AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I hold up my hands before my family drives me insane. “Listen, I have had sex. Which is great, but more importantly, I will not be having sex with Finn Hughes. And more important than that, if I was going to have sex, I wouldn’t talk to you about it.”
“Men like lingerie,” my mother says, not even remotely deterred.
“I really don’t want to hear this.”
“You can’t wear it at the restaurant, obviously. But when you bring him back up here, you can say you’re going to slip into something more comfortable.”
“This sounds like porn,” I say.
“Bad porn,” Sophia says, wincing.
As if to punctuate that proclamation, the doorbell rings.
Finn looks incredible in his suit. He greets me warmly before turning to my family. “Mrs. Morelli. Sophia. I didn’t know you would be here.”
“We just dropped by to see our lovely Eva,” she says, as if it’s random happenstance. “And she told us she had plans with you. Again.”
“I do seem to be monopolizing her company. But what good company it is.” He grins at me, as if he knows that my sister came here to dress me. And that my mother came here to talk about the birds and the bees. And that, somehow, it’s all a joke that we’re in on together.
He has that effect.
It’s not embarrassing, in this moment. It’s effervescent. Like life is a fizzy drink.
“We’re going to the new Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side.” He gives her a lopsided smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll have her home by curfew.”
“Don’t worry about that.” Somehow the cheeks of this fifty-something-year-old woman turn red. As if she’s remembering our conversation about porn. “I’m sure whatever time you two kids get to bed will be fine.”
The word bed hangs in the air between us.
Sophia’s eyes twinkle with barely suppressed glee.
We go outside to where Finn’s car is waiting. He hands me into a Lamborghini. I admire the twinkle of the gold fabric in the moonlight. He returns to his seat and glides onto the road.
“How many cars do you have?” I ask.
“A few.”
“One for every day of the month?”
“Not quite that many. Although if I count the cars at other properties…”
That makes me laugh. “So you like cars.”
“I like speed,” he says. “Cars. And horses.”
“Thoroughbreds. I remember.”
“Well, did we pull it off? Did your family believe it?”
“Oh, they believed it. They believed it a little too well. If you’re not careful, my mother is going to find a way to trap you in a real relationship.”
“A shotgun wedding?”
“You’d have to get me pregnant for that.”
“We’d have to have sex for that.”
“Which isn’t happening,” I say, feeling prickly from the conversation about lingerie. And porn. “Not because I’m a virgin, though. I’ve had sex before.”
