I’ve done every single thing on the sexual menu. Repeatedly. “Not all of them. He’s very skilled with his hands. And his mouth.”
Avery doesn’t precisely know that I’m a virgin.
She thinks I’ve had sex because she knows I go into bedrooms with frat boys and let them hang socks on the door, so it’s a reasonable assumption. But I’ve perfected the art of listening to their troubles and keeping all my clothes on. I’ve also perfected the art of a hard kick to the balls in case one of them gets particularly persuasive.
Like I told Sutton, I don’t think one particular act matters that much. I never thought I was saving it for marriage, but in my head, when I touch myself at night, it was always a dark head of hair and black eyes that looked down on me. Always the same.
No matter how much I hated him, Christopher was always the gold standard.
“He’s fun to play with while I’m in town,” I say, still casual, because I’d like to have casual virginity-removing sex with Sutton. Then I can stop the stupidity of imagining Christopher being my first. “Not anything serious.”
“Oh my God, Harper.” She sounds scandalized. “Two men?”
“No,” I correct sharply. “There’s only one man. Even that is temporary.”
Temporary, the word my mother used to describe my father’s wives. And her husbands.
Nothing lasts forever.
“Two men,” Avery says, insistent. “There’s always been something between you and Christopher. Mostly you two have never stayed in the same city long enough to do anything about it. And now he’s seeing you with his business partner…”
Seeing me with my dress up around my waist, my sex exposed in the hallway while his business partner licks my pussy. “Nothing is going to happen.”
“But call me when it does.”
“I’m literally never going to call you again, because nothing is going to happen.”
“Okay,” she says, not believing me for a second. “Talk to you tomorrow.”
I hang up with an exasperated smile, tossing the phone onto the nightstand. I’m feeling a little punchy without any of my supplies with me, but I don’t want to make a trip to the art store.
For one thing I don’t think the concierge would take kindly to me splashing oil-based paint all over their antique furniture and old wallpaper. I also don’t want to imply, even to myself, that I’ll be staying in Tanglewood for longer than a few days. I’ll sort out the issue with the Tanglewood Historical Society and be back in LA with my mother and her new treatment and my brushes.
The only thing of interest in the hotel room is the book on Cleopatra, which is more interesting than the cover could possibly imply. There’s intrigue in here about her life, going beyond her experiences with Julius and Antony. Chapters and chapters from before she was ever a glint in their eyes. The making of a powerful woman, through the only means available to her.
Those men, who wanted her for her body. And her mind?
Did they think they were in love with her?
She was more than a pretty face to them, this much we know. They used her, and she used them back. And in the end she outlasted them both, so maybe that’s the moral of the story.
It ended in tragedy for all three of them, though.
Maybe that’s the true moral of the story.
The Grand fits its name with a gorgeous fountain in the front and ornate carving along the front that’s been lovingly repaired with plaster. Old trees surround the property like an embrace. A thick red carpet covers the cobblestone close to the entrance.
“See?” I tell Sutton, who looks ridiculously handsome in a suit. “This is how you treat a place with history. You don’t blow it up into a million pieces.”
“We aren’t going to blow up the library,” he says, that rough voice underlaid with amusement. “And besides, I don’t think this is the example we should follow. The Grand used to be a strip club.”
Through an arched doorway I can see gilded wood box seats and a wide stage. “And you know this by rumor only, I’m sure. It’s not that you would have gone to a strip club yourself.”
He laughs in a fully masculine way that does not confirm or deny anything. “I work with the construction company that did some of the restoration.”
It’s almost impossible to believe that this place was anything but a theater. It’s cleaner and more elegant than some of the theaters I’ve been to on