Page 87 of Start With A Slap

“I’m not that sensitive, Ivy,” he said with a chuckle. “Did you have a good time, at least? Before you got sick?”

“It was... Yeah, I mean, I got to see a lot of art, a few old friends… It was fun but fast, you know. I didn’t have a lot of time.”

“How was the event?”

“Uneventful.”Unlike the afterparty.“He had a couple meetings and accepted an award.”

Her mind wandered to his speech; how it made her feel… flashbacks to their tryst in the rain…

“Biggest Ego in the Hotel Game?”

That snapped her back to the present. “That’s the one.”

He patted her arm. “I’m glad you had fun.”

There was something she’d been dying to say, and since he was asking... “Did you...” She tried again: “I met your grandmother.”

He froze in mid-inhale, and opened his eyes. “What?”

“Sever’s mom?” Uh-oh. What if he didn’t know she existed? “She’s in Paris, and she’s um, she’s dying, I think.”

Jason finally let go of his breath, nodding slowly.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” He sat up, cracked his neck, then reached for his discarded jeans on the floor. “All good.”

“You’ve met her, right?”

Still not making eye contact with her, he stuck a cigarette behind his ear. “I have had the displeasure.”

“Oh my god, right?” She sat up. “How beastly is she? She called me vapid. Me! Vapid!”

He ignored that. “She’s dying for sure? He said that?”

“Yeah, and she looked it too. I mean, she’s gotta be at least eighty...”

“She’s only sixteen years older than him.”

“What? No way!” She added up the difference. “She reallyisdying.”

Jason scratched his head and put on his jeans.

Dragging his tired ass to the balcony for a smoke after an orgasm? This was unprecedented. Pre-affair, she would have pressed for an explanation. Now, it was easier to keep things on the shallow.

CHAPTER 26

Afterglow

STOP SEXTING ME!

Ivy was at work, under a virtual avalanche of case work that she’d uncharacteristically let pile up, and now deadlines were looming. She didn’t have time for Sever’s provocative trips down memory lane, much less the time it took to keep deleting them.

She’d spent the night before taking every step she could to lock down her phone and cover her digital tracks. She changed her password, turned off previews, set Sever’s ring to silent and changed his ID tag to “Le Mal”. That way, even if Jason glanced over her shoulder, it would look like a text from Mala.

And thoughI can taste you on my tonguecoming from her lesbian cousin would be tough to explain in its own right, at least it wasn’t coming from his father.

Start taking my calls.

---