“Damn. Wow, nice!” he compliments.
I glance over at the real Theo, squirming.
He nods in agreement with his drunken self. “Very nice.”
Chuckling, I look back at the screen. Theo is unfastening the Velcro on the back of his outfit, pushing it off his shoulders and down his waist. I get a great view of his arse in his tight black Calvin Kleins as he bends. When he tries to step out of the bulky Yoshi part of his costume, he trips and loses his balance. His hands reach out and grab me, and we both go down, disappearing from view.
The giggling intensifies, and then suddenly, there are a few beats of silence before … sounds of noisy, sloppy kissing.
My eyes widen. Theo and I both lean in to get a better look at the phone screen.
“Oh shit, please don’t tell me we made a sex tape.” I groan loudly.
Seconds later, we both reappear. I stand first and then Theo. We’re grabbing at each other, frantic, bumping into stuff as we stumble against the wall, Theo’s body pressing against mine tightly as my hands scratch at his back and fist into his hair. We kiss like we’re trying to kill each other.
“Well, that escalated quickly,” Real Theo says beside me.
My face burns, and I can’t contain my bubble of laughter.
In the video, Theo picks me up, and my legs wrap around his waist. When he manoeuvres us towards the camera so I’m sitting on the counter, blurring the image with a close-up of my back and my bunched-up costume, my possessions go everywhere, make-up scattering onto the floor as we fumble awkwardly, obviously pawing at each other.
Just when I think it can’t get any worse, it does.
“Ouch. Okay, you’re a biter.” Video Theo chuckles. “Bed or counter?”
“I don’t care where we do it as long as you get inside me right now!” I sound so breathless and excited in the video that a wave of shame washes over me.
“Bed then. More room.” He picks me up again, and we’re on the move, bumping into the door on the way out of the bathroom.
The camera continues filming the empty room, but in the background, though fainter now, you can hear us kissing, moaning, and giggling. Video Theo is humming the Wonder Woman theme song.
“No, leave the boots on, Luce. They’re hot as shit.” His video voice is all gravelly and filled with lust. It makes my breath catch and my whole body ache with longing.
I wince and jab at the screen, stopping the video. My face feels like it’s on fire. “That’s quite enough of that!”
Theo’s mouth pops open. “No, come on. I wanna listen. Don’t you wanna hear how it ends?” He reaches over and tries to take the phone from my hand, his eyes excited.
I shake my head and hold it out of reach. “No! Jeez, it’s over three hours long. It’s filled my whole phone memory. I’m deleting it. I don’t even want to know what we got up to; denial is a much better idea. What we don’t know won’t hurt us.”
He rolls his eyes. “Three hours? I’m not even gonna try to blag and say I can last that long. I got thirty, maybe thirty-five minutes of solid rutting at the most. Drunken fumbles … probably less than half that. Three hours? No way. We’d be dead.”
My body stiffens at his words, and I raise a disbelieving eyebrow. Thirty-five minutes. Is that a joke? I quickly filter through my sexual encounters with Lucas over the years. They’re all essentially the same—some foreplay, then seven or maybe eight minutes of actual screwing, if I was lucky. Thirty-five minutes? No way.
Theo presses a hand over his crotch and shifts uncomfortably. “I know I shouldn’t get turned on from watching us have a drunken hook-up, but damn, that looked hot. I wish I could remember it.”
He looks at me and grins, laughing as I slap his chest with the back of my hand. I don’t disagree with him though.
A sudden surge of panic grips me. “This had better not be uploaded anywhere!”
I quickly do a scan of my socials and his, but it appears this one was just for us. Thank God.
I breathe a sigh of relief and look over at Theo. His eyes twinkle as he looks at me over the rim of his coffee cup.
I gulp and know this needs fixing. We get on great, and I don’t want that to change because of a drunken mistake neither of us remembers. Well, sort of don’t remember … I get another micro flash of his mouth on my body, skin on skin, but I force it away.
“Listen, I don’t want to feel awkward about this now. The wedding is today. I don’t want to be walking on eggshells or feeling self-conscious about this the whole time. Neither of us remembers it, so I think we should pretend it never happened and move on.” I purse my lips and wait to see how he feels.
He nods in agreement. “Okay. We’re both adults. We can agree not to let this get weird.”
“Great.” I grin and reach for my coffee, taking a big gulp. The pills are kicking in now. I already feel a tad more human.
I turn my attention back to my phone, and just as my finger hovers over the delete button, Theo says, “Ah, come on, Luce. Before you delete it, can’t we hear how it ends? Please? Come on, you know you want to.” He nudges me in the ribs with his elbow, his bottom lip jutting out pleadingly as he bats his eyelashes. “Let’s play for it. I win, we skip to the end and listen before deleting. You win, we straight-up delete and never mention it again.” He holds out his fist on his palm, ready for another ridiculous round of Rock, Paper, Scissors.
A chuckle escapes my lips. “You do realise this isn’t how all adults make decisions or settle debates, right?”
He grins and waits, one eyebrow raised. Giving in, I put my coffee down and then match his gesture, and we thump our hands and throw our shapes.
“Yes!” He crows happily as he defeats my scissors with his rock.
I groan and roll my eyes. Though I must admit, I’m more than a little curious myself. I pass him my phone and gulp the last of my coffee as he slides his finger across the screen to skip to the last five minutes. I hold my breath, strangely excited. It feels naughty, and I kind of like it.
When he presses play, soft snoring emanates from the phone.
“Oh, what an ending!” I burst out laughing, shaking my head, deciding a nice, hot shower is in order. I can’t keep the smile from my face.
fourteen
Theo
While Lucie busies herself in the bathroom, I turn my attention back to the video. I’m not ready to admit defeat. I need to hear it. Does that make me a pervert? Probably. But it’s not like I’m watching someone else … I have every right to check and see if I managed to make her moan my name. I scan through the video, stop-starting every few minutes, trying to find the highlights. When I find them, hearing her moan my name and begging me not to stop, it’s so hot that I’m instantly hard as steel. I press my hand against my crotch to try and relieve the ache, but it doesn’t help.
Damn, why can’t I remember this? And why the heck didn’t I take the phone into the room with me? I bet this looks even hotter than it sounds.
My mouth is dry. I would give anything not to have been this drunk, so I could remember every second of this encounter. What a damn waste. She looked that hot, and I got her naked, yet I can’t recall a single second of it? Life isn’t fair.