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  “Is she going to invite your father?”

  I pulled my attention away from Esteban’s message, which had included a photograph that made the ones my mother complained about look like they belonged in a hymnal. “I don’t know. I’d assume so.”

  My parents had been divorced, at this point, almost as long as they’d been married. My dad had moved to Florida, which had meant the every other weekend custody thing hadn’t happened for us, something my mother loved to point out over and over. How she’d been a single mother, did it all on her own. By now it was old news, especially since whatever generous alimony arrangement they’d made had allowed her to work only at part-time retail jobs she cycled through whenever she decided she wanted the employee discount at some new place. My mom hadn’t had it all peaches and cream, I’d never say that, but she hadn’t exactly had to work in a labor camp to raise us, either.

  “He’s not even close to William!”

  “William spends a week with Dad in Florida every year, Mom. Just like we did when we were kids.”

  “A week out of the year?” She sniffed. “That’s hardly anything.”

  I shook my head in warning. “Not your party. Not your choice. If Evan and Susan want Dad there, he’ll be invited.”

  My mother scowled. “The way you talk to me!”

  “Someone has to,” I said, kind of hating that it had to be me, but for fuck’s sake, Jill was my mother times two, and Evan was Mr. Avoidance. I was already the perverted black sheep anyway. I might as well also bear the burden of being the ungrateful child.

  Susan came back from the bathroom with suspiciously red eyes that made me feel bad that all of this had to be such a big freaking hassle. “It’s settled. I’ll replace the pasta bar with a vegetarian buffet. Will that be acceptable?”

  Before my mother could answer, Susan picked up her purse. “I have to get going.”

  She’d fled within ten minutes, leaving nothing but a few crumpled catering menus in her place. My mother, scrubbing the counter so hard I feared she meant to slaughter her sponge, barely said goodbye to her. She turned her face from mine when I tried to hug her goodbye.

  “You want to stay over? Your room is ready. I saved some Shirley Temple movies on the DVR.” She turned off the water.

  I snuck a peek at my phone, but to my disappointment, Esteban had signed off with a hurried GTG. I shoved my phone back in my pocket. “No. I have to work in the morning. I didn’t bring a bag.”

  “You should’ve. I never get to see you since you moved so far away.”

  We talked on the phone several times a week and texted more than that. I sighed and hugged her. My mother had gotten so much smaller over the past few years. We used to be about the same height—not that we’d seen eye to eye very often. Now it seemed almost like I could rest my chin on top of her head.

  “I’ll call you.” I paused. Then, though I prayed the answer would be negative, asked, “So, you’re not coming to the gallery show on Friday night?”

  My mother shook her head. “To what, see you in some more of those pictures? No, thank you!”

  “I could email them to you,” I offered with a blankly innocent expression that Evan and I had both perfected as teens to totally flip my mother’s shit. “The pictures, I mean.”

  “No, thank you!”

  I laughed, though part of me cringed at the way she categorized what I considered art. And honestly, how she categorized what I considered one of the most significant parts of me. I hugged her again anyway, though, because she was my mother. Then I got the hell out of that house and headed for home.

  12

  Alex and Olivia were not coming to the gallery show. They’d planned months ago to go out of town for the weekend. Alex had, however, told me it was okay if I wanted to take off early to go home and get ready. I knew that was so he could leave early himself without feeling guilty¸ if Alex Kennedy could ever be said to feel guilt. I suspected he rarely did, which was one of the reasons we’d become friends instead of only coworkers.

  “I’m not sure you’re the one who gets to decide what time I leave,” I said, putting a few last minute bits of data into a client file and glancing to where he lounged in my doorway. “I mean, I’m the one who prints the paychecks. So.”

  “Yeah, well, we have direct deposit, so yeah, fuck your logic.”

  I laughed. “Wow. What a great workplace environment.”

  “You love it,” he said and tossed a paper plane at me that I hadn’t even noticed he held.

  I caught it in midair. “Where you going for the weekend?”

  “A nude beach,” Alex said.

  I swiveled again in my chair. “What?”

  “Gotcha. Have you ever gone to one of those?”

  “A nude beach.” I shuddered. “No. Are you really going?”

  “How about one of those all-inclusive sex resorts?”

  Again, I shuddered. “Um, no. Seriously, is that where you’re going?”

  “No. Just to Miami.”

  “Close enough,” I told him. “Are you gonna get a little nipped and tucked while you’re there?”

  “Nah. Just lie out on the beach in my man thong.” Alex grinned and turned around to show me his butt, clad in tailored trousers I was sure had cost as much as one of my car payments. Man knew how to dress, I’d give him that.

  “Don’t send me any selfies, please.”

  Alex looked deadpan. “Oh, I’ll tag you in every one of them.”

  “Sicko.” I shook my head with a sigh. “Are you coming in on Monday?”

  “Why? Are you planning on being late?”

  “No. Just wondered.”

  “You don’t have some big weekend planned?” Alex asked.

  I shook my head again. “Nope. The gallery show. That’s it. Nothing much else going on. Oh, I might head over to the sex dungeon for some hardcore pony play, maybe look for a new vinyl suction bed—” I stopped at the look on his face. “Gotcha.”

  “What the hell is a vinyl suction bed?”

  “It’s this bed you get in and they put a little breathing tube in your mouth, and then they suck out all the air,” I told him. “Like vacuum packed. Like those bags you use to store sweaters, only for sex.”

  Alex winced. “Shit. I thought I’d seen some stuff, but that is really...”

  “I am not looking for a vinyl suction bed,” I told him. “As if I’d tell you, if I were.”

  “That’s maybe a little too kinky, huh?”

  “It’s only too kinky if you’re not into it,” I said with a laugh.

  “But the pony play,” he said. “That’s real?”

  We both burst into laughter. Pony play is totally a real thing, but I’d never done anything like that. I hadn’t even seen it done. Nobody I’d ever met had really done it.

  “I think that’s some serious kind of Anne Rice Sleeping Beauty series stuff,” I told him. “I mean, yeah, I guess it’s real, but no, I’m not planning on harnessing my lover up to a carriage with a horsetail up his ass and having him pull me around this weekend.”

  “Why not? It sounds like fun,” Alex said, and paused for a beat before adding, “so you do have a lover!”

  “Oh, my God,” I cried. “You’re obsessed with sex! Get out of here, you perv! Go take your wife to Miami and lie around on a beach getting drunk.”

  “Don’t forget about the man thong,” Alex added and ducked out of the office before I could throw something at him.

  He had got me to thinking, though. Alicia had moved to Texas a little over two years ago, but you couldn’t replace a best friend the way you could a fuck buddy or even a boyfriend. I’d left my old job and discovered that work friendships didn’t necessarily last without the bond of hating your boss. I’d met up with that crowd for drinks a couple times, but not being able to keep up on the office gossip meant I was usually left out of the conversation. When I’d first started getting online to really explore finding a play partner, I had met a bunch of like-minded peopl