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“But it doesn’t ease the nerves any,” Zoey says, with a nod of the head. “You want a tip?” She doesn’t wait for me to answer, just launching into her advice and telling me, “Give him a really sloppy blow job. I mean, just—sloppy as hell.”
My blush is so heavy at this point, it feels almost like I’m running a fever. It takes a lot of effort not to just down the whole tall glass of mimosa then and there. Instead, I turn and face her fully, letting out a heavy, shaky breath.
“Sloppy, huh?” I don’t know how to do sloppy, but at least it doesn’t sound like the most difficult trick in the book to pull off.
My interest must amuse Zoey because she laughs and she says, “You can cover up any nerves you have if you’re just making a real mess out of things, and they always get off on it.”
It sounds stupid, maybe, but that’s just how the rest of the morning is spent. Zoey and I trading conversations about the bedroom. I don’t have too much to say on it, though she eventually goads me into sharing a little bit about the night before. Mostly, Zoey does the talking and I do the listening, and by the time she gets up to leave, I have a lot to roll around in my head.
Zoey leans forward, paying her tab. She tells me, “Look, all of that being said, the biggest piece of advice I could give you is that it’s honestly not that hard. He wouldn’t have asked you to marry him if he didn’t love you, right?”
Something pulls tight in the back of my chest. I force myself to nod my head anyway. “Right.”
“So even if you do mess up a few times, what’s the harm in it? I think that’s cool. I mean, I would give a lot to get the chance to explore my sexuality for the first time again,” says Zoey. “Nothing’s better than that light bulb moment when you realize that you actually get really turned on by something.”
She pays for my tab too, despite my protests. “I can cover that myself, you really don’t need to do that, Zoey.”
Zoey says, “Consider it a gift from me, in case we don’t see each other again. You know, a congratulations on the future marriage kind of thing. Don’t stress yourself out so much, Ashley. Just enjoy that you get to explore all of this with someone you really care about.”
And then she’s gone, seemingly in a much better mood than when breakfast had first ended. It’s creeping closer to noon now, and I don’t know when to expect Grant and the others to be back. Normally, day drinking isn’t a hobby of mine, but I’m technically on vacation, and I technically did just get engaged the night before.
So I order myself another mimosa and settle in to try and untangle some of my own thoughts. I’m smart enough to know that I need to understand what I want out of things before I can try and figure out what Grant wants.
Right about now, it feels like I might want something a lot more emotional than what we originally agreed to.
Fuck.
Chapter fifteen
Grant
Today’smeetingisbeingheld in a rented-out conference room at a neighboring hotel. The room itself is too large for our small party but my father has always been of the mindset that every client should be treated like the most important client.
So the three of us step into the room. There’s a full wall of windows on one side, overlooking the city. London is pretty, but it’s busy. During the middle of the day like this, the crowds on the sidewalk are visible from the fourth floor. They mill over the pavement in clusters, colorful dots that drift about.
It’s a little odd being in what’s essentially a soundproof bubble. Nothing from outside drifts through the heavy panes of glass, not even the sound of mid-day traffic, which is backed up for at least three blocks and I know for a fact must be filled with blaring horns.
Charlie drops down into one of the chairs on our side of the table, setting his briefcase down with a thud and starting to pull our paperwork out and sort it. I turn to do the same thing and wait for my father to join us. He does, after getting off the phone and confirming that the client will be here, he is just running late.
Only when Don sits down, he’s grim-faced and eyeing up my brother like he’s looking for a fight. “You know,” starts Don. I wince at the tone. It’s such a ‘parent’ way to say something. “You could put some effort into finding a nice girl, Charlie.”
“Zoey’s a great girl,” says Charlie, without missing a beat. “She’s a doctor. She’s out here for a medical conference. Super smart.”
He cuts himself off before he can say something else, like a joke about how she’s super flexible, too. I’m grateful for that, at least.
It definitely wouldn’t go over well.
“You know that’s not what I meant,” says Don, with an impatient sigh. He starts unpacking his own files and papers, then reaches over to readjust mine and Charlie’s file stacks as well. The man has a hard time not taking control of every situation. “I mean that you should be looking for someone to settle down with.”
“You met Zoey for an hour, and you’ve already written her off.” Charlie is trying to dissuade the conversation with jokes, but it’s not working.
Don gives him a firm, disapproving look. “Charlie, I’m being serious. You need to take after Grant’s example and start looking for someone to settle down with. You’re not in college anymore. You need to stop acting like it.”
“You’re right,” Charlie snaps. “I’m not in college anymore, so maybe you should stop treating me like I am. You realize that I’m an adult, right?”
“I think we might be missing some papers,” I say, trying to direct their attention back onto the relevant task at hand. My goal is to stop a fight from fully breaking out but— it doesn’t happen.
Instead, my father says, “Then act like one. How do you expect to run a company if you can’t even control your own life?”
