Page 98 of Crescendo

“Hey—” she blurted. “The fuck’s going on, dude? Is someone dying?”

“Yeah, my fucking trust in you,” I said.

“What?”

“Are you fucking Natália?”

“Uh—huh?” I heard her fumbling for words on the other side. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about. Natália left the call running by mistake while she went to go rip your clothes off just now—”

“Ah, shit—”

“And I’m of half a mind to book a ticket back there right now and rip yourskinoff of yourbones—”

“Dude, listen—”

“Are you fuckingkiddingme? You wait until I’m out of the country to—”

“It’s not that!”

“Melinda, she’s like a child!”

“She’stwenty-six, for fuck’s sake, dude! She’s an adult! There’s only five years in it!”

“She’s—” I guess she was twenty-six. In my head she was still perpetually that doe-eyed innocent twenty-one-year-old who was a little scared of the world and what would come next in it. “She’s like a fucking daughter to me, and youknowthat, andthe second I have my back turned, you start sleeping with her in secret?”

“It’s—oh, Jesus Christ—” She groaned. “Look, I wasn’t planning on keeping it secret or anything—”

“Oh, you just started fucking her without being able to help yourself, and you forgot to ever mention it to me?”

“Dude, calm down. We’re both adults doing—”

“Calm down?Natália’s giggling over getting you naked and calling youbabyand you’re strolling into her place calling herhot stuff—”

“It was just—something that happened,” she blurted. “I told her we should take it slower, that we had to figure out what we would tell you—”

“Didn’t sound that fucking slow to me. When was this?”

“Uh…”

“You started fucking her this morning and I’ve broken your streak—”

“No! It started weeks ago and we’ve been trying to—”

“Weeks?I fucking knew it—”

“It’s not—”

I dropped hard onto my desk chair, sliding it back across the room, opening and squeezing my free hand as I held the phone to my ear. “So, what was it? The day I left? The day after?”

“Look,she was just—she was having a really rough time with the project coming together, and she came to see me, and I was giving her a place to rest and recharge and relax. Okay? Just… looking after her. Letting her talk through her blocks. And she spent a lot of time around my place, and we just got…”

“Handsy.”

“No! It’s—it’s not just a physical thing, for fuck’s sake, dude, I really like her.”

Oh, god, I was really getting sick. “That’s worse. At least if you just want to fuck her and then leave, then you’redonewith her after.”

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