The Promise of Lace

Evernight Publishing

www.evernightpublishing.com

Copyright© 2013 Lilith Duvalier

 
ISBN: 978-1-77130-466-5

Cover Artist: Sour Cherry Designs

Editor: JS Cook

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this
copyrighted work is illegal.
 
No part of
this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written
permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are
fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATION

This one goes out to Clove Dachshund for that
time in Brooklyn, and, since she was there too, to Frenchie Velocipede- thanks
for teaching me to crochet. And let’s wrap it all up with a shout out to
Pearlie Hawkshaw and Minnie Yarning- see you girls at Burlesque, and then
Roller Derby.

THE
PROMISE OF LACE

The Promise Series, 4

Lilith Duvalier

Copyright
© 2013

Chapter One

“Roxanne? What about this?” Hailey pressed the plastic
hanger against her collarbone and let the lacy black nightie and the fire truck
red bra and panties underneath it drape over her jeans and tee shirt. She threw
me a look that she clearly thought was “Coquettish Bedroom Eyes” but was
actually “Drunken Duck Lips”. The innocent white of her over-bleached tee shirt
peeked through the holes in the lace’s pattern like sunlight peeking through
the blinds the morning after a drinking binge.

“What about it?” I asked. My patience with our outing to the
mall was wearing thin. Hailey was my best friend, but I wasn’t sure why she had
felt the need to drag me here. If she was looking for lingerie, there were a
ton of little places we could go to in the city that weren’t filled with
screaming children, snotty bleach blond high school kids tromping around in
sweat pants, and angry-at-their-lives twenty-something sales associates. We
weren’t eating off gold plates or anything, but we could both afford boutique
prices every once in a while. We certainly didn’t
need
to schlepp out to the suburbs to spend our Saturday at the
mall. There were at least four places we could walk to in our neighborhood, one
of which was just as sketchy as this place was. It was called “Revv!” and it
was sandwiched between a “cellphone repair” store that was clearly a drug front
and a hipster tattoo parlor where every single one of the artists had a
handlebar mustache.

But no.
Here we were. Listening to the tin-can
speaker system playing something truly terrible which seemed to be one or two
words repeated over a booming electronic bass while we waded through racks and
racks of atrocious polyester shit. We had picked out a few things just to make
fun of them, like the neon blue maid’s outfit that not even a porn star would
wear. Hailey hadn’t been able to even convince me to touch that one. God only
knew where it had been.

“Do you think Noah would get a kick out of this?” Hailey
asked, jiggling the hanger and making the cheap tulle edges of the black
nightie spike into her cotton tee shirt.

“Remind me again why I’m here helping you pick out sex
clothes for a guy that you’ve been with since before college? It's not like you
need to impress him. You guys are pretty much at the ‘Hey honey, wanna do it
before we toss the sheets in the washer?’ stage aren’t you? Why am I being
forced to participate in your sex life?”

I didn’t add
“again”
.
I just hoped that Hailey would realize it was implied. I asked her this
question way more often than I should have needed to. For some reason all of my
friends seemed to think that I wanted to hear about, nay—
needed
to hear about their sex lives. I was the only single friend
in our entire group, so I was supposed to have an opinion on whatever new,
dirty trend my friends had read about in
Cosmo
or on the internet, which blew my mind. They were the ones with guys at home.
They obviously had way more sex than I did on any given day.

But I was definitely the ‘easy’ friend and we all knew it.
Hailey and Noah had been together since the second day of college. Carla had
gone through a boyfriend a year for most of the time that we’d known her, but
never seemed to be single in between them. Gillian was quietly and
non-judgmentally waiting for the marriage, and we teased her occasionally, but
we respected that. I was the only one of us who had ever really done the one
night stand thing, and ever since sophomore year, when I had drunk a bottle of wine
by myself and told a story about making Trevor Saubom come on my thighs and
lick it off, I had become the friend that was privy to everyone else’s sex
life.

“Noah… I love the big lug,” Hailey sighed, describing a man
that I once saw fish a Cheeto out of an armchair before he put the slightly
fuzzy snack food directly into his mouth without so much as a shrug. “But we’ve
been at the boring married stage for like, the last year. And we only got
engaged six months ago. And we didn’t even have any sort of interesting engagement
celebration sex.”

I didn’t know why Hailey insisted on telling me these
things. I had known Noah as long as Hailey had, and I loved him too, but the
guy was shaped like a gorilla and nearly as hairy and the image of him humping
my best friend was not one that I needed.

“And your solution is lingerie?” I asked. “Isn’t that just…
super lame?
Plus…
I have, despite my best efforts,
developed an impression that you two are less about presentation and more about
unfortunate monkey sex on whatever surface is available. That’s why I never sit
down in your apartment.”

Hailey stuck her tongue at me, but grinned because she knew
that I was right. "And you don’t have any sexy underwear?” Hailey sighed.

“Not really. I buy the lace waist panties sometimes, but just
because they’re comfortable.”

“That counts as sexy underwear, Roxanne.”

“Maybe.
But I’ve never had a guy notice. They
tend to be much more focused on getting to what’s underneath the lace.”

Hailey pouted at me. “Well. At least it’ll toss in a little
bit of a novelty factor.
Right?”

“Sure, if you find something nicer than that. It’s kind of,
you know, whore-y.”

In addition to being the ‘easy’ friend, I was not the person
that my friends invited out for validation or to be nodded at in a calming way.
Especially not since the issue with Carla’s fiancé, Asshole
Doug.
We’d all been out at the bar together and Asshole Doug had started
in on Carla, the way he always did, insulting her and belittling her but
pretending that it was all just a joke. And I’d had enough. I told the guy to
his face that not only did I not think he was funny, I thought he was a piece
of shit.

I had gotten thrown into a wall, which wasn’t quite as bad
as it sounded. I’m petite with a tendency to wear boxy jackets that make me
look a little bigger than I am and I didn’t think Asshole Doug really expected
to be able to push me as far as he had. But it had been the kick in the ass
that Carla had needed to (
fucking finally
)
realize that Asshole Doug was, to put it in 90’s terms—a damn scrub—and that
his already rampant emotional abuse was going to turn physical. Carla and I
weren’t really talking anymore, because shooting the messenger is a
time-honored tradition, but I was hoping after she got a little bit of space,
things would mellow between us. I missed her.

Anyway.
Now, more than ever, I was the friend
that you invited out when being nodded at and agreed with weren’t working
anymore and you needed a little tough love.

At least with Hailey that wasn’t tiring.
She was used to me telling her
what I really thought.

“I know I’m heavier than I was—” she started.

“Oh, come on,” I sighed. I hadn’t decided yet whether or not
I was going to point out that it was just junk-food weight and nothing that a
morning jog and trading potato chips for side salad wouldn’t fix, but my
oncoming rant was cut short when the single most good-looking guy I had ever
seen came up to us.

He was gorgeous. At least five years younger than us, which
put him solidly in the early twenties range instead of in that scary space
where late twenties was starting to get serious about becoming early thirties.
He was wearing all black: tight black jeans that
sheathed
his perfect ass and a tight black tee shirt that let you
see every curve of the muscles underneath his clothes. A little bit of a blue
and green tattoo peeked out from under one sleeve. His thick black hair was
styled forward so that it fell into his eyes, drawing attention to the
beautiful green that shone out of them. He had cheekbones you could cut
yourself on, and lips that made you willing to risk it.

“Women are never heavy,” he announced. “They’re voluptuous.
Curvaceous.
Even at an extreme, I’d still use Rubenesque,
which is an artistic term, because you are, of course, a work of art. ”