Page 99 of For Pleasure Or Worse

Frankie shuddered. “Why the fuck would you want that?”

“Oh come on, you’re not curious?”

“Curious enough to watch my best friend wank his dick on camera? Nah, I’m good.”

Tyler scoffed out a refute. “Well it’s not like we can watch the ones with Tally in them. I’m just supporting the biz.”

God bless him, the big himbo whore. It didn’t make me want to crawl into my asshole any less, but at least I knew the respect was there and that’s honestly all I could have asked for.

“I didn’t know we were all hanging out in here.” It was Angelo’s turn to show up outside the bedroom, sticking his head in timidly. He shimmied inside and found a spot against the windowsill. The room was collapsing in on itself, but I welcomed it. It felt so much less lonely and gave me some hope that I still had family, even if family came in a different packaging. These men didn’t need to be here, keeping me company, making jokes, lifting my spirits. Yet they were.

“Is that what you’re wearing to the airport?” Ophelia pointed at my sweatpants, tank top, the threadbare zip-up sweatshirt I had hanging off my shoulder, and my hard-soled moccasin slippers. Effectively: my pajamas. And yes, I would most certainly be wearing them because if I had to slip my shoes off in a TSA line, I’d do so without causing a scene.

“Yes, Mom,” I replied.

Phee took to zipping my suitcase closed, struggling with the final edge of it and then hopping up on the bed to sit on top of the hard pink shell while she wrestled the zipper completely closed. Tyler looked bemused and impressed.

“So, how does it work? You just…you flip on the ring light and fuck?” Sam piped up.

“Sometimes.” I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation. I’d given Mateo a lap dance in front of everyone in this room less than twelve hours ago, so talking about the details of running a sex cam business was tame in retrospect. There was no visual to go along with the explanation this time at least. “I guarantee you that whatever you’re imagining is exactly what it is.”

“You don’t want to know what I’m imagining,” Angelo said. “I can get really weird.”

“I’ll fill in the blanks for you so that we never have to talk about it again.” Frankie pinched his nose and took a dramatic centering breath. I could tell that with even over a decade inspecial operations, Matty and I had still given him a pinnacle moment of trauma, and I’d wear that like a prideful badge of honor. “The only reason I know about this little side gig, and you guys don’t, is because I walked in on Cap dressed as Santa Claus porking Mrs. Claus under my own goddamn roof. That shit you don’t forget.”

“It was our highest-paying video of the year, for what it’s worth,” I added. “Even better than the leprechaun.”

“What’s the romantic counterpart of a leprechaun?” Phee mused. The boys thought hard, their eyes creasing inquisitively. Frankie’s frown deepened and his head shook back and forth like someone trying to erase a picture off an Etch A Sketch.

“You’ll never know.” I grinned big.

“I need to know,” Angelo complained. He scrubbed a hand down his face as if the riddle would haunt him. “Female leprechauns don’t exist. So if you’re not doing your research, there’s bigger problems at stake here.”

“Didn’t Mateo tell you? That job he’s hiring you for is actuallydirectorof video content.”

“I’m taking my name out of the hat.”

“Where the hell is everybody?” a voice called from the hallway a second before my husband lumbered into the room, stopping short and looking around at all of our friends gathered in several places. His thick eyebrows drew together and steam wafted from the mug of coffee in his hand. I gestured lazily when he found me in the chair. “Is this an intervention?” Mateo asked.

“We didn’t want it to come to this, but you forced us.” Sam dropped his head and put his hands on his hips. The room fell silent, confused. He was a man of very few undeserved words, and the tone was a touch too serious. “We’re worried about you. Doing porn with a cock that small has to be some level of self-harm. Are you okay, Cap? We can get you the help you need.”

We exploded in laughter. A warmth rushed through me, like medicine aiding an aching, cold heart. It would be okay, all of it. The secret being let out, my family, our wedding, the future of this, no matter what it looked like. Because I had them.

Maybe it didn’t always feel like it, but I deserved this happiness. Not for small glints of time like drops of rain in a pool, all the time. I deserved to swim in it.

“Maybe I was supposed to have brothers,” I muttered. The swell of attention was back on me, and Frankie placed a hand on my knee and shook it. Beneath the lip of his faded ball cap there was that beholden kind of love brightening his dark eyes, and a small smile tugged at his full lips.

“You do have brothers,” he said.

I put my hand over his gratefully, fighting a whole shelf of emotions from being knocked down and trying my hardest not to cry, because when that started it wouldn’t stop. But then I favored a glance at a reassuring Angelo, and an agreeable Sam, and landed on an already teary-eyed Tyler and the dam burst open.

“Look what you did, Pike.” Tyler sniffled. “You made her cry.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ, Ech. Get it together,” Mateo said, crossing the room to lean down and kiss me on the top of the head. I swiped my tears away with the sleeve of my sweatshirt. When we finally got home I’d need a full detox and an uninterrupted forty-eight hours in my bed. Vegas was going to be a dark strike on our vacation destination list for the foreseeable future.

At that point I was practically aching for South Floridian humidity and the familiar coastal palm trees. My coffeemaker, my car, to get back to work and throw myself into it. I could tell I wasn’t the only one chomping at the bit to be home. It might not be any better than hereemotionally; we had to have hard conversations with both his parents, and mine, and though I’dnever be ready for that the same way you’d never be ready for death, I was less afraid.

Angelo pushed off the windowsill and to the door of the ensuite bathroom. “You guys got any tissues in here?” He closed the door behind him, right before flicking on the light. I looked at Ophelia, but she was already staring wide-eyed at me with a wicked glimmer.

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