Page 9 of Playboy For Hire

“Hmmph. I’ll send her to outer space if she runs her mouth again.” Thea fixed me with a firm look. “But if you’re not going to tell them you broke up, I suppose there’s only one thing for it. You’ll have to hire someone.”

“I—huh?”

I don’t know what I’d been expecting her to say. Join a silent order of monks? Go on a mission trip to Kenya that never ended? Actually change my name and fly to Mexico after all? Any of those would have made more sense coming out of her mouth.

“You mean like…a…a…” I couldn’t even make myself finish the sentence. Whatever word I used—sex worker, prostitute, rent boy—all of them were impossible to say to my great-aunt’s face.

“A gigolo?” She arched an eyebrow.

One point for her. I would never have come up with that word on my own. But still. I gaped at her.

“I don’t know why you’re looking at me like that,” she said. “Just because I’m a godly woman doesn’t mean I don’t know how the world works. I watched all-male fornication on a nude beach in Marseilles in nineteen-sixty-six. I am hardly an innocent—”

“Wait, what?”

“—but in any case, that’s not what I was referring to. You don’t need to pay someone for sexual intercourse, you have your apps for that. What you need is someone to be your date.”

I stared at her, trying to figure out where to start.

“Okay, one, I thought you wanted me to get off the hookup apps. Two, aren’t you also the person who told me I needed to lieless, not more? And three, even if I were going to consider your proposal, which I’m not, because it’s a patently insane thing to suggest, where would I find such a guy in six day’s time?”

She shook her head regretfully. “I always thought it was a shame you didn’t go in for trial law. You’re a very persuasive speaker, you know.”

“Auntie Thea—”

“But not persuasive enough!” She cackled at my confusion. “I’ve got answers to refute all your evidence.”

“My evidence?”

“Your jurisprudence lex loci mens rea habeas corpus ex post facto.”

“Do you even know what any of those words mean, or have you just been watching too much Law and Order?”

“One, you have said yourself that you hardly get any use out of those apps.” She ticked the points off on her fingers. “Two, this isn’t a new lie, merely an extension of an old one. And three, you use a website called Heartthrobs Homunculus.” She paused, tilting her head to the side. “No, that’s not right. Heartbeats Rhinoceros? Oh, I know I have it written down somewhere. Violet told me all about it at lunch yesterday.”

She began searching around on the TV tray, the side table, and the pockets of her wheelchair, while I still tried to make sense of what she’d said.

“Why were you talking about this with Violet?” I asked slowly, a sense of dread building in my gut.

She looked up from her search to grace me with a brilliant smile. “Sweetheart, you are the light of my life. Who else would I talk about at lunch but you? All the ladies are very invested in finding you a man. Why, Lucille even offered to set you up with her granddaughter’s soccer coach, Marcus. Did you know Marcus was gay? I certainly didn’t, but he’s a successful architect too. Only forty-eight.”

“I didn’t know Marcus existed until four seconds ago. And forty-eight? That’s only five years younger than Dad.”

“Then he and your father would have plenty to talk about, I’m sure.” She tutted. “But I know how you like to do things for yourself, so I told her no, that wouldn’t do, which was when Violet brought up Heart Attack Hotel or whatever this company is named. You know what? I’ll just give her a call, and she can tell you herself.”

“Auntie Thea—”

But it was too late. Thea had already picked her tablet up off the side table and was using it to video call Violet, who lived just a few doors down the hallway.

Not for the first time, I regretted telling Thea anything about my love life. But she was so good at wheedling information out of me with her gentle hand touches, understanding eyes, and empathetic murmurs of ‘how difficult that must be,’ all of which masked the curiosity of an alley cat, the confidence of acharging bull, and the nose of a vulture for sniffing out tidbits of information.

Finding out I was the talk of her Ladies Who Lunch group should not have surprised me, but Thea was really on another level when it came to making me feel two steps behind. I hadn’t even told her about my little boyfriend lie directly, but she’d talked to Nana one day about the guest list and found out all about it herself.

And Auntie Thea had the tracking powers of a bloodhound—or perhaps just a more realistic picture of my romantic prospects of late. She knew that I couldn’t have been telling my grandmother the truth. So she’d kept at me, day after day, hammering me with questions about my supposed boyfriend until I’d broken down and told her there was none.

“Violet? Is that you?” Thea asked, squinting at her tablet like she was staring into the sun.

I sighed and reached over, tapping her reading glasses where they stuck out of one of her pockets. She clicked her tongue but put them on.

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