Inside Suzi Chapter 5.5
by Inside Suzi
Chapter 5.5
One More Test
Two days before Cancun, Mei sent a message at what was — I had learned to calculate automatically — well past midnight in Shanghai.
Mei: I've been thinking.
Suzi: That's either very good or very alarming. Which is it this time.
Mei: Both. I want you to do something for me before you leave.
Suzi: Mei it's ten in the morning here and I haven't had enough coffee for whatever this is.
Mei: Get more coffee. I'll wait.
I refilled my mug. I came back to the phone.
Suzi: Go ahead.
Mei: Two things. The first is simple. The second is the real one. You can decide after the first whether you want the second.
Suzi: You've been planning this.
Mei: I've been thinking about it since the phone call. Since I understood that you are two days from Cancun and you have never once been out in the world fully as this version of yourself. Without Marcus. Without the safe context of home. Just you and the outside and whatever happens.
Suzi: And you think I should fix that before I leave.
Mei: I think you'll want to have done it. There's a difference.
I sat with that for a moment. The house was quiet — Marcus at the office, two days of work left before they locked the door and loaded the car and headed to the airport. The morning was mine.
Suzi: Tell me the first thing.
Mei: A walk around the block. Mini skirt. The thin tank top — I know you have one. Nothing underneath either. No bra. No underwear. Just you and the skirt and whatever the neighborhood sees.
Suzi: You want me to walk around my block with no underwear in a mini skirt.
Mei: I want you to walk around your block with no underwear in a mini skirt.
Mei: It's ten in the morning. Weekday. Most people are at work. The worst that happens is a neighbor waves at you. The best that happens is you feel something you've never felt before.
Suzi: And the second thing.
Mei: After the walk — same outfit, nothing added, nothing changed — you go shopping for the trip. You need sandals for Cancun anyway. A good department store. You try some on. You find a male clerk to help you.
Suzi: Mei.
Mei: You sit down. You try on shoes. You decide how much of yourself you show him. That part is entirely yours — I'm not telling you what to do in there. I'm just telling you to go in and see what you want to do.
Suzi: No underwear in a department store.
Mei: No underwear in a department store. Sitting in a shoe chair while a man kneels in front of you and tries to do his job.
Mei: Photos. I want one from the mirror before you leave the house. One from the parking lot before you go in. One after you come out still in the outfit. I want the whole day documented.
Mei: Think about it. I know you're already thinking about it.
I was already thinking about it.
I set the phone down and picked up my coffee and looked out the kitchen window at the quiet street. Tom's truck wasn't there. Tyler's window was closed. The neighborhood was in its mid-morning stillness, unhurried and ordinary, entirely unaware of the conversation happening in my kitchen.
The walk first. Then the store. Same outfit, nothing added.
I thought about the distance between the woman who had flinched in a green dress three years ago when men looked at her at a party and the woman sitting here now, who had walked to a mailbox slowly and watered tomatoes in a wet shirt and stood at a window in the dark with her breasts bare and told her husband to call another man and come in a chair while she watched.
Not a small distance.
I picked up the phone.
Suzi: Give me twenty minutes to get dressed.
Mei: That's my slut. Go.
Mei: And send me that photo before you walk out the door.
—
The skirt was black. Short — genuinely short, the kind I had bought two years ago for a night out with Marcus and worn exactly twice and always with opaque tights underneath because the length required it. Without tights it fell to mid-thigh and no further, which meant that sitting down or bending forward or moving with anything other than perfect stillness would show considerably more than mid-thigh.
I reached for underwear automatically.
It was muscle memory — twenty years of dressing had trained the hand to reach for the second drawer before the mind had weighed in, and my fingers had the cotton already in hand before I registered what I was doing. I stood there for a moment, looking at them. Plain nude cotton, entirely practical, the kind of thing you put on without thinking because you always put on something.
I put them back in the drawer.
The specific awareness of that choice — the deliberate reversal of the automatic — settled into my body with a warmth that was already beginning to do what warmth did. I was aware of the skirt before I'd put it on. I was aware of what it was going to feel like in a way I hadn't been when this was hypothetical.
I put the skirt on.
The sensation was immediate and specific — not the warmth of fabric against skin but the absence of it, the cool air finding the inside of my thighs as I stood in front of the mirror and registered what I was looking at. The skirt sat on my hips and stopped where it stopped and the gap between its hem and the floor was full of nothing but bare leg and the particular awareness of being entirely exposed beneath a thin layer of fabric. One gust of wind. One moment of carelessness. Nothing at all between me and the world.
