Page 33 of Madam, May I

Even how you pour your wine at a certain angle to control the pour is geometry.

She chuckled. She had ten years on him easily, and he had taught her so much already. And not just about math and reading. Even about looking at a life differently.

Snuggling down in the bed, she pushed through with her reading and kept her phone close in case she had to look up the sound or meaning of a word. The more she read, the more she became lost in the story, admitting that she liked the way the writer described things and the story that unfolded.

Seeing the movie first helped her, but she enjoyed the details lost in the translation from book to film.

Slowly she pushed through, having to reread sentences or look up words for clarity until she came to the end of the first of three sections of the book. She folded the corner to keep her place in the novel and checked the time on her phone. It was well after midnight. She had been reading for hours.

Desdemona felt emotional and pressed her hands to her bare lips. Had it been easy? Had she stumbled? Did she get lost in the words she didn’t know or understand? No, yes, and yes. But she did it.

“I did it,” she whispered, lost somewhere in between happiness and desire to learn even more.

“Maybe I really can do this,” she told herself, starting to believe in herself.

Funny thing, she was playing catch-up to Loren.

I promise one day you will pass the test and go on to college and do whatever you dream about and wonder why you ever had any fear about it all.

Who could she tell about her victory when she told no one of her defeat?

Desdemona looked at her phone. It was her prepaid—her business phone. Flinging back the covers, she rose from the bed and retrieved her personal iPhone from the Balenciaga bag she had worn earlier that day to run errands. She rarely used it and often forgot about it. Sitting on the padded leather bench at the foot of her bed, she folded her feet beneath her bottom and scrolled through her contacts. There weren’t many. The majority of the people she interacted with were not friends and definitely not family. Of that she had none.

She paused, and her finger hovered over Loren’s listing in her phone. “It’s so late,” she said.

Desdemona set the phone down on the bench.

“But I feel like he would be proud.”

She picked it back up.

“But I don’t want his girl mad at him.”

Back down again.

“Hell, I’m hunting up congratulations and nothing else.”

She picked the phone up again and settled on sending a text.

DESI: I just finished reading the first part of—

She paused to crawl onto the bed and grab the book to double-check her spelling of the title.

DESI:—Fahrenheit 451.

She finished the text with a few celebration-type emojis before sending it and dropped the phone back inside her bag, which was hanging on the door handle. She turned off the lights and climbed back beneath the covers, snuggling her head among the pillows. She felt giddy like a kid and couldn’t help smiling, even as she closed her eyes and tried to bring on sleep.

When that failed, she thought of her little vibrating buddy in the drawer. It would send her right to sleep right after she was done with it.

Why not?

Turning over in the bed, she opened the drawer again and reached for the vibrator.

Her minuet text tone filled the air.

Desdemona dropped the vibrator and sat up in bed as she eyed the illumination inside her purse. Cloaked by the darkness, she flung back the covers and got up from the bed again to move toward the light until her phone was in her hand.

Loren.