Whispers and Lies Read Online Free PDF

distress. Alison was so young, so vibrant, so alive. She infused me with a sense of such profound well-being that whatever niggling doubts or petty reservations I may have had flew out the window, along with my common sense. Simply put, I was reluctant to see her leave, and if drinking a second glass of Baileys would prolong the evening, then a second glass of Baileys it would be. I eagerly proffered my glass for more. She promptly filled it. “I probably shouldn’t have told you that,” she said. “You’ll think I’m a slut.”
    It took me a minute to realize that she was referring to her lost virginity. “Of course I don’t think you’re a slut,” I said adamantly, as relief washed across Alison’s face, like a paintbrush, almost as if she’d been waiting for me to exonerate her, to forgive her the sins of her sometimes errant past. “Besides, I’ve got you beat,” I offered, trying to make her feel better, to prove I was hardly one to sit in judgment.
    “What do you mean?” She leaned forward, lowered her glass to the carpet. It disappeared inside the pink petal of a woven flower.
    “I was only fourteen when I lost mine,” I whispered guiltily, as if my mother might still be listening from the upstairs bedroom.
    “Get out. I don’t believe you.”
    “It’s true.” I found myself eager to convince her, to show her that she wasn’t the only one with a past, with skeletons in her closet, however small and insubstantial they might be. Maybe I even wanted to shock her, just a little, to prove to her—and to myself—that I was more than I appeared at first glance, that underneath my middle-aged exterior beat the heart of a wild child.
    Or maybe I was just drunk.
    “His name was Roger Stillman,” I continued without prodding, conjuring up the image of the lanky young man with light brown hair and large hazel eyes who’d seduced me with ridiculous ease back when I was in the ninth grade. “He was two grades ahead of me at school, so of course I was monstrously flattered that he even talked to me. He asked me to the movies, and I lied to my parents about where I was going, because my mother had decreed I was too young to date. So I said I was going to a friend’s house to study for a test, and instead I met Roger at the movie theater. I remember it was one of the James Bond movies—don’t ask me which one—and I was very excited because I’d never seen a James Bond movie before. Not that I saw much of that one either,” I recalled, remembering Roger’s tobacco-scented breath on my neck as I’d tried to follow the movie’s convoluted plot, his lips grazing the side of my ear as I’d strained to make sense of all the double entendres, his hand sliding down my shoulder to the tops of my breasts as James coaxed yet another willing female into his bed. “We left before the movie finished. Roger had a car.” I shrugged, as if that said it all.
    “Whatever happened to Roger?”
    “He dumped me. No surprises there.”
    Alison’s face registered her displeasure. “Were you heartbroken?”
    “Devastated, as only a fourteen-year-old girl can be. Especially after he bragged about his conquest to the entire school.”
    “He didn’t!”
    I laughed at Alison’s spontaneous outburst of indignation. “He did. Roger, I’m afraid, was a rat of the first order.”
    “And whatever happened to the rat?”
    “I have no idea. We moved to Florida the next year, and I never saw him again.” I shook my head, watched the room spin. “God, I haven’t thought about any of that in so long. That’s one of the amazing things about being young.”
    “What is?”
    “You think you’ll never get over something, and then, the next minute, you’ve forgotten all about it.”
    Alison smiled, twisted her head across the top of her spine, stretching her swanlike neck until the muscles groaned and released.
    “Everything has such urgency. Everything is so important. And you think you have so much time,” I said,