the onus was on him to teach her to entice him. So he’d better find a way to get the lessons underway quick smart so they could all relax.
She glanced in the mirror, preparing for a shudder, and surprised herself with a spontaneous smile instead. She looked more closely. The pink really did suit her! She reached for the zipper at the back and tugged it up, only for it to jam halfway. She jiggled it, then tugged it, then jiggled it again, trying to ease it up, then down, then up. No joy; it wouldn’t budge.
At that moment she saw the dress as a metaphor for her life. The dress was Adam, chosen for her but not by her, and although it seemed to suit her at first glance, something was derailing her attempt to wear it. She couldn’t reverse the zipper, but she couldn’t move forward with it either, and she was stuck on her own with the problem while her friends tried to find other options for her. Damn zipper!
Just as she thought she was going to have to call Erica and Sarah in to help her, the zip unjammed and she managed to slide it all the way up. Victory was hers. She smiled to herself. Yes, victory was hers, just as it would be in three months’ time, without her friends having to step in to save her.
She grabbed the gold belt Erica had insisted on and positioned it around her waist. Instantly, she imagined Adam’s big hands there and shivered deliciously. It was a short step to thinking about his hands under the belt, under the dress. On her naked flesh. That was what she wanted: his hands, on her. And his mouth, she wanted his mouth sending her mindless as he kissed her. And she just had this feeling … this feeling that if she couldn’t find her way with Adam, she’d never find it.
On that basis, she couldn’t let her friends’ misgivings stop her. She wasn’t going to let anyone stop her from doing this. She was unsticking the zip that was her stalled sex life on her own and going all the way up with it.
She gave the belt tug, tightening it so enthusiastically an ‘Ouch’ flew out of her mouth.
The whispering outside stopped abruptly.
‘Laney?’ Erica. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ she called back, loosening the belt a notch. ‘Just give me a minute and I’ll be out to show you.’ She looked at herself in the mirror and nodded. ‘Coming out now.’
There was a moment of silence as she walked out and favoured the girls with a slow twirl. But she found, for once, she didn’t need their approval. She liked the dress without needing anyone else’s opinion.
Still, it was nice to see Sarah and Erica smiling conspiratorially at each other like proud parents. Better than the tension-fuelled whisper-fest they’d been indulging in all day.
Erica came up behind her, ripped out her hair elastic and turned her to the larger mirror. She smoothed the straight fall of Lane’s hair. ‘Darling, if you wear this with my chocolate suede high heels, I’m going to want to do you,’ she said. ‘If only I could be there tonight to make sure Adam’s worth the transformation. Are you sure I can’t persuade you to let me stay?’
‘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.