“But they don’t feel right.” Sasha tried to look confused without making her face crinkle but failed. “I look better in my clothes, but I don’t have date clothes.”
Sasha picked through her nighttime work clothes until she found a tight black dress that would probably show off her hoo-ha. She’d worn it to a party after the local hockey team won the championship. She was pretty sure a few of the players had appreciated her ass in this dress as much as they’d appreciated the vodka-luge replica of the trophy. “This one.”
Hannah rose off the ground. “Really? It’s not too over the top?”
“Just sexy enough.”
“But I thought I wasn’t going for sexy.” She squinted. “I thought I was going for potential girlfriend.”
“Obviously, neither of us knows how to dress for that,” Sasha said, taking a big gulp of wine.
“Oh, honey.” She took the dress from Sasha. “Did you hear from him after he sent you a picture of his anemic penis?”
She shook her head and took another drink of wine. Hannah’s stomach sank from the pointlessness of it all. Sure, she could put on the barely there dress and play the game of making Jack think he might get laid. That might keep him chasing her for two weeks. But she had no idea how to put on the pretense anymore. She’d probably end up like her friend, in sweats and no bra, ready to settle in with Herr Netflix on a Friday night.
“It doesn’t matter.” Sasha sniffed, probably to suppress unshed tears. “What matters is that you have a great time tonight.”
“And why does that matter?” Hannah dropped her robe and pulled on the dress her friend had chosen. “This isn’t about enjoying myself. It’s about getting the job I want.”
“Don’t do that.” Sasha’s voice had a firmness it didn’t often have.
“Do what?”
“Pretend like you don’t like him.”
“I don’t know him.”
“You know enough to smile when he texts you.”
Jesus. She thought she’d been smooth. “That’s just chemistry.”
“Which feels great.” Sasha sounded so wistful. “Chemistry is rare.”
Her friend had a point. She’d missed feeling like that since Noah had dumped her. The dopamine hit to her brain that she got every time she heard from Jack was nothing compared to how she’d felt when he’d kissed her. She’d been blown apart in those three minutes waiting for a car service, and she hadn’t quite put herself back together again.
As she turned around for Sasha to zip her up, she said, “I can’t afford to think about how good it feels. If I do that, I’ll fall down with my legs open and his penis between them. Then he’ll never call me again and I’ll never get promoted to VP.” As her colorful grandfather used to say, men paid attention to women who “turned up their tails and ran a little.”
“That’s quite a leap.” Sasha walked into the bathroom and rifled around in her makeup bag. “At least wear pink lipstick. More kissable. Less angry.”
“I shouldn’t be kissing him if I want him to call again.”
“You kissed him last week.”
“But I wasn’t trying to make him my boyfriend last week.”
Sasha held out a light pink shade. “What do you think you do with a guy you want to be your boyfriend?”
“Like I would know.” Hannah spread the lipstick on, liking the effect. Immediately, her face looked more inviting than it usually did.
“You kiss him.” Her best friend’s words were slow and clearly enunciated, like she was talking to a toddler or a poorly trained puppy.
Taking Sasha’s advice wouldn’t be a hardship, if her memory served. “I can do that.” She grabbed the glass with the remaining vodka soda and melting ice cubes.
“Just, whatever you do, don’t sleep with him on the first date.”
“Considering the precautions I’ve taken against that happening, I think we’re safe.”
Sasha stopped in her tracks. “Precautions?”
She considered whether or not to enlighten her best friend and roommate on the truly drastic measures she’d taken to ensure that—no matter how much she might not want them to—Jack’s hands and his sinful mouth would remain completely out of her knickers. “You’re not going to want to hear this.”
She walked into the bathroom to retouch her makeup and Sasha followed her. “Hear what?”
“I don’t think your delicate ears could take it.”
“Take what?” She moved to sit on the closed toilet and stared at her. If the Catholic Church ever decided to allow women priests, Sasha would be the one who got all the juicy confessions, even though she’d be utterly scandalized on a daily basis. No one could withstand the stare. “Think back to how long it’s been since I’ve had sex.”
“There was that one guy right after Noah dumped you—” She paused to do some internal calculations, and then her eyes grew as large as Magnum-sized condom packets.
“The urologist who was—ironically—sort of a twat.”
“It’s been two years!?” Sasha shook her head. “I knew it’d been a while, but I didn’t think it had been that long.”
“Yup.” She hadn’t made a big deal out of the fact that she wasn’t having sex, and it wasn’t that she didn’t want sex. She just didn’t want just sex with anyone who’d offered it—for the past two years. Thank goodness for the advances in sex-toy tech.
“How are you going to keep yourself from sleeping with Jack?”
That was a good question that Hannah had thought long and hard about, amid all of the things she was hoping were long and hard about Jack. “I haven’t waxed my hoo-ha since the last time I had sex.”
“So you think the power of your great seventies bush is going to keep your legs closed? I don’t think it works that way.”
“That’s precisely how it’s going to work.”
“I mean, you said just him kissing you had you all hot and bothered. And it’s been two years. How are you going to stop yourself from doing the nasty if he puts on the moves?”
Hannah loved her friend because she said things like “hot and bothered” and “puts on the moves,” her whole old-fashioned way of encouraging her to live a little. But Sasha’s brain clearly hadn’t stopped shorting out over the whole two years thing because her friend just stared at her, wide-eyed, in the mirror as she applied a dusting of highlighter on her cheekbones.