"Have you known her long?"
"A couple of years. We met in college, then we both got hired at the Windsor so we decided to move here together and be roommates."
"Ah." I hadn't realized her roommate was an employee too, but it makes sense. I know we did a lot of hiring at college job fairs. Fuck, I hate the reminder that Lydia was in college so recently.
"I'll take this," she says, taking the lamp from my hand. I'd forgotten I was even holding the hideous thing. She disappears into one of the bedrooms so I take stock of her apartment. I think this is a relatively new development. The apartment itself isn't huge but the floor plan is open and the appliances look new. The couch looks new, along with the end tables and lamps. Normal lamps, I note, not shaped like a cat or a unicorn or whatever the fuck else she's into. There's an old dresser that's been painted teal being used to hold the television and a kitchen table with mismatched chairs that I suspect came from Goodwill. There's a sash of some kind hanging from a cork board near the kitchen table. Like a pageant sash, but uglier. I walk closer to check it out as Lydia calls out from the bedroom that she's packing normal stuff.
This sash is even more ridiculous than the lamp. There's something called a bar badge sewn onto it. And a dating app badge. And a confidence badge. Pinned to the bulletin board but not sewn onto the sash is a Rhys badge. And a sex badge. And a butt stuff badge.
My cock throbs at the idea of taking Lydia's ass but my mind is stuck on the Rhys badge. Am I some kind of a game to her?
The front door opens and Payton appears. I step away from the bulletin board as Lydia pops out of her room with a happy exclamation over her friend's arrival. She introduces us and then pauses, taking a second glance at her friend.
"Payton, why are you still wearing the same thing you had on last night?"
"Um," Payton replies, glancing down at herself as if in confusion. "Am I? Enough about me. How was the sex last night?"
"Payton!" Lydia's eyes widen and she shoots me a look, her expression mortified. "I'm not going to tell you what Rhys is like in bed when he's standing right here."
"Okay, so tomorrow at lunch?" Payton seems totally nonplussed over Lydia's rebuttal. Lydia's eyes dart back and forth between me and Payton.
"Probably not then either, Payton."
"Ohhh," Payton drawls, looking between us. "Of course not. We'd never discuss such a thing. Wink, wink."
She actually says ‘wink, wink’ out loud.
"Are you almost ready? I've got a lot of work to get done this afternoon." Including giving Lydia multiple orgasms so they're fresh on her mind when she recaps it during her lunch. Because impressing this virgin has somehow, inexplicably, become my thing.
Twenty-Two
LYDIA
Rhys disappears into his home office almost as soon as we return to the hotel. Besides his bedroom and the room he's using as an office there's a spare bedroom, but Rhys places my suitcase in his room and tells me to unpack. So I do. I line up my shampoo and conditioner next to his in the shower. I hang my clothes next to his in the closet and I pretend this is all normal and that he likes me. Likes me a girlfriend amount, not a hooker amount, which is ridiculous because no one moves their girlfriend in after one date.
I check the fridge and find it empty save for bottled water, craft private-label beer from Hennigan's, orange juice, a carton of eggs and a bottle of mustard. There's a basket of fresh fruit on the counter so I help myself to a pear and then stare at the view of the Vegas Strip while I eat it.
After that I've officially run out of things to do and I think it's been all of half an hour since I got here so I doubt Rhys is emerging from his office anytime soon. So I resort to my normal Sunday afternoon activity: pajamas and home renovation shows on cable. I'm in my favorite pair of sheet pajama pants and a tank top, sprawled out on Rhys's couch waiting to find out which house a couple from Downers Grove, Illinois chooses on their house hunt, when the front door opens and Canon walks in.
"Oh, hey, I didn't realize you were here," he says, spotting me halfway to the bedroom Rhys has his office set up in. I'm slumped on the couch with my feet on the coffee table and my phone in my hand playing a word game while I wait to find out if location trumps yard space for the Illinois couple. "Have you moved in?" Canon asks with a wide grin, eyeing the way I'm sprawled on the sofa in pajamas.
"Basically," I say, shrugging my shoulder as if I've got no idea how this happened either. Mostly I avert my gaze because he just saw me yesterday wearing a sheer nightie auctioning my virginity and that is super-embarrassing.
"Wow. This is so much better than I anticipated," he says, laughing to himself as he continues down the hall to find Rhys.
The Illinois couple picks the house with the good yard and the outdated kitchen. I score thirty-four points spelling the word ‘jeed.’ I don't even know what that word means. I mostly just move the letters around until I get a word worth a decent number of points and then I hit play.
Rhys and Canon emerge from the office, Canon telling us to have a good night, and then he's gone. Rhys flips the safety deadbolt as the door closes, walks over to where I'm sitting and stops.
"Dinner?"
Oh.
"You want me to get dressed?" I toss the blanket off of myself and place my feet on the floor and stand. Getting redressed on a Sunday is so not my idea of a good time.
"No, we'll eat here."
"Eat what? You don't have any food." I drop back onto the sofa with my blanket, relieved I don't have to get dressed.
"We'll order from the kitchen. What do you want?"
"Do you order all your meals from the kitchen?"
"Pretty much," he says like this isn't a weird thing. I wonder how I'm going to make it without Del Taco. I bet I can get Payton to bring me an iced java coffee on her way to work. "What do you want?" He's walked over to the kitchen and picked up some kind of smart screen device that I saw earlier on a charging dock next to the stove. The stove that still had the instruction manual inside of it.
"I don't know. What do they have? Do you have a menu?"
"They have whatever you want."
"Whatever I want?"
"Yes."
"So I could order…" I search my brain for something really outlandish and come up totally blank. Surely they can make a cheeseburger or a pepperoni pizza or a chicken salad or a turkey sandwich. "I could order lemon pie for dinner and they'd bring it?"
"I have no idea how long it would take but yes, they'd bring it. Did you want lemon pie?" He's tapping on the screen and I hope he's not just ordered me a lemon pie because I don't actually like lemon pie. It was just the wildest thing I could come up with on short notice, which is really really lame.
"What are you having?"
"Grilled chicken, a baked potato and broccoli."
"Oh! I know what I want." I'm sort of excited now because this is my favorite thing ever, but making it myself requires buying so many ingredients that it's really not cost-effective. He raises his brow in question so I continue. "I'd like a salad with shredded chicken, corn, black beans, avocado, tomatoes, cheese and cilantro lime dressing on the side."