She kissed him—his kisses were so nice. Too nice. If she weren’t so anxious, she could have kissed him for hours. She said goodbye, stepped out of the car, and watched him drive away.

Later, and for the rest of her life, she’d wonder what would have happened if she hadn’t gained those extra pounds that caused her to return home and meet Arthur. It would amaze her that something as trivial as her weight was the first domino to fall in a long line of dominoes that stretched all the way to Lake Beulah and deep, deep into her future.

CHAPTER TEN

Sherri leaned against the wall clutching her towel to her chest, afraid she might faint after sitting in the hot sauna for almost half an hour. She watched Danny spin his muscular legs on the exercise bike. The huge front wheel was like a room fan, blowing the announcements on the bulletin board loose. The breeze felt good.

“Did you hear about Bunny Rhonda?” he asked.

“No,” Sherri said. “What about her?”

“Preggers.”

“What?”

“She got herself knocked up.”

“Little Rhonda?” She wanted to clean out her ears. “She’s pregnant? I didn’t think she even had a boyfriend.”

Danny smiled. He loved being surrounded by women, and he took delight in gossip. “Frank.”

“Busboy Frank?”

He nodded.

She was still in disbelief. “Frank the stripper?”

“I told you he liked to break you girls in.”

“But Rhonda?” Now Sherri really did think she could faint. Frank could have gotten her pregnant. How easy it would be to be in Rhonda’s shoes, just a shuffle of the deck of fortune. Now she understood why Rhonda seemed to have turned on Sherri after she’d been so public about sleeping with Frank.

“She’s working the coat check now. Her parents won’t let her come home.”

“What’s she going to do?”

“She made Frank propose to her. You should see him, he’s sadder than a pound dog.”

“Maybe they’ll be happy,” Sherri said.

“Frank and Rhonda? They go together like a giraffe and a hedgehog. I wish them the best and all that, but I don’t see it.”

“I guess I don’t either,” Sherri said. Poor Rhonda. She’d been training to be a legal secretary, but what she’d really wanted was to go to law school—there were plenty of Bunnies who settled for the next best thing, but even the next best was something. Now she was stuck having a kid with a guy who slept with Bunnies as a rite of passage, and strutted around a strip club in a wig, makeup, and studded dog collar. If she’d been terrified of becoming a Bunny, imagine what she was thinking about becoming a mother.

“Speaking of couples,” Danny said, “Val keeps saying she’s going to break up with Curtis. Think she ever will?”