Page 85 of All Twerk, No Play

“Fuck, you’re heavy,” she joked, pretending to shove me off. I pulled out and rolled onto my back beside her, tied off the condom, slid a hand under her neck, and curled her into me. She pulled the blanket over us, settled into my chest, and we went back to sleep.

"Little Lies," Fleetwood Mac

Cruz

Whensheroused,wewent for another round then I dragged her to the shower. She tied her hair into a top knot, but when I slid my fingers inside her, her head dropped into the stream of water … so after she came I washed her hair. She hummed in contentment as I massaged her scalp, her face blissfully relaxed.

All the tension I’d fucked out of her returned when her phone rang. She toweled off, pulled on a tank top and leggings, and answered with false cheer.

“Hi, Dad. Yes, I got the invitation. No, I’m not avoiding her, but I don’t know if I can get the time...” She listened, head bobbing. “I told you we’re not together.” She massaged her temples. “It’s just me.”

Normally she hid her emotions, but she was so focused on keeping her voice calm that her apprehension showed, making my heart ache.

As soon as she hung up, I impulsively offered, “Need a plus one? I’ll go.”

Whatever it was couldn’t be that bad, right?

“You want to come to my grandfather’s 80th birthday party?”

Oh fuck, no I didn’t. Not at all.

But hope glimmered in her eyes, so against my better judgment, I nodded. “Think of me like a palate cleanser. Whoever you bring home next will be compared against Alex. I’ll lower the standards for your future husband, really shake up the party.”

Her hand bridged her brow, warding off a headache while resting her elbows on her knees. I snuck a peek down her tank while she calculated the risk.

Finally she marched into her office, rifled around in a file cabinet and stared at a piece of paper like it contained the answers to the universe.

“I think it’s a little late for the sex contract,” I smirked.

“It’s a non-disclosure agreement.” She focused intently on the paper, which trembled in her hands. "I should make you sign this. When I shared what I'm about to tell you with my divorce attorney, I was slapped with a defamation lawsuit." She finally looked up from beneath her blonde eyelashes. "If you leaked anything you see next weekend to the press…"

"You think I'd do that?"

"No," she answered, holding the contract to her chest like the legal language comforted her. "And there will be so many guests, it would be hard to prove the source." She let out a shaky breath, placing it on her desk.

"What if I give you something that means more to me?" I asked. "In first grade, I got into a fight at school. When I came home with a split lip, I insisted to my mom that he started it."

I expected Mama to yell, but she crouched to my height and gripped my shoulder."Mijo, cuando juras por tu madre, es porque lo dices con el corazón. Y si mientes, se rompe un pedacito de ella."

"She made me swear, on her name, that I was telling the truth—and if I was lying, a little piece of her would break. And I admitted that, ok, yeah, I shoved first." I shrugged, and she grinned. "From then on, I never lied to her, not even when the truth made me look like an asshole."

I used my thumb to draw a cross over my heart."Lo juro por mi madre."

She tracked my thumb intensely, then she scrolled on her phone and flicked the screen to me. “Do you know who this is?”

The screen showed a distinguished white man with round glasses, sporting a seersucker. “The popcorn guy, right? OrvilleRedenbacher?”

Her eyes widened as she shook her head.

“I’ve seen him before …” I snapped my fingers. “Colonel Sanders. Please, baby, tell me you’re secretly a fried chicken tycoon and this quiz comes with a complimentary chicken and biscuits bucket.”

Her lips quirked as her head continued to shake.

“Don’t tell me …” Finally it clicked: “Milton Bradley. The Monopoly man, with the top hat and the monocle?” I pantomimed a circle over my eye.

She scrubbed her face, disguising a smile. “That's Richard Sinclair.”

She handed me the phone to skim his Wikipedia page: Real estate investor and business magnate, blah blah blah. Took the reins of The Sinclair Group from his father in the early 1970s, yada yada. Seventeenth richest person in the country, married twice, lives in Manhattan.

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