Dana’s Dirty Secret

Dana stepped into the air-conditioned restaurant, relieved to get a break from the sweltering sun. The Italian bistro offered the delicious aroma of home cooked sauces, spices and baked garlic bread. Something about it was warm and comforting for reasons she couldn’t decipher. It took only a few seconds for her to locate her friends, who were raising their hands excitedly to get her attention. Dana plastered on a fake smile and walked down the aisle to get to the table in the back corner. 

Since it was the middle of the day within the middle of the week, only a few patrons filled the tables. Conversation flowed, forks hit plates and wine glasses were emptying. Wine. That would be really nice right now. It was what she would need to get through this little rendezvous. She made it to the table and both girls jumped up to give her bullshit hugs and fake kisses. 

“Oh sweetie, we’re so happy to see you.” Caroline said. “How long has it been? 

“Seven years.” Dana said.

“You don’t look happy to see us.” Sara pouted. 

Dana shook her head. “Sorry, ladies. Tough day at work. Have you ordered yet?”

Caroline flashed an apologetic smile. “We did. Sorry. We didn’t think you’d mind.” 

“I don’t” Wouldn’t matter if I did. “I’ll just wait for your server to come back.”

“Right.” Sara leaned in. “So, tell us how you’ve been doing. I thought you’d be married by now, but Caroline didn’t think so.” 

Dana flashed a smile and then flashed her ring. 

Sara squealed while Caroline nodded in approval and grabbed her hand. She studied it closely. “Mitch could have done better but I do remember you were always one of those girls who were less about material things. A settler if you will.”

Dana swiped at her brow with her middle finger. “Yeah, you still know me as well as you did in Highschool, Care Bear.” 

The name earned a grimace from Caroline while it earned a grin from Sara. “My God, I haven’t heard that name since senior year.”

Caroline’s fake enthusiasm for Dana’s company seemed to be ebbing. Which made it easier for Dana to relax. At least when they were real in their contempt for her, they were more likeable. But only slightly. 

The server came and delivered two salads and a basket of cheesy garlic bread. Shortly after, Dana received a menu and ordered a bottle of Don Perignon. 

“A bottle? In the middle of the day, sweetie?” Caroline asked. Her eyes were watchful like she was waiting for Dana to have a breakdown. She would have undoubtedly taken pleasure in that. “What, is Mitch stressing you out?”

“Mitch is fine, he’s a good man. Hardworking and perfect.” Too perfect, too hardworking, too clingy. Too much everything. 

Sara nodded. “I knew the two of you would end up together after graduation. I just felt it.” She popped a cherry tomato into her mouth. 

Dana’s smile didn’t come from Sara’s words but the bottle being brought to the table. She decided not to eat any food and settle for the wine, since she’s such a settler. 

And after listening for the girls drone on about their perfect lives with their perfect husbands and perfect kids and perfect vaginas, Dana decided that the wine was the most brilliant idea she’s ever had. 

She couldn’t believe that these were the same two girls she envied and followed around like a puppy in Highschool. The cheerleaders, the IT girls. The Regina George clones.

They once spoke of growing up to be fashion designers and runway models. But instead, they were living perfectly basic lives with their husband’s platinum card. They all were. Why did these girls seem like so much fun in Highschool? Dana pondered this while staring into her nearly empty second glass of Dom. 

“Seriously?” Caroline huffed.

Dana looked up and followed Caroline’s annoyed gaze to a man that was sitting at a table alone, reading a menu. 

There was a rough raggedness to his appearance that made her tilt her head curiously. 

“This is a classy restaurant. You don’t see anyone else in this place with jeans on. We all look like we’ve done something productive with our lives today whereas he looks like he just climbed out of bed.” 

He did look like he just climbed out of bed, and he also looked like he didn’t give a shit. Dana reached for her wine and took a sip. 

Caroline was still looking at the man while Sara was toying with her salad. 

“His jeans were dirty when he walked in. How can he just sit there like nothing’s wrong?” 

He was a man who didn’t care about his appearance. What Dana would give to possess a trait like that. To wipe off her makeup and reveal the blemishes on her face as well as the bags under her eyes. If she stopped caring, she wouldn’t feel the need to curl her hair, or put accessories to an outfit to look like she made an effort. 

“Maybe because nothing is wrong.” Dana crossed her legs. “He’s sitting at a table, existing, not thinking about you.”

Caroline dropped her fork. “No one said he was. I commented on what he was wearing, which I’m allowed to do.” 

“Right, you are. How dare he walk into an establishment you’re eating in and disrespect you by wearing normal clothes?”

Both girls were silent for a long moment. Dana just continued to sip her wine. She had hoped by some miracle that getting out and possibly having a little fun with some old “friends” would get her out of the slump she’d been in for months now. But social life is proving to be just as disappointing as home life. She was going to finish her glass and be done with the girls. Lesson learned. Girls from Highschool don’t really change. 