The tank top went on next. Thin white cotton, no bra. My breasts moved under it when I turned to look at myself from the side — that specific uncontained movement that I had grown to associate with a particular quality of freedom.
Anklet on. Hair down. The lightest touch of lipstick.
I picked up my phone.
I turned back to the mirror.
The woman looking back was not performing anything. She was simply present — in the outfit Mei had prescribed, with nothing underneath any of it, two minutes from walking out the front door into her own neighborhood like this. I raised the phone and took the photo straight — the full length of me in the mirror, the skirt sitting where it sat, the tank top showing what it showed.
I sent it to Mei without a caption.
Her response arrived in seconds.
Mei: Oh my god.
Mei: Look at you. Look at what you're about to do.
Mei: Go. Right now. Don't think. Go.
Suzi: Going.
Mei: Walk like you own the street. Because you do, you beautiful slut.
I put the phone in my bag and went.
—
The porch step.
That was the first moment — the specific moment of stepping off the porch onto the front path, where the ordinary world began and the privacy of the house ended. I felt it in my body before I'd moved more than two steps. The air was warmer than I'd expected, a late morning warmth with the particular quality of a day that had decided to be generous, and it found the hem of my skirt immediately. Not a breeze exactly — just the ambient temperature of the outside world, a warmth that told the skin on my thighs that they were now in it, no longer protected, part of the day.
I walked.
Slowly, as instructed. My heels on the front path, then the sidewalk, the anklet catching the morning light with each step. I was aware of everything — the sound of a lawnmower somewhere two streets over, the specific quality of the suburban quiet, a dog barking once and stopping. The way the skirt moved with each stride, swaying slightly, the hem lifting the smallest amount with every step and then settling again. Nothing showed. Nothing had to show. The knowledge was enough — the knowledge of what wasn't under the skirt, of how little separated me from the air and the world and anyone who happened to be on the sidewalk.
I turned the corner onto the main run of the block.
Tyler's house came into view.
I kept my pace unhurried and felt the particular awareness that his house always produced in me, the habitual consciousness of the window. I let my gaze move to it briefly — half open, the curtain still — and then forward again. No movement. No confirmation. Just the awareness of possibility, which was its own kind of charge, the mind doing what the mind does when it has been trained to notice certain things.
I kept walking.
The awareness of the skirt was constant and specific — not uncomfortable, not frightening, but present the way the anklet was present, a continuous low-level signal that said: you are out here, fully, with nothing between you and the world. A car passed on the street moving slowly in the residential quiet and I didn't adjust my pace or my posture or my expression. Just kept walking. Just let the car pass and the driver see whatever they saw — a woman walking on a Tuesday morning in a short skirt and a thin top, anklet catching the light, entirely unhurried.
The second corner. The long side of the block — fewer houses, a stretch of hedges, the school that was empty because it was past the start of the day. I breathed here. The specific breath of someone who has done the hardest part and knows it. For a stretch of thirty seconds I was entirely alone on the sidewalk, walking in a mini skirt with nothing under it in the morning sun.
I felt extraordinary.
Not the word Mei used, though that too. Something more fundamental. The specific aliveness of a body in motion through the world with no armor except its own presence, nothing managed or concealed, just this — just a woman walking, just the skirt moving, just the anklet and the morning and the particular satisfaction of having stepped off the porch when stepping off the porch required something.
The third corner. The final stretch toward home.
A neighbor I recognized slightly — from school pickups years ago, a woman I'd waved to a handful of times — was coming out of her house with a bag of recycling. She looked up as I passed. We exchanged the smile of people who know each other slightly, the practiced neighborly acknowledgment. She had no idea. Not a single visible thing was out of place — I was a woman taking a morning walk in a skirt, nothing more. The knowledge of what was underneath was entirely mine.
I smiled back and kept walking.
My front path. My porch step.
I stood on the porch for a moment before going back in, looking at the quiet street, feeling the warmth of the morning and the warmth under my skin that had been building from the first step and had not diminished.
I took out my phone.
Suzi: Done. The whole block.
Mei: And?
Suzi: A neighbor waved. A car passed. I kept walking.
Mei: Good girl. How did it feel?
Suzi: Like being completely awake. Like the first time every time.
Mei: Yes. That's it exactly.
Mei: Now get in the car. Same outfit. Don't change a single thing. Parking lot photo before you go in. Remember.
Suzi: I'm going.
Mei: Enjoy the shoe shopping. Take your time with it. I want every detail afterward.
