Free The Trouble with Lexie by Jessica Anya Blau

connection when we met. It was powerful, and surprising, and I didn’t ask for it, it happened on its own. And I know you’re engaged. I know this is going nowhere. I’ll never try to persuade you to be unfaithful. But I want to be around you as much as you’ll allow because there’s something magical about you. You make me feel great.”
    â€œOh, well, OK.” Lexie laughed nervously. Maybe she should take the Klonopin and normalize her behavior.
    â€œListen. I promise, I won’t bring this up again. Especially notafter you’re married.” Daniel reached across the table and put his sprawling hand on top of Lexie’s. She looked down and thought of a starfish covering a rock. “You can trust me.”
    This matter-of-fact declaration, and his insistence that he wouldn’t pursue her, made Daniel even more compelling. Lexie felt almost ill with desire.
    THEY AGREED TO NOT TALK ABOUT THE ATTRACTION AGAIN. (LEXIE didn’t confess to being attracted to Daniel, but it appeared to have been assumed.) Instead, the conversation was steered once again to their childhoods.
    Lexie told Daniel about Swallow at the Hollow and Heidi Pies; the drinking, the cigarettes, and the pot; the burn holes in the couch; and her mother’s current boyfriend who, Mitzy had told her, showed up on their first date riding a bike and carrying a half-full bottle of wine in a backpack.
    â€œSo, other than your father providing the seed and your mother giving birth to you, what did your parents do for you? I mean, did they buy you food and underwear at least?” Daniel was getting angry on Lexie’s behalf. Like they had wronged him with their unparenting.
    â€œUh, well . . .” Lexie never had nice underwear growing up. And she wore bras by the year: Her eighth-grade bra. Her ninth-grade bra. Her tenth-grade bra, etc. By the time each school year was ending, the underwire half-moon had shifted out of its seam pocket. Why even call it a wire? It was far thicker than anything that could be called wire: a flat, metal prong that, when uncovered, would stab her in the side of the breast until she went into a bathroom, lifted up her shirt, and fed it back into place. Lexie did have more than one pair of underwear as a kid, but none of them were fresh-looking. Once, as Lexie was changing in the locker room after gym in eighth grade, Kim Carnesale looked at her and said, “Are those granny panties actually hand-me-downs from your grandmother?” Lexie had laughed, painfully, along with Kim and the other girls nearby—most of them from the drill team—the blond girls, the ones with thick-skinned tan legs that you thought were panty hose until you got close enough to see it was flesh. Lexie didn’t own nice panties to replace the ones she’d been shamed about. And she had no money to buy new panties (her babysitting money was used to buy school lunches) so for the rest of the year Lexie sat on the bench when she changed. With her jeans draped across her lap, she’d shimmy out of her gym shorts, then slip on her pants before anyone could see what was what.
    â€œI had raggedy, ridiculous underwear,” Lexie said. “We were poor. Underwear wasn’t a priority.”
    â€œI know it would be inappropriate, but I want to buy you a hundred pairs of beautiful underwear.” Daniel said this with only the slightest hint of a smile. He appeared serious.
    â€œBut I have totally sexy underwear now. That’s the great thing about being a grown-up—you’re in charge of your own underwear.” Lexie regretted telling Daniel about her bad underwear. It was something Peter didn’t know and now there was an imbalance in intimacy. And yet she felt an irrepressible urge to reveal even more private details about herself. It occurred to her that she’d gone completely mad.

6
    T HE AGREEMENT WAS THIS: ONE KISS. ONE LAST KISS FROM ONE man before Lexie got