Page 41 of Spinning Out Of Control

Rach

AHA!My twenty dollars is safe.

G

You haven’t had sex?! Seriously?

Kira

No, there has been no sex. I did, however…

Sort of…

Punch him in the face……..

G

KEEKS!

Dottie Girl

Why am I not surprised?

Rach

Damn. Now I owe Amir twenty bucks. He totally called it. He knew you’d be due for a violent outburst sooner rather than later.

Kira

It was an accident. And so was the fact that I almost climbed into his lap and humped him on a park bench.

Dottie Girl

That’s it. I’m switching to FaceTime NOW

I belly flop onto the mattress in my hotel room, propping a few pillows up to hold my phone so I can video chat with my girls. Dottie and Rach appear simultaneously. A moment later, G pops up in the lower left-hand corner, but her pretty face is obstructed by herhusband. By the looks of it, he’s trying to suck her heart out of her pulse point.

“Georgie, honey, look out. You’ve got a blood sucking tick on your neck,” I say, flicking my phone screen like James is a bug I can shoo away from here.

“I know, he won’t get off,” Georgie says as she pats his head.

“It looks like he’s trying to get off, if you know what I mean,” Rach jokes, and Dottie wolf whistles.

“Adler. Put your Edward Cullen fangs away and let us talk to Georgie in private. For fuck’s sake, you’re a grown man, not a sex-crazed teenager.” I flick my phone screen again, just for emphasis. Unlatching, James looks through the phone screen and into my soul.

“You people interrupted my Georgie time. Seriously, Keeks, don’t you have a geriatric CEO to be making out with right now?”

“Don’t you have an ocean submersible to implode in?” I fire back, causing everyone to laugh. Thankfully, James takes the hint and detangles himself, leaving me to fill in my friends on the events of the day in peace.

“What the hell was Jonathan even doing in New York?” Rachel asks when I get to the end of my story. I shrug.

“Who knows? He probably has a tracker on me, some kind of microchip that pings the second I might be feeling any sort of contentment. Like, ‘Oh lookie here, Kira is feeling a little happy. It’s time to swoop in and fuck it up.’ Remember a few years ago when I wasdoing the corresponding gig at the San Francisco Marathon? He showed up and “accidentally” kept cursing on camera, causing the network to cut the live feed. I never made it onto the news. Nope, I was shoved into the realm of blooper compilations that only stoned teenagers and bored Baby Boomers watch.”

“What a freaking snake. And he ruined your big moment! Ugh, you and Warren huddled together in the park on a chilly Manhattan afternoon, forced to share body heat to keep warm. The tingle of that first brush of your lips and the way you could have melted into it, letting the city pass you by as you sunk into each other. That’s the kind of swoony first kiss a romantic can only dream of,” Georgie says, a dazed look in her eye. She’s a romance author; she’s got a way of finding the poeticism in every situation that I love.

“It wouldn’t have been our first kiss anyway, G.”

“It would be your second first kiss. In my experience, second first kisses are just as romantic, if not more so than the first.” Dottie says, gazing off to the side where I’m sure Stephen is sitting and making googly eyes right back at her.

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