Free Nine Women, One Dress by Jane L. Rosen

did try to find a man of my own. When your heart is already spoken for, though, it’s hard to give it to someone else. I would have had to be knocked over the head with a bat to see past Arthur, and truth be told, no one came out swinging.
    Even on the handful of occasions that I had sex over the years, I pictured Arthur the entire time. When the man my cousin Stacey had fixed me up with came up to my apartment after a few too many margaritas at Rosa Mexicano, it was Arthur’s hand that gently unzipped my dress and caressed my back. It was Arthur who was the real object of every moment of desire I have had over the past seventeen years. Not once did I open my eyes to look at who I was actually with. Not once did I picture anyone else. At this point I think if I were ever to be alone with him, one real-life touch from him in the right place and I might just explode right there on the spot!
    You may think I’m crazy, but I believe you can’t help who you fall in love with. Maybe you’re in love with the correct person, the one who’s right around your age, your same religion, someone your parents were thrilled to meet when you took him or her home. If you are, well, then you probably don’t believe me. But you might just as easily have fallen for your lab partner in college, who came to your northeastern liberal arts school from some rural town in the Appalachians, and the minute her hand brushed against yours while reaching for a beaker you knew you were a goner. And you wouldn’t have cared if she was a he or he was a she or if he or she was already with someone else. That’s what happened to my freshman roommate in college. There she was, dating the star of the football team, when some girl from Kentucky came in and made off with her heart. Done. You can’t help who you fall in love with. That kind of love just swoops in and grabs hold of you, and even if you were to drop chemistry—or switch jobs, which god knows I should have done a long time ago—it’s still taken hold of your desire, and that’s a damn hard thing to free yourself of.
    I am in love with Arthur Winters and have been for a very long time. And until yesterday, when I received this beautiful dress and an invitation to the Four Seasons for dinner, I never thought it possible that the feeling could ever become mutual. I can’t lose sight of the fact that it’s only possible because a beautiful woman is no longer with us. But I’m also incredibly excited to think that there could be something between us, to think that I might have the chance to bring him true happiness again.
    When I started at the firm nearly eighteen years ago, at thirty-four I knew it was time to start looking for someone to spend my life with. It was a little late, actually, but I wasn’t willing to settle, like some of my friends had. I didn’t feel any clock ticking and was confident that it would happen when it happened. I wasn’t very ambitious workwise either. I didn’t necessarily have my sights set on moving up the corporate ladder. It was more that I thought I would work there for a few years, maybe fall in love, get married, have a child, work somewhere else. It was not my intention to become the longest-serving executive assistant at the firm (an award bestowed on me three years ago), and it was certainly not my intention to become an old maid. But at fifty-two years old, it seemed I was approaching just that. I had been having a one-sided affair with a married man for nearly two decades. Tonight it would either begin for real or it would end once and for all.

CHAPTER 10
Dinner at the Four Seasons
    By Arthur Winters, Attorney-at-Law
Age: 60
    I was running late. Sherri hated it when I ran late. My plan was to be seated at the table and have her escorted in by Julian, the maître d’. The reason I was late is truly embarrassing—it’s because I changed five times. Sherri had been slowly trying to make me look a little hipper, and for the most part I had been