Page 34 of The Love Lie
Winnie gasps so loudly it sounds as if she’s been possessed. They’re a bit of a dramatic duo. “Sam Heughan.”
“Yeah, him.”
“He looks like Sam Heughan?”
“Yes.”
“SAM MOTHERFUCKING HEUGHAN?”
“Yes. But also sort of like Brad Pitt.”
“BRAD PITT?”
“Yeah. You know that scene inLegends of the Fallwhere Tristan comes riding across the plains and meets Susannah for the first time and tips his hat with a smile and she’s like,Oh shit, I chose the wrong brother?”
“You mean the scene that was wholly responsible for my sexual awakening at fifteen? Yes. I know the scene.”
“He looks like that, but better.”
“Better?” she squeals, sounding parched.
“Yeah, because he’s real.” Sam wets her lips, swallows. “Like how you can see an ice cream cone on a commercial and think,Damn. I want one of those.But if it’s the middle of summer, and a hundred degrees out, and you’re on the beach, and someone walks by licking a drip off the side of a fresh vanilla-chocolate swirl, it’s almost a religious experience? You don’t just want one. Youneedone. It’s like that.”
“Sleep with him.”
“Winnie—”
“Sleep with him right now or I will never forgive you.”
“Oh my god.” Sam laughs into the crook of her elbow. “Did you not hear me? I can’t. You’re supposed to be talking me out of this.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“That’s the whole reason I called!”
“Please,” Winnie comments dismissively. “We both know that’s not true.”
Sam stills. “What do you mean?”
“You did not call me, your best friend who reads three romance novels a week, to tell me that you’re fake engaged to the hottest man in the world and, now that I think of it, that there’s probably only one bed because you wanted to be talkedout of it.”
“Yes. I did.”
“Sam.”
She gulps. Winnie’s pointed glare burns a hole in the side of her skull from across the Atlantic. “Idid.”
“Sam.”
“What?”
“Samantha Rose Peters.”
“What?”
“Maybe you can lie to yourself, but you can’t lie to me. You’re calling for permission. And I’m giving it. Sleep with him. You owe it to…sex. No, not sex. Me. Your perpetually single best friend whose vagina is practically the Sahara. Do it for me.”
“But…Em. And the bullying. And the misogyny. And cancel culture. And feminism. And—”
