s it.”

“Okay. And you had sex. Why does that change any­thing?”

“Be­cause friends don’t have sex!”

“Uh, Dina? Yes they do.”

“I know, but we weren’t sup­posed to.”

“Why not?”

“Be­cause I didn’t want to seem pa­thetic. I re­ally like him, but I’m so not his type and he’s not mine. There are still things he’s hid­ing from me, I can tell. And he’s only tak­ing me to the re­union be­cause I’m help­ing him with his dad. Ex­cept his dad is mad at him, so it’s not re­ally work­ing. Which means he doesn’t need me any­more.”

“Any­one look­ing at the two of you knows he’s not stay­ing with you be­cause of some ar­range­ment you think you have.”

“An ar­range­ment Iknowwe have.”

Tracy gave her a look and Dina squirmed.

“And leav­ing with­out talk­ing to him? You have no idea what he’s think­ing or feel­ing. You’re never go­ing to get those an­swers you want if you keep avoid­ing him. Not to men­tion,” Tracy leaned for­ward, “you missed out on all the good post-coital talk!”

“He left me a voice­mail.”

Tracy rolled her eyes. “What did it say?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t lis­ten to it.”

“Give me your phone.”

“What? No!”

She held her hand out and Dina gripped her phone in her lap. There was no way she was let­ting Tracy lis­ten to the voice­mail.

“Then lis­ten to it your­self.”