the way, it’s nine in the morning.
“Nobody.” I have to admit, there’s a tiny bit of jealousy that courses through my veins. I don’t want Dylan to meet him. I never cared if she met Devereux, but the idea of her setting her beautiful blue eyes and batting her thick dark lashes at Lincoln has my heart pounding rapidly and seeing green.
Presley goes onto tell Dylan that I’ve been hooking up with Lincoln. I glare at her, in between fits of coughing and feeling like my chest might explode. “Will you stop telling everyone about my life? I want to remain boring.”
“At least you’re not like my sister Vi,” Mal notes, digging through her bag for her phone she’s constantly losing and teetering on the edge of 10 percent battery life. “She joined CrossFit, and now she’s picking out dicks in a book.”
Dylan moves around the bar, uninterested, and begins restocking the liquor. Presley and I, we stare at Mal like she shouldn’t have left the conversation at dicks in a book. Part of me thinks I know where this is heading because I know Vivian, Mal’s younger sister, and she’s pretty fucked up. More so than Dylan. Think Britney Spears meets Miley Cyrus breakdown. That kind of crazy.
“Uh, what?” Presley gapes at Mal. “I need more details. All of them.”
Mal smiles, finding her phone and then pulling out her charger. “Well, she joined a CrossFit gym. Now she’s sleeping with men from a dick book.”
Dylan suddenly becomes interested. “You’re gonna have to give us a bit more detail.”
“Apparently, there’s a dick book.” Mal plugs her phone underneath the register. “And in it, pictures of dicks from the men available to you know, have some fun with. You never see their faces until you pick one.”
Dylan smiles, applying a coat of dark lipstick in the mirrored glass behind the bar. “Is it cataloged by itty-bitty to you-won’t-ever-walk-right-again?”
Mal laughs, brushing locks of her hair from her shoulder. “I’m not sure, but that’d be handy, huh?”
“So what happens once they pick out a dick they want?” Curiosity bites at me. I don’t know why I find it interesting, but I do. Mal’s sister once went on a date with a dude who, she came to find out, had a butt plug in his ass all night. No lie, she dates wackos.
“They have sex and film it,” Mal adds, nonchalantly, watching as Kylo makes his way to the front, holding a box of coasters in one hand and napkins in the other. She takes both from him, but he stops and waits for her to continue. He must have heard what she said.
He smiles. “You were saying?”
Mal flicks her hand at him. “You’re a child. Go away.”
We laugh, and Kylo does too, but something tells me by the look he’s giving her, he’s no child when it comes to sex. I’ve never thought of him in that way, but I guess he’s cute. Before leaving, he sends a grin my way, an almost shy expression crossing his face.
I return the smile. No sense in being mean to the kid.
“And then what happens to the tape?” This question comes from Presley, who’s just as interested as me.
Mal’s eyes light up. “The maker of the book watches it.”
Setting my tea down, I lean into the bartop. The rain outside turns from a mist to thick drops, splatting in a rhythmic beat on the windows. “Who’s the maker?”
“No one knows.” Reaching for a bucket, Mal places it under the constant leak we can’t seem to fix in the ceiling. “They send the tape in and never hear back.”
Presley shudders. “Okay, that’s just fucking weird and probably illegal.”
Mal tips her head, amusement in her eyes. “But it’s not. No money is exchanged and the sex is consensual. And her watching it, that’s not any different than someone watching porn.”
“True.” Though I’m part of the conversation, my thoughts are not with my friends, but rather the one suspending them with anticipation. My heart stutters, my distant stare on the marina. I blink once, twice, determined to demolish interest in him. Doesn’t work.
“Enough that I can see you again?”
I think about the range of expressions he held captive with those words and wished I could have peeled back his layered thoughts.
Collective voices erupt, my attention drawn. Avie and Everett make their way into the bar, Kylo close behind them. Everett disappears near the table. Avie doesn’t. I peek over at him, baseball hat on backward, shirt wrinkled, and eyes