Flash Friday: "The Secret" (NSFW)

The 52/250 Flash theme this week is "Tainted Love". My story, "The Secret", appears this week, which is nice, except for the fact that it somehow got clipped- the last two lines of the story are missing. I'm pretty sure it's an error. Here is the story in its intended form. (NSFW, I guess, at least in the sense that it implies that unmarried people sometimes have sex. Shocking, I know.)





"So, do you want to know my number?"

Her brown eyes flashed eagerly at me. Her bracelet shone in the dim light of the restaurant. I felt like she almost wanted to tell me. I hadn't really thought about it, but now that she had asked me, I wanted to know. Some questions you knew could never be answered- what if Napoleon had won at Waterloo? But others you didn't know could be asked, until they were. And once they were asked, the possibility existed they could be answered. I had told her my number. I thought about inflating the total before telling her, but I didn't. My number seemed a little low. I didn't expect her number to be zero- that seemed impossible. I didn't know what number I wanted hers to be, either. Was 5 too many? 10? How many should she have? Would the thought of others who had come before make what we had different? Would knowing I wasn't the only one imbue the act with some sense of corruption, some taint of ill repute? Would I compare? Wonder if I was better? Was there any difference between assuming the number wasn't zero and knowing what the number was? It was stupid, but now that I knew I could know, I wanted to know.

"No," I told her.

"Good," she said. "I would have lied anyway."