Chapter Twelve
An hour and four hands later, only three of which resulted in a mah-jongg (for everyone but me), I managed to learn that Leo hadn’t actually moved across the world for me but had requested a six-month secondment to his company’s New York office.
As he apparently told Marin on one of our two double dates, he wanted to “see where our relationship could go without the long distance,” and I was, it seemed, all too happy to let him.
From Stella, I discovered that I hadn’t come to mah-jongg much in January since Leo and I were too busy “hibernating in our love nest,” and Jada let me in on the most humbling nugget of all, my adorable nickname for him was . . . Snugglebug.
I stared at them, certain they were joking, but their amused expressions told me they were most certainly not.
I did my best to absorb every nauseating detail, quietly piecing together the missing parts of my life like a puzzle.
And when they finished, I could see it clearly, the full image of a couple who had gone from a fleeting connection in Mykonos to a full-blown relationship in Manhattan.
Evidently, we were the kind of twosome that liked to spend Sunday mornings at the farmers’ markets in the Lower East Side, stocking up on what we needed for the week.
The kind that just signed up for a Thai cooking class.
A pair who, on rainy weekend afternoons, could be found wandering the Antiquities galleries at the Met.
Leo and I were everything I had railed against. Everything I believed didn’t exist outside of a nineties rom-com.
We were the kind of love story I’d spent years convincing others wasn’t real.
And that was precisely the problem.
If we were only a few months in and I was already stumbling live on air and whistling a completely different tune than what I’d built my brand to be, then Ravi was right, this was a one-way ticket to career self-destruction.
But even more than just my brand, wasn’t this core philosophy about men and dating and relationships part of my identity?
I’d spent my formative years despising my father, who’d left us to shack up with a hotter new model, and reminding myself that I didn’t need anyone.
Relying on someone else for happiness was dangerous, like handing over the keys to your emotional well-being and hoping they didn’t crush it.
Marin glanced down at her watch. “What do you say? One more game? I have to pick up the twins from my parents at four.”
“Rack ’em up,” Stella said, twirling her finger in the air before restacking the tiles. “Elliot, I was listening to the show the other day, and thank God Brian wasn’t home, because I nearly had to baptize myself after that one caller.”
Jada practically choked on her mimosa. “OMG! I know exactly what you’re referring to. That segment was unhinged.”
“Hey, what are you guys talking about? I want in on the joke,” Marin said, looking between them.
I was too busy trying to hold my mimosa in my cheeks to keep it from bursting past my lips.
“Oh, God, yes. From my ‘Textual Tensions’ segment,” I said after a desperate attempt to swallow as the bubbles burned my nostrils.
“This listener wrote in to share a line she claimed to be so steamy, so naughty, so irresistible, that it is one hundred percent guaranteed to make your boyfriend or husband want to jump your bones immediately.”
Marin flailed her hands, gesturing wildly with her champagne flute to continue as it splashed about. “Ooh, okay, okay, so what’s the line? You can’t leave me hanging.”
Jada, pressed a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. “You tell her, El. I don’t think I can say it with a straight face.”
Casting a glance from Jada to Stella and then back to Marin, I sighed and relented, “Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.
So apparently, if you say the words, ‘I want to feel you grow in my mouth,’ your significant other will literally short-circuit and be singularly focused on that one thing until you make good on your offer,” I said with a shrug.
“Oh My God! Who is Saying That?! Stop it right now!” Marin’s shock was visible from her bulging eyes that seemed to shrink her forehead to mere centimeters, and her mouth fell comically to the floor.
Stella, with tears in her eyes from laughing so hard, grabbed her phone and waved it at us as she said, “Actually, I’ve been thinking about it since it aired, and I kinda think we should test the theory.
Might even make for some good follow-up content for your show, El. ” She waggled her eyebrows at me.
I stopped maneuvering my tiles and considered, kinda forgetting altogether that I was included as part of her “we.” “What did you have in mind?”
Stella continued, “How about this? Everyone will text their significant other the magic phrase, and we’ll clock their responses, see how spot-on the gal from your show was with her claim.”
“No. No way. Tyler would die of a heart attack if I sent him that!” Marin cried, her face already flushing a whole new shade of vino, somewhere between a cab franc and a Syrah. “He’ll think my phone got hacked!”