—
The drive was twenty minutes and I was aware of the skirt the entire time.
Sitting down changed it — the hem rode up slightly, the fabric shifting to accommodate the position, and the seat of the car against bare skin was its own specific information. Not unpleasant. Distinct. The kind of sensation that keeps the body's attention regardless of what the mind is doing, a low continuous note under everything else.
I drove carefully, both hands on the wheel, and thought about what I was about to do.
The dare was mine now. Mei had pointed the direction but the execution was entirely Suzi's. No one would know. No one watching would see anything other than a woman shopping for vacation. The secret was internal, carried in the space between the skirt and everything it wasn't covering, known only to me and Mei and the particular charge that had been building since I stepped off the porch.
I pulled into the parking lot.
The department store was busy in the way of a weekday mid-morning — not crowded, but populated, the particular demographic of people who shop on Tuesday mornings. I sat in the car for a moment with the engine off.
I raised my phone and took the parking lot photo Mei had asked for — me in the driver's seat, the store's entrance visible through the windshield behind me. Just my face and the outfit and the slight flush of having walked the block still in my skin, and the entrance to the store where I was about to go. I sent it.
Mei: You're really doing this.
Suzi: I'm really doing this.
Mei: I'm so proud of you I could cry. Go buy some shoes, slut. Make him work for his commission.
I put the phone in my bag and got out of the car.
—
The shoe department was on the main floor, tucked toward the back of the store past the handbags and the jewelry counters, with the particular carpeted quiet of a space designed for sitting down and taking time. Display shelves on three walls, padded benches and low chairs arranged in the center, the whole setup oriented around the act of a customer sitting and a salesperson kneeling — an arrangement I had navigated a hundred times in my life without once considering its specific geometry from this angle.
I considered it now.
There were two people working. A woman in her fifties at the register, reading something on a tablet. And a man — mid-thirties, dark hair, the particular build of someone who spent time at the gym without making it his personality, wearing the store's standard business casual. He looked up when I came in with the alert attention of someone who is good at his job and noticed customers.
"Can I help you find something?"
I gave him the smile I had practiced in the mirror since my first year of consulting — warm, poised, slightly more direct than strictly necessary. "I'm going on vacation," I said. "I need sandals. Maybe a pair of heels for evenings out. I'd like to try a few things."
"Of course." He gestured toward the sandal display. "Any particular style? Heel height?"
We looked at sandals together for a few minutes — I was genuinely shopping, genuinely considering what I wanted for Cancun, and this grounded the whole thing in something real rather than performance. I chose three pairs to try. He went to the back for sizes.
I chose a chair.
Not the low bench — the chair with the slightly higher seat and the padded arms, the kind that was designed for comfort during a long try-on session. I sat in it and crossed my right leg over my left and felt the skirt settle and registered, with the full and specific attention I was now paying to these things, exactly how it had settled and what that meant.
The hem was at the top of my thigh. Crossed, it fell toward the outer edge. Nothing was visible. Nothing needed to be visible yet.
He came back with a stool and the boxes and sat down in front of me with the practiced ease of someone who did this dozens of times a day, and reached for my foot.
His eyes tracked down to my ankle as he positioned the first shoe — pausing for just a fraction of a second on the gold chain there, the anklet catching the light at ankle level where his work took him. He registered it the way people register small unexpected details, and moved on. He would not have known what it meant. I did.
His eyes were professional otherwise. He was doing his job.
I let him work.
The first pair were flat sandals — tan leather, a thin strap across the toe, comfortable and exactly what I would wear on the beach in the morning. He slipped them on efficiently and I stood and walked a few steps on the carpet and said yes, these were right, I'd probably take them.
"What about something for evenings?" I said, sitting back down.
He brought out a heel. Strappy, gold, the kind that went with a sundress or nothing at all. He knelt in front of me again and reached for my foot.
This time when I settled back into the chair I uncrossed my legs.
Not wide. Not obviously. Just — uncrossed. Feet on the floor, knees together but not pressed, the natural relaxed posture of someone trying on shoes. The skirt fell. The hem sat exactly where it sat.
He was looking at the shoe, working the strap around my ankle, head bent.
And then he wasn't.
It was a fraction of a second — the eyes lifting from the buckle, tracking upward along the line of my leg with the instinctive automatic movement of eyes that have registered something and are moving toward it before the professional brain has intervened. He caught himself. His gaze returned to the buckle. His hands continued their work, entirely steady.
But I had seen it.
