Page 105 of All Twerk, No Play

“Ohhhhh, God, you’re gonna destroy me on this one,” she moaned, tilting her head back to stare at the ceiling. “That one about Buddy Holly?”

“I've won already! That’s Weezer,” I said, steering with my knees so I could throw my hands in the air while she pretended to be disappointed.

“This is ‘She,’ my favorite Green Day song,” I explained, as I queued up the song that describes a woman who screams in silence—and nobody embodied that better than Victoria. “Billie Joel Armstrong’s feminist girlfriend explained how historically women haven’t been allowed to speak their minds. He wrote this to tell her he was willing to listen and learn.”

The familiar bass line echoed through the car’s luxury speakers. I drummed along on the steering wheel, singing about a woman locked up by other people’s expectations, holding a brick of self-control.

When Victoria’s tentative smile emerged, I reached across the console to use her thigh as my ride cymbal, promising that whenever she was ready to scream, I would listen until my ears bled.

By the second chorus, Victoria’s fingers drummed along her other leg. When I finished the final line and tried to lift my hand, she gripped it to keep it on her thigh.

Right, she would want her boyfriend to touch her legs, I guess. I caressed the denim, fingernails scraping along the inseam, and thought about heading north between her thighs … until she stifled a yawn.

“Why don’t you close your eyes? It’s five hours to Saratoga.” I squeezed her leg. “What’s the point of having a boyfriend if you can’t wear comfy clothes and trust him to drive your exhausted ass home?”

When she closed her eyes, I was disappointed that she didn’t explain the point of having a boyfriend. I honestly didn’t know. I’d never had a girlfriend before, let alone the most beautiful and smartest woman I’d ever met.

Way to ease in, Cruz.

I merged her Audi onto the Long Island Expressway, picking up speed as the view out the windshield changed from tree-lined estates and sprawling vineyards to strip malls and car dealerships.

When she asked to be more than friends, I thought she meant sex. Friends with benefits. But her eyes had been so full of yearning that it had blown me away … and scared the shit out of me.

I considered telling her no. She was a princess from the highest echelon of New York. At best I was her willing sex toy. She should be with someone who understood her world, a guy with perfect hair and chinos and a bank balance that could afford more than Chipotle.

I’d wanted to explain that to her, but her family spent the whole weekend condescendingly treating her like she didn’t know her own mind. How could I treat her the same way? True, her request was deeply misguided … but I was her mistake to make.

Plus: I was selfish as shit. She didn’t belong with me, but she sure as hell deserved better than a douche canoe like Spencer. Looking into her pleading eyes, I couldn’t say no to her. For some lapse of judgment, she wanted me, and I would ride the wave as long as she’d keep me.

Say yes and figure it out later,I always said. And being Victoria Blackstone’s boyfriend was the opportunity of a lifetime.

I tapped a rhythm on the steering wheel, her Audi zipping between minivans navigating the suburbs and the Teslas commuting back to the City and I recognized familiar personal injury attorneys on billboards and graffiti tags on overpasses. She shifted on the leather seat and I turned down the volume, leaving Green Day’s album playing a song about finding paradise in the slums.

Someday, probably soon, she would be swept away by somebody who preferred those slick skyscrapers to these corner bodegas, and she would leave me for him without looking back. I could feel the clock ticking.

While I had her, I’d show her how she deserved to be treated: like a goddamn queen, bowing to nobody. I would fucking worship her so that when she left me—and she would inevitably leave me—she’d demand better.

She looked so peaceful, expecting to wake up at our building upstate.

Boy, was she going to be surprised when I woke her up and we were still 200 miles from Saratoga.

"Lovely Day," Bill Withers

Victoria

“Wakeup,baby,we’rehere,” he said. I blinked at the late afternoon sky—too early to be back in Saratoga. I instantly recognized the New York skyline in the windshield, scanning left to One World Trade Center then trailing north a few blocks, my mind still programmed like a homing beacon to rest on the familiar skyscraper that once consumed all my waking moments. But if lower Manhattan was on my left …

“We’re in Queens?” I asked, rubbing my brow as I examined the street where we were parked.

When Eric told me he grew up in Queens, I imagined the rundown neighborhoods near the airport. But out the passenger window, I saw semi-detached row homes on narrow lots with fenced-in yards and bars on the windows. Small and dated, but well-maintained for their age.

“Quick pit stop for homemade chilaquiles,” Eric pointed to the right door of a brick duplex. “Mine are a cheap replica of my mama’s.”

“You brought me to meet your mother?” I screeched, looking down at the comfortable clothes he’d encouraged me to wear. I pulled my hair out of its messy topknot and tried to smooth it into a bun.

“I warned you I was a mama’s boy.” He flashed that boyish grin, taking my hand before I could pull my hair out and try again.

“I look like a schlub,” I whined. “I didn’t bring wine or flowers, she’s going to think—”

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