I couldn’t help but blush. Leave it to Jada to dive right into uncomfortable topics.
I’d just spent the last fifteen minutes explaining everything that had gone down from the moment Silas had asked me out until he’d gotten into the car and driven away. And what did she do? She skipped right past all of it to the physical part.
“It was just sex,” I said with a shrug.
Which was the truth. It had been pleasure. I’d orgasmed. He’d orgasmed. Sex was an action that caused a release. Like mixing hydrogen and oxygen to get water.
“If it was just sex, then he was doing it wrong. It shouldn’t be just anything. It should be an explosion of passion and sin. Something that leaves a mark on you forever,” she said with a lift of one expertly shaped brow.
It was as if she’d read my brain. I already had a mark, but it had come without even a kiss.
I shook my head, and it caused Jada’s perfect vision to waver in front of me. She’d shown up to the dive bar looking like she was ready for a magazine shoot. Black leather pants, royal blue stilettos, and a sequined halter top so small it almost didn’t cover her breasts. It was heading down into the forties tonight, but Jada’s outfit screamed how little she cared. As if she could control the weather like she tried to control everything else in her life.
I’d missed her. Her attitude. Her direct way of looking at everything.
“I don’t think I’m built for that kind of sex,” I told her. Even though they were the truth, they were words I wouldn’t have uttered if I hadn’t had the shots.
Jada poured me yet another one from the new pitcher of cosmos the bartender delivered to our table with a smirk and a, “Welcome back, Jada.”
“You definitely aren’t having sex with the right men then,” she responded, winking at the man as he sauntered away from our table.
I leaned in. “Have you slept with him?”
“Yes,” she said. “And he’s decent. Like banging-up-against-walls kind of good, but he wasn’t my earth-shattering, life-changing guy.”
I slammed my shot and leaned back. “Just tell me. It was Dawson, right? All that broody, muscled goodness exploding all over you.”
She cackled at my unintended innuendo. “No. You’ve got to stop with the Dawson-and-me thing. It literally makes me want to puke. It’s wrong on so many levels I can’t even begin to start with.”
I frowned. “I don’t get that at all.”
“Of course you don’t, because you’ve had the hots for him since you were capable of masturbating.”
I grimaced at her word choice.
“He’s Jersey’s brother-in-law. It would practically be incest.”
She laughed. “Not hardly. Do you know how many sets of twins marry other sets of twins? Do you know how many arranged marriages tie families together that closely?”
“Arranged marriages, really? We don’t live in the feudal ages.”
Jada’s smile slipped away, and I sat up.
“Wait. You’re not? Your parents aren’t setting you up, are they?” I asked.
She frowned. “Otōsan has handed down an ultimatum.”
I was floored. Jada was not particularly close with her parents. They’d barely been in the U.S. when she’d lived with her maternal grandmother in New York. Once she’d gotten kicked out of every private high school in the city, she’d been sent to their house in New London to detox and finish classes online. Instead of being watched over by her parents, she’d been watched over by a housekeeper and a bodyguard who she’d ditched whenever possible. Even knowing all that, I’d never thought her parents would do something as barbaric as force her into a loveless marriage.
“Do you know who it is? Do you even like him?” I asked.
“I know him, and I hate him,” she said quietly with such force and vehemence that it completely dropped my heart into the pit of my stomach.
“What does your mom say about it?” I asked.
Jada flipped her phone over and over on the table, the turning of it slightly mesmerizing. “You know Haha. She has nothing to say. She defers everything to Otōsan as a good little wife should.”
“Is there anyone else? Or maybe someone you could marry with a contract like how Truck and Jersey first got married? You know, just to deter your dad?” I asked. I knew I was really feeling the alcohol if I was talking about Truck and Jersey’s fake marriage that had turned into real love and real rings.