“I’m really not,” I sigh. “I think you’ve just known me too long.”
“So why’d you choke on that donut like it was trying to face fuck you?”
I bite my lip as we join the beer line. “I… might have done something bad,” I whisper, painfully aware that we’re in the middle of a packed tent.
Sutton frowns. “How bad are we talking? Bad, like you need me to get you out of a traffic ticket again, or bad, like you need help hiding a body? I mean, you know I’ll do it either way. I just need to know what shoes to wear.”
I laugh. “Somewhere in the middle of those options. I, uh… I hooked up with Jonas.” That’s not even close to the right word for it, but I don’t have the words to explain it to her.
Sutton’s face lights up, her mouth hanging open. She smacks me on the arm as she tries—and fails—to whisper. “Shut. Up. That’s not a bad thing. That’s amazing!”
“He didn’t know it was me.” I clear my throat and stare straight ahead. The bartender beckons us forward and I order three lagers while Sutton stares daggers at me. As soon as he turns to pull the beers, Sutton is breathing down my neck, eyes crazy.
“What?” she over-enunciates, hitting the ‘t’ extra hard.
“Remember Muriel said he was leaving town in a suit?” Sutton nods. “I… sort of followed him.”
The bartender returns with the beers. Sutton takes all three and jerks her head toward a picnic table at the edge of the beer garden. “And how do you ‘sort of follow’ someone?” She hisses as we walk.
“Fine, I totally stalked him to Portland, happy?”
Sutton laughs and takes a seat across from me. “Happier, yeah. But I still don’t see how you two could hook up without him knowing it was you.”
“Oh, lord. How do I say this?” I eye my beer, trying to find the words. Yeah, there’s no way around. I lift the beer to my lips and drink it in one go before slamming the plastic cup back down. “Sutton, this is serious cