13 - Jess #2
“Constance kept the letters hidden behind the false backing of her scrapbooks. The handwriting is so tiny it requires a magnifying loop to decipher, but ‘R’ had a magnificent way of telling her exactly what she wanted to do to her once the legislative session adjourned."
"The OG locked-door romance," David sighed, a look of genuine reverence crossing his face. "See? That is history. That is text. This is infinitely better than Amberlame trying to explain the benefits of alkaline water to her five thousand bots."
The acid of the wine was beginning to lose its edge, transforming into a warm, thick laziness that uncoiled in my chest and softened the stiffness in my neck.
The silence between us became comfortable again, the specific, high-friction gossip of the twentieth century replacing the toxic digital sludge we’d been wallowing in.
"Speaking of scandalous logistics," I said, tilting my head to look at him through half-closed eyes. "How did the late-night committee meeting go with Sloane and Antoine?"
David’s expression instantly converted into something entirely demure. He took a tiny, delicate sip of his wine, his gaze drifting up toward the ceiling fixture as if he were contemplating a particularly moving piece of Renaissance art.
"I'm sure I have no idea what you mean, Jessica," he purred, though the sudden flush along his throat gave the game away. "We simply had a polite, professional exchange of ideas regarding the local hospitality industry."
"David."
"Fine," he erupted, a massive, face-splitting grin breaking through his composure. "Antoine’s hung like a horse and it was the best sex of my life.”
“David!”
“Sloane has this apartment near Logan Circle that looks like a Scandinavian design boutique,” he went on. “I got to see the living room and… that’s about it.”
“Oh my fucking God. David.” Every utterance of his name was dealt with varying degrees of fascination. He ate it up.
“That man’s stamina should be studied by the National Institutes of Health.”
I slapped his arm, bouncing in my seat so hard that wine spilled over the rim of my glass. “Tell me, tell me, tell me.”
“Let’s just say that by 3 AM, the concept of personal boundaries had been thoroughly dismantled. I didn't get back to my own bed until the street sweepers were out."
I stared at him, a sudden, strange weight settling behind my ribs.
The casual confidence of it. The ease with which he crossed lines that I’d spent years treating like high-voltage fences was both baffling and enviable.
My mind flicked instantly to the pool from earlier, the memory of being sandwiched between Brock and Hunter.
The heat of that double focus had left a permanent imprint on my skin, a lingering prickle that the air conditioning in the apartment couldn't seem to touch.
"Must be nice," I said into the rim of my glass. "To just... do the math and execute the play without an identity crisis."
David paused, his wine glass halfway to his mouth. His theatricality vanished in a second, replaced by that terrifyingly observant look that made him an exceptional roommate and a dangerous confidant. "Jess. What did you do?"
The wine had officially breached the perimeter of my good judgment. The secret had been burning a hole in my pocket since I left the gym on shaky legs, and the volume of suppressed adrenaline made my teeth ache.
"I slept with my trainer," I said.
The words came out in a rush, falling into the space between us like a live grenade.
The noise that came out of his throat was a high-pitched, strangled squeak that sounded like a stepped-on chew toy. He set his wine glass down so quickly a few drops sloshed onto the coffee table, completely ignored. He gripped his knees, his face turning a shade of pink I’d never seen before.
"You what?" he gasped, his voice an urgent whisper as if the walls of our apartment building were wired by the FBI. "When? How? Where? Give me the coordinates, Jessica, or I will perish on this rug."
"Monday night. In the locker room shower," I said, my face burning as the confession took shape in the room. "After the session. It just... happened."
"Oh, my God," David chanted, rocking back and forth on the couch. "The giant trainer. The one with the shoulders that require their own zip code. You actually did it. You broke the drought with a Category Five hurricane."
"He's... substantial," I admitted, my internal monologue scrambling to keep the specific details from spilling out of my mouth. "But that's not the problem."
David stopped rocking and his eyes narrowed, internal radar detecting the second drop before I even had the chance to phrase it. "There's a problem? How could there possibly be a problem? Does he have a third nipple?"
"No," I said, taking a big swallow of the wine to steady my hands. "It’s Hunter."
"Another boy? The plot thickens." The exuberant lilt in his voice would’ve been amusing if I weren’t technically in distress.
"We were in the pool today," I said, the memory making my stomach perform a slow, heavy loop.
“We don’t have enough wine for this.”
"Brock was correcting my form from behind, and Hunter was holding my ankles, and then they were... trading me back and forth. Debating the mechanics.”
“Go slow,” he said, holding up a hand to stop the flow of my words. “I’m gonna use this later when I touch myself.”
I aimed a scatter cushion at his head. Hard enough to make his silk hood slip off. “I’m being vulnerable with you, goddammit.”
“Okay, okay,” he said with a laugh. “Carry on.”
“It was the way they were touching me,” I breathed, picking my way through the words that sounded most correct. “The way they were looking at each other over my head. I'm into Hunter, too. Like, exactly as much as I'm into Brock."
David sat frozen for five full seconds, processing the configuration. Then, gradually, a look of profound, religious awe spread across his face. He raised his hands toward the ceiling like a preacher at a tent revival.
"Praise the Lord," he whispered. "The potato has sprouted. She has sprouted into a magnificent, multi-stemmed exotic flower."
"David, it’s a mess," I groaned, burying my face in my hands. "I don't do this. I'm an archivist. I organize things into neat, acid-free boxes. I don't get tangled up with two men who work at the same gym and share a mutual competitive complex."
"Shut up," he said emphatically, reaching over to smack my shin.
"Listen to me. You have spent five years living like a nun because Sharter and Amberlizard made you feel like you weren't allowed to have nice things.
Now you have two gorgeous specimens of the male form practically fighting for the privilege of checking your alignment, and you're complaining about the filing system?
God knows you could use some excitement that doesn't involve white gloves and nineteenth-century tax records. "
"I don't even know if that's a thing people do," I muttered, looking up through my fingers. "Like... do they both know? Would they even want to? The whole thing feels like I’m heading for disaster."
David leaned back, his mind already spinning three steps ahead, his eyes gleaming with the sinister light of a master strategist.
"We need a field test," he said, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial purr. "A controlled environment to see how the variables perform under pressure."
"What are you talking about?"
"The wedding," he said, a wicked smile spreading across his face. "Amberlump’s big, expensive production.”
“Seriously. How many of those do you have ready to fire?”
He shrugged. “I’m well-read. I could go for days… Amberleech, Amberliar, Amberleper— My point is: you need a date.”
I shook my head vehemently. “No.”
“You were going to go alone and look dignified and miserable while she did her victory lap. But imagine the optics, Jess. Imagine walking into that reception with one of them on your arm. Just one. To start." He winked at me, and I sank deeper into the couch.
The image of showing up to Amberleigh’s curated, high-society event with Brock or Hunter—men who looked like they had been chiseled out of granite—was an incredibly potent fantasy.
It would completely rewrite the narrative.
That was if either of them even wanted to go.
What if Brock just wanted sex? What if I’d read Hunter all wrong and he wasn’t, in fact, interested in me that way?
"But which one would I take?" I asked, the question slipping out before I could stop it.
"Exactly," David said, snapping his fingers. "Which is why you’re going to bring one of them to my firm’s summer mixer.”
“I’m not going to your summer mixer.”
“You are. And you’re bringing one of them,” he said, fixing me with a no-nonsense stare. “Think of it as a trial run. Pick one, bring him as your date, and let's see how he handles the D.C. wolves before we deploy him against the final boss."