by ROCFanKat

Disclaimers & E-Mail: See Chapter 1.

I woke in a tangle of peach floral sheets, in a shiny brass bed, in a peach-and-white bedroom. Blinking in the sunlight, I tried to sort out where I was...and then recognized the jasmine notes of Cassie's perfume on the sheets. That brought last night back in a rush. Must have slept like the dead to wake up that far out of it.

I felt fantastic.

Trying not to whistle, which would be smug, I washed up in the peach-and-blue bath and then searched for my clothes. My shirt was missing, but it was bound to turn up somewhere, so I put on the blazer and the trousers, and padded downstairs in bare feet.

Cassie was in the kitchen, drinking coffee and leafing through the Sunday paper. She smiled when I wandered in, and not quite as a joke, I put both hands over my heart in a show of admiration. She had on a quilted robe that I'd never seen before--nothing fancy, but flattering--and even with only traces of last night's makeup, she looked great. It figured.

Mindful of my new priorities, I kissed her good morning before I got coffee.

"I was going to wake you up in a few minutes," she said.

"Were you?"

"Mmmhmm. Care to know how?"

The first swallow of coffee almost went down the wrong way. "Care to show me?"

"Show yourself. Just push the button with the red arrow on it."

I followed her glance to a CD boombox on the counter, and sighed. "If this is more 'Golden Throats'..."

"It's not. Red arrow."

Mistrustful, I pushed the button--and jumped back as a pulsing disco beat blasted out. "Hot Stuff," of all things. What was Cassie doing with Donna Summer CDs?

"Don't give me that look," she said, amused. "We saw The Full Monty together, remember?"

I remembered. We'd had so much fun that we both bought the video the following year. It had been a lot more fun in the theater, though; everybody had been chair-dancing to "Hot Stuff" and "You Sexy Thing" and "Flashdance," and a few crazies had even gotten up to dance in the aisles. The manager had tried to restore order at first, but he finally gave up and started dancing too. We'd all given him a standing ovation.

The memory made me smile, and involuntarily, both feet started tapping. I caught myself just before the tapping turned into actual dancing and sneaked a look at Cassie. She'd seen. In fact, she was smirking.

"You know you want to," she said.

That damn song was starting to get to me. I hated disco, but there was no avoiding the need to keep time to this kind of thing. "Just between you and me?"

"Cross my heart."

I shook my head, knowing that I'd regret it later, but put the coffee mug down and gave in to the rhythm. It had been a while, but it came back. Cassie got up to lean against the counter and watch.

"Not bad," she remarked, "but this is the Full Monty soundtrack. I don't believe you've quite got the spirit of the thing. Do you really need all those clothes?"

"You're not serious."

"Well, you don't have to, of course. But if you love me..."

I was going to regret this, all right, but I did love her. So I unbuttoned the top button of my blazer, flashed the lapel, and raised an eyebrow at her.

"Oh, yeah," she said happily. "That's more like it. Are you wearing anything under that?"

"Couldn't find my shirt this morning," I replied, concentrating on my footwork on the way into a turn.

"I'm wearing it."

Startled, I tripped halfway through the spin. Cassie just laughed and took off her robe. All she had on was my shirt, mostly unbuttoned. It looked better on her.

"Don't stop," she ordered, moving with the beat herself now. When she got close enough, she unbuttoned the next button down on my blazer. "Your turn."

"It's Sunday morning," I said, unbuttoning her in return. "Everyone in town is getting ready for church, and you and I are doing this."

"You bet we are. Move your feet, sailor."

I gave up and let the music take its course.

•••

"We've got to stop having sex, Cass. It could lead to dancing."

"Well, at least now we know what disco is good for."

It had certainly been good for that. We were just now getting around to having breakfast, at 10:00 in the morning. If I looked over Cassie's left shoulder, I could see my dark-purple shirt dangling from a branch of a potted tree, and it was best not to dwell on how that had happened.

"I thought we could just hang out today," she said. "Maybe go to the art museum or the mall, or catch a movie. Something like that. What do you think?"

