“For a price, of course,” I murmured.
“Yeah!” Abbott was excited. “I told you way back when that the girls liked us, didn’t—”
Theo fortunately cut him off. “None of what happened was a crime. No money changed hands. My client doesn’t have any comments.”
“No comments?” Emmie screeched, still incensed. “Well, I have a comment. You’d better get yourself and all your used condoms out of my house by the end of today, Oakley, and I’m going to enjoy all of my money. You won’t see a dime of it. I’m getting all the life insurance, and yeah, it’s a one-point-two-million-dollar policy, and I’m cashing it out, baby. Looks like the only person who came out on top of the cheater tournament is me! Joke’s on you!”
Oakley and Theo ignored her, heading for the door.
“You had to have sex with Brooks for six months, and you got nothing! Not a cent! I get everything. You lose!”
“Emmie.” I rested a hand on her shoulder. “It’s over.”
She turned to me, something sharp and dangerous in her face. “No, it’s not. She needs to pay, just like Brooks did.”
23
EMMIE
“Iguess we shouldn’t have had all those celebratory drinks,” Zoe said later as I was groaning on the couch and sipping coffee.
Marius wasn’t answering when I drunk dialed him.
“I think you freaked him out,” Zoe told me and tried to feed me nibbles of flatbread pizza.
I loved arugula and goat cheese as much as the next girl, but when you were drunk and whiplashed, going from the greatest sex of your life to your dead husband’s affair baby being fake, you just needed cheap, greasy pepperoni pizza to soak up the booze.
“I’m a rich bitch,” I mumbled, trying to drag myself off of the couch to search for my phone. “I’s a millionaire, and I wants a pizza.”
“They don’t deliver out here, remember?” Zoe said. “Because the horny seniors kept trying to flirt with the poor delivery boy.”
Mrs. Roberts floated in, wearing a gauzy caftan. The old decor from Girl Meets Fig littered the walls of the small apartment in the retirement community.
“How were we supposed to know he was underage? Every male looks the same when they’re under thirty-five, with those baby cheeks.”
She inspected her reflection in the antique mirror on the wall.
I tried Marius again.
Emmie:I’m sorry I scared you.
Emmie:I’ll suck your dick if you bring me a pepperoni pizza.
Emmie:Extra-large.
Emmie:That’s how I want your dick too.
“Garlic knots,” I mumbled, adding the request to the text message chain.
“Maybe a salad,” Mrs. Roberts said pointedly.
“Marius didn’t text me back,” I flopped down. “So no salad or garlic knots.”
“Marius! Now, speaking of jailbait, he did grow up into someone handsome, didn’t he? I remember when he was a pimple-faced busboy. I gave him this special cream for his skin. Remind me to give you some, Emmie. I see you breaking out at your hairline. Weren’t you two friends with him back then?”
“He was a grade or two above us, I think,” Zoe told her grandmother as she hoisted my torso back onto the couch.
“And transferred to that fancy Connecticut private school.” Mrs. Roberts drew a fake mole on her cheek. “After what happened to him, I don’t blame him for leaving.”
