Page 27 of Levee

“Might not have enough room there for a litter of kids,” he warned.

“The next step doesn’t have to be my final destination,” I said, shrugging. There was time. I mean, you wouldn’t think that if you felt the little ovary explosion each time I was around a baby these days, but it wasn’t like I was anywhere close to settling down. I didn’t even have a serious man in the picture.

As much as I was into Levee, everything about this party bus and the comfort at which he felt around the drinking, mostly-naked girls, clubbing, and all of that suggested that this was all stuff he partook in fairly often. He clearly wasn’t in a settling down phase in his life.

This was just, you know, for fun.

Even if that little voice in my head was whispering about what cute babies he would make.

The bus drove around for about an hour as everyone drank and had fun. I’d even almost finished my drink before we pulled to a stop, and the driver opened the door.

“Do I want to know where we are, Zayn?” Levee asked as I propped up onto my knees to look out the window.

They were almost completely blackout, but I could still see the words on the front of the building we were in front of.

“Ah, we are going to theWorld Erotic Art Museum,” I told him, beaming at the idea, figuring this place was going to have all sorts of art to check out.

“Huh,” Levee said a while later, his arm sitting heavily around my shoulders. “I don’t know what I was expecting exactly,” he admitted, “but a wall of pussy sculptures wasn’t it.”

“I still can’t get over the bed made of four penis pillars,” I admitted. Each one of them had been carved with various sexual positions. “And I really want to know if I can find a print of those scissor people in a meadow.”

“Did you two see the giant copper phallus?” Zayn asked, waving over toward where two of the girls we’d brought with us were each sitting on one of the testicles and smiling at Raff, who was taking their picture.

“Hard to miss,” I said, smiling.

“I’ve lived in this area all my life and I had no idea this place existed,” Levee admitted.

“To be fair, it seems like the kind of place you really only need to see once.”

“Zayn isn’t from here, is he?” I asked.

“No. Well, I mean, who the fuck knows? The man seems to exist everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Why?”

“How does he even know about this place?”

“I imagine he has someone on his staff whose job it is to find interesting things for him to do no matter where he is visiting.Figure this was a better trip than having to drag you around toHorrorlandor some shit like that.”

“Yeah, horror really isn’t my style,” I admitted. “I’m not a huge fan of violence in general.”

“We have that in common,” Levee admitted. There was a strange edge to his tone, though, that I couldn’t quite place.

But Zayn was calling us over to check out some more pieces of art, so there was no more time to talk in private.

I was actually having a really good time. It felt nice to be out of the apartment with other adults doing just random fun things.

But after the museum, then a stop at a very fancy restaurant where none of us should have been permitted to enter dressed as we were, but Zayn seemed to have some sort of pull, it was about time for the bus to circle back to the lot where they’d picked me up, so I could get back to my place in time for my dinner date with Lily and Curtis.

“So, are you still going to be bringing bagels in the morning?” I asked as Levee walked me to my car.

“That depends.”

“On?”

“If you’ll tell me what kind of bagels you like.”

“Cinnamon raisin.”

“Then it’s a date,” he said, backing me up against the passenger rear door, leaning in, and sealing his lips over mine.

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