“He just looks too...what’s the word I’m looking for?” 

“Rugged?” Sara asked. 

Masculine, Dana thought. Her eyes went back to the man. He was handing his menu to a server as he spoke to her. She hadn’t caught what he said but she did hear the deep smoothness of his voice. 

When the server walked away, the man’s eyes met hers and they didn’t look away. 

A blush crept on Dana’s face as she turned her head away. 

Even as Caroline and Sara continued to gab on about nothing, she felt the man’s attention burning a through her, warming her skin a few degrees.

The women finished their lunch and moved on to drinks while Dana was just finishing her third glass. She was trying not to look in the stranger’s direction, but she found it hard to concentrate.

“Look, he’s getting ready to leave.” Caroline said. “And he’s paying with cash.” 

Dana wished Caroline would just blow him already and get it over with. But no, working class scared Caroline. 

As the man neared the table, he stopped in front of her. 

Their eyes locked onto one another and she swallowed hard. It was exuberayting, how different he was to what she went home to. Opposites on a large spectrum. 

“You dropped your card.” he said. Not what she’d been expecting. He bent down and picked it up. His eyes slid up her legs as he came back up and she didn’t miss the look in his eyes. The heat that he revealed made something inside her stir. 

“Thank you.” She took her credit card from him and placed it on the table without looking away. 

“What time is your husband expecting you home, Dana?” Caroline asked, breaking the moment. 

Dana glances at Caroline while the man seemed unphased by her words. “Late.” Dana retorted. 

“Excuse me? Uh, sir? Where do you work?” Sara asked. 

Dana closed her eyes. She recognized this routine. She’s been through it in Highschool. 

“I’m a mechanic.” he answered. 

There was no shame in his answer, but the way Sara and Caroline looked at him was as if there should have been. 

“A mechanic? Wow. Now how can a mechanic afford a nice place like this?” Caroline asked. 

The man stared down at her; his expression unreadable at first. 

Dana wanted to tell him to just walk away. Save himself for the humiliation Caroline still felt the need to inflict although she was no longer slinging Pom-poms. 

Finally, the man smiled. “I work hard. Have a nice day, ladies.” His blue eyes found Dana once more before he walked away, out of the bistro.

Something compelled Dana to follow. She tried not to because honestly, what was out there for her? But out there was better than sitting here with her “friends” who after today she decided to never see again. 

She lifted a finger in the air, motioning for the check. “Ladies, I’m going to call it a day.”

Caroline groaned. “Aw, really?” She almost sounded serious.

“Yeah. We can catch up-“  Oh, you know, never again. “Some other time.” She paid for her bottle and left the bistro. She took a deep exhale when she got outside and made her way to the parking lot across the street. 

Her steps slowed when she saw the stranger leaning up against a black rusty truck, smoking a cigarette, watching her. 

She bit on her lip as she approached him with hesitant steps. Mitch hated cigarettes. Sara and Caroline found them disgusting and dirty, and Dana missed the calm of it. The dirtiness of it. It has been years since she sucked on one. She was sure she couldn’t even taste the menthol anymore she was so addicted to them in middle school. 

“Everything okay?” she asked, stopping a couple feet away from him. 

His blue gaze was direct, undressing her. “No, my car tapped out on me and I don’t have the right things with me to get her running again. Could I trouble you for a lift?”

She would never know what made her nod her head. Some bizarre connection they shared. An unusual need inside her calling for something he had that Mitch didn’t have. That Mitch never had. He was the black to Mitch’s white. 

“Only if I can trouble you for a cigarette.” Dana said, a nervous smile on her lips. 

He nodded once, dropping his cigarette. “Lead the way.”

The two walked to her silver Kia. Once inside, the man gave held out his carton of cigarettes, one sticking out in her direction, teasing her. She tentatively took it and looked at him. 

He looked back as he got his lighter out and flicked it on. 

With the cherry lit, she took a deep inhale, and then fell back in her seat with a deeper exhale. Smoke filled the car and the man laughed at her. “How long has it been?”

"Ten years.”

He whistled. “What made you quit?”

Dana started up the car and rolled the window down. “My husband, my children.”

“So why are you back to the bad habit?”

“My husband, my children.” She left the parking lot and headed out of the city with the man’s direction. 

It was the most peculiar thing that Dana felt no danger in his presence. There was an eerie aura to him but nothing that made alarm bells ring inside her mind. At a stop light, she looked over to him, he was already looking at her. 

"Why do you keep looking at me?”

“You looked at me.”

“I mean before, you know, in the restaurant.”

“Why else would a man look at a woman, Dana?” The combination of the way his voice caressed around her name, and the stark focus of his gaze on her eyes, made heat bloom between her legs. Never in her life has a stranger’s attention made her body react that way before. 

