Chapter Two
“—I’m almost there and Jack is just pummeling me into the mattress,” Samantha was saying, crossing one leg over the other and smiling.
“I’m still tipsy as hell and the hotel room is spinning and every time my hips go up I hear this little voice in my head go this is it, you’re ready, it’s going to happen tonight.
And that’s when I feel the weight on my side and Kiki—god bless that girl—slides her hand between my legs and puts her mouth on my ear and just starts begging Jack to fill me up… ”
The sound that came out of Fiona Hall’s mouth reminded me of steam escaping a boiling teakettle.
“So yes, my husband got me pregnant on our wedding night,” Samantha said, her grin matching the utterly delighted look on the host of Call Your Daddy’s face.
“But, like, credit where credit’s due, you know?
It was absolutely a team effort. Yukiko’s hand was right there.
And Marcie—oh my gosh, I don’t even think you can say on air what Marcie was doing while this was all happening… ”
From somewhere behind me, I heard a production assistant quietly let out a holy shit into a headset. I tried my damndest to keep from blushing and failed completely.
I had not expected Samantha’s interview to be like this.
Yes, I’d read every message in the group chat Heather and Eva had started three days ago.
I’d heard the jokes among my three wives all about just how explicit my babygirl planned to get on her favorite podcast. I’d even talked to Mona Isringhausen about it and received her assurances that yes, this was why she’d chosen Samantha for this assignment. Samantha understood the assignment.
But reading it in text form and hearing it come out of my babygirl’s mouth were two different things. Especially when both she and Fiona Hall, Call Your Daddy’s reverend mother of sex and debauchery, seemed to be enjoying this so damned much.
“Girl,” Fiona said as Samantha finished the anecdote. “Girl. You are insane!”
Samantha spread her hands. “You asked me how my pregnancy was going, Fiona.”
“I didn’t expect you to tell me how it started!” Fiona jabbed a finger at her notes, half of which had slid to the floor at some point in her shock at the answer. “Samantha Avery, that was a warm-up question! And you said that shit with your whole chest, girl!”
Samantha shrugged like this was something she did every day. “Well. Now you know.”
From my chair in the corner of the room, out of view of the cameras, I put a hand over my mouth and tried very hard to focus on the studio instead of the words that were being said inside of it.
Call Your Daddy’s actual recording room was a lot smaller and more intimate than I’d expected.
It had been made up to look like what was essentially a very chic living room—two couches facing each other with a bookshelf and some decorations in the back, along with a very large table in between host and guest. Fiona’s notes sat on this last, the only detail that made it feel like an interview instead of a casual conversation.
The carpet was so thick my shoes had sunk into it when I took my place just outside of view, stuffed into a comfortable office chair some intern had looted from the building’s employee side.
It hadn’t escaped my notice that there were two of these chairs in the room. The other lay empty, ready to be rolled into position roughly equidistant between Fiona’s hosting couch and the one where Samantha sat with her knowing smile and one leg crossed over the other.
In not too much time, that chair would be occupied by Dawn Lowry.
Fiona Hall was much like the room: chic and smaller than I’d expected.
For whatever reason I’d pictured her as tall and willowy, like Caroline, but she had a build much more like Marcie’s: blonde and slender, with the highest, sharpest fuck-me heels I’d ever seen and a retro blazer that made her look like the lead in a TV show from the ’70s about women entering the business world.
Underneath it she wore a simple white t-shirt with the words GHOST HIM emblazoned on the front.
“Okay, we need to back up,” Fiona said, lifting her hands. “That is definitely the pull quote, though. The first thing our listeners are going to hear as a teaser is all about how ‘hands-on’ your fellow wives were on your wedding night.”
“I’d be mortified if it were anything less spicy,” Samantha said, clearly game.
“Samantha Avery,” Fiona said, cocking her head to the side. “Samantha fucking Avery. Do you have any idea how long I’ve been trying to get you into my studio, girl?”
“Bitch, I wish you’d just slipped into my DMs!” Samantha giggled.
“That PR woman of yours is a fucking terror,” Fiona said with a big smile. I got the impression she was a woman who smiled easily. “There's not many people left in this industry who scare me, and she's one of them.”
“She's the best,” Samantha said. “Mona's a big softie once you get to know her. I promise.”
