Dream & Dare by Susan Fanetti

few minutes here and there, but otherwise, her head had been full of all the memories she’d been reliving with Hoosier for nearly two months. She wanted the chance to make more.
     
    And sweet Lord, she wanted to hear him again tell her he loved her.
     
    The next morning, she refueled with coffee, and Demon took charge of the kids so Faith could drive her to the hospital. They rode most of the way in silence. When Faith pulled off the freeway and stopped at the bottom of the ramp, Bibi reached out and laid her hand on Faith’s arm.
     
    “Turn right, honey.”
     
    “What?”
     
    “I want to see your mama first.”
     
    Faith blanched. “Bibi, no. You know I need to get my head straight before I see her. I can’t today.” Margot almost never remembered anymore that she had two daughters. In some ways, that was a blessing for her and Faith both. But Faith still hurt over so much. Bibi understood how difficult it was.
     
    “I know. I just need to sit with my friend for a minute before I go back to the hospital. Drop me, and I’ll call a cab when I’m ready to go.”
     
    Faith turned right and headed to the San Gabriel Center. “Connor would kill me if I just ‘dropped you.’ I’ll hang out in the lobby and wait for you. It’ll give me a few minutes to myself, anyway.
     
    “Thank you.”
     
    Faith reached over and gave her hand a squeeze.
     
     
    ~oOo~
     
     
    “Oh, my God, Beebs! What happened to you? Oh, honey, you’re hurt!”
     
    Margot was having a good day, which meant that she was living in the late Eighties/early Nineties, when they were young and beautiful, and their friendship was new. She rarely remembered any later than the early Nineties any longer, but she increasingly lived in the world of her childhood and didn’t remember Bibi at all. More and more, Margot was just a confused little girl.
     
    When she remembered Bibi, she always expressed shock at her appearance. Bibi was in her sixties. Margot remembered her in her twenties. “I’m just tired, Margie.” She brushed her hand over the burn scars on her arm and up to her neck. They could have been much worse—Hoosier’s were much worse—but the skin had come back discolored, looking like the scars they were. “And this ain’t nothin’. Don’t hurt at all.” She sat down next to the dearest friend she’d ever had. “What you been up to?”
     
    “Oh, you know. Getting the house in order. And Blue’s taking me to San Diego this weekend.”
     
    “Is he now?” Bibi held Margot’s hand and sat back to listen to her story and remember the days when it would have been true.
     
     
    ~oOo~
     
     
    “Leave it to Blue to get serious with a porn star .” Bibi capped her eyeliner and got up from the antique vanity Hoosier had brought home one day. He was always dragging home oddball gifts like that. This one had been an abomination, covered in about thirty coats of chipped paint, but she’d stripped it and stained it, and now she loved it. It was like something Joan Crawford would have sat at to do her makeup.
     
    As she adjusted the laces on her red leather bustier and then settled her tits to their peak advantage, Hoosier walked up behind her and kissed her bare shoulder. “This is beautiful. But wear a jacket. And be nice. He’s gone for this girl.”
     
    “Her name is Goldie Swallows. Hooj, come on! Goldie Swallows ?”
     
    “I knew I shouldn’t’ve told you that. Her name is Margot. She doesn’t actually answer to Goldie. And you be nice .” His tone was firm, but he laughed.
     
    “I’m always nice. It’s all those Southern manners I got steeped in growin’ up. I’m the nicest bitch in the state of California.” She turned and looked up at him. When his eyes dropped to her cleavage, she lifted his chin with the tip of her index finger. “You met her. Prep me.”
     
    She hadn’t had a real friend in the five years they’d been married. But Hoosier had Blue, and she guessed he was as close to a