Champagne Rules by Susan Lyons Page A

here,” Ann said, “but you took a serious risk that afternoon, Suze, and you’ve got a hole in your memory. You say it was sunstroke, but what if this
    ‘caveman’ drugged you?”
    Suzanne shook her head. “We didn’t eat or drink anything.”
    “The next thing you remember is being in your room the next day, feeling awful. Could you have fallen, hit your head?”
    “Or maybe he bashed me over the head with that ten-inch dick? No, Ann, I don’t think so.”
    “Then why don’t you remember? You must have repressed it. But why, if it was this idyllic, erotic afternoon, and the two of you made a sensible decision to leave it at that?”
    “She got sunstroke and fried some brain cells,” Jenny said.
    “Don’t make such a big deal of it.”
    Suzanne realized her head was throbbing, full of her friends’
    words, and her own worries and fears. She closed her eyes and tried to focus, to remember. After a moment, she said slowly,
    “You know what I think? Now that I know he’s real, that I really did it—did all those things that were utterly out of character—
    I think my brain, my conscience, tried to forget. Sex with a stranger, not knowing if he was single, not using a condom.”
    She shivered. “I couldn’t come to terms with what I’d done, yet I couldn’t manage to forget.”
    “You remembered the sex but not the conversation?” Ann said.
    Suzanne shrugged helplessly.
    “If you got so angsty about it the first time, then maybe you shouldn’t repeat it,” Rina commented, and Ann nodded her head firmly.
    Jenny clapped her hands to her cheeks. “I can’t believe this!
    You can’t let this guy slip away again. God knows where he lives, and he’s offering to come here and meet you. That’s absolutely awesome. Come on, Suze, what’s there to get angsty about? Just make sure he’s not married, and then go for it. With a condom . Sex is a perfectly natural bodily function, so why not have great sex and just enjoy it? Without agonizing over it, for Christ’s sake!”
    “Ssh,” Ann warned Jen, as Suzanne pressed both hands to her aching head.
    Jenny took a long, noisy breath and continued in a quieter voice. “We all agreed to write the ad, and now everyone wants to bail out? No way. Look, here’s what we’re going to do.”
    “We?” Suzanne said.
    “Yeah, we’re in this together.” Jenny giggled. “I mean, not the actual sex, but getting you together with this guy. So, Suze, you reply to caveman, ask him if he’s single, and set up a meeting in some nice safe public place. And the rest of us’ll be there when you meet, to blow the whistle if something goes wrong.” She thrust her face toward Suzanne’s. “What do you say, Suzie Q?”
    Suzanne sucked in a long breath. Across the table, Rina’s eyes were wide with concern. To her left, Jenny’s impatient scowl challenged her to action. To her right, Ann’s crinkled brow counseled caution.
    She took another deep breath and her headache began to lift. How wonderful that these women all cared. They’d never let anything bad happen to her.
    “I’m torn,” she admitted. “I’m busy, I enjoy my life, I have my long-term plan to eventually find and marry—yeah, Jenny, Mr. Cleaver. This . . . caveman is definitely not Mr. Cleaver.”
    “But you’re torn?” Rina prompted.
    She sighed. “I sound so middle-aged and boring. Like Jen says, what’s wrong with one more afternoon or evening of fabulous sex? This time I wouldn’t drink too much. I’d know the memories I was creating were real.”
    Jenny, who was systematically demolishing her baklava, nodded vigorously.
    “I’d go into it with my eyes open, and take a bunch of precautions,” Suzanne went on. “Besides, we might meet and not even be attracted to each other this time.”
    Or she might be attracted to him, but he’d see plain old boring Suze. Now there was a dismal thought. She gripped her head with her hands, realizing her headache wasn’t gone after all. “Oh, I