"Anything you want. I need to go home and change first, though." Trying to avoid seeing the shirt in the tree, I tried to read the outdoor thermometer on the bay window. "Wonder whether it's sweater weather."

"That reminds me--let's go shopping. I saw a sweater at Paul Harris the other day that just about matches your eyes."

I didn't quite know what to say to that, but it made me feel weirdly good.

"I thought for the longest time that your eyes were black," she said.

"Not too far off. An old boyfriend said they reminded him of motor oil after 2,000 miles."

Cassie looked disgusted. "What a thing to say. That wasn't that Phil creep, was it?"

"Nope. That was Stu. Didn't I tell you about him?"

"I don't know if I want to know. How would you hook up with someone who knows what motor oil even looks like, anyway?"

"It was high school. He had a car. He was cute--for where I come from, anyway."

A moment of silence. "This conversation makes me feel very peculiar," she finally said.

"Why? You know I dated guys. In fact, up until a couple of months ago, you were always pushing them on me."

She sighed. "It made me feel better. God knows what I'd have done if you ever had let me fix you up. I probably would've made it a double date and watched your boy like a hawk--and if he'd touched you, I'd have sawed his part off. It would've absolutely ruined my date's evening."

Now the silence was from my side of the table. "This would be one of the things we have to talk about," I said, slowly. "You went out with everything but the kitchen sink and the Vienna Boys' Choir. You also weren't celibate."

She reached over to take my hand. "No, I wasn't. I'm human. Besides, I thought you were never going to feel the same way about me. But I talked a lot more than I did. That made me feel better, too." Gently, she rubbed the hand she was holding with the edge of her thumb. "Why? Did it bother you?"

"More than you know," I admitted. "I never knew why."

"I love you. I have for a long time. No one meant anything."

"It's all right if someone did, Cass. That was before."

Her grip tightened at that. "Nobody's that noble, Devvy, and I don't want you to be. Knock it off. This is me, remember?"

"Impossible to forget," I said, smiling against my will. "All right--I was jealous sometimes. Been there, rode the ride, bought the T-shirt. So let's just say we've had this conversation and drop it. Deal?"

"I wish it were over. But we still have to talk about the witch sometime."

Very true. But not today. "Whenever you want, sweetheart. Now suppose we...what?"

"You just called me 'sweetheart.' "

Her expression was intent, but unreadable. Wary, I ran back over what I'd just said. "Guess I did. It just slipped out. I don't have to..."

She cut me off with a kiss.

" 'Sweetheart,' " I repeated, in the interest of experimenting with this phenomenon.

Another kiss.

" 'Baby duck'?"

She laughed. "Nice try. I guess it meant the same thing, though. You can't really call your best friend 'honey' or 'sweetheart' or 'pookie' or..."

"Don't ever use that word on me," I warned. "Are you still my best friend, by the way?"

"Now more than ever," she said, and put a friendly kiss on the bridge of my nose. "So did we decide on the mall?"

•••

You could set your watch by traffic patterns in Greenville, and weekday rush hours weren't the half of it. We had a day-care rush, a soccer-practice rush, and even a Twelve Step rush, although nobody talked about that one. Sundays were just the same. Everyone went to church between 9 and 11, and then all the restaurants filled up. After that, it was on to the mall.

Cassie and I had fooled around (literally) so long that we didn't get to The Landing until 12:30, which meant we had to park in the back forty and walk. But it was a nice day, and it didn't matter anyway.

"The usual?" she asked, as we crossed the ocean of asphalt. That meant The Sharper Image, Pottery Barn, The Gap, Tower Records, Borders, Starbucks...and then the little specialty shops. We'd done the circuit together any number of Sunday afternoons.

"Works for me. What about Nordstrom?"

"Next time. I'm fine on shoes for a while." She eyed my footwear critically. "So are you. Thank God you don't go around in Nikes. I got so sick of dating wannabe kids."

"Like them?"

We checked out the very young couple headed toward us, both wearing gaudy athletic shoes, jeans, sweatshirts, and backward baseball caps. They were hanging all over each other like they'd just discovered sex, which maybe they had. As we passed, they scanned our attire--khakis, sweaters, serious purses, and even my Munro ankle boots--and gave us looks of biting disdain.

