She sat down beside me after we ordered our coffees and whispered almost breathlessly, “I have to tell you something and I swear it’s all true!”

“I’m listening…” I said, partly curious and partly concerned.

“So you know the guy I’ve casually been seeing off and on recently?”

“Yeah… you’ve mentioned him a couple of times.”

“Well, I was with him last night and the most bizarre thing happened,” she blurted out.

“What? He’s kinky in bed?” I asked, knowing that with my luck, it was exactly the kind of story I would be subject to.

“Oh no, he’s quite the opposite in fact,” she said, straight-faced.  

“So what was it then?” I asked.

“So he invited me over and started wooing me with dim lights, music… the works. I resisted his advances at first but eventually gave in,” she began.

“Why did you give in?” I cut in, I assure you, in an attempt to be helpful.

“Well, if I knew the answer to that, then I wouldn’t need my therapist now, would I?” she shot back.

She was right. I really couldn’t argue with that.

“Yeah… you’re right… go on,” I conceded.

“Well, he was being all sweet and romantic and saying ‘I love you’. Then he asked me if I loved him too so I opened my mouth to reply in the negative but kissed him instead.”

“Nice!”   

“Oh come on… what else could I have done? I didn’t want to lie and say something that’s not true,” she said in her defense.

“Uhh… well, some people do interpret kisses to be declarations of love you know. So, you have to be careful doling them out,” I explained.

“Damn! I didn’t think of that… anyway I thought I would just kiss him a bit and then say I was hungry so we could eat and then I could leave. But obviously things didn’t go as planned,” she sighed again.

“Do go on…” I urged, just as the barista called out our names.

Back at the table with her Café Mocha and my Kenyan black, I said, “Ok, now go on…”

“So things started heating up and the next thing I know, we were on the rug with our clothes off. And that’s when it got bizarre…”

“Oh?”

“Yeah… so I thought I would steer things myself and started going down on him. And he started talking… a lot!” she said before reaching for the complimentary almond biscotti that came along with the coffee.

Then she continued, “He kept saying how good he felt and how great I am at doing what I was and how he’d never experienced anything like it.

And then, bang in the middle of telling me that I give the best head ever, he drops the bomb.”

“What???” I couldn’t contain my curiosity any longer.

“He said his name!” she whispered with a shriek (yes, it’s possible… with her it’s possible to whisper and shriek at the same time).

“His own name?” I asked between two quick sips of my Kenyan black.

“No! He mentioned Dude!” she shrieked (and this time without the whisper).

“What the… how the hell does he know Dude?” now it was my turn to shriek.

Before continuing, I guess I should mention here that “Dude” is her ex-husband. Now you understand the shock, yes?

So back to her narrating the story at the crowded coffee shop…

“Apparently he knows someone who used to work with him…”

“Okay, but why the hell did he mention Dude while you were in the middle of giving him a blow job?” I asked.

“I’m getting to it… He said ‘That Dude is a real bastard for walking out on someone as awesome as you. 

What an asshole! And now he will never experience the best blow jobs ever… you really are the best...’ he just went on and on… He didn’t even realize that I had stopped what I was doing and was sitting up staring at him with my mouth open.”

“And then he said ‘By the way, you know that the bastard remarried right?’” she said in an eerily calm voice.

I moved the white plate with the biscotti, the tiny tray with the sachets of sugar, and her huge mug of Café Mocha, and reached across the table to take her hand in mine. She tried to dust the crumbs off her fingers because she knows what a stickler I am about these things. But I just held her hand firmly and gave it a tight squeeze.

“You don’t have to go on if you don’t want to…” I said finally.

“No, I want to… I want to tell you about it… ” It was that eerily calm tone again, the one that honestly sends shivers down my spine.

“I’m listening…” I said without taking my eyes off hers.

“Yeah… so that’s how I found out that the man I had loved and lived with for so many years had finally moved on. Right in the middle of going down on someone I barely knew. I guess I should have been prepared, I always knew it would happen… so it shouldn’t have been a surprise… and it actually wasn’t… the real surprise was actually my reaction to the news…” her voice trailed off as she began ripping open the sugar sachets and emptying them on the table.

“How did you react?” I asked, my eyes fixed on the tiny mound of white sugar forming on the dark brown table.

“I just burst into tears… I felt so silly you know… I mean, what did I have to cry about after all this time? It’s been over for so long… we’ve both moved on… but there I was sitting naked in this guy’s apartment with a mushy Foreigner song playing in the background… and sobbing my bloody eyes out.”

She flattened the mound of sugar with her palms and then, with a mischievous grin that has always and only been hers, she reached into her wallet and took out her credit card. The annoyingly loud people at the tables around us all went quiet and stared as she shaped the sugar into lines of imaginary cocaine, giggling as she did it.

“That’s enough now Scarface. Let’s get out of here,” I said, snatching the credit card from her sugar dusted fingers, which by the way, are still the most beautiful ones I’ve ever seen.

“But I feel like another coffee,” she wailed, waving her white-tipped fingers at me.

“I think we’re way past coffee now. What we need is something a lot stronger… Come on, I have a bottle of Stoli with your name on it,” I said, grabbing her elbow in an attempt to get her off the chair.

“But what about all this sugar now? Let me clean up at least… I know how you detest getting anything on you.”

I dropped her elbow, grabbed both her palms instead and wiped them on my jeans.

“Come on…. Now you’re clean. Let’s go.”

And that’s how we walked out of that incredibly insipid coffee shop, with her head on my shoulder and white sugar dust on my thighs.