ELEVEN
CHAPTER ONE
Red lips.
Smooth skin.
Perfume.
These are tricks a lot of women know. Men like silky hair and clinging dresses, high heels and gartered stockings like the ones she wears now. In her twenties Stella had taught herself how to be sexy for a man; it wasn’t until she was older that she discovered it was so much better to be sexy for herself.
Her feet whisper on the cool industrial tiles as she tips her scarlet-soled pumps into the bin and pushes it along the rollers toward the X-ray machine. Next, her bag, which she affectionately calls the TARDIS. Like the traveling police-box time machine from her son’s favorite TV show, Stella’s bag is bigger on the inside. It can hold a weekend’s worth of everything a woman needs to make herself beautiful, plus a book in case she doesn’t find anyone worth being beautiful for.
Her coat goes next. She’d prefer to keep it on, but even if they let her through the scanner with it, the buckle will set off the alarm. Then again, so will the clips on her garters, probably. At this point, Stella knows most of the TSA agents who work at the Harrisburg International Airport by name. They still have to pat her down, of course, but by now it’s become sort of a game for them and for her.
“Hi, Pete.” She doesn’t miss the way his gaze dips to her seam-stockinged toes and lingers on her calves when she turns to add her cell phone to a second bin before pushing that one through behind the first. She can’t see him do it, but she’s sure he takes a good, long look at her ass too.
This is good.
It doesn’t matter that Pete is at least her father’s age and wears a walrus mustache. Or that he’s married with kids and grandkids whose pictures he proudly displays on his phone. Or even that the gum he chews constantly can’t cover up the pervasive odor of bad breath. It doesn’t matter that she will never take Pete home and fuck him.
It only matters that she could, if she wanted to. If she tried hard enough. If she let him stand a little too close, breathe a little too hard, if she shifted just the right way so the slit in her dress parted just enough to give him a glimpse of her bare thighs.
Stella is pretty sure Pete thinks she’s a relatively expensive call girl, or at the very least some rich man’s mistress. It’s the clothes, hair, the manicured nails. It’s the shoes. There’s no way for anyone to mistake anything about her for a woman on a business trip, unless her business is pleasure. Pete doesn’t know she doesn’t get paid for any of this, at least not with money.
“Where you off to tonight?” Pete lets the wand move up and down her body as she holds up her arms. The wand beeps around her thighs. He moves it again, slowly. Up and down. “Sorry about this, Stella.”
“No problem.” Her warm smile isn’t forced. He doesn’t know it’s as much artifice as the fake lashes and fingernails. The only difference is she doesn’t need glue to hold it in place. “I’m used to it by now.”
He waves her to the side, where a pair of TSA agents will pat her down, explaining the process every step of the way and asking repeatedly for her permission to touch her in places that no longer even feel intimate. Stella makes it easy for them. They’re just doing their job.
The agent bending to slide her fingers up Stella’s calf is new, or at least has never worked the Friday night shift before when Stella’s passing through. Her name tag says Maria. She has dark hair slicked into a tight bun that can’t disguise the natural curl. Big dark eyes fringed with lashes that don’t need to be glued on. Her mouth isn’t painted red, but it’s lush and glistening just the same. She does her job efficiently, barely cracking a smile. Not unfriendly, but definitely distant. When she looks up, Stella, who’s looking down, thinks she understands why.
Stella’s never been with a woman, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t thought about it. These tricks—sometimes they work on women too. That gleam of interest, however faint and trying to be ignored, calls to her just as much as it does in a man’s eyes, because all of this effort Stella makes isn’t so much about the wanting as of being wanted.
When Maria’s fingertips skate along the inside of her thighs, Stella’s reaction is immediate but not unconscious. Her feet shift on the blue-painted marks on the floor, the rough paint that could snag her stockings if she’s not careful. The tiniest movement, not enough to draw attention to herself, but the agent notices. Their eyes meet. Under the layers of silk and lace, Stella throbs.
Maria looks away.
What would it be like to hide yourself that way, so the world can’t guess something that is such a basic part of you? Such a defining thing? Stella understands. Everyone has secrets, and most of them are about sex.
Maria doesn’t look at her again, not throughout the entire rest of the inspection, and her