Page 18 of All Twerk, No Play

“No fucking way!” Kate said with a devilish grin. “The new high-maintenance tenant?”

“I’m sure she’ll keep me busy with complaints,” I said, though that wasn’t how I wanted her to keep my hands full. “You might need your fiancé to help you with this stuff instead of calling me.”

“Paul loves a spreadsheet, but he’s useless with manual labor. Plus he hatesThe Twelve,” she gestured to the screen. “He says it’s too unrealistic.”

“Isn’t that the whole point?”

“Exactly,” she said, bumping my hip. “It’s a fantasy to escape from everyday life, but he can’t suspend his disbelief.”

I caught a flicker of longing when she glanced at the television. Apollo was on the screen, played by my favorite actor, Dominic Martin.

Two years ago, I’d been at her place watching the episode where Apollo cursed Cassandra to speak truth that nobody would believe. Dominic had seemed larger than life on screen, his majestic golden hair waving in the wind, a pristine toga tied at his shoulder showing off his formidable six-pack. I’d followed the workout plan from his feature inBodybuildingmagazine, but I wasn’t sure an amateur could get that definition.

“Unbelievable,” I said. “No way can he look as good in person.”

“Better,” Kate muttered.

"You know him?" When I snapped my head over, her scrunched-up nose implied she knew she’d fucked up. “He grew up here, right?”

She took a sip of her wine. “Yeah, but he graduated before I moved here.”

“Did you ever meet him?”

Her eyes shifted out the front window, scanning for Paul’s car, but the street was all clear. “In New York, when he was doing Shakespeare in the Park. Before all this.” She gestured to Dominic on the screen, and my jaw dropped. We'd watched this show for hours, why hadn't she mentioned it before?

“So are the rumors true?” I asked. He was known for on-set professionalism and off-set orgies. Supposedly his Hollywood mansion even… “Does he really have a sex dungeon?”

“I don’t know, I knew him before he bought that place,” she shrugged, flush rising up her neck. Hold up, did those rosy cheeks mean …

“Did you ever …” I wiggled my eyebrows, and the flush deepened. “Holy shit, you slept with Dominic Martin?”

“Like, a million years ago,” she said with a dismissive hand wave.

I threw up my hands victoriously, making an obnoxiously loud airhorn noise. “You fucked Apollo!”

She rolled her eyes at my over-the-top reaction. “Before he was a god.”

“Jesus,” I said, running my hand over my mouth. I held my hands about a foot apart. “What about this rumor?”

She chuckled, shifting one of my hands a few inches closer … still impressive.

“Best summer of my life,” she said softly, just as the headlights from Paul’s BMW shone through the window. “But I was just a notch in his bedpost. That rumor's true: Big dick, bigger ego. Thought the whole world revolved around him. When I didn’t …” She shrugged and lifted the remote, flicking offThe Twelveto watch the Mets lose as Paul came through the garage door.

“Thank you for helping, by the way,” she said, interrupting my thoughts while she cut in with the trim brush. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, if you ever moved back to Queens or something.”

“Do you know something I don’t? Did the New York housing market suddenly become affordable?”

She snorted. “I wish.”

“You wish you could move back?”

“Sometimes. Though if you tell Mallory, I’ll deny it to my last breath,” she confessed, and I made a ‘lips sealed’ gesture. “You don’t?”

I missed my mom and sisters …. but their lives had changed so much in the seven years since I joined the Navy. After my stepdad died, they’d downsized to a two-bedroom. My high school friends had all moved on, too. “Except instead of only painting your house, I’d get requests coming from Mama, Adriana and Luisa.”

“I can’t imagine Adriana texting more than she already does …”

Kate grabbed my phone to stage a well-lit shot, rolling up my sleeve to make sure my tattoos were visible, and sent it to my sister who replied instantly.

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