“I never what?” There’s a lot of ways that sentence could end, and none of them are good. I’ve always been careful to never let on that Neil is the most attractive man I’ve ever met. I’ve never torn his shirt off, either. Or shown him my breasts.
His face is seriously confused. “Charli… you told me before that you don’t fool around with men.”
Oh. That’s mostly true, especially lately. But really? That’s what he finds so shocking here?
“But last night you… and I…” He swallows hard. “We were going to…” Then he lifts up the covers and looks down at his body.
His naked body. I can’t see it right this second, but I saw it last night.
“I’m not wearing pants,” he says again. “We were going to—” He’s like a stuck record now.
“Okay, look.” I clap my hands. “Time is wasting. Can we just get out of here, and worry about this later? Can I have the shower?”
“S-sure,” he stammers. He’s still looking at his dick, as if checking to see if it’s still there.
“Close your eyes, please,” I say primly.
Shockingly, he obeys me. He flops back onto the pillow and squeezes his eyes shut.
I dart out of bed and make a run for the bathroom.
TWO
PLAYING THE RICH ASSHOLE
Neil
I’m going to die of embarrassment. Or die of this headache.
Or both at the same time.
It’s not the nakedness or the drunkenness that’s killing me. I look good naked, and I rarely get drunk, because it makes my diabetes harder to manage.
And it’s not the clip-on tie. I wear what I want. Fuck the haters.
But the details from last night are starting to cut through the fog in my brain. Charli’s breasts woke me up for good. Those spectacular breasts that I’ve spent the last year and a half trying not to ogle.
Last night she let me, though. No, she actually encouraged me by whipping off her dress.
And I’d pounced. I’d been sloppy drunk for the first time in years. After we’d rolled around a little, I took off my pants while she tried to remove my tie and my shirt.
She’d been only partially successful. But eventually she gave up and kissed her way down my body.
I’d been in heaven, having guiltily jacked off to this very fantasy quite a few times. Then she’d—and I swear this actually happened, it wasn’t a fever dream—put her mouth on me. Everything had been pure bliss.
But I’m a greedy bastard. I’d wanted more. So I’d grabbed a condom off the bedside table and tried to put it on, but…
I let out a loud groan of despair. Because unless I’m remembering a nightmare, I’d suddenly been afflicted with whiskey dick at just the wrong moment.
God, how embarrassing. I will never live this down.
Or maybe I will. Charli asked me to forget that it ever happened. And suddenly I’m on board with this plan.
Nothing happened. Not one thing. Not the whiskey dick or the blowjob. Okay, it’s going to hurt me to give up the memory of my hand threaded through Charli’s red hair as she—
Whew. My cock stirs at the mental image.
But no. I can’t keep that in the spank bank if I don’t want to remember what happened afterwards. So I have to delete the whole mental file, no? The breasts and the stumbling into the elevator. We’d been laughing like nutters. I’m pretty sure an elderly couple had exited the elevator early just to escape our howls.
“We gotta celebrate,” Charli had said. And I’d agreed. We’d been celebrating our…
Whoa.
Hold up. That memory can’t be right. Can it?
I leap out of the bed and cross the room, looking for evidence. Not that it’s difficult to find. My belongings have been tossed helter-skelter on the desk in the way of a hotel drunk. And right there, beside the key card for this suite, is a certificate with a decorative gold border looping around the edges of the page.
A marriage certificate. With my name on it. And Charli’s.
Holy fuck.
“Holy fuck,” Charli calls from the bathroom. “What is this thing in my hair?”
I can’t answer her, because I’ve lost all capacity for speech. Is there any chance this certificate is fake? Who’d marry a drunk person to another drunk person?
There’s a crumpled receipt on the desk that answers the question pretty handily. It’s from the TruLove Vegas Wedding Chapel, and the charge is for over twelve thousand dollars. It’s itemized, because—as I learned in childhood—when you fuck up your life, there’s usually somebody there to make sure you know the details of your self-destruction.
Wedding music: $57.50
Ceremony: $250
Flowers: $75
I glance around the room and find a bouquet of white roses on the floor near the bedroom door. So that charge tracks.
Deluxe Multi-stone Engagement Ring: $11,000
“Seriously,” she calls. “What is this thing? Neil? It’s heavy. Like jewelry. Help!”
At the sound of Charli’s distress, I snap out of my stupor and cross to the master bathroom. When I open the door, I find that she’s wrapped her body in a towel before summoning me. But I can still see cleavage.
I yank my eyes upward. “What’s the matter?” My voice is outwardly calm, but inwardly I’m wondering if I can take care of this little marriage thing before Charli finds out. Or I investigate it, at least. So I know for sure if we’re really—
Yeah, I can’t even think it. Too crazy.
I concentrate on the problem at hand. Charli clutches a section of her hair, where there’s an object imbedded in her red waves. It’s in an awkward spot at the back of her head. No wonder she can’t untangle it herself.
I reach up with shaking fingers and clear the loosest strands away from what turns out to be an eleven-thousand-dollar, multi-stone engagement ring. And by “multi-stone” they meant multiple different stones. It’s like a rainbow parade in jewelry form.
“Holy fuck,” I whisper. Somehow this makes it real in a way that words on a receipt don’t seem to capture.
“What?” she snaps. “Did you just realize you’re naked from the waist down?”
“That is the least of our problems,” I mutter. “Just don’t look at my dongle.”
“Oh, sure. The same way you didn’t just stare at my breasts? Fine. Is it out yet? OUCH!”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to pull so hard. But the last bit of hair was stuck between two stones.”
“Two stones? Of what?”
“Nothing.” I palm the ring, still in full-on panic mode.
“Neil, show me what was stuck in my hair.”
“No.” I put my hand behind my back with all the finesse of a kindergartener who’s stolen a cookie.
“Cornelius!” The pitch of her voice is high and scared. “Show me. Because it felt like a...” She swallows hard.
“A what?”
“A ring. A damn ring. And I don’t wear rings. Except I think maybe…” She takes a deep breath. “What did we do?”
I pull my hand out and slowly open it. We both look down, and then we both take identical sharp breaths.