So Em nodded her head again—more sure than ever her alcohol-dipped brain was sending her a subliminal message that she was on the right track. “You heard me. I want to talk dirty. Bring it on.”
Her friends frowned at her as though she’d just told them she wanted to have relations out in the middle of the square on the steps of the gazebo.
Em dunked her fingers into the top of her lower-than-usual cut dress and pulled out one of the offensive gel breasts, slapping it on the desk with disgust at their wide-eyed surprise. “Stop lookin’ like I just confessed to a murder. Why does everyone think I’m such a priss?”
LaDawn scooped up the gel breast and shook it like a raw chicken breast, making it jiggle. “Because you are?”
With alcohol came fearlessness. “I am not. I quote the Lord, yes. But that’s only because Jesus analogies are all I have to make comparisons to real life. My mama was a true Southern Baptist, and it just so happens Bible verses are what stuck. So while I might be conservative on the outside, I don’t buy into it all the way you think I do. I like sex. I like it a lot.”
LaDawn reached out and patted her hand, her tone a little condescending, a little amused. “Good for you, honey. You still shouldn’t be playin’ with the big girls.”
“Em, talking dirty to some stranger on the phone isn’t like practicing to flirt with a man in real life,” Dixie reminded her. “I’m not sure how you’re connecting the dots here.”
“She connected them with wine.” LaDawn barked a laugh at her own joke.
Which only infuriated Em further. She raised a finger and swished it around. “Let me tell you a thing or two, Miss LaDawn, I could do it! I hear you naughty Nancys take calls all day long—I’ve learned some things from you.... I’m not sayin’ I want to talk to the men LaDawn considers herself ‘companionators’ to—that might be rushin’ things, what with the latex and flogging, but maybe something tamer. Who knows, maybe it’ll help me get better at talkin’ up the opposite sex—free me from the chains that bind or something.”
Or something. Anything to loosen her up and help her forget there were days when she felt like she was nothing but a stale loaf of day-old bread. There were days when Clifton’s words, even after almost a year, still stung. “How was I supposed to know, someone like you, conservative and nigh on prissy, would entertain the idea I liked to wear women’s clothes?”
Conservative and prissy.
She wanted to be a new Em. Open to owning her sexuality and leaving the buttoned-up perception of her behind.
Marybell snickered, swirling her glass of Pinot. “Very dramatic, Em, this freein’ of your sexuality. Next you’ll want to read the Kama Sutra cover to cover and pose nude for Playboy.” Marybell chuckled. “Taking calls isn’t like flirting in real life. We openly have sex using our words—we don’t just suggest it. Don’t confuse the two, pretty lady.”
“Girl, you are somethin’ else when you an’ libation join hands in holy alcohol, ain’t you?” LaDawn squawked, slapping her hand on her thigh. “Two glasses of Chardonnay and all of a sudden you’re Em the Emasculator.”
Em felt the office chair she was sitting in wobble. Or was she wobbling? She couldn’t be sure. She giggled on a hiccup, one that jolted her so hard, she fell into Dixie, who stroked her hair with a soothing palm.
She took a deep breath and waved a finger at LaDawn’s lithe form in a “fooled you, didn’t I?” fashion. “It wasn’t Chardonnay, FYI. I had four drinks at the bar. The ones with the orange swirly stuff and the pretty umbrellas in them. Four.” Take that, conservatism.
“Four?” LaDawn and Marybell chirped their surprise in unison.
“Okay, who was on Em duty while I was off two-steppin’, LaDawn?” Marybell asked, casting a glance of aspersion LaDawn’s way.
LaDawn popped her heavily lined lips, brushing her platinum hair off her shoulder with a scoff. “Oh, no. I told you I was gonna take second shift. That means before 11:00 p.m. you were babysitting.”
Marybell shook her head, the pointy spikes of her red-and-green Mohawk beginning to sag after a long girls’ night out. “Nope. Dixie was supposed to take eight to ten. I was ten till 12:00 a.m. We let Cat take the night off, seeing as she can’t keep her eyes open for more than twenty minutes at a time.”
Cat, now sprawled across the chaise, snored to prove their point.
All eyes went to Dixie, who shot them a sheepish grin, full of dimples and sunshine.
LaDawn grabbed the bottle of Chardonnay and poured her and Dixie another glass to share while Marybell dug a blanket out to cover Cat, tucking the edges under her chin. “You were textin’ with that confounded dreamboat of yours again, weren’t you? It’s not girls’ night if you’re textin’ with your man, Dixie. Then it’s girls’ night and Caine,” she admonished with a stern tone, but a smile she couldn’t hide crept across her lips.