Zenny leans back against the headrest and props her sneakers up on the dash. It’s such a young thing to do, such a college thing to do, and it makes me smile.
“Every order has their own rules about dress,” she says, not seeing my smile. “With SGS, when and where the postulant wears her uniform is determined between the postulant and the prioress. In my case, the Reverend Mother wants me in street clothes more often than not, because she’s concerned about my youth. We agreed on the shelter and at monastery events, and that’s it for me. But I’ve seen some postulants wear their uniforms all the time.”
I think about this for a minute. Come to some important conclusions. “I still want to fuck you in your postulant’s uniform.”
This earns me a lip bite and a very studious examination of her sneakers. “Okay,” she murmurs, and I don’t miss the way she squirms in her seat.
My smile gets bigger.
On the way to our date, Zenny guesses all sorts of places we could be going, all of them wrong. She guesses restaurants and movies—which I scoff at like a cynical Wakefield pirate—and then suggests other things I almost wish I’d thought of, like the arboretum or the local improv club. But no—we’re going to a place less classy and far more juvenile than an improv club, and I tell her that, which puzzles her for a long time.
I finally exit the highway on one of those indiscriminate suburban exits, the kind that have a hotel for no reason and a McDonalds and a chiropractor’s office, and navigate a few turns to our destination. Then I park the car and turn to face her.
“Well?” I say.
She gives me one of those Hollywood starlet eyebrows. “Are you actually taking me to a skating rink?”
“Yes, I am, Zenny-bug. Your skates are in the trunk,” I say as I grab my things and open my door.
“Wait…my skates? I don’t have any…” she trails off as she follows me outside the car to the trunk and sees that she does, indeed, have a pair of skates.
“I didn’t want to take a chance on them not having rental skates available,” I explain as I lift our things out of the trunk and shut it. “So I noted your shoe size and had my assistant order some skates.”
She stares at me a moment and then shakes her head in incredulity. Her face is crinkling up into an amused smile, however, so I know I’m not in too much trouble.
“Okay, rich boy,” she says.
“This is not a rich-boy date,” I protest, offended. “This is exactly the kind of normal date normal people go on.”
She laughs. “With their custom-ordered skates and their Audi R8 parked outside?”
“Well, I’m not going to compromise on everything.”
She tucks an arm into my elbow, glowing up at me. “I have to admit, this is exactly the kind of date I’d want to go on if this were real. Let’s do it.”
And we go inside, pay our six-dollar admission fees, and stroll into the dimly lit, badly carpeted lobby. Top-forty pop music blares awkwardly through the mostly empty space, and the smell of stale popcorn permeates the air, and Zenny’s if this were real chafes at me. I’m starting to have the uncomfortable feeling that I’m in a Wakefield novel myself, that I’m the hapless hero or heroine who starts to fall in love even though I know better, even though I know that’s not the arrangement, even though I know I’ll have my heart broken.
But I can’t stop. It’s like watching a tornado carve up a prairie field, like watching hail tear through leaves and roofs and dirt. It’s happening, and all I can do is take shelter.
Zenny’s skates fit perfectly, and so do my new blades, and she gives a delighted little clap of her hands as I pop up and skate backwards around the table. The light pings off the stud in her nose, and she’s so fucking hot, so fucking young, and I want to fast forward to the end of the night and what I have planned, but I manage to keep myself under control. As soon as she has her skates on and she’s stowed her shoes, we roll out to the rink itself, a wood-floored affair crowded with disco balls and scores of teenagers too young to do anything more interesting with their Saturday nights.
“I didn’t know you could skate like this!” she exclaims, as I move in circles around her.
“Elijah and I played roller hockey, remember?” I say, moving in front of her and skating backwards as she tentatively skates forward.
“I was a baby,” she points out in playful exasperation. “Of course I don’t remember.”
“Oh yeah,” I say. And she’s right. In fact, Elijah and I both quit roller hockey the year Zenny was born—me because it was not one of those sports that netted lots of attention from girls, like basketball or football, and Elijah because he was so busy with his ten trillion other extracurriculars that he had to start dropping things to make time for the activities he really wanted to do.
A quick bite of shame follows the realization. Because what am I doing with this girl, really? Who do I think I am? There’s got to be a special hell for men who fuck their best friend’s sister, especially when their best friend’s little sister is much, much too young for the kind of fucking I like to do.
I execute a few figure eights around Zenny, trying to push these thoughts away, and my antics earn me more clapping, which only makes me peacock more. I know I’m thirty-six, but it feels really good to show off sometimes, okay? Even on rollerblades.
It only takes Zenny a few laps for her legs to remember how to move on skates, and then we settle into a nice pace, holding hands and talking to each other over the music. I feel like a kid, like a teenager, electric that she’s holding my hand, stealing glances at her tight ass moving under her jeans. The breeze created by our movement plasters her T-shirt against her body, and under the thin, worn-through cotton, I can see the divot of her navel, the smooth cups of her bra. I can see the place where her hips flare out from her narrow waist, the outline of the button of her jeans. A button that I plan to have unbuttoned very soon.
I adjust myself subtly as we skate, and sneak a look at my watch. Twenty more minutes and I’ll be able to put my sixty dollars to work.
“See something you like?” Zenny asks dryly, noticing my gaze and my not-as-subtle-as-I-thought handling of my cock.
“Just reading your T-shirt,” I pretend to lie, knowing she’ll see right through it and not caring. I want her to know how much I look at her, how much I want her. I want her to have me at full force, full desire, not only because it’s what she wanted out of this arrangement, but because I don’t know if I can actually hold myself back. It might kill me to pretend to want her less.
“Uh-huh,” Zenny says, in a voice that conveys that she’s clearly on to my lecherous ways, but she glances down at her shirt anyway. It’s a mission trip T-shirt from several years ago, with the words Maison de Naissance printed underneath the picture of a cross superimposed on the outline of Haiti.
It rings a bell, and I manage to fish out a fuzzy memory of Tyler’s wife talking about Maison de Naissance.
“That’s a birthing center, isn’t it?” I ask, nodding at her shirt.
“It is,” she affirms, looking a bit impressed that I know that. “Do you speak French?”
“Only enough to order good food.”