I didn't need to see Mona Isringhausen to know what kind of laugh those words would bring out of her.
“I'll take your word for it,” Fiona said.
She lifted her legs beneath her, sliding her shoes out of her heels.
The posture looked comfy and intimate, which was probably posturing for the people watching the podcast on YouTube instead of listening to it.
“Okay, so first of all—thank you so much for being here.
If you're a longtime listener, you know exactly why Samantha's here with us today. If not, well, you just heard a little bit about it.” A foxlike grin spread across the woman's face.
“First though, Cynthia told me something about you just a few minutes ago. Something I did not actually know.”
Samantha's shoulders tensed the slightest amount. Cynthia was one of the production assistants—not the one who'd been listening outside of the green room. What had she said?
“What would that be?” Samantha asked.
Fiona's grin widened. “That you're a fan?”
I watched the tension in my babygirl's shoulders go slack.
“Oh my God, yes,” Samantha purred, completely in her element now. “Delta Rho used to have listening parties. We'd have the whole chapter in the sorority house with snacks and booze and put you on the speakers.”
Fiona put a hand on her heart. “Girl, stop it!”
“I'm serious. Nobody was allowed to talk during the Would You Rather segment.”
“Aaah!” Fiona turned towards the nearest camera with an exaggerated laugh.
Over the next hour I'd learn she did this a lot—it was her way of bringing the invisible audience into the room with her.
Of making them feel like they were her friend, not just a viewer.
“Huge shout-out to Delta Rho. Shout out to all my sorority girlies worldwide. This show would literally, like, not exist without all of you.”
They're getting along well, I thought.
My gaze flickered down to my wristwatch: recently loaned to Yukiko during her Morning Harbor interview and only given back after she'd used it to time what the two of us had gotten up to afterwards with a pair of blonde cheerleaders.
The hand swept silently around the dial, ticking off the seconds into minutes.
They'd been rolling now for about two. Which meant we had a little less than twenty before Dawn Lowry would be joining us.
My babygirl clearly intended to make the most of them.
“Okay,” Fiona said after a few more lines of mutual admiration between her and her guest. “So. Obviously, everybody watching at home or listening in right now is thinking about the video. I don't have to explain it; if you're tuned in, you already know.”
“That damn video,” Samantha said. But she was smiling.
“Most people post their wedding all over social media, but you had yours posted,” Fiona said. “Leaked. By one of the camera crew.”
“There's something uniquely horrible about having the best day of your life lead directly to the worst one,” Samantha said.
Fiona blinked like she was considering making that the pull-quote instead of the wedding night thing. “And now it's blown up into this big thing. There's reaction videos to it. There's think pieces about it. Everybody's got a take—”
“I can understand the interest,” Samantha replied, cocking her head to the side.
“I mean, I look at the video now, what I see's an entire sorority having the time of their lives. I see my two best friends in the world—Kiki and Marcie—up there with our husband, all of us surrounded by a hell of a lot of people who love us, and I think... yeah. I can totally understand why people would become obsessed with that.”
“Right?” Fiona leaned in. “For some people—full disclosure, most of the people I've talked to who are fans of this podcast—you're totally goals. But in some corners, you're some kind of symbol for everything that's wrong with the world. The Atlantic said—hang on, it's in my notes—”
“That there's something deeply unsettling about watching educated, ambitious women compete for one man's attention while calling it empowerment,” Samantha recited serenely.
Fiona's jaw dropped. “You memorized it?”
My babygirl laughed. “My fellow wife puts those articles on the fridge. You can't miss them—I see them every time I go get a glass of orange juice. Kiki's crazy about them.”
“Holy shit, you put them on your fridge.” Fiona sounded impressed. “That's honestly kind of awesome.”
“You're going to ask me how we deal with all that,” Samantha said with a knowing smile. “And honestly—that's the answer, right there. People give us their hot takes, we put them on the fridge and we laugh at them. While we live our totally freaking awesome lives with Jack.”
Her answer made me smile. That's my babygirl, I thought.
Fiona used it as a pivot point. “Jackson Avery,” Fiona said, running the words over her tongue like it was a sexual position she was excited to try. “Your husband.”
“My Daddy,” Samantha purred.