S.E.C.R.E.T.: An Erotic Novel Read Online Free

so many ornate shutters that
     they looked like aging showgirls in costumes and stage makeup. My apartment was atop
     a three-story stucco block of a house on the corner of Chartres and Mandeville. It
     was painted pale green, with rounded arches and dark green shutters. I had the top
     floor, but at thirty-five I still lived like a student. My one-bedroom rental had
     a futon-couch, milk carton bookshelves that doubled as end tables, and a growing collection
     of salt-and-pepper shakers. The bedroom was in an alcove, with a wide stucco archway
     and three dormers that faced south. To be fair, the staircase was so narrow it prohibited
     big, fat furniture; everything had to be portable and bendable and foldable. As I
     approached mybuilding and looked up, I realized I’d one day be too old to live on the top floor,
     especially if I continued to work on my feet. Some nights I was so tired, it was all
     I could do to heave myself up those stairs.
    I had begun to note that as my neighbors got older, they didn’t leave; they just moved
     to a lower floor. The Delmonte sisters had made the move a few months ago after Sally
     and Janette, two other sisters, finally moved to an assisted living facility. When
     the cozy two-bedroom was freed up, I helped them haul their books and clothes from
     the second to the first floor. There was a ten-year age difference between Anna and
     Bettina, and though Anna, at sixty, certainly could have taken the stairs for a few
     more years, Bettina forced her hand when she turned seventy. Anna was the one who
     told me that when the single-family dwelling was converted into five apartments in
     the ’60s, it became known as the Spinster Hotel.
    “It’s always been all women,” she said. “Not that
you’re
a spinster, my dear. I know single women of a certain age are very sensitive to that
     word these days. Not that there’s anything wrong with
being
a spinster, even if you
were
a spinster. Which you most certainly are
not
.”
    “I am a widow, though.”
    “Yes, but you’re a
young
widow. Lots of time to remarry and have children. Well, to remarry at least,” Anna
     said, one eyebrow up.
    She slid me a dollar bill for my troubles, a gesture I had stopped resisting long
     ago as that bill would inevitably endup folded over eight times and shoved under my door a few hours later.
    “You’re a treasure, Cassie.”
    Was I a spinster? I had gone on one date last year, with Will’s younger brother’s
     best friend, Vince, a lanky hipster who gasped when I told him I was thirty-four.
     Then, to cover his shock, he leaned across the table and told me that he had a “thing”
     for older women—this from someone the ripe old age of thirty. I should have slapped
     his stupid face. Instead, an hour into our date I began glancing at my watch. He was
     talking too much about the crappy band that was playing and how bad the wine list
     was and how many run-down houses he was going to buy in New Orleans because the market
     was surely going to correct itself anytime now. When he dropped me off in front of
     the Spinster Hotel, I thought about asking him up. I thought about Five Years hunched
     in the back seat.
Just have sex with this guy, Cassie. What’s stopping you? What’s always stopped you?
But when I caught him spitting his gum out the window, I decided I just couldn’t
     take off my clothes in front of this overgrown boy.
    So much for my last date, I thought, as I prepped a bath and stripped off my waitress
     clothes. I wanted to wash the restaurant smell off me. I glanced down the hallway
     at the little notebook on the table by the front door. What was I supposed to do with
     it? Part of me knew I shouldn’t read it, and the other was powerless to resist. So
     all through my shift I kept putting it off, thinking,
When youget home. After dinner. After a bath. When you get into bed. In the morning. Never?
    Dixie circled my ankles for food while water and bubbles filled the tub. The