new message. The voice made her body reflexively shudder, but it wasn’t Angel’s.
“I’m hoping you remember me, Rett. I’d be flattered if you did. It’s Cinny Keilor. Well, it’s Cinny Johnson now. I found your number through the online white pages and just had to call to see if I could convince you to come to the reunion. I would love to see you again. It’s just going to be a super week. Almost everyone is coming. Tell me what I have to do to convince you. I would really love to see you again. Call me if you have the time.”
The breathy, slightly excited voice trailed away after giving her number. Rett replayed the message, then lay in bed trying to ignore her tingling body.
That voice her head was full of it now. “Rett, I want you to touch me there.”
Cinny was in a tight pink formal gown. The senior class homecoming queen’s tiara had slipped onto the backseat floor of her brother’s car.
Rett tasted Cinny’s lips again. “I want to show you how good it can be.”
Cinny was helping pull her dress up. Rett had one knee between Cinny’s thighs. She tugged one shoulder of the gown down and ran her tongue along the top of Cinny’s breasts. She kissed the firm column of Cinny’s throat while her hand smoothed Cinny’s hips.
“I’m ready,” Cinny had whispered. “I want you so much.”
Her fingertips pressed into the crotch of Cinny’s pantyhose. Cinny groaned. Rett kissed the groan away and in one swift motion, not waiting for further permission, pulled the hose down and tangled her fingers under the fabric.
The same hot wetness that Cinny generated in her was coating her fingertips. She pressed where she knew it would feel good and let her slick fingers find the way.
Cinny breathed out, “My God.”
“I told you.” Rett kissed her again, then murmured, “I always knew it would be like this.”
Cinny’s legs were opening wider. Rett was trembling. “That feels so good.”
Just as Rett’s fingers poised to take her, Cinny twisted to one side, panting. “I can’t, I can’t.”
“Don’t do this to me.”
“Please stop, Rett. You know I want to, but I can’t. It’s wrong.”
Rett had flung herself to the other end of the backseat. “I can’t go through another year of this.”
“I’m sorry,” she said sadly. She pulled down her dress. “We shouldn’t see each other again.”
“I guess not,” Rett said. She didn’t want Cinny to see her cry again, so she got out of the car. Her own secondhand dress was crumpled. She wouldn’t go back to the dance. She’d only come because Cinny had asked her to be there.
She went to the gymnasium bathroom and sat in a stall for a long time to calm down before starting the long walk home. As she walked through the parking lot she passed Cinny’s brother’s car, and hated herself for being so weak that she would take any chance to bump into Cinny again. She prayed that if Cinny saw her again, she’d say, “Rett, I was wrong. I can’t go on this way. Make love to me.”
Her weakness got what it deserved. Cinny was in the car, but her boyfriend was there, too. All she saw was his back and her legs, and all she heard was his groaned-out, “You’re so hot tonight.”
She felt punched in the stomach. She wouldn’t talk to Cinny for weeks after that and would never tell her why. Then one afternoon Cinny had slipped a note into her locker, asking Rett to “see” her after school at the creek beyond the old Gefferson place. She’d gone, all the while rehearsing the speech where she told Cinny to go to hell.
Cinny had said she missed Rett’s friendship. She’d asked for a hug to make up whatever it was that was bothering Rett. The hungry, bruising kisses that followed had led to another rejection, and not the last one. Her entire senior year, from homecoming to prom night, she’d still followed Cinny around like a desperate lapdog, hoping for any castoff caress that might come her way.
That voice that breathy,
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