“Ophelia, that’s fucking insane.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. He was much more rational and I needed someone to talk me down off the anxiety ledge. “There’s no way.”
We didn’t make it three steps in the direction of the living room before Frankie groaned and turned back around, mumbling under his breath. His fists connected with the bedroom door. “Cap, you good?”
After a few seconds without an answer, I joined him in knocking. “Nat! The cookies burned!”
The longer we stood there waiting for a reply the greater the pit of despair opened in my stomach. My worried expression must have gotten to Frankie because a second later he announced his entering and shouldered his way through the door.
Our collective jaws dropped like the fucking ball on New Year’s Eve.
Across the room Natalia’s phone buzzed incessantly in her tangled shorts on the floor, completely drowned out by the sound of music playing from a speaker on the dresser. All the lights were dimmed, save for some red and green mood setters that illuminated the walls behind the bed. Mateo’s impressive desktop setup was on and streaming, tiny icons hopping up and down where a video window was open. At the foot of the king-sized mattress sat a tripod with a giant circular light pointed down at the bed.
It was what was happening on the bed that left Frankie and I speechless.
“Oh, shit.” Mateo looked up and caught us standing in the door, shocked we’d actually pushed our way inside.
Nat was on all fours in front of him, that skin tight Mrs. Claus corset unbuttoned and her fishnet stockings ripped open as she offered her ass to her boyfriend who was dressed as the fat man himself. Red jacket, red pants, a fluffy white beard fastened around his head with elastic.
“What the fuck are you doing, Mateo?” Frankie spoke first. His voice roused Nat, who until that moment was none the wiser, still performing for the jumping icons on the computer screen. “Jesus.” He smacked his palm over his eyes and turned back toward the open door.
She screamed, flinging her body off the bed and shielding herself. “Phee! Oh my god!”
“Fuck, guys.” Mateo hurriedly tucked himself into his pants, clambering over to the camera to end whatever sexy live stream they were hosting.
A wave of shock washed over me, and when I thought it would subside, I took another look around the room and got hit with it again. “Lady Marmalade” unironically sifted through the speaker in otherwise silence like a sick joke.
“It’s not exactly what it looks like!” Nat crooned.
I couldn’t have cared less if my best friend was having sex on camera. I just needed more than thirty seconds of adjustment. We almost lit the house on fire and then I watched Natalia’s boyfriend mount her like a reindeer for an audience. Another one of those what-the-fuck waves crashed into me again.
“Nobody’s judging,” Frankie assured her, pointing to his roommate. “But, why the fuck are you dressed like that?”
“It’s an act.” Mateo ran his fingers through his fake white beard. “Mrs. Claus and Old Saint Dick.”
17
Nothing was too scandalous to say at brunch. I’d sat through many PTA meetings over bagels and coffee and listened to parents show their true colors over school district politics.
You’d be shocked to hear the kind of gossip that gets spewed when someone’s kid isn’t getting first class attention in a classroom of thirty to one. Which PE teacher is sleeping with the new divorcee, whose English teacher is writing naughty romance novels on the side. I’ll be the first to agree that we’re not paid nearly enough money to deal with parents. The kids are fucking cake in comparison.
So—brunch was good for open conversation, first and foremost. A few bellinis, some eggs benedict, avocado toast on house-made everything bagels. And Natalia and I playing a game of who can keep their mouth the fullest the longest to put off the inevitable discussion about the events of the night before.
It didn't take long before Natalia’s fork clattered onto the plate in front of her. “Frankie saw my whole rack, didn’t he?”
“Likely,” I admitted. Leave it up to her to break the ice. “And what a rack it is.”
She shook her head, smiling. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
“No, don’t you dare,” I said. “You don’t need to apologize to me, or to anyone. It’s no one else’s business. I’m sorry, we just—when you didn’t hear the fire alarm—”
“Mateo pulled that shit out of his ceiling when the battery started dying.”
“Completely valid.”
The corner of her mouth twitched upward. “We’ve been keeping the whole cam thing between us for obvious reasons. I just don’t want you to think I was afraid of your reaction, because I totally wasn’t, Phee. I knew you’d be a rockstar about it.”
“It was just—shocking,” I told her. “Old Saint Dick’s…dick was all up in my face.”
She cackled. “Was it as big as Frankie’s?”
“Isn’t it a conflict of interest to talk about your boyfriend’s best friend’s dick?”
“You’ve seen my guy’s, your guy has seen mine. We should all just stand naked in a room together and get it over with.”
“That sounds like an orgy.”
Nat took a sip of her drink and pondered something. “How comfortable are you in front of a camera?”
“I love you, but absolutely not.” I snorted. “With my luck, my vagina would get plastered all over Pine Ridge by the parent-teacher association and they’d protest outside my house with pitchforks. My siblings already pretend I don’t exist. Imagine if that became my legacy.”
She frowned. “Worth a shot.”
“You guys look like you have it all in the bag without us,” I joked. “I’m sorry we found out the way we did, but I’m selfishly glad I know.”
“I am too.” She let out a deep breath. “Having no one to talk to about it is exhausting. I feel like I’m tiptoeing around constantly.”
Nat was one of four in a strict, traditional family. Every sister had their father wrapped around their finger, but there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that neither Nat, Camilla, Isabella or Mia would want to deal with the cardiac arrest Mr. Russo would experience knowing one of his daughters was selling sex.
“What is it like?” I asked around a spoon of yogurt. “Since when?”
“I was so sick of working in that bank every day. I just wanted to be in control of my own money and time. I needed freedom. This ass is too perfect to be sitting on it all day.”
“Understandable.”
“I was doing it on my own for a little while before I met Matty. Just some solo stuff, live camming, photos. When we started dating I didn’t tell him, and I stopped performing because I was head over heels and I didn’t want to jeopardize it. But then I was back to the same shit job, and I wasn’t happy anymore. Mateo noticed.”