The curvy blonde closes her mouth with a snap. “Yeah,” she says after a strained moment. “Sorry.”
Now I feel like a creep for spoiling their fun. “I didn’t mean to shout. I’ve just…” I shrug. “Got a lot on.”
“Yeah, you do.” Finley swings her legs out of reach as Rosa aims a slap at her ankles. “Ow. That’s physical abuse.” She points at me. “I have witnesses.”
“Are you okay?” Rosa asks, ignoring her. “You closed the door when you found him in there, so I thought you knew him.”
“I do know him.”
“Should we do something different next time? Call the police?”
I shake my head and scrunch up my face. “No, nothing like that. He’s fine.”
A hint of amusement dances back into Rosa’s eyes. “Yeah, he is.”
“It’s okay if you enjoy watching porn, too,” Finley says. “Although I feel obliged to give you a lecture on the patriarchy.”
“Women earn more than men in porn,” Rosa shoots back. “You should lecture on the matriarchy.”
“They also get more abuse.”
“Oh, hun. We get that everywhere.” Rosa turns to me. “You know you can pick up boyfriends anywhere, right? You don’t have to do things you’re not comfortable with to keep them.”
“Zach’s not my boyfriend.” I shift in my seat, uncertain how to explain things without actually explaining. “When I told him I’d never given a blow job, he thought he was helping by giving me a visual example.”
The pair roll their eyes at each other.
“Fine. If you don’t want to know—”
“Don’t sulk. Jesus.” Finley points across the table to Rosa. “You know she’s the queen of the blow jobs, don’t you?”
I examine Rosa’s face for signs of a joke, but don’t see any. “Really?”
“No, not really,” she snaps. “That’s not a real thing. What Miss I-only-lick-pussy is trying to say is that I’m a sex worker.”
“You’re a sex worker,” I parrot.
“I’m not wracking up tens of thousands of dollars of debt before I know my degree will earn me something,” she explains as though detailing why she got a paper route. “This way, I start out even.”
“You start out ahead,” Finley says with something close to admiration. She rubs her fingers together. “Miss Moneybags.”
“Says the girl who’ll take me to the cleaners when I want my next car warrant.”
“Well, not yet. Give me a few years.” Finley gets to her feet and disappears into the kitchen, coming back soon after with a bag of crisps and some rice crackers. “Snacks,” she says at my raised eyebrows. “I feel like we’ve skipped to the middle of some serious slumber party action and if we’re to continue talking, we need lots and lots of snacks.”
With a laugh, I settle back in my chair. There’s no way I’m going into the finer points of all the trouble I’m in, but for anything else, I’m game.
* * *
ZACH
“No,” Caylon says, his dead eyes tracking my movements as I pace back and forth across the room. “We said no contact. There’s no need to renegotiate. She just has to learn to stay outside our boundaries.”
“She won’t leave.”
“Then take the gun to the police like you threatened to.”
Trent rolls his eyes at me, and I try to hide the smile because it’ll drive Caylon up the wall, and he’s already bent out of shape. “We can’t do that.”
