Page 30 of Treat

“The dog hit you in the ear?” Amy asked, confused.

“No, Jude did. He was holding the leash, and when Tilly yanked it, his hand slipped off my shoulder and hit my ear.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone for so long that Brynn tapped the screen to make sure the call hadn’t dropped. “Amy?”

“I’m still here.”

“That’s a moment, right?”

“It’s a moment of something,” Amy agreed. “Did you ask him?”

“No,” Brynn admitted. “I lost my nerve.”

“So what happened?”

“We came back to the apartment and interviewed a cleaning service. They’ll do grocery shopping and meal prep, so I think we’re going with them.”

“How nice. Move out now.”

Brynn blinked. “What?”

“You heard me. I’m sending you money for a hotel, you can pay me back when your twenty-five k drops. Go pack.”

“I’m not packing, Amy. Get a grip.”

“You get a grip. If you don’t get out now, you’re going to end up losing your job over bad sex.”

“How do you know it would be bad?” Brynn demanded, offended on Jude’s behalf. Hell, she was offended onherbehalf.

“Because hot guys are terrible in bed.”

“Not all hot guys,” Brynn began.

“Nope, all of them. They think their looks mean they don’t have to put in any effort,” Amy said, her voice tinged with annoyance and disgust. “So they twist your nipples a few times, finger your clit—if they can find it—then shove it in and pound away for seven seconds. And when it’s over, they act like they just gifted you a winning lottery ticket.”

“Damn,” Brynn marveled. “Who did that?”

“Drake Simpson, sophomore year of college. The hottest guy I’ve ever dated and the worst lover.”

“Oh, I remember him. Hewashot.”

“For all the good it did,” Amy muttered. “A box of hair has more self-awareness. He was genuinely baffled when I told himI didn’t come, and genuinely hurt when I told him why. Nobody had ever told him how bad he was in bed.”

“Well, that can be a tough thing to say to somebody,” Brynn began.

“And that right there is the reason hot guys are shit in bed,” Amy declared. “Nobody is willing to tell truth to hotness.”

Brynn grinned at the ceiling. “You should put that on a t-shirt.”

“Ha, ha. My point is, fucking Jude will likely not live up to your fantasies.”

“It could,” Brynn protested.

“Fine. Let’s say it does. In fact, let’s assume for the sake of argument that he has a magic dick, and sex with him is the greatest sex in the history of the universe. It’s so amazing and transformative that it ends poverty, world hunger, and all wars while simultaneously reversing climate change and restoring the oceans.”

“Wow.” Brynn blinked. “That’s some good fucking.”

“But then after, you lose your job, because that’s what happens when you sleep with your boss,” Amy continued. “And with a rep for sleeping with the boss, no one else will hire you. So you’ll have to take an office job, you’ll work sixty hours a week as a corporate stooge and be so spiritually beat down and exhausted that fun will be nothing but a fond memory. All for dick.”

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