Page 3 of Puck Daddies
Luke pulls back, breathy, and extends a hand toward me, like we’re boarding a boat. “Come here,” he says, gentle and coaxing and maddening. He gestures vaguely at the room with its velvet curtains and printed rules and anonymous joy.
I don’t take his hand. “You’ve been seeing each other.”
“It’s not—” He glances at Callie, then at me, then at the ceiling like there’s an answer carved into the molding. “It’s not serious.”
Callie laughs again, softer. “Don’t be mean,” she tells him, like I’m a child who needs things softened. “We wanted to tell you together. We thought it would help you feel included.”
“Included,” I repeat, each syllable a blade. “Okay. Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to leave. If either of you come into my shop I will personally glue your hands to your wallets so you have to tip my staff for the pleasure of breathing my air.”
“Meg,” Luke says, flustered. “It’s not a big deal. Everyone’s poly these days.”
“Polyamory is not a party you spring on someone. That’s not ethical. That’s not kind. That’s not us.”
“You’ve been so…closed off. You said you wanted to try?—”
“You should have told me you were sleeping with her. You should have told me before you kissed her in front of me. You should have told me before you put me in a room where the only way to not be a buzzkill is to pretend my boundaries aren’t real. They are. You crossed them. I’m out.”
He rubs a hand over his jaw, frustrated. “You’re making a scene.”
“Deal with it.”
Callie’s smile, to her credit, falters. “Meg?—”
“Don’t,” I snap. “Don’tMegme like I’m a silly freshman and you’re the senior who knows everything.” I turn to Luke. “You brought me to a sex party to tell me you’re sleeping with someone else. You called it a surprise. You lethertell you whoIam. And when I said I didn’t want to do this, you made standing still feel like failure. Get out of my way. I’m leaving.”
Color rises in his face. “You know why Callie and I hit it off? She’s notboring, Meg. She actually wants to have fun.”
“Boring,” I repeat. “Because I didn’t kiss your mistress at a sex party you didn’t ask me if I wanted.”
“Meg, come on. You?—”
“No.” I set my glass on the bar with a square, final sound. “We’re done. You could have ended it like an adult. Instead, you tried to engineer me into someone you know I’m not.”
He moves toward me again, faster this time, voice low. “Stop. Stop. You’re making me look bad.”
“You’re doing that on your own,” I say, the sweetness in my voice the exact sweetness Aunt Bea used when a customer tried to return coffee beans because “they tasted like coffee.” I narrow my gaze. “Get out of my way.”
He doesn’t. He angles himself so I’d have to brush past him to leave, a cornering move that’s more reflex than threat but still makes my body flinch. He’s not dangerous. He’s just stubborn and embarrassed.
Fuck him.
“I’m done. I’m not having this conversation in a room where I can hear other people’s pleasure like it’s the laugh track to my humiliation. Get. Out. Of. My. Way.”
Luke inhales and then, finally, steps aside. It’s not grace. It’s calculation. He’ll tell himself he’s the bigger person. He’ll tell himself I’m dramatic. He’ll tell himself I’ll apologize tomorrow. He’s wrong on at least two counts.
I don’t even look at Callie. She’s not worth it. I buzz past her, through the increasingly naked crowd, to the front of the building. The valet looks up, slicks water off his brow with a practiced hand. “Would you like a car, miss?”
“Please,” I say, and my voice breaks on thep. It makes the valet look at me properly. He doesn’t ask questions. He just lifts a hand, and a black SUV glides up like it was waiting for me.
The driver service is crisp and silent and part of the ticket price, apparently. The driver opens the door like he’s seen worse nights and not judged them. I slide in and the leather cools the backs of my legs through silk. The door thunks shut like finality itself. The rain gets louder and farther away at once.
“Where to?” the driver asks, eyes kind in the rearview without being intrusive.
I give him an address that I don’t call home, not out loud. “Please.”
I press my palms to my knees to keep them from shaking. The wordboringbounces around the car like a moth smacking a lamp.
When we turn into Luke’s building’s private drive, my heart does that identity lurch again—this is not home—but I go upstairs anyway because my clothes are here and my toothbrush is here.