The specific quality of that half-second — the involuntary look, the catching of himself, the return to professionalism that cost something — moved through me with a warmth that settled low in my stomach and stayed there.
I liked it.
Not because of him. He was pleasant enough, unremarkable in the way of most people going about their Tuesday — a man doing his job competently and without particular distinction. That was almost the point. She hadn't needed him to be remarkable. She had provided the charge entirely herself, had walked it in through the door and set it in the chair and decided what would happen next. The power had nothing to do with him. He was simply the recipient of something she had chosen to give.
I stood and walked in the heels. I said I liked them. I asked to see one more pair.
He brought a third option — something strappier, higher, frankly more evening than anything on the Cancun itinerary required, but I had asked and he had brought them and I wanted to stay in the chair a little longer.
He sat on the stool. He reached for my foot.
I let my knees drift slightly apart.
Not dramatically. An inch, perhaps two — the difference between knees-together and knees-relaxed, the difference between managed and simply sitting. I watched him from above with the particular quality of attention I had learned to deploy while appearing to look at something else — the shoes on the display opposite, the middle distance, anywhere but directly at him.
He was working the strap of the third sandal around my ankle.
His eyes moved.
Not a fraction of a second this time. Longer. The professional control was still there — his hands continued their work without pause, the buckle found its hole, the sandal was secured — but his gaze had traveled the length of my leg and arrived somewhere, and in the arriving had stayed a beat longer than the first time, and in that extra beat I understood that he could see enough to know what he was seeing.
I let him.
I looked at the sandals on the display and felt the warmth that had been sitting low in my stomach since the parking lot spread outward through my body and arrive at every extremity at once — my fingers, my face, the inside of my thighs. I was aware of the air between my legs and the chair beneath me and the man sitting three feet away who was trying very hard to be professional and not entirely succeeding.
I stood. I walked. I said the heels were lovely but perhaps too formal.
I sat back down.
"I think I'll take the flat sandals and the gold heels," I said. "But could I try one more thing? For the beach — something with a bit more of a platform?"
He went to the back again.
I sat in the chair and breathed and let myself feel exactly what I was feeling — the heat of it, the specific charge of what was happening in this ordinary department store on this ordinary Tuesday morning, the knowledge that this man who did not know my name was going to come back and kneel in front of me one more time.
He came back.
He sat on the stool.
He reached for my foot.
And I opened my legs.
Not a drift this time. Not a relaxation of careful posture. A decision — deliberate, unhurried, final. My knees moved apart and the skirt fell and I let it fall and I looked directly at the display of sandals on the far wall with the expression of someone considering her options.
He went very still for a moment.
Just a moment — his hands paused on the shoe, the professional continuity of the transaction breaking for the span of two or three seconds while he registered what he was seeing. What he was seeing was everything. The skirt had fallen entirely between my legs. There was nothing between his eye level and what the skirt was supposed to cover.
Then he looked up.
He couldn't help it. The way Tyler couldn't help it, the way Tom couldn't help it — the eyes moving upward, finding my face, the specific expression of a man who has found himself somewhere he didn't expect to be and is trying to determine what the rules are.
I looked back at him.
And I smiled.
Not the professional smile, not the boardroom smile. The other one — the one that said: yes, I know exactly what you just saw. And yes, I meant for you to see it. And no, neither of us is going to say a word about it.
His expression shifted. Something relaxed in it — the tension of the professional caught in an unprofessional moment giving way to something simpler and more honest. The corner of his mouth moved. Not quite a smile. Something more private than a smile.
He looked back down at the shoe.
He finished fastening it.
"How does that feel?" he said. His voice was entirely steady. He was good at his job.
I looked at him for a moment. The same smile. The one that said exactly what it said.
"How does that look to you?" I said.
A pause. Brief. The specific pause of a man deciding how to answer a question that has more than one answer. His eyes moved — a single controlled flicker downward and back — and then returned to my face.
"Perfect," he said. His voice was still steady. Barely.
"Perfect," I agreed.
I stood. I walked. I said I'd take the platform sandals as well.
He carried the boxes to the register. The woman at the counter processed the transaction with efficient pleasantness, asking if I'd found everything I needed. I said yes. I signed the receipt. I thanked them both.
He met my eyes one more time as I picked up the bag.
"Enjoy your vacation," he said.
"Thank you," I said. "I intend to."
I walked out through the store and across the main floor and out the doors into the parking lot, the afternoon sun warm on my skin, the shopping bag in one hand and the anklet chiming softly with each step, and I felt — there was no other word for it — victorious.
