Younger by Pamela Redmond Satran

down.
    â€œI just think you have to be more assertive and do what you want, right from the beginning,” she said, staring at the ceiling. “How are you going to become a brand-new person if you keep acting like your same old self?”
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    It wasn’t until Thursday and what I’ve come to think of as the Bikini Wax Incident, after the Krav Maga—a form of Israeli martial arts—class Lindsay dragged me to, that I got up the nerve to tell her I didn’t want to go to the dinner at Thad’s with Porter Swift.
    It all started when I asked Lindsay whether she knew of a gym near the office that I might join. I’d gone for nearly a month without following my daily Lady Fitness routine, and I was afraid that any minute all the muscles in my new killer bod were going to give way, totally blowing my cover. In just four days of working for Teri Jordan, I’d found myself reverting to some of my old comfort-eating habits, hiding a bag of Hershey’s Kisses in my desk drawer and whipping up a pot of creamy mashed potatoes before bedtime every night, spooning out a crater that I filled with molten butter and salt and then savoring the concoction under the covers in my tent.
    Lindsay asked what kind of exercise I liked to do, and when I mentioned the elliptical trainer and hand weights, she looked at me as if I had said I did calisthenics under the tutelage of Jack LaLanne.
    â€œThat’s kind of retro,” she said, giving the word a twist that made it impossible for me to tell whether she considered that a good or a bad thing. “Why don’t you come with me Thursday night to my Krav Maga class? It’s awesome.”
    In the class, I felt as if I burned off the entire week’s intake of chocolate kisses, along with learning to disable any terrorists I might encounter on the way home. In the plush locker room, I tried to follow Lady Fitness etiquette and keep my eyes averted, which was difficult, as Lindsay was standing beside me holding forth on the menu for her upcoming dinner party while completely and unself-consciously naked.
    It was further difficult not to look because Lindsay’s severe black clothing had been hiding several remarkable physical attributes. Her breasts, for instance, were so high that there was far more square inchage on the part below the nipple than above it. Was that normal for women in their twenties, I wondered—I mean for women in their twenties who weren’t featured in the magazines I sometimes found when I cleaned under Gary’s side of the bed? I couldn’t remember, though the contrast with my own breasts, which until now I’d considered one of my best unclothed features, made me hunch over in shame.
    Lindsay also sported several startling tattoos—a dragonfly on her shoulder, a snake at her hip, and what looked like a USDA symbol perched atop the crack of her butt—made all the more vivid by the contrast of their inkiness against her ethereally pale skin. And the color of the tattoos seemed to provide the only variation in the expanse of paleness: Lindsay’s nipples were the faintest blush of pink, her pubic hair a thin strip of peach fuzz.
    â€œAlice,” she said.
    â€œHmmmm?” I feigned nonchalance as I trained my eyes on my locker, pretending to rummage around for my bra, which I knew was hanging beside my sweater.
    â€œWhat do you think I should make for dessert Saturday night? I was thinking about trying to do this amazing pear crostada that Thad had the other night at Craft.”
    I pulled my bra out of the locker and fumbled to slip it on while keeping my body angled away from Lindsay’s gaze, without making it seem like I was trying to keep it angled away.
    â€œBut then I was thinking,” Lindsay said, propping her hand on her hip, right beside the indigo snake, “that maybe I should just go with something simple, like a crème brûlée.”
    I was about to answer that