"You're really Kade Kingston?" Her sobs turned to sniffles, then stuttered breathing, but she slowed the rate at which she was consuming the liquor at least.
"Yeah... the one and only." I sipped my whiskey, keeping my buzz going, and turned to face her again. "What's your story, pretty girl?"
A brief hint of a smile flashed across her face, but then more tears came pouring out. I was quite certain those were brought on by the buzz she was feeling already.
"He cheated on me…. At his bachelor party, and he didn't even tell me himself. I heard his groomsmen talking about it." The wail that erupted from her chest tore through me, but it also drew a few gawking eyes.
"Hey..." I soothed, glaring at the men behind me. This girl was probably barely legal and now her entire life was turning upside down. She wasn’t exactly the sort of woman I'd find myself attracted to—hello hot mess. But no matter what sort of playboy people thought I was, I'd never do that to a woman.
Cheating wasn't just wrong, it was despicable… and with a stripper, no less.
"We were high school sweethearts, and yes, I wasn't sure if I was ready for marriage, but he didn't have to go sleeping with another woman two nights before our wedding, did he?" Lainey's hands flew up to cover her face and Jimmy handed me a clean towel, giving me the side eye and a cringing face. Clearly he understood how messed up this was too, but I wasn't just going to leave her.
"Here," I coaxed, shoving the towel in her hands. She started wiping her face and sniffling, then blew her nose into it and looked up at me.
With the makeup wiped off and her face cleaned up, the woman sitting next to me was even more ravishing. She didn't need all that paint to make her gorgeous. She had incredible bone structure, fully pouty lips, and deep brown eyes I could lose myself in. It made my heart flutter, especially when she started wrestling with the gown again and looked up at me pouting.
"Help," she whimpered, "I'm trapped in this death suit he made me buy and I want it off."
Jimmy passed by, this time sitting the bottle of rum in front of me with another wink, and I felt conflicted.
"Sure," I mumbled, not knowing where to begin. I stood with fumbling fingers like it was my first time undressing a woman, trying to unhook her bra or something. After ten full minutes I managed to get the skirt and train off, and she managed several large gulps from the bottle of rum.
The entire time, she kept rambling about her high school sweetheart, how she never did a wild thing in her life, how she was the good girl who got good grades and didn't ever do anything wrong. And every slurred sentence that escaped her lips made Jimmy give me another awkward glance. He knew how very unlike me this was.
To say Kade Kingston thought about someone other than himself would be laughable. I was the butt of someone's joke right now, but I honestly didn’t care. And I wasn’t helping her just to get laid either, which I was certain was another thing people were saying about me. Even I knew how off the wall it was for me to listen to her sob story and help her out of this gaudy gown.
But the instant that skirt hit the ground and her curves popped out, I was rock hard. It hit me like a ton of bricks, so heavy I had to sit down to avoid blowing right there in my pants. Lainey's body was on fire, and the white satin cocktail dress that hideous thing had been masking fit her like a glove.
She poured more rum into her glass, then into mine, and turned to face me. Her knee brushed mine, but she didn't pull away.
"The sad part is," she said, continuing her sob story, "that I was ready to walk down the aisle to that cheating jerk when I hadn'teven lived my life. I've never done a crazy thing in my life. Not once. When girls in high school wanted to go swim in their bra and panties, I sat on the shore and hid myself. When my college volleyball team went to a rave I stayed home. When?—"
"What sort of crazy things do you want to do, Lainey?" I asked her, interrupting her rant. She paused long enough to take another long pull from her drink and then set the glass down.
"I don't know. I'm so stupid I don't even know what crazy is. I think turning my econ paper in a day late is crazy." She laughed at herself. It brought the most radiant smile to her face, which only made my problem worse. I wasn't a total sleaze, though. No way I was going to take this woman up to my room unless she initiated it right here in plain sight in front of all these witnesses—and the dozen cameras pointed at me right now.
"Come on, you have to want something ridiculous. Sky diving, bungee jumping, swimming with sharks. What's crazy to you?"
She turned, slurping more rum, and sighed. "What's the craziest thing you've ever done?"
I actually had to think hard about what to say. I didn’t want to make her feel bad, because I'd done some pretty ridiculous things. But I also didn’t want to lie to her. My name was in every tabloid and gossip blog out there. I knew she’d probably heard some of my antics.
For the past twenty years I'd been making waves. Only now, at thirty-six, had I finally decided being the wild child wasn't cool anymore.
"Well, I surfed the Banzai Pipeline in Hawaii, and I've swam with sharks in the Great Barrier Reef?—"
"Swum," she said curtly. "Have swum... it's grammar."
I laughed so hard I snorted. Not only was she obnoxiously moral, but she was a grammar nerd too. It really got me going. "You're not kidding. You really are a goody-two-shoes.”
"God, stop judging me," she said in a tone that betrayed how mortified she was. She covered her face. "I told you. I should've just married him in a boring ceremony and had two kids and a dog and lived in a clean neighborhood with a three-bedroom house and a white picket fence. My mom would’ve loved that."
I felt bad for her, genuinely bad. It was probably the first time anyone had gotten real with me like this. Most people placated. They wanted my money or my fame or my sperm. They never wanted real, honest conversation. This was refreshing.
"Okay, okay..." I sighed, then I took a sip of my own drink. "Take crazy off the table. What sort of thing would push your boundaries, but not be too crazy for you?"
Lainey lowered her hands and looked up at me with skepticism. Her shoulders still sagged and she looked like she couldn't think of a single thing to say. So I prompted her.
