Avril Tremayne - Kiss Don’t Tell

‘Very sure.’

‘Damn!’

‘And just to be one hundred per cent clear, I’m buying this dress for me, not Adam,’ Lane added.

‘Aha,’ Erica said, patently unconvinced.

‘I mean it.’

‘Aha.’

‘Erica!’

‘All right, all right. Go. Change. Pay. Margaritas. Talk.’

***

Erica barely waited until she’d ordered a double round of drinks (to avoid re-order interruptions) from Glory, the barmaid who was practically a fixture at Midnight Madness, before fixing Lane with a laser stare. ‘If you say one more time you’re not dressing to please Adam, I’m going to cut up every white shirt in your wardrobe. You’re deflecting.’

‘I’m not deflecting!’ Lane insisted. ‘I’m really not dressing to please him.’

‘Hide the scissors tonight, Lane!’ Erica sing-songed.

‘I mean not … not as such. Of course I’m interested in Adam’s reaction to the pink dress, but only as a means of comparing it to his reaction the other two times he’s seen me. It will be instructional to note if there’s more of a spark there.’

‘Oh instructional,’ Erica said, with an eye roll. ‘In that case—’

‘Hang on,’ Sarah interrupted her, reaching out a refocusing hand to grip Erica’s wrist. ‘Are you saying there hasn’t been a spark, Lane?’

‘Not on his part, no.’

‘Not on his part,’ Sarah repeated, ‘but what about on your part?’

And—bang!—into Lane’s head popped an image of Adam tracing a fingertip around her lips. ‘Oh,’ she breathed, as her own fingers came up to press against her lips, which had started to tingle at the memory. The memory kept going … his fingers moving down over her chin … to her collarbone … to her buttons … undoing them … that line of freckles. ‘Oh,’ she breathed again. Would the pink silk dress have made a difference? If she’d been wearing it on Wednesday, would he have pulled down the zip and dragged it off her body? Put his hands on her skin? His mouth? God. Oh, my God.

‘Okay you’re scaring me, Lane,’ Sarah said, and she really did sound fearful. ‘What’s the “God-oh-my-God” about?’

Lane snapped back to the present. ‘Did I say that out loud? I didn’t mean to.’

‘Well you did,’ Sarah said. ‘And I don’t want you to “God-oh-my-God” like that about Adam. I warned him, I really did, not to do this to you.’

‘Do what?’

‘Whatever it is that makes girls say “God-oh-my-God” about him.’

‘Do all girls say that about him?’

‘As far as I can tell.’

‘Oh! It’s just that he … he … he …’

‘He …’ Sarah’s eyes were wide with burgeoning dread.

‘He …?’ Erica’s were wide with unholy joy. ‘Don’t make me beg, Laney.’

‘It’s nothing, really. Just that the other night I started taking off my clothes—’

‘Oh my G-o-o-o-o-d.’ Sarah, melting down, covered her face with her hands. ‘No, no! I don’t need to hear this.’

‘—and he stopped me—’

‘Really don’t need to hear this.’

‘—so I did the buttons back up.’

Sarah peeked between her fingers. ‘Okay, I’m recovering.’

‘And he undid them again.’

‘Gah!’ Sarah’s fingers closed up again, eyes shielded. ‘I can’t take it.’

Glory chose that moment to deposit six margaritas on the bar in front of them.

‘Ah, thank you, Glory, what a sense of timing you have,’ Erica said, with a travesty of a smile.

Glory half tossed her head, as though they weren’t worth a full toss, grunted something unintelligible, and left them to it.

‘Okay, hold that thought, Lane, and stop moaning, Sarah,’ Erica said, looking around. She nodded at a table by the window. ‘Let’s grab that table over there—that one with the two stools. We can gaze out at the hustle and bustle of grungy old King Street while we contemplate why we keep coming to this bar when the cocktails are so bad and the service is worse.’

‘It’s our old uni hangout,’ Lane said.

‘And if either of you was still at university, I might—but only might—understand,’ Erica said. And then she grinned at Sarah. ‘But maybe it’s serendipity. Adam lives here in Newtown, doesn’t he, Sarah? Maybe he’ll walk in off the street.’

Sarah shook her head. ‘Not a chance. He hates this place.’

‘Then maybe we can go and call on him.’

‘No!’ Sarah and Lane burst out together.

Erica sighed. ‘I’ll meet him one day, might as well get it over with.’

‘Why is there any need for you to meet him?’ Lane said.

Erica blinked at her. ‘Um … because he’s going to be an important fixture in your life for three full months.’

‘So was Chao, and for way longer than three months.’

‘And who the hell is Chao that I should want to meet him? Or is Chao a her?’

‘He’s a him. My Mandarin teacher. Who you never insisted on meeting.’

Erica opened her mouth … then closed it. She looked at Sarah. ‘I’m not sure what to say to that,’ she said.

‘I’m not sure what to say to anything at this point,’ Sarah said, and slinging the strap of her bag over her shoulder, picked up her two drinks and made her way to their chosen table.

Lane and Sarah took the two stools that were already there while Erica snagged a third from a group of guys nearby with a swing of her hair and a come-hither smile that managed to charm them out of the stool without being quite come-hither enough to make them actually come hither.

‘Now you see, I need to be able to replicate that,’ Lane said, and flung her head in a circle in a poor facsimile of Eric’s stylish swish.

‘To start with, you’ll have to get rid of that elastic band,’ Erica told her.

Lane reached a defensive hand up to her ponytail, and Erica laughed, then sighed. ‘If you won’t even take out the band, I’m not sure what the point of the pink silk is,’ she said. ‘But let’s get back to the undone buttons anyway.’

‘Do we have to?’ Sarah asked.

‘You started all this,’ Erica pointed out.

Lane took a sip of her margarita. ‘I’m afraid the undone buttons were done straight up again, so it’s not a very exciting finale.’

‘By him?’ Erica asked.

‘By him. And the lesson was over.’

‘What were you wearing?’

‘My navy blue suit.’

‘And the other time?’

‘My navy blue suit.’

Erica pantomimed banging her head on the table. ‘So. Much. Becomes. Clear.’

‘Clothing is incidental in our case,’ Lane said, in her own defence. ‘I’m paying him, remember?’

‘If you really believe clothing is incidental,’ Erica said, ‘I want to know why we’ve spent the past three hours looking for something for you to wear tonight. At your instigation I might add.’

‘It’s … complicated.’

‘You’re a smart girl, Lane. I’m sure you can find the words.’

Lane took another sip of margarita. ‘Because the button-unbutton episode got me thinking, which is what a lesson is supposed to do.’

‘Thinking about …?’ Erica asked.

‘David Bennett.’

‘Did you know we all have a tell when we lie? Sarah’s is easy—she blushes. Yours is more subtle. Your eyes flick to the left.’

‘My eyes aren’t flicking,’ Lane said.

‘No?’

‘No!’ Lane insisted, and tried hard to keep them still.

‘Okaaay, keep going and I will ignore that little twitch of your right eyelid as it struggles under the pressure of not flicking.’

Lane took a deep breath. ‘The point is , clothing won’t be incidental when it comes to David, but with Adam … Well, with Adam practice will make perfect, so I might as well practise.’