Dirty by Debra Webb

decade.
    “Who this, Miss Jackie?   You know him?”
    I licked my lips and took a shot at swallowing, but a chunk of emotion had rammed into my throat.
    “You might want to read what’s written on the back.”   My gaze collided with my assistant’s and he nodded to the photo.
    I knew from the softness of his tone and the concern in his eyes that my face had gone white as a sheet.   Hobbs and I enjoyed our cutting banter, but we were both keenly aware of each other’s feelings.
    Somehow I managed to turn the photo over though my fingers were ice cold and shaking.   My heart stumbled as the words scrawled there registered in my brain.
    You were the last one to see him alive.   #D-1216 .
    My knees went weak, forcing me to wilt against the edge of my desk to keep from hitting the floor.   Who the hell would send this to me?   No one knew...I hadn’t told a soul.
    “Do you know this man, Jackie?” Hobbs inquired cautiously as if he feared the answer might be something he didn’t actually want to know.
    I blinked, tried to snap out of the daze of disbelief I’d slipped into but couldn’t quite manage the feat.   I must have looked as if I’d seen a ghost since both Hobbs and Alita hovered close, their faces cluttered with worry.
    “I don’t know his name,” I admitted, my words as thin as a whisper.   Not once in all those years had I allowed myself to consider the full ramifications of what I’d done that night.
    My mind rushed back ten years.   The barrage of sensations that accompanied the memories stole my breath again.   We’d met at the bar of a local nightspot—the hottest singles gathering place at the time.   Even now it felt surreal...as if it had happened to someone else.   It was the night my divorce had become final.   My son was with his father and new stepmother.   As glad as I was to be rid of my lying, cheating, pompous ass husband, I felt lonelier than I’d ever felt in my life.   I’d gone out for the evening hoping to get my mind off the past and focused on the future.   I was a free woman.   Had a second chance.   I was supposed to be ecstatic.
    But the truth was I hadn’t dated in fifteen years.   I felt out of place, like I didn’t belong.   God, that had been a miserable feeling.   The other women at the club were flirting or dancing and dressed to kill.   I simply didn’t know how to do that anymore.   Somehow in all those years of motherhood and being a wife I’d forgotten how to be just a woman.
    Then he had claimed the bar stool next to me.   I stared at the man in the photograph...my thumb slid over his face as if I could somehow reach back in time and touch him.   Dark hair and eyes.   Classically handsome.   He’d had that whole Cary Grant suavity going on. The attraction was instantaneous and fierce.   The encounter had begun as a game, then he’d started talking to me as if we’d known each other for years.   Pretty soon he had me laughing and then...incredibly he’d made me want him like nothing I’d ever wanted before.
    We ended up in a motel room...alone and feeling desperate like the world might end in the next moment.   Heat rushed through me as images from that night flooded my mind.   Still keeping up the pretense of the game he’d started, we hadn’t exchanged names, just hours of explosive passion.
    How could I have put that night so completely out of my mind?
    Damn.   Now I remembered.   The next morning I had awakened and he was gone.   He’d left without saying good-bye, without my even knowing who he was or where he’d come from.   But that magical night had coalesced into a kind of clarity that woke me up as nothing else could have.
    I never told anyone about him...not even my closest friends.   But somehow that night a complete stranger had made me see that everything would be all right.   I would survive the divorce and all it entailed. I was still a desirable woman and my destiny was my own. All I had to do was