Chapter One
The building was exceptional only in how utterly normal it appeared. Whoever it was that had designed it must have intended it to be the most forgettable building in the world.
“Are you sure this is it?”
“I don’t know….” Val turned in the car seat to look at her a moment . “I guess it must be. I mean, this is the address Laura gave me.” She turned back to the building, seeming to have as much difficulty as Caitlin did believing this was it.
Caitlin looked again at the building . No Holes Barred. That was what the club’s name was, supposedly. This hardly looked like the place you’d find an exclusive adult club. I guess that’s why they chose it. Or built it, or whatever. That was, of course, provided Laura hadn’t decided to play a nasty trick on Val, in which case it would be extremely embarrassing when they went in and asked where all the action was. Caitlin didn’t know Laura very well personally. She did know the woman was fond of jokes and had played countless pranks on Val, whose trusting nature insured she would fall for them every time.
“Are you positive you want to go through with this?”
Val nodded slowly to herself. “I haven’t been laid in a year, Caitlin. A year. Do you have any idea what that’s like?” she ground out. “A whole year of nothing. Not just horrible sex, nothing! It’ll atrophy if I don’t get some soon!”
Caitlin tried hard to banish the sudden vision of a withered vagina from her mind. “Damn it Val!”
She knew exactly what Val meant, had in fact been without longer than she had , but preferred not to point that out. She would have been able to get some action if that had been all she wanted. She wasn’t prudish. Sex before marriage made all the sense in the world to her- after all why buy the house if you haven’t checked out the plumbing? Her problem was she didn’t like getting involved with someone that she didn’t see as a likely candidate for spending the rest of her life with. She wanted the option, whether or not she chose to use it.
At this point in her life, though, she might be horny but she was also fairly scared. What if sh e wasn’t any good in bed any more? What if she never had been? If she were just destined to be alone? She tried hard to shake the thoughts running through her head. Her mother had lived her whole life alone. What if it ran in the family, like some dread, unnamed disease?
It’s now or never. It’ll be years before I get up the gumption to try again. If I ever do. It occurred to her that she really wasn’t starting off on the right foot . What is it Val wa s always saying about giving people a fair chance? Val seemed to have even worse luck with men than her own, yet still tried to find a good one. Caitlin never had figured out if it was blind determination or pure desperation that drove her.
“Well…let’s get this over with.”
As they stepped from the car, Caitlin wondered yet again how she had even allowed Val to talk her into this. She had decided several years ago to stop looking for love after a string of nightmarish blind dates, set up by so-called great f riends. She’d lost most of her friends over the years because she wouldn’t go out with their freaky, monstrous, or just plain stupid relatives more than once. Shit, you would think, being my friends , they’d know my taste a little better than that! Or at least know their own family well enough to know they wouldn’t be interested in me!
She had finally come to her senses and just stopped going out on blind dates all together, swearing off relationships while she was at it.
Val was the only friend that she
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