Georgie squared her shoulders again, then grinned and slapped his arm. “Shut up, Fucker. You’re still crying over Gary with the wing-tips and you guys broke up two years ago.”
“Water under the bridge, my dear Georgina
. Water under the bridge,” he announced, stirring his new martini. Then he said, “But I get where you’re coming from. I have a similar story about my first. It’s not easy to forget your first time.”
Georgie said, “So maybe…I don’t know. Maybe Jack isn’t the right guy for this? Do you really want to be forever emotionally tied to a guy who has sex for sport? Especially since you’re both in the city and will likely run into each other again and again. And again. And again. Because despite being a city of nine million people, New York delights in reuniting you with people you hate. I mean this could get messy.”
“I want to do this with someone I know,” Eva said, feeling indignant, “and like. He’s Antonio’s best friend, and he knows things about me and my family that no one else does. He’s the closest thing I have to family in this world. Don’t you get it? I’m already attached.”
“Oh.” Georgie took a sip of her martini through gritted teeth. “Ouch.”
“But not in a marry-him-and-have-his-babies way. I know Jack doesn’t operate that way. I know the parameters,” Eva quickly explained. She’d never, ever thought of romantic moonlit strolls with him, or of Jack confessing his undying love.
Jack Bennett? Never! No, the things she’d thought about him were likely the same things he thought about her. Sex. Pleasure. Nothing more.
She sat up straighter, strengthened by her thoughts. “I mean, isn’t it better to do it with someone like Jack than to get drunk and have a one-night stand with a guy I just met?”
Georgie nodded slowly. “Yes. I guess.” She sighed. “This is the problem with holding onto your V-card for so long, Eva. You start to think of it as part of your worth. You build up the act of losing it so much in your mind that it can never match up to your expectations, and then when you don’t have it to flash anymore, you feel worthless.”
“I don’t think of it as any part of my worth,” Eva said. “It’s a monkey on my back. I just want to lose it and pick up some much needed knowledge while I’m at it. I may be naïve, but trust me, I can separate sex from love just as well as he can.”
“Okay,” Georgie said. She gave Nelson a nudge. “I don’t mean to sound like I don’t fully support you in this. You don’t have anything to worry about. In fact, we probably have more faith in you than you do in yourself.”
Nelson had been scoping out the bartender with the blond crew cut across the way. He nodded. “You’ll do fine,” he said dismissively. “What I want is more details about this wondercock of Jack’s. Is it truly wondrous?”
“And cocky?” Georgie added. “You really think he’s going to attempt to stuff all ten inches of its exalted manly grandness into your virgin snatch tonight?”
Eva’s stomach lurched at her friends’ gleeful teasing. But maybe they were right—sex was supposed to be fun. She needed to just relax, goddammit. “I don’t know. He has his own lesson plan. But last time he hinted that he wanted to you know.” She blushed as she remembered the sexy way Jack had leaned in and whispered in her ear, and lowered her voice. “Do the deed.”
Georgie laughed. “You’ve never said the word fuck, have you?”
“I have,” Eva insisted. In fact, she’d dropped the f-bomb Sunday night. With Jack. When he’d been about to make her come like the world was ending.
He was changing her, making her more like him. So what if he had sex for sport? She knew that going in. And she needed lessons. He was a master. They were both business people, and this was a business arrangement. She could handle this.
“Fuck,” she said, lifting her nose into the air. “See? Fuck fuck fuckity fuck. We’re going to fuck tonight. Happy?”
Georgie applauded. Nelson beamed.
Eva checked her watch. It was time. Time to catch a cab to the Plaza.
She hugged her friends who wished her good luck, patting her on the back as if psyching her up for some sporting tournament. For a moment, she thought of Antonio and her father, and how proud they’d been when she’d lettered in volleyball her sophomore year, but she forced those thoughts away. Georgie was right. In order to go through with this, she couldn’t think of family for the rest of the night.
When she got outside, she headed down the block to hail a cab, practicing deep breathing, trying to calm herself as she imagined Jack, standing in the lobby, waiting for her.
Oh, who am I kidding? Jack never waits.
Still, it would be nice if he’d show her a different side than the playboy businessman everyone else saw. She knew she was just his student, but maybe someday she’d be able to teach him a thing or two.
* * *
The sixty-something man in the black hat pressed closer to the brick wall of the building behind him, watching Eva Fiorini breeze out of a bar with a spring in her step.
Something about her was different.
He’d watched her grow up, almost always from afar. She bore no marks of the world of sin she’d been born into. She’d always been pretty, fresh-faced and pure, the kind who reeked of sunshine and rainbows and attended Mass every Sunday. Back when she was little, it had been hard to believe there was even a shred of the Fiorini evil running through her blood, or that she kept any dark secrets...
But now?