“Keeps you young, old man,” Dart observes, wisely.
I’m wondering how to shut this conversation down, when their attention is caught by something behind me. I turn as well. Swift has pulled herself up on the pole and is contorting lithely.
“Now I see what Road sees in her,” Pennywise murmurs. “Just watch those muscles work.”
“I can still take her,” Salem growls.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Mary
“So, is he hot?”
I grin at Kristen who’s in her normal position, hanging over the partition between our cubicles. For an answer, I pretend to fan myself. To me, Grumbler is indeed good-looking, to someone younger, perhaps not.
During my sleepless hours in the night, I considered how I’d approach this morning. I’d veered from telling my friends what had happened, to keeping everything bottled up. I’d come down on the side of full disclosure. I need someone to talk to, someone to bounce ideas off. It may help me get perspective. Who else could I trust, except for my closest friends? It hadn’t been a mistake. While I’d surprised the hell out of them when I’d answered their polite enquiry about my weekend, there had been no censure, just sympathy. Though they had taken a moment to take it all in.
Kristen wants to know all about my biker. Terra focuses on something else. “How’s Alicia now? Dreadful thing to happen to a young girl. She must be crushed.”
I recall Alicia this morning, she’d seemed eager enough to get back to school. “She seems to have accepted she’s joined the club of losing her virginity to someone who wasn’t worth it.” I grimace. “There’s enough of us in it.”
“But not all of us were filmed. You sure your boyfriend is going to be able to get that video locked down?” Terra shudders. “I’d hate to think there was a porn film of me out there.”
“I have confidence he will,” I say. “And Alicia’s convinced he’ll do what he says.”
“Don’t you think she should have gone to the cops?”
“She’s too embarrassed,” I respond to Kristen. “And it was consensual, it wasn’t rape. There was nothing untoward until it was filmed, and it’s only her word for that. They might think she was making things up to get back at a man who slighted her after he took what he wanted.”
“It’s the way of the world,” Terra confirms. “It would be her words against his, no marks showing force. And, if that film, hopefully, never turns up, no proof she was videoed during the act.”
“But she’s underage,” Kristen protests. “He should be arrested for that.”
I shrug. “He should, but she’d have to face him in court, and I wouldn’t want to put her through that.” I believe Grumbler when he says Owen will never bother us again, even if I don’t like to consider why he’s so certain.
“As long as Alicia can put it behind her and move on. Maybe learn a lesson not to go behind her mom’s back.” Terra winks at me.
I smile. “Hopefully she’ll now respect that I know what I’m talking about.”
“Getting back to your man. When are we going to meet him? Can you get him to come out for a drink with us one night?”
Could I see an after-work get-together with Grumbler in tow? I don’t think he’d mind. The problem is, we’ve still got things to discuss, things that might influence where our fledgling relationship goes.
As Art comes into view, Kristen ducks down and goes back to work. After Art talks to me for a moment about a job he wants done, he disappears again. It’s then Terra starts quizzing me in earnest.
“What’s on your mind?” she asks, her voice low.
I wonder whether to tell her, but in honesty, she’s not only my friend, but is close to my own age. I can’t talk to Alicia for obvious reasons. This is one of the things I’ve warned her about.
Glancing around to make sure Kristen’s heads down in her cubicle and no one else is around, I tilt my head and say quietly, “The condom broke.”
“What? Alicia’s?”
I shake my head. “No, thank God for that. Grumbler’s.”
Terra snorts loudly. Frantically, I wave her to stay silent. When she’s finished chuckling, she tells me, “Well thank goodness you don’t have anything to worry about.”
“You don’t think? I’ve not gone through menopause.”
She shakes her head. “Fertility goes down drastically with age. I have a friend. When she was forty-four she met the man of her dreams, got married, and wanted to start a family. She’d turned forty-five by the time she started trying. It never happened for her, even with fertility treatments.”
That’s sad, wanting a family and not being able to have one.
I’m not against abortion per se, it’s every woman’s right to choose. But as far as I go, I’d always felt aborting a foetus was a kick in the teeth in the face of women who’d give their eye teeth to give birth. As long as I was in the position to raise a child, I’d always see it as a blessing. Or so, I’d thought. Now?
“Grumbler suggested the morning-after pill.”
“He want you to take it?”
My head moves side to side. “No pressure, just a suggestion.” It’s a sensible one and a way to make certain.
“Do you want to?”
“I don’t know,” I wail softly. “I don’t know what I want. On one hand, it’s ridiculous continuing a pregnancy if, in the unlikely event I am. I’m too old to raise a baby, and I’m nearing the time when Alicia would be off my hands and I’d be able to live my life. Having a baby now ties me down until I’m nearing seventy.”
“So take the pill,” she says reasonably. She pauses for a moment to answer an email. “Does Grumbler want a kid? Would he support you?”
I smile, remembering his words last night. “He says he would now, but he’s nearing sixty, Terra. Will he really want all the shit that goes with bringing a child up?”
“He hasn’t other kids?”
“No,
