Page 39 of Fan Favorite

“Am I?” she looked at him quizzically.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “It’s a little mean, don’t you think?”

“Since when do you care about mean?”

Since when, indeed. Down on the beach Edie was piling her hair on top of her head with one hand and fanning her chest with the other. She looked over her shoulder and caught his eye. Smiled. Peter’s heartburn surged and he fished a roll of Tums out of his pocket, feeling—and not for the first time—just a little bit terrified of Edie Pepper.

14

Edie Pepper was standing in a semicircle of possible wives, still daydreaming about that key ceremony kiss and digging a wad of swimsuit out of her buttocks, when she had the peculiar sensation of being watched. She froze, her hand still lodged in her butt crack, and slowly looked over her shoulder. Lo and behold, there was Ted, down on one knee in the sand, adjusting the lens of a camera pointed directly at her ass.

“Ted,” she hissed. “Knock it off!”

Edie flapped her hand to shoo Ted away until she accidentally spanked Aspen, the NBA cheerleader from San Antonio, hard on her bare and impressively firm derriere.

“Don’t break a nail, sis,” Aspen said, her eyes slit.

“Sorry! I just didn’t want him filming my ass.”

Aspen laughed. “What makes you think he’s filmingyourass?”

Edie took a good look at Aspen’s butt. It looked like it had been drawn by some pervert at Pixar, with impossibly round cheeks offset by a gleaming white thong that ran between herlegs and up her backside to her shoulders, where the spandex then split into two white bands that ran down the front of her body like suspenders. Side boob, under boob, all the boob really, except for where the fabric skimmed over impossibly tiny nipples. The swimsuit continued in taut strips over her flat stomach before joining again in a tiny V at Aspen’s crotch.

Where was her pussy?Where was her pussy?was all Edie could think. Seriously, where the fuck was it? A swimsuit like that would literally slice Edie’s labia in two, leaving her spilled out the sides like the two folds of skin hanging off Jack Nicholson’s neck inSomething’s Gotta Give. Edie scanned the rest of the girls and was dumbfounded by the utopian display of demure vaginas.

“Girl, what are you wearing?” Aspen asked, peering at her.

“I was just about to ask you the same thing,” Edie said, attempting a bitchy sneer. “I’ve got dental floss bigger than that contraption.”

“Shocking. Since everything about you is”—Aspen measured with her hands—“bigger.”She mugged for the camera before holding one hand to the sky and inspecting her manicure in the sunlight. Her long, petal-pink nails were filed into sharp points.

“Actually, my real swimsuit was mysteriously sliced and diced this morning,” Edie said. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, now would you, Edward Scissorhands?”

Aspen raised one perfectly arched brow. “What’s Edward Scissorhands? Like a band?”

Edie clutched her throat in horror.

Max, the long-distance runner from Kansas City, leaned forward to join the conversation.

“No shit?” she asked, her lavender hair glinting in the sun-light.

“Shit,” Edie said ruefully.

So far Edie hadn’t spent much time with any of the girls. They mostly treated her like a pariah and avoided her, leaving Edie wandering theKeymansion while they went on dates, bored out of her mind and wondering what the fuck she was doing there. Her roommate, Parker, the artist/heiress from Palo Alto, spent the time between dates scrawling lipstick portraits of Bennett—and his girlfriends—across torn pages of theLA Times. Obviously, Edie supported any woman making a political statement, but when her own face appeared on their bedroom wall drawn over the headlineEARTH TO HIT CRITICAL GLOBAL WARMING THRESHOLD BY EARLY 2030S, it made it somewhat difficult to fantasize about getting married and having Bennett’s babies.

But from what Edie could tell, Max seemed like one of the normal ones. Today she was the only other girl in a one-piece, though Max’s was a sleek Ivy Park x Adidas with the hips cut practically to her armpits. Her body wassick. The other girls were thin. Some wereenhanced. But Max looked strong, like you could bounce quarters off her thighs. “You don’t happen to know anyone who might have a vendetta against me?” Edie asked Max, making eyes toward Aspen. “Who might want to make me look stupid?”

“What? Me?” Aspen seemed genuinely surprised. “You think I cut up your swimsuit?”

“Or maybe your BFF Zo?” Edie offered.

“Why would we do that?” Aspen asked with confusion.

“Maybe because you’re mad I’m here? Because you’re worried I’ll steal Bennett away from you?”

Aspen studied Edie’s face before leaning in for a conspiratorial whisper. “Babe, chill out. That shit’s for the cameras. Nobody touched your swimsuit. But keep an eye on Bennett, okay? You seem like a nice person. I’ve got a couple weeks on you and,trust, the guy’s a mess.”

But before Edie could process this information, a field producer bounded across the beach with the enthusiasm of a golden retriever set loose upon the sand. “Okay, okay, smiles up, big, big, let’s go! I want to see teeth! I want to see smizing! I want to see enthusiasm!” He paused and put a hand to his ear, listening to his headset. “Here comes Adam!”

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