She lifts her cheek from my shoulder and beams a radiant smile at me.
“Come on baby,” I coo. “A little psycho won’t scare me off. To be honest, I get turned on by a little bit of crazy. It keeps things from getting boring for me.”
“Yeah, well, this wasn’t alittle bit of crazy, sweetie. It was a shit-ton of batshit psycho.”
I wince. “Okay, I admit you’re starting to scare me a tiny bit.”
She giggles uproariously. “One more glass of champagne and then I’ll tell youeverything,” she says with gusto, clearly savoring the fact that I’m on the edge of my proverbial seat, waiting to hear this story from her.
But, of course, since her wish is my command, I carry her to the ledge, where I fill our empty flutes from a bottle of Cristal we brought down to the pool with us.
“Aah, that’s good,” she says after taking a long sip. “Best champagne I’ve ever had.”
“I should hope so. This stuff ain’t cheap. It’s liquid gold. Now, come on. Tell me what you did to the guy. No more stalling. I know you’re enjoying torturing me. But enough is enough.”
She looks at me flirtatiously. “Okay, but in my defense, keep in mind that my dad was in treatment at this point. So I was on the brink of a nervous breakdown, as it was. And, like I said, I was more enraged at the betrayal of my trust, in my time of need, than about the cheating itself.”
“Just tell me the story already. I’ll consider all mitigating factors once I know the extent of your batshit psychosis.”
She returns her empty flute to the ledge and leans her shoulder against the side of the pool. We’re both standing now. Facing each other. Her hair is wet and slicked back. Her breasts just above the water line. And I can honestly say whatever’s about to come out of her mouth won’t scare me off in the slightest.
“Okay, so, I saw all those texts on Shawn’s phone while he was taking a shower, and I?—”
“Hold up. Sorry. How, exactly, did you see those texts and photos? Wasn’t Shawn’s phone passcode protected? If not, he’s the world’s stupidest serial cheater.”
Georgina snickers. “Yeah, he had it passcode protected. And, trust me, he never punched in the code at an angle where I could peek over his shoulder. But where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
“Oh, shit. His passcode was all zeroes, wasn’t it? Or something like 1-2-3-4?”
She giggles. “Nope. It wasn’t an obvious code. I’m just a brilliant, devious hacker.”
I pause to let her elaborate, and when she doesn’t I say, “Come on. Give it up. What’d you do?”
She giggles happily, sounding very much like a woman with an abundance of beer, tequila, and champagne in her bloodstream. “If I tell you, then I won’t be able to hack intoyourphone, whenyoustart acting weird and suspicious on me.”
Oh, Georgie. I put my palms on her cheeks and her lips part in surprise.
“Sweetheart, I’m a lot of things, some of them not so admirable, but a cheater isn’t one of them. I promise.”
She swoons in my palms, so I lean down and kiss her bee-stung lips. And, for a moment, fireworks are going off so violently and deliciously inside me, I feel physically dizzy. When our lips break apart, I nuzzle her nose and whisper, “Also, I use facial recognition.”
She bursts out laughing, and throws her arms around my neck again. And, just like that, she’s clinging to me again... which I don’t need to be told means she wants me to walk laps around the shallow end again.
“Okay, so here’s how I hacked Shawn’s phone,” she says. “The night before, when he fell asleep, I cleaned his phone screen immaculately, until there wasn’t a single smudge on it. And then, after he’d logged in several times the next morning, I peeked at the new smudges when he was in the shower.” She shrugs. “Once I had the pool of numbers to work with, I was able to figure out his code on the third try.”
“You’re a genius.”
She runs her fingers through my wet hair. “Are you scared of me now?”
“Not at all. Just impressed.”
“So, anyway, I saw those texts and photos, and lost my shit. I went straight to his closet and grabbed all of his jerseys. Shawn played basketball for UCLA, so he had?—”
“Hold the fuck up. ‘Shawn’ is ShawnGordon? This whole time we’ve been talking about motherfucking ShawnGordon?”
“Oh, God. Not you, too.”
“Georgie, he’s been UCLA’s top scorer the past two years. He’s a freak. A beast.”