“You tell me.” she said, her voice quiet. 

The car was silent for a moment minus the soft croon of Adele on the radio. 

“Tell me why you agreed to give me a lift.”

“Well, your car wasn’t working so-“

“You know, it was a possibility that I fucked with it on my own to use as an excuse for you to give me a ride.”

She grew silent. She knew what he was saying, and heat crept up to her cheeks. 

“Take a turn right up here.” He motioned to a trail that seemed to lead into the woods. It was ridiculous for her to follow his directions so freely without question, knowing what some people were capable of. But she did it because she knew what it would lead to-which is what she wanted.

She parked in an area hidden in the woods from other cars on the road. When she turned the car off, she looked over at him. He was looking at her lips. It was obvious what he wanted.

Dana opened the door and got out the car. She felt both nervous and excitement of the prospect that another man-a stranger, was about to touch her. And she was going to let him. He came around the car, seeming calmer in the situation than she was. Maybe he was not betraying anyone. He could be a single man and has no reservations about this because there's no one to cheat on.

He stood in front of her now, taking in her face, her body. His eyes drunk her in like she was a meal, and he didn't know what he wanted to taste first. The clear attraction he felt for her relaxed her muscles. She didn't feel much like a wife, or a mother right now. Just a woman that the man in front of her wanted to be inside of. 

He pressed her against the car door and lowered his mouth to hers. The feel of his body was warm against hers. Unfamiliar, strange, but not unwanted. When his tongue slipped into her mouth, she could taste the smoky flavor of whiskey and cigarettes, so masculine. She moaned, grabbing onto his hair, needing more.

It was sick but she wanted to smell like him. The cleanliness that her life has been for the last seven years has put her in a box with no airholes and no means to escape. No one to hear her screams, her cries. 

But this, being with this man, this moment. She could taste her freedom in his kiss. She marveled in it. Her fingers worked on undoing his pants. There was no hesitation, no fear, no second thoughts. She didn’t care for foreplay, didn’t even care if he got her off. It was about the act itself-doing something that wasn’t routine, something that made her dirty. 

The man broke the kiss and opened the back door. "Get in."

Dana bit her lip, making her way around him and crawling into the backseat of the car. She laid on her back, slipped off her heels, and hiked up her skirt.

While he watched her, he took a condom from his pocket and slid down his pants. When she saw him, she took note in the fact that he was slightly bigger than Mitch, but not by much. She recalled the time when she was young where just the sight of a cock would excite her. She was no more than thirteen at the time. And just like then, seeing his cock made her wet.

He got into the car with her, positioning himself over her. She looked down between them, sliding her red silk panties over to the side, grabbing his condom-covered dick and guiding him between the lips of her pussy, inviting him.

He slid inside her, stretching her. A slight hiss of pain escaped her and the man covered her mouth with his own. 

With his tongue sliding against hers, she quickly recovered from his size and pumped her hips to meet his, driving him fully inside her. His blue eyes closed, and his hips started on a rhythm. The two of them rocked together back and forth, his cock sliding smoothly in and out of her as she held onto his back. 

While he closed his eyes, she kept hers open, drinking in the pleasure contorted on his face. She was the one doing that to him. He was using her to get himself off and that brought a rush of pleasure to her pussy. She moaned, locking her legs around his hips. "Harder."

Blue eyes opened to meet hers and he repositioned himself as well as he could in the seat. He buried his face into her neck, and pushed off the floor to drive deeper in her, his hips moving faster as he repeatedly hit a spot inside her that felt so good, it made her body tremble. "Oh god!" Her head dropped back as her eyes closed. She grabbed onto his shoulders, her breaths heavy and quick as she matched his rhythm, bucking her hips, starved for the immense pleasure that was building inside her. 

“You like getting fucked. Don’t you, whore?” 

Her eyes widened as an unexpected rush of heat hit her. Her body reacted suddenly, as if his words were a trigger. She came hard, gasping and wordless. Her body shook underneath him while her mind went blank for a few seconds. 

Never did she imagine that those words would do that to her. 

"I didn't lose you, did I?" He asked. 

Breathless, she shook her head. "No, keep going. Please keep going.” She wanted this to last for hours, days even. He brought her to one more climax, this time by grinding against her clit before his own release started to take him. She watched his face, heard his groans, felt his dick jerk inside her and tasted ecstasy as a result. 

Neither of them said anything after he came down. There was nothing but heavy breathing and silent reminiscing 

They got back into the front after fixing their clothes and she drove out of the woods. She took him back to his truck at the restaurant. There were no words to say. They’d both gotten what they wanted. After a casual goodbye, Dana headed home. She was greeted by her baby girls, Aubrey and Hannah, as well as a kiss from her husband.