—
I sat in the car for a long time before starting the engine.
The parking lot moved around me in its ordinary Tuesday afternoon way — carts being returned, cars backing out of spaces, a woman loading bags into a trunk three spots over. Entirely ordinary. Entirely unaware of what had just happened in the shoe department. I sat in the driver's seat with the shopping bag on the passenger seat and the windows up and the engine off and felt the specific quality of solitude that comes after doing something alone that no one can take from you.
I was aware of the anklet warm at my ankle — had been aware of it all day, that small gold weight through the walk and the drive and the shoe department and all of it. A private constant. Something only I knew was there.
I leaned the seat back slightly.
I thought about the walk around the block first — the porch step, the specific cool of the morning air finding the inside of my thighs, the way the skirt moved with each stride. The neighbor with the recycling bag who had no idea. The long side of the block where I had been entirely alone for thirty seconds and had felt the specific aliveness of it.
The warmth that had been building since then had not gone anywhere. It had accumulated through the drive and the parking lot and the shoe department, layer by layer, and was sitting in my body now with a specific insistence that I had learned to recognize and had also learned not to rush.
I thought about the shoe department.
The first look — that involuntary fraction of a second, his eyes tracking upward before he caught himself. The care it had cost him to bring them back down. I felt the memory of it move through me, warm and specific, and pressed my thighs together and then released them.
The second look. Longer. His hands continuing while his eyes arrived somewhere and stayed a beat past professional.
The third — his stillness, the pause, the upward movement of his eyes finding my face and the smile he found there. The something that had shifted in his expression when he understood the rules were what I said they were.
I wondered, briefly and without guilt, what he looked like under the business casual. Whether he was still thinking about the chair. Whether he would be later, in the way that Tom still thought about the doorway. The specific wondering of a woman who had just done what she had done and whose mind went where it went.
My hand moved to my thigh.
Not a decision — or the same kind of decision as putting the underwear back in the drawer and walking off the porch, the kind that arrives already made. My palm lay flat on my bare thigh just below the hem of the skirt and the warmth of my own skin against my hand was immediate and real.
I looked at the windshield. At the ordinary parking lot beyond it. At the woman who had finished loading her bags and was pulling out of her space, backing away, driving off. Nobody coming. Nobody positioned to see inside the car with its slightly reclined seat and its windows up.
I slid my hand under the skirt.
The contact — fingers against the inside of my thigh, moving upward — was sharp and immediate after the sustained restraint of the shoe department, and I exhaled against the headrest and felt my knees fall apart the way they had fallen apart in the chair, the same deliberate unhurried opening, the same decision made with the same calm certainty.
I was wet.
Thoroughly, unmistakably wet, the kind of arousal that had been building since the porch step and had been fed by every subsequent thing — the walk, the car, the parking lot photo, the shoe department, each look, the smile, the walking out with the bag while the knowledge of all of it sat warm in my body. I pressed my fingers against myself and felt the immediate response and closed my eyes.
I thought about the walk.
The specific sensation of the skirt moving against bare skin with each step, the hem lifting fractionally with every stride. The knowledge of what wasn't there — no fabric between the skirt and the air, no barrier between me and whatever the world might see. The way that knowledge had made every step slightly different, slightly more inhabited, slightly more real.
I stroked myself slowly, the way I had learned — not rushing toward the destination but following the sensation, staying with each moment of it rather than using it as a vehicle for the next one. My fingers found the specific pressure that unraveled me, circling with the patience I had been practicing, and I felt the pleasure build from the base of my stomach outward.
I thought about the shoe department.
The man's face when he looked up and found me looking back. The smile I had given him — not performed, not planned, just the authentic expression of a woman who knew exactly what she was doing and had made her peace with it. The corner of his mouth in response. How does that look to you. Perfect. The specific charge of a question that meant two things and an answer that covered both.
I wondered again what he looked like. What his hands would feel like on something other than a shoe buckle. Whether he was the kind of man who lost the careful professionalism entirely when nobody was watching.
I pressed deeper.
Two fingers inside myself, curling in the way that turned my breathing ragged and my thoughts to something simpler and more urgent than memory — the specific location that made my back leave the seat even in the reclined driver's position, that sent the pleasure from internal to everywhere at once. My thumb found my clit and worked it in slow deliberate circles and I stopped thinking in sentences.
