Page 54 of Bordeaux Bombshell
“You know the first thing Nate said to me when he came back?”
Lauren leans forward, picking up my wineglass and handing it to me with a smirk. “I’m a fucking idiot?”
That makes me laugh. “He wishes. No. He took one look at me, sleep-deprived and a mess from sitting in his dad’s hospital room for hours, and told me to leave. That he couldn’t deal with my shit too.”
“Rude.”
“Yeah. But I left, and I vowed not to speak to him again until he apologized.” Sipping my drink, I focus on identifying the notes on my tongue while Lauren sits in silence with me.
When she still doesn’t speak, I sigh and keep talking. “Later, when Greg was home again and I came to help Jackie, he tried to talk to me, but I shut him down. And then it was just easier to avoid him than to deal with his horrible attitude.”
“Okay, hang on.” Lauren sets her glass down on the coffee table and leans forward. “Hey, babe—”
A tapping on the window behind us interrupts her. We turn to find Alfie out on the patio, inspecting the planters out there. “Already ordered dinner,” he says, holding up his phone. “Should be here in twenty.”
“I love him.” I can’t help myself. As soon as I say it, I clap a hand over my mouth, eyes wide as I look sideways at Lauren. Thankfully, she’s laughing.
“I licked him first. Sorry, girlfriend,” she giggles. “Okay, but can we go back to the part where I was convinced you and Nate were having super-hot hate sex, but you didn’t want anyone to know? Because I have been arguing with Sophie about it for years now, and I need to prove a point.”
“Um, what made you think we were having sex?”
“You looked entirely too unstressed to not be getting orgasms on the regular. And you both were a little too obviously not speaking. I always assumed it was because you were hiding it from Kel, but now you’re telling me he knew the whole time and didn’t care. Explain.”
All those times I’d leave the room as soon as Nate entered. Or he’d find a reason to be busy outside when I was in the tasting room. I guess we weren’t so subtle after all.
Who am I kidding? I knew we weren’t subtle. But I didn’t care. At first, I just wanted to make him angry, but when he didn’t give me the satisfaction, it was my pride that kept me from extending an olive branch.
I drain half of my glass before answering. “Orgasms were had, but not sex.”
Instead of being shocked like I expected, Lauren carefully picks up her glass. “No sex, huh? How were orgasms had, then?”
“Uh…He’s very good with his fingers. And tongue.” To avoid elaborating, I quickly gulp down the rest of my wine.
“If a lesbian would count it as sex, then it was sex.”
At that, I nearly spit out the liquid in my mouth. “Jesus, Lauren. Seriously?” Maybe I don’t want to learn how to have girlfriends after all. I always assumedSex and the Citywas an exaggeration—that no one really talked like that.
“Just saying…doesn’t have to be penis in vagina to count as sex.”
Covering a cough, I pull a fringed throw pillow into my lap, curling around it. “Whether it counts as sex or not aside. I let him get me off, and I occasionally returned the favor, but I still refused to talk about it. Based on what I’d seen, I assumed he’d been fucking his way through France, while I’d been here wading through the atrocity that is dating in Portland.” I shift in my seat, rubbing lengths of fringe between my thumb and forefinger, needing something to do with my hands.
“I wanted nothing to do with him, except that my stupid body seemed determined to only want the kind of orgasms he could give me.”
“So he wore you down with his tongue? Familiar enough story. Where does Manon come into it?”
A spike of irritation shoots through me, and I toss the pillow aside before I tangle the delicate strings. “If I’m being honest, she just pissed me off. She was hanging all over him, always touching him and having to prove how smart she was. Also, Nate and I had finally done, um,it, the week before—”
I cut myself off at the look on Lauren’s face.
Again, I push to my feet and pace the living room. I’m too agitated to sit still while everything pours out of me in a rush.
“Fine. About a week before the shower, Nate and I had finally hadpenetrativesex for the first time, and I was feeling all kinds of ways about it. I was ready to actually talk to him about what it all meant, when Manon called and he fucking answered the phone. We were literally still naked, and he answered her call. So I maybe lost my mind a little bit there. But I was so damn mad. You’d be mad, too, wouldn’t you?”
My feet lead me back to Lauren, where I pause, hoping to find compassion on her face. I do.
She stares up at me, eyebrows raised. “Oh, I would be livid. You’re not wrong there. But what happened at the shower that made you so mad at her and not him? And why are you here?”
My feet take over again, walking me back to the window. “I’m surprised Emma didn’t tell you the whole story.” I don’t stop my mouth to check what I’m saying, just vomit my questions and the random memories surfacing.