Stella was already texting away, her lightning fingers flying over the keyboard like they were on fire. “Brian will definitely know it’s me. No doubt about it! He’ll probably respond with a dick pic and a drooling emoji or something equally crass.”
Jada took her phone out of her bag and started typing too. “Marcus is gonna think I’ve been kidnapped and it’s a code to signal for help or something.” She was giggling as she typed. “Okay, if we’re doing this, then we’re all doing this? Agreed?”
No. Wait, what? No way. I could never—would never—text that to Leo, especially after knowing him for like a minute and a half!
“Okay, everyone hold up your phones and show the text,” she ordered.
Ugh, but this was my bit, from my radio show, and I didn’t see a way to bow out.
I suppose I could use the excuse that Leo and I were in a newer relationship, but to be honest, wasn’t that precisely the time when you’d send these kinds of risqué texts?
Early on, when the passion flame burned brightest.
They all finished typing out the phrase and then held up their phones as proof, waiting for me to do the same. Reluctantly, I keyed in the X-rated sentence, I want to feel you grow in my mouth, lifted the screen to show them I was willing to take one for the team, and hit send.
Within seconds, incoming texts started bouncing around the room like an eighties arcade. The familiar ring of a FaceTime call resounded loudly from Marin’s cell amid the sea of dings and pings, causing us all to practically fall to the floor in stitches.
Marin, tears pricking in the corners of her eyes, flipped open the screen with her finger to accept the video call.
“Holy shit, Tyler! Put your pants back on! What the hell are you doing? It’s like three in the afternoon!” Marin howled into the phone as she scurried out of the room to deal with the call, shielding her naked husband from sight.
At this point, we were barely holding on to life. Cackling and gasping, with little squeaks punctuating the silence, sending us further into an absolute fit.
Another text alert sounded and Jada shrieked in horror, clasping her hand to her wide-open mouth.
“Marcus just texted that Isla has the family iPad that all our messages are linked to, and now apparently our six-year-old is asking him what ‘grow in my mouth’ means? Oh my God, kill me.” She buried her face in her hands, pretending to cry between genuine fits of laughter, spurred on by the rest of us, including Marin, who’d just tossed poor Tyler off the video call.
We were doubled over and wheezing when Jada’s phone pinged again and she peeked a trepidatious eyeball through her fingers to check her messages once more.
“That son of a bitch!” she barked out, slapping her hand to the table before laughing even harder.
She flashed the phone in our direction, the words Just Kidding About Isla in big letters from her husband on the screen.
Jada dramatically grabbed for a handful of napkins and playfully patted her brow, panting in relief.
“Sweet baby Jesus, thank God! I wasn’t sure how I was going to dig myself out of that one!
Not to mention afford all the therapy Isla would undoubtedly need.
” Still laughing at the close call, she clutched her chest and texted him back, a wide grin lighting up her face.
Another chime. This time, it was Stella’s husband, Brian, responding with the old reliable . . . dick pic. She flashed us all a quick peek before tossing her phone onto the table with a smug, “Told you so. Do I know my man or what? How about you, El? What’s Leo have to say for himself?”
I’d been so distracted by the chaos of the last few minutes I had almost forgotten there was likely an equally unhinged response waiting for me. Sure enough, the icon showed one new text. I clicked it open, held my breath, and read his reply.
Leo: You’re trouble. You know that, right? I was already thinking about you, and now I don’t think I’ll ever get you out of my head. Come home soon. I miss you.
I was in shock. His message wasn’t vulgar or crude. Cocky or cliché. It was sweet. Playful. Romantic, even.
Goddamnit.
“C’mon, I see that look on your face. Spill. What dirty talk did he hit you with?” Stella poked.
I held the phone out for them to see, Stella taking the lead to read it aloud.
“‘You’re trouble. You know that, right? I was already thinking about you, and now I don’t think I’ll ever get you out of my head.
Come home soon. I miss you.’” After pausing dramatically, she burst out, “Are you freakin’ kidding me?
! I got a dick pic—in terrible lighting, no less!
—and you got . . . that? Actual prose and a kissy-face emoji! ”