“I mean that you have no bra on,” I said. I pointed. “They’re, like, right there.” And fuck, I wished I could look at them. But I kept that to myself. This is Evie. She’s nice. Be nice.
“Shit,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest, though it was a bit late for that. “I have to be at work in twenty minutes. What do I do?”
“Hold on.” I went to my closet and, way in the back, found a jean jacket that used to be Andrew’s. Andrew wasn’t as small as Evie, but he was a little smaller than me. “Here,” I said, bringing it out to her.
“Thank God for casual Friday,” she said, putting it on. Now her boobs were covered, and she looked sexy and badass. Red hair, jeans, boots, Harley shirt, jean jacket. Jesus Christ. “Is it awful?” she asked me.
“No,” I said, staring. I cleared my throat. “Not awful.” Pull yourself together, Mason. “Do you need a ride?” She didn’t have her car here, because we’d taken Uber everywhere last night.
“No, thanks,” she said. “I gotta go.”
“Make sure you tell Bank Boy how good I was,” I said as she rushed to the door. She glared back at me, and I put my palms a foot apart, like a measurement. “This big, okay? I can send you a dirty text if you want.”
“Are you always like this?” she asked.
“It’s a condition,” I said. “My big dick drains all the blood from my brain.”
But she’d slammed the door behind her, and she was already gone.
Ten
Evie
Everyone stared when I walked in to work.
Everyone.
I felt my cheeks burning as I booted up my computer and logged in while someone unlocked the front doors. “What is it?” I murmured to Dar, who was sitting in the cubicle next to me. She had on a pressed button-down shirt and khaki pants. “Do I look that bad?”
“Bad?” she said, staring me up and down. “Evie, you look hot. I mean, hot.”
“Stop it,” I hissed. “I do not.”
“You do,” Dar said. “This is casual Friday at a whole new level. James in Customer Relations just about choked on his muffin when you walked by. And the guy fixing the photocopier has a hard-on.”
I looked down at myself. “It’s just a t-shirt and a jean jacket.”
“Sweetie, this is a bank. I’m dressed daringly, and these are Dockers.”
It didn’t take me long to realize she was right. I could see it in people’s faces. Male customers gave me a goggle-eyed glazed look; female customers just looked at me wide eyed, like What the hell? I had been afraid that everyone would know this was a walk of shame outfit: no makeup, no bra, man’s t-shirt and jean jacket, last night’s jeans and boots, hair fixed by some guy’s comb. Instead, I seemed to give off a rock star I-don’t-care attitude, like I was Pat Benatar in a 1980s video.
Or like I was Old Evie.
The Evie from high school, and that crazy first year of college, had worn a walk of shame outfit more than once. She’d slipped home at four a.m., her panties long gone from under her skirt. She’d lied about going to friends’ houses and snuck off to parties instead. She’d come home with her hair smelling of hairspray and cigarette smoke, her breath smelling of vodka and bad decisions. She’d snuck a trip to the doctor’s for birth control, and another trip to the drug store for condoms—which her mother had found, one disastrous morning, under the bed while she was cleaning.
Old Evie had been fun, but she’d gone too far, too. Done genuinely stupid things. One of the things that New Evie understood, now that those days were gone, was that trying some drug you didn’t understand, or giving a guy a blow job in a closet on a dare, were not things you did when you had confidence and self-esteem. They weren’t the way you gained, them, either. They were things you did when a tiny voice inside you, buried deep but never entirely silent, quietly told you to hate yourself. And when you banished that voice, you didn’t do those things anymore.
Last night hadn’t been like that. I hadn’t heard that old voice, that I’d left behind for so long. I’d stayed in the realm of fun, without crossing the line into stupid. And Nick had something to do with that. Nick seemed to know instinctively where that line was.
But it was still far, far too close to Old Evie for comfort.
This is not me, I thought frantically as I served customers, trying to act casual and totally unsexy. I am not this woman. I am not. I sat unnaturally still, so my nipples would stop rubbing against Nick’s t-shirt beneath the jean jacket. I work at a bank. This is normal. Everything is under control.
At eleven my phone vibrated in my purse, and between customers I surreptitiously checked it, keeping the phone under my desk so no one could see. It was a text from Nick. Without thinking, I tapped it.
Dear God.
Too late, I remembered his words: I’ll send you a dirty text if you want. I didn’t know he meant it.