Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 93224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 466(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 466(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
I think about that, then take a sip. The coffee is shit, but I’m grateful for the burn. “Maybe,” I say. “But let’s start light then. How have you been, Andie?”
She looks at her coffee, shrugs. “Fine. Working a lot. Getting by.”
A half-laugh escapes me. “You don’t have to pretend.”
She shrugs again, tighter. “I wasn’t pretending.”
I let out a snort of frustration. “Okay let’s skip the small talk then because it’s obviously not working. I need you to tell me everything about the bet. No filters, no lies. Start at the beginning.”
She looks up at me, and her mouth is a hard, straight line. She thinks for a second, then just says, “Okay.”
Her fingers flex on the mug, then go still.
“It started at the end of last year. Me, Stella, Kayleigh, and Mary Kate. We were just bored one day. You know, classes and all that were a drag.” Her voice is even, but the words come out like old coins, dull and heavy. “So we decided to make things exciting. A contest. The first one to lose her virginity, and prove it, wins the pool. Thousand dollars. Enough to make it real.”
She looks at the chrome napkin holder, then back at her coffee.
“There were rules. You had to provide some kind of evidence, probably photo or video although we were never totally clear on what counted and what didn’t. It was juvenile. It was supposed to be funny, a dare. I never even thought it would happen to me first.”
She lifts her chin, and the angle is defiant, but the eyes aren’t.
“Then I met you. I didn’t know who you were. Not until the next morning. By the time I figured it out, it was already…”
She doesn’t finish. She takes a breath, tries again.
“I wanted to quit the bet. I tried to work up the courage, but I could never find a suitable excuse. So I just kept mum and said I was having no luck.”
The words hang in the air, thrumming.
I say nothing. I just wait, because she isn’t done.
“The first time, when we hooked up outside? I took a photo of you for the bet. I wasn’t thinking. It happened really fast, and it was only of your cock.”
I jerk back, astonished.
“When? Outside the faculty club when we literally crashed into each other?”
Andie flushes.
“Yes. It happened really fast. You had me bent over, pushing into my ass from behind and I reached for my phone. I literally filmed you from between my legs so there’s only a photo of your cock going into my asshole from below. It could be anyone, to be honest, and you were so busy coming that you didn’t notice. But obviously, that photo didn’t pass muster because you were in my ass. The girls demanded a face photo, and so I took one of you at the Faculty Club the next time.”
I growl. “Yes, I remember that one.”
Her voice is still steady.
“I know it sounds stupid. I know it was wrong. But everything after that—the texts, the meetings, the things we did—that wasn’t for the bet. I was scared if I told you, you’d never want to see me again. So I never said anything, lying by omission, and then it was too late to course correct.”
The truth lands with a soft, terminal weight.
I run a hand over my mouth, think about what to say, then decide to be just as direct. “I was furious. Not just at the bet. At the fact that you used me.”
She doesn’t flinch, but her nails dig into the mug.
I keep going. “I’ve told you before that when you’re a man with my money and reputation, women start scheming. Women have been using me since I was old enough to buy dinner, so I’ve grown wary. Again, I’ve had multiple women try to entrap me via pregnancy, and a few tried to extort me for cash with ‘emergencies.’ Some wanted a name. All of them wanted a lifestyle.”
She blinks. “Right. That’s why you—“
“Only did anal. No way for anyone to get a hook in me. I thought that was smart. I thought it would keep me safe.”
She just looks at me, and for the first time, there’s no anger, just a slow, blooming sadness.
I shake my head, take another drink of the bitter, burned coffee. “Then you came along. You weren’t supposed to be…”
I stop, not knowing how to finish.
She finishes it for me. “Real?”
I nod, feeling defeated. “You weren’t supposed to be you, Andie.”
The air in the diner is syrupy, so dense you could swim through it. Someone scrapes a stool across the linoleum at the counter, and the hiss of the espresso machine spikes, then falls away. The world outside the window is dead, just the orange wash of a streetlamp and the ghost of the Lambo’s paint under it.