He nodded, his hand at my back, my own arms wrapped around my body like I was one big wound. Jesse held the door open for me and we were both hit with the first fall chill of the year. Silently, we walked down Royal to Saint Louis, where his truck was parked halfway up the block. My body, drained of all emotion, felt like flesh pressed against bone beneath a dress I couldn’t wait to rip off and burn. Will knew my secret and he didn’t want me anymore. I could hardly take the new job at the new restaurant named after me. How would we cope, him knowing what he knew, me feeling how I felt?
Jesse and I didn’t say a word to each other as he drove the narrow streets of the French Quarter, drunk tourists tumbling in front of our slow-moving truck. We crossed Esplanade and Elysian Fields, and pulled up next to the Spinster Hotel on the corner of Mandeville and Chartres, where the Delmonte sisters were still up, no doubt, watching and waiting for me to come home. Would they notice that the man dropping me off was different from the one with whom I had left? And indeed, what did this say about me? It said nothing, I decided. It said that I had accepted help when I needed it the most, and in doing so changed my life. I forged real bonds, including with men, and definitely with the one sitting next to me now, looking at me with soft eyes.
“Here you are. Want me to come up? Make you a cup of tea? Tuck you in? I promise that’s all I’ll do. I know where your head’s at.”
I wanted to say, Yeah, it’s where my heart is, with a very hurt man who left me feeling broken and dirty. A man I loved who I thought loved me, unconditionally. But I was wrong. Of course there were conditions. There are always conditions when it comes to men and women and love and sex. But if for Will to love me like he once did, I’d have to be like the old me, then Will could keep his love. I would never again go back to being that tiny, chaste, timid woman. Never.
I looked at Jesse’s face, his eyes mellow in the dark of the truck’s cab.
“Well? What say you, Miss Robichaud?”
That’s when I felt it; it started behind my belly button and worked its way up, settling around my heart: defiance. The necessary kind, the kind that pushed back on whatever judgment I’d seen in Will’s eyes, a look that had made me feel undesirable, unworthy of love. That wasn’t coming from him; that feeling was in me already, and it was time, time to let all of that go: No more judgment, no more limits and no more shame, Cassie. Starting now.
I turned to Jesse. I turned to face the man who knew my darkest parts, my fears and desires, and wasn’t turning away.
“Actually, I would like it if you came up, Jesse. I’ve had a hell of a night … and I think I could really use a friend tonight.”
He wet his thumb with his tongue and rubbed stray mascara off my cheek.
“Then use me, darlin’,” he said. “Use me.”