The parking lot. The car. The specific absurdity and specific perfection of a woman sitting in a department store parking lot on a Tuesday afternoon with her hand between her legs and her vacation sandals in a bag on the seat beside her. Mei in Shanghai, past midnight, waiting for the report she had sent Suzi out to generate. Marcus at his office, unaware. Tom across the neighborhood with his word Waiting still sitting in the group chat, getting closer.
Cancun in two days.
The man in the shoe department, probably still on the floor, probably thinking about the woman in the black skirt who had smiled at him with that particular smile.
I thought about his face when I asked how it looked and felt the orgasm arrive.
It came quietly and completely — not the sharp urgent release of something rushed but the full deep wave of something that had been building since morning, through the porch step and the block and the car and the parking lot and the shoe chair and the walk to the register and the walk to the car, all of it arriving now in the particular privacy of a vehicle where no one was looking and nothing existed except the sensation moving through my body in long slow waves that I rode with my head against the headrest and my hand still between my thighs and my eyes closed against the afternoon light.
I stayed in it until the last of it had finished.
Then I sat for a while in the specific quiet of after — the particular weighted stillness of a body that has arrived somewhere and is resting in the having-arrived.
I straightened the seat.
I smoothed the skirt.
I raised my phone.
Just my face in the frame — flushed, settled, the hint of the store entrance visible through the windshield behind me. The afternoon light catching whatever the day had left on my face. I looked like a woman who had done something and was not sorry about any of it.
I sent it to Mei with a single line.
Suzi: Three pairs of shoes. I'll tell you everything when I get home.
Three dots appeared immediately, though it was past one in the morning in Shanghai.
Mei: I've been sitting here awake for two hours.
Mei: Three pairs.
Suzi: I took my time.
Mei: That photo. Suzi. That face.
Mei: Drive safely. Call me tonight. And — I need you to know something before you go.
Suzi: Tell me.
Mei: I've been thinking about this all day. Since I sent you out this morning.
Mei: I never did any of this. Not once. I married Wei at twenty-six and I was careful before that and careful after and I told myself that's just who I was. That the boldness was for other kinds of women. Not me.
Mei: You always seemed so composed. So put together. I thought you were the careful one too — maybe more careful than me, even, with all your professional armor.
Mei: And then you started telling me things and I realized the armor was never who you were. It was just what you were wearing. Underneath it you were always this. You just needed someone to tell you it was allowed.
Suzi: Mei.
Mei: I'm not sad about my choices. I love my life and my children and Wei is a good man. But when you walk around a block in a mini skirt with nothing underneath and then go buy shoes and send me that photo looking like that —
Mei: I get to feel some of that. Through you. And it means more than I know how to say.
I sat in the running car in the parking lot and read that message three times.
I had known — had understood in some peripheral way since the first time Mei said I've been waiting for this version of you — that her investment in my unfolding was not simply friendship, not simply the delight of a confidante watching a good story develop. There was something more personal in it. Something she was reaching for through me that she had decided a long time ago was not available to her.
Seeing it stated plainly made it more real.
And it made the dares feel different — not the directives of someone playing a game, but the wishes of someone who had made different choices and had found, years later, a friend through whom she could feel the shape of the road not taken. Not with sadness. With something warmer than sadness. With the specific kind of love that wants for someone else what it cannot reach for itself.
I typed slowly.
Suzi: You're there with me every time. You know that. Every single time I step off the porch or go into a shoe department or do anything I didn't know I was allowed to do — part of what makes it real is knowing I get to tell you about it. You're not living through me. You're with me.
Mei: God you're going to make me cry and I have an eight o'clock meeting.
Suzi: Go to sleep, Mei.
Mei: I'm going. Have the most magnificent time in Cancun. Come home changed.
Suzi: I will.
Mei: I know you will. You already are.
Mei: And Suzi — I've made a decision about your pussy hair. I'll tell you when the time is right. Consider it a standing dare.
Suzi: I cannot believe you run my life from Shanghai.
Mei: Someone has to. Sleep well, beautiful slut. Tell me everything.
I put the phone on the passenger seat beside the shopping bag.
I looked at the bag for a moment — three pairs of vacation sandals, bought on a Tuesday morning in a mini skirt with nothing underneath while a stranger tried to do his job and mostly managed it.
I put the car in drive.
Two days until Cancun.
I drove home in the afternoon light with the windows down and the anklet warm at my ankle and something settled in my chest that felt very much like readiness — not the nervous readiness of before, but the particular calm of someone who has tested a thing and found it true.
The world had not ended.
The world had, in fact, been entirely cooperative.
I thought: wait until I see what it does in Cancun.