“Honey, are you there yet? Pick up.”

“Dana! Answer the phone. Are you there yet?”

“Stop ignoring me. Are you there yet? Call me when you get there! And don’t stay out too late. You need your rest. Are you listening to me?”

A line from a Sheryl Crow suddenly played in her head:

“Hello, it’s me. I’m not at home. If you’d like to reach me, leave me alone.”

She was, for just one moment, tempted to make that her greeting, especially since Tonya was the one who called her the most. Everyone else would find it hilarious. Well, maybe not everyone, just people with a sense of humor. Unlike her intended. Dana dropped her head to the steering wheel with a painful thunk. God, what am I doing?

This was going to be so hard. She wanted to see Alice again. Last night’s kiss was replaying itself all through her body. But then again, she didn’t. When they were just friends, she enjoyed being around Alice … except when she was needling her in that Pieszecki style of sarcasm. That wasn’t so much fun. But she’d never expected this…this feeling…this ….

She shook her head and tried to shift her thoughts to the business at hand. Shane. Since she’d come out, Dana had been feeling more than a few twinges of guilt over the way she’d treated Shane…as if she were a badge of shame or something, someone NOT to be seen with. “Everything about you screams ‘dyke’,” she’d told her one day. In typical fashion, Shane seemed to let the remark slide by. But now, well now she was wondering whether Shane was just masking.

Growing up with her mother’s cutting remarks, Dana knew firsthand how words could wound in ways that took a long time to heal, if they ever did. The thought that she might have hurt Shane like that, just because she couldn’t come to terms with her own sexuality, it made her feel just a little heartsick.

But maybe she could help make up for it tonight. If there was anything she could remember that might help Shane, it might count as one small point of redemption. At least, she hoped so. She switched the cell phone to vibrate, stuck it in her pocket, tossed her keys into her purse, and just before she shut the car door, checked for her keys one more time. Lately, she’d been forgetting things, just little things, but they had a way of becoming big inconveniences. Locking her keys in the car would mean having to call Tonya. Right now, that was just the person she didn’t want to think about, see or talk to.