"Ow," I muttered. "Guess we asked for that."

She smiled slightly. "That's not it. They think we're losers who can't get dates."

"This is The Landing," I growled, "not Noah's Ark."

"Maybe I'll have to hang all over you, just to show them."

Her tone was teasing, but I wasn't having any of it. "No showing anybody anything. No PDAs. I mean it."

"It might be just a little late for that," she said, laughing. "We've already made out in front of half a dozen people and a client, not to mention whoever's seen that videotape by now."

"That's different. That's the agency. Strangers are a whole other thing. They might think we were..."

The unspoken word went off like a bomb in the noisy parking lot. Cassie stopped walking a split-second before I did.

"We do not look like Connie the Barbarian," she insisted.

"We don't have to. We've got a problem, Cass."

She looked around to see whether anyone was within earshot. No one was, but just to be safe, she drew me into a space between two parked SUVs. "We don't have any problem. I don't know that we're gay. I wasn't sure about you, when you were with...her, but I know I'm not."

"I'll remind you that you unzipped me with your teeth in the kitchen this morning. Not that I minded for a second. But if you're not sure about me..."

"This is different. I'm not into girls. I'm just into you."

"It may have escaped your notice," I said, biting off the words, "but I'm a girl. I would have thought that of all the people on earth, you'd have seen enough anatomy by now to know the difference."

"You know what I mean," she snapped. "I love you, not your parts."

"You didn't seem to have a problem with them before. You were even saying something about giving my trainer a great big tip at Christmas. So if..."

"I said that?" She seemed to be honestly puzzled. "When did I say that? Honey, you're at least 10 pounds underweight."

That ruined what was left of my good mood. Crossing my arms, I leaned back against one of the SUVs and scowled at her.

"I didn't mean it like that," she said, annoyed. "It looks good on you. Really. Most people would just look scrawny, but..."

"You might want to stop talking now, before you make me mad."

She leaned back against the other SUV, biting her lip in thought. "You're afraid to fight with me now, aren't you?"

"No. But this is such a stupid thing to fight about. We're supposed to be fighting about whether we're gay or not, and..."

"I know. That's why we're fighting about this instead," she said quietly.

That was why. All the anger drained out of me. "We don't have to do this right now."

"Of course not. We're here to shop."

I regarded her hopefully. "We could still argue. When we get to The Museum Company, anyway, and you start trying on Egyptian jewelry."

"You're still mad about that brooch," she said, brightening. "I don't care--I like it. It looks good with my maroon blazer."

"It looks like a pair of junior stewardess wings. I kept telling you to try the Venetian stuff, but no--you had to play Queen of the Nile. You're too blonde for that, Cass."

She was smiling all the way now. "Did you see that episode of 'Seinfeld' when Elaine dated a gay guy?"

As non sequiturs went, that one was world-class. "Probably. What does that have to do with your arrested taste in jewelry?"

"She said it was the best of both worlds: sex and shopping." Cassie crossed the small distance between us and put both her hands flat on my chest. "She was right."

I was just leaning forward, surroundings forgotten, when a shadow fell into our space. Both of us jumped. A stocky man about our age was making for one of the SUVs, shopping bags in both hands.

"Pardon," I said, stepping aside.

He gave us a hellfire's-too-good-for-some-people look and fumbled for his keys. Cassie motioned to me to get out of the man's way.

As I walked around the back of the vehicle, I noticed a Family Foundation decal in the back window, along with one of those "Proud Parent of an Honor Student" stickers. I was underwhelmed by this information, but still couldn't quite tear my attention away, for some reason.

"Shopping, Dev," Cassie prompted.

I squinted a bit in the sunlight, and then saw it clearly in the back window: two points of red light, glowing behind the tinted glass.

She was back. I was sure of it now. The question was what she wanted--and when she was going to tell me.

"Hello?"

I would have to let Cassie know, of course. But not just now.

"Sorry," I said. "Coming."

•••

(c) 1999, ROCFanKat

Continued - Part 5