Cuffing Kate by Alison Tyler Read Free Book Online Page A

of deviant possibilities: Spanking? Anal? Sex toys?
    For a moment, I considered returning to the living room. Sonia was drinking her first beer, after all. Maybe
she would have looser lips than usual. But I didn’t feel up to listening to a
full-on rant. Hopefully she would write about the situation in her diary.
Tomorrow when she went to class, I could sneak in and read every filthy little
detail.
    Except maybe I couldn’t wait that long.
    * * *
    Jules lived in an apartment down the hill from campus. I
knew because I’d known him before Sonia. We’d shared one class together—a cozy
little 500-student Art History class. I also served him his daily caffeine
infusion as barista at the central campus coffee bar. From my vantage point, I
could spy him often in the quad. I hate to admit that I followed him, so let’s
just say that one day our paths crossed in town, and I watched as he entered a
retro white stucco apartment with wrought-iron railings on the balconies.
    Sonia may look like she’d be a good lay—but I thought Jules
looked like he knew how to get inside a woman’s head. He was tall and lean,
given to dressing simply in battered blue jeans and a khaki jacket. In between
serving up shots of espresso, I’d drawn pictures of the two of us entwined. My
canvas: white paper napkins. To my dismay, he simply hadn’t chosen the right
woman.
    What had he asked her for? What had he wanted to do?
    “I’m going out,” I told Sonia as I passed behind the sofa to
the door.
    “Where?”
    “A walk.”
    “If you go by Juiceeze , pick me up
a smoothie,” she said. “Carrot and ginger, please. That beer was foul. You
shouldn’t drink those.”
    I didn’t answer. I worship Guinness.
    “And you don’t need any more coffee,” she added as I began to
shut the door. “Putting caffeine in your body is like depositing counterfeit
money in your bank account.” These were the pearls of wisdom Sonia tossed out
every day. I let them roll under the dresser like dust bunnies on roller
skates.
    Without a plan, I walked by Jules’s apartment. Then I stopped
and looked at the shades on the windows. What if I went up and knocked on his
door? What if I forced him to tell me exactly what had happened? I could imagine
the way he would look at me. Every day, he bought java from the coffee bar, but
we’d never actually spoken more than the most casual chitchat. What kind of
crazy person confronts a virtual stranger about his sex life?
    I took a step. I spun around. I went home.
    * * *
    Patience is one of my only virtues. This strength comes
with the fact that I have had to wait for nearly everything I’ve ever wanted.
I’m not complaining. This is my truth. But is this also why I envy Sonia? Men
fall into her lap. Instructors trip over themselves to hear what tidbit of
wisdom she has to offer. This time, all I had to do was bide my time until she
left for class.
    Her diary was exactly where she always kept it. Sonia would
never think of me as a snoop. She lives so much on the surface, she never stirs
her unvarnished toenails in the water to see if there’s depth.
    I sat on the edge of her bed, my hands shaking as I found the
latest entry. Jules had asked her to dinner, but not at a restaurant, at his
house. That was smart of him. Sonia has such restrictive eating habits. There
are few decent vegan hotspots in the vicinity. He’d poured wine, which she
accepted, even if she didn’t take a sip. Why had she gone to his place? From all
the previous entries I’d read, Sonia had never gone home with a man.
    Her own words answered the question for me.
    He was a gentleman, and I loved the way he spoke. His words
were eloquent as he described the text we’re reading.
    So what had happened? Sonia bored me for two paragraphs as she
described her own feelings about the text then wrote a bit about how Jules had
offered to coach her before her next debate. Finally there it was. A word leaped
out at me, big and bold and black: