“You should totally make him lasagna for that,” Elsie said. “I emailed you the recipe. Did you see it?”
“Yes…”
She had sent me a three-page single-spaced Word document with instructions. I had glanced at it on the train then promptly decided Chris was never eating a lasagna made by my two hands.
“It’s not happening again,” I said flatly. My friends all booed.
“I’m supposed to be getting an annulment!” I protested. “That’s the plan.”
“This is your one and only chance to get laid for the next decade,” Sophie told me. “Remember in college when you were lusting after that hunky lacrosse player with the big trust fund and even bigger package?”
“He was a complete dick.” I felt sick at the memory.
“Yeah, but remember how completely obsessed you were? Your grades started slipping, and you were having those weird dreams. And then you hopped into bed with that creepy guy who was obsessed with collecting antique action figures.”
Ivy shuddered.
“That was definitely a mistake, but Chris is the bigger mistake.”
“No,” Sophie said, clapping her hands in front of me. “Chris isn’t the mistake. Not sleeping with him is. This is how it starts. You’re going to start obsessing about him being your boyfriend and start making rash decisions that affect our business. Remember the stalker scrapbook you made of the hunky lacrosse jock? You’re going to turn as obsessive about Chris. You’re going to miss jobs, your work quality will go down, and you’ll stop sleeping.”
I chewed my lip. The reality was that I had already been slipping. I was behind on my editing, I was behind on my coffee-table book, and I could barely sleep at night with Chris just across the hall, imagining my hands all over him, feeling his cock inside of me.
Sophie patted me on the shoulder. “You need to screw him a few times, then you’ll get bored and you’ll go back to your usual efficient self.”
“I can’t screw him; he’s going to think I’m a gold digger! I’ll be homeless! My grandmother can’t survive on the streets.”
“Actually,” Elsie said, “my money is on your grandmother and the parrot doing just fine. I don’t see you lasting a week.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I’ll have to deal with this problem another way. I promised Chris we would have a clean separation. No muss, no fuss. Sex makes things messy.”
“If you do anal with a condom, it helps keep some of that mess down,” Brea remarked.
We peered at her as she deftly embroidered a veil.
“You are reading too many romance novels.”
“Not reading—they’re audiobooks!”
Elsie shuddered. “She was listening to something with tentacles earlier.”
“And claws!” Brea said happily.
“Does Mark know what you’re reading?” I asked apprehensively.
“He pretends like he doesn’t, but then I jump his bones when I’m super excited about a particular book.”
“That’s what you need to do to Chris,” Amy suggested. “Just make it seem super casual. Take off your bra, throw it at him, then spread ’em wide and say, ‘Come and get it.’”
I made a face. “He doesn’t want me like that. Last night and this morning were a mistake.”
“Last night and this morning,” Ivy remarked, “are not a mistake on his part.”
“I’m sure he’s regretting it.”
“Not with tits like those!” Brea said.
My phone chimed. I bet it was one of the brides asking about their photos. I had to finish those.
