He points to Nick.

Who just shrugs. “I’ve never seen a crotch do an imitation of a Samsung Galaxy 7 before,” he says.

“You giving Ryan a moisturizing treatment there, Carrie? A sugar scrub?” Zeke jokes, everyone around us laughing as Carrie realizes she’s basically giving me a hand job with a donut.

My perverted teenage self came up with lots of really inventive ways to whack off, including a Playtex glove/Crisco combo that I’ll take to the grave, but it never occurred to me to use a hollow cream-filled donut as a vessel for emptying my nuts.

“Oh!” Carrie falls backward, then rolls over, flashing me a nice view of her ass. As she stands, I smile at her and she smiles back, unguarded and embarrassed, the absurdity of the situation cutting through our mutual discomfort.

For about three seconds.

I take off for the locker room, turning my back on the giant mess behind me. Just as I open the men’s room door I hear Chloe chewing someone out, calling for staff to clean up the mess.

Zeke’s on my ass as I strip naked and check out my junk. No injuries.

“Short circuit? Nice.”

“Shut up.”

“Carrie made your cock ignite.”

"Shut UP!” I roar, naked from the waist down, wearing a fake cop’s uniform on top, hat and all. The associate professor at Stanford in charge of the wireless robotics project I would love to work on would, I’m sure, be impressed with my credentials right about now.

“Geez, Ryan, it’s just a joke.”

I tear the rest of the uniform off (easy to do with Velcro) and take a very fast shower, washing off the sticky cream filling and other bits of sugar all over my legs and midsection. Two minutes later I’m re-assembling myself.

My outside self, that is.

My insides are a whole different issue. I feel like someone squeezed me, hard, and made my gooey center fall out.

I shove on a non-electric g-string and glare at Zeke, who is leaning against a locker, arms crossed, making it clear he’s going to torture me with conversation. “What?” I bark at him.

“What the hell happened to you at that wedding?”

“Nothing.” Everything, I want to scream, but I don’t.

“You and Carrie…?”

“I told you. I did her a favor. It was all pretend.”

“You know damn well it wasn’t.”

“We’re not compatible.” The last word tastes like contempt.

“You are!”

“Turns out I was wrong.”

“At the wedding, you were grabbing my shirt and threatening me when I talked about you and Carrie fucking. Now it turns out I’m right?”

“Yeah.” I slam my locker door and adjust the cop uniform. My basket will have to be enough. No flashing lights. The air smells like singed hair.

My singed hair.

“Bullshit.”

I shrug. “Believe what you want to believe.”

“Ryan, you know damn well nothing you did at that wedding was pretend.”

“It was pretend for her. All of it. That’s what she said.”

“She said that?”

“Yes.” I don’t mention she said it to Chloe. I’m sick of this conversation. Parts of my body are zooming from Carrie’s touch and the pyrotechnics display.

My heart’s zooming, too.

Zeke lets out a low whistle. “She’s more of a player than I thought, then.” He washes his face with his palm, rubbing his upper lip with his index finger. “She’s hard core.”

“Yeah.”

“You okay?”

“I will be.”

“You need to get laid.”

“If that’s an offer, my answer is no. You’re not my type.”

“Gia and Gina want to see me next weekend. How about — “

“Sure.” I wave him off. “We’re late for the divorce party.” The last thing I want to do is dance for a bunch of bitter women, but it’s better than what just happened with Carrie.

Zeke follows me, hand clapping my shoulder. “We’ll get you out there and over this, Ryan. I guarantee it.”

“Right."

As we walk into the hallway, Carrie suddenly exits the women’s locker room. We’re inches from each other, face to face. She smells like coconut body wash and is wearing a new outfit, a simple but tight dark red sweater and a long, pencil skirt made of deep blue. Her makeup is fresh, a smudge of powder on her collar.

I don’t touch her.

“Um, thanks for catching the donuts,” she says.

“Thanks for putting out my dick.”

Zeke starts wailing with laughter.

Carrie gives him such a glare he begins coughing, hard, and disappears like a rabbit. She looks at me, uncertainty making her painted face softer.

“Ryan, we should talk about — ”

“Using a donut as a fire extinguisher?”

“Ryan,” she pleads. “This is hard enough.”

“What’s there to talk about?” I imitate Zeke, minus the accent. It’s the only way I can get through this moment, this pain, this anger. “We had a fun weekend. I did my job. You knocked ‘em dead, Kitten.” I give her a grin that I can’t feel in my eyes and pat her shoulder twice. Exactly twice. “It was good fun. Now we’re back to reality.”

I can’t look her in the eye. I’m a coward. I admit it. If I looked in those beautiful honeyed pools, what would I see?

Pity.

A man can handle many, many insults, but being pitied by a woman he slept with, one who doesn’t reciprocate his feelings, isn’t one of them.

I turn away and give her a little wave, headed for my roomful of horny divorcees who know I’m pretending, and who pretend right back.

We’re even. Equitable. On par.

It’s simple — I just made my feelings balance with Carrie’s.

She was pretending last weekend.

And I just pretended back there.

Chapter 14

CARRIE

“Oh, my God, how much sex are you having, Jenny? Every single wrinkle on your face is gone. You look nineteen again!” I squeal as we hug in the Grind It Fresh! flagship coffee shop in the Seaport District. Jenny’s finally back from her nearly month-long honeymoon and has time for coffee with me.