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Karin Kallmaker - Unforgettable.docx
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It might have worked if Cinny hadn't leaned over Kate and said slowly and clearly, "Do you really want to know what makes me happy, Kate? Really?"

"Tell me, Prom Queen, what makes you happy? Hugging Rett here, who has been doing the deed with Angel all week?"

Cinny went down on her knees and straddled Kate, lowering herself inch by inch as she spoke. "You know what makes me happy? A woman's tongue reaching places that you've never had touched, and a woman's body hot with sweat as I touch and lick places inside and out to make her scream with ecstasy. You've never screamed, have you, Kate?" Cinny's lips were inches from Kate's. "What makes me happy is the kind of screaming, scratching, wild jungle-fever sex that only another woman can possibly do for me and if I never have sex again for the rest of my life I'll die knowing I still had better sex in one minute with a woman than you'll ever have no matter how many men you ever find to take pity on your sorry, drunken ass."

"Jesus, Cinny." Kate made a feeble attempt to back out from under her.

"So don't you ever assume you know what makes me happy." Cinny got to her feet. "I need a drink."

The only sound in the room was Bunny's pouring a rum punch over ice. She handed the glass to Cinny without a word.

Lisa broke the silence. "Urn, Cinny? Are you trying to tell us something?"

Cinny perched on the sofa with her legs curled under her. She shrugged. "It shut her up, didn't it?"

"Bravo," Natalie said. "She's also passed out."

"Thank God," Mary said. "I love her like a sister, but lately when she's had too much she gets mean. She always says sorry the next day, but the damage is done."

Angel said quietly, "She needs help if she does this all the time."

"The divorce just killed her. That bastard cleaned out their accounts and moved to St. Paul in a single weekend. Left her with the mortgage and the car that has a payment." Mary lifted Kate's head and slipped a pillow under it.

"Men are bastards," Lisa said.

"We're back to a safe topic," Bunny said. She indi¬cated the glass in her hand. "Damn. I'm sorry I made these things."

"They're potent," Natalie said. "I've had my limit." She laughed. "I want to be sober if Cinny wants to go through that little speech with me."

Everyone laughed, but Rett saw the speculative glances that Bunny and Lisa shared. Cinny must have seen them, too.

"I lied," she said into the silence that fell after the laughter. She started to sip from her glass, then set it down with an expression of distaste. "Dutch courage."

"You are trying to tell us something, aren't you, Cin?" Lisa sat down next to her. "Maybe you should tell Sam first."

Cinny was looking right at Rett. "I already did. Yesterday. Pity I didn't wait until tomorrow." Her gaze flicked over Angel.

"I'm so sorry, Cinny." Good God, Rett thought. She did it for me. After all these years, she did it for me.

"I'm not," Cinny said carefully. "You know I'm not sorry at all. It's over."

Lisa put her arm around Cinny. "What are you trying to say? Just tell us."

Cinny's usually flawless skin was mottled with red patches and her eyes shimmered with tears. "I'm . . . I'm like Rett. And Angel. And Natalie." In a whisper she added, "A lesbian."

"Christ, Cinny, are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure, Bunny." Cinny pushed Lisa away. "I spent twenty-three useless years trying not to be one. I've walked away from love and I've hurt Sam, who doesn't know what hit him. I've made a ruin of everything because I just couldn't admit it to myself, and because I was afraid you'd look at me just the way you're looking at me now."

"It'll take some getting used to." Bunny was looking everywhere but at Cinny. "You know as well as I do there's folks in this town who won't like it."

"Fuck them." Cinny picked up her drink and drained it. She lurched to her feet. "I've been what

everybody wanted me to be for way too long and now it's my turn." She stood in front of Rett. "I have lousy timing. If I'd found some courage a couple of days earlier it might have worked out."

"Don't torture yourself about it," Rett said. She wanted to make it better but knew her words could hurt too. "We might have had something together once upon a time, all those years ago. Who knows?" she said softly. "I'm hers, like I was meant to be all along. She's the only one who knew what she wanted from the beginning."

Rett looked at the faces around the room. Angel clearly had sympathy for Cinny, but her eyes shone when she met Rett's gaze. Mary was carefully non¬committal, while Bunny seemed stunned into silence. Natalie, on the other hand, had the look of a woman who had just won the lottery.

Lisa hopped up from the sofa. "Well, I sure feel like going to sleep. Anyone else?" Six pairs of eyes looked at her as if she had lost her mind. "Please. Irony? Get it?"

Cinny wiped her eyes and turned away. "I think I'm going to go home. I'll see everyone tomorrow night. The pajamas are ruined, Bunny. Just toss them." She gathered up her things and went out into the night in her bare feet and Tom's T-shirt.

Angel darted after her. Rett watched them talk for a moment, then Cinny embraced Angel before going around to the passenger side of the car. Angel looked back toward the house and Rett held up one finger.

"Angel's going to drive her and I'll follow to bring Angel back."

"You're going out dressed like that?"

Rett looked down at her blotchy pajamas. "I look like I murdered somebody."

Natalie took her keys out of her hand. "I've only had one and I've been snacking all along."

'I'm perfectly. . . no, you're right, I'm not." She'd had her first rum punch some time ago, but she'd started another and hadn't had anything to eat. "Thanks, Nat."

The noise of the cars faded into the night.

"Do you realize," Bunny said suddenly, "that in our graduating class four of eleven girls are gay? Four?"

Mary crossed her legs at the ankles. "Maybe that's all for the whole reunion."

"There's what, eighty grads here?" Rett thought it wise to sit down, too. She felt very lightheaded all of a sudden.

"Eighty-seven," Bunny said.

"Then eight-point-seven of them are gay. Four just happen to be in our graduating class. That leaves one each for the other classes."

"How do you get to be point-seven gay?" Lisa stepped over the snoring Kate to get a handful of pretzels. Rett gratefully accepted half.

"Denial," Rett said. "That or lack of imagination."

Bunny laughed. "Well, I won't forget this party for a while."

Maybe Bunny was too deep in her rum punch to see that what Cinny was going through wasn't a laughing matter. "It's going to be very difficult for Cinny. As you said, people aren't going to like it because people feel like they own a piece of her."

"You survived," Bunny said.

"I don't have to live here. I'm not the icon of the all-American girl. She's going to need her friends to stand by her. People like Jerry Knudsen can be very cruel."

"Jerry's a moron."

"Doesn't make him less spiteful."

Kate snored and rolled onto her side. Mary sighed. "You know as well as I do that folks 'round here hate change. Most people are live-and-let-live, but they sure hate mess. It's going to be messy for her."

"She going to need her friends," Rett repeated. "People who will look the Jerry Knudsens of the world in the eye and tell them to grow up."

"That'd be kind of fun," Bunny said. "I think she lied for too long, and she should have never married Sam if that's the way she was."

"She was just doing what those prayer-can-cure-you fanatics preach. They never seem to think about the husbands and wives who get hurt when their partner just can't live the lie anymore."

Bunny put her hand over her eyes. "Can we talk about something else? This is starting to sound like politics, and I hate politics."

Rett shrugged. "It's your party. It's been a doozy."

"You can say that again," Lisa said. "Buns, I'm not looking forward to sleeping on the floor, and I think I've had all the fun I can stand for one night. I'm going to head home."

Bunny sighed. "You sober enough?"

"I just had the one earlier. I'll be fine."

"Who the hell drained the punch bowl? Kate and I did? I did, didn't I?" Bunny tipped sideways on the couch. "I think I'm going to pay in the morning."

Rett would have told Bunny she and Angel were

also going to call it a night, but Bunny was asleep. She gathered up the things she and Angel had brought and waited outside for Angel and Natalie.

Natalie likewise decided to call it quits and promised to have lunch with them the following week after all the reunion hubbub was over. Angel was quiet most of the way back to the motel, and Rett was lost in thoughts chiefly concerned with Cinny's future.

"You're not responsible," Angel said suddenly.

"How did you know what I was thinking?"

"I have your number, Rett Jamison."

"She did it for me."

"She did it for herself. She doesn't know that yet. She's achingly sorry for what she's putting Sam through, but other than that, she didn't utter one word of regret. Don't forget, the Cinny Keilors of this world land on their feet."

"I hope so."

Rett curled around Angel's sleeping body and breathed in the warmth. The past week had been a barrage of memory and discovery, most of it good and some really bad. In those few short days Angel had become so solidly a part of Rett's world that all her visions of what the future would bring had Angel in them somewhere. So they would live in different places. There was always e-mail and frequent flyer miles. It would work out because in Rett's mind there was no other option.

11

Rett rang the doorbell at the Martinettas'. Angie opened it a few moments later and whistled.

"You look almost as good as Auntie Angel."

"Why, thank you." Rett wasn't put out by Angie's bias. She followed Angie to the greatroom where the elder Martinettas were sipping after dinner coffee while the two Tonys and their brothers-in-law, already in tuxedos, were clustered around the television watching a Twins game.

Tia had followed her into the room. "Angel will be right out. That dress is yummy."

Rett smoothed the deep green fabric. Sequins spilled across the shoulders and over the bodice, then narrowed to a thin line that swooped across her stomach to the hem. It made her all bosom, but she'd taken to heart the knowledge that no one ever looked at Marilyn Monroe's stomach. "So is yours." The creamy linen suited Tia's velvety olive skin, a trait all of the Martinetta women shared.

"Mr. Martinetta, sir." Rett made her voice break like a nervous adolescent's. "I'm here to take Angel to the dance."

Angel's father laughed. "Have her back by ten."

"You mean ten A.M., right, Papa? You won't see Paul and me before then. Big Tony says there's a dance club in Minneapolis that's open until four and I'm going to make the most of it. Paul takes me out once in a blue moon."

T.J.'s wife entered next, equally glamorous. "I hope that game is just about over."

The gentlemen made assorted reassuring noises, then high-fived at a home run.

When Angel came in Rett was completely tongue-tied. "Professorial" was the very last word she'd use to describe the breathtakingly beautiful creature in a chocolate brown, form-hugging dress. The body that was molded by the halter top made Rett's hands sweat. The earrings they'd chosen together winked in her ears. Angel turned slowly to the appreciative whistles of her family. The dress plummeted in the back to below her waist, snugly outlined Angel's hips and hinder, then flared out to just above her knees. "What do you think?"

Rett found it hard to swallow. "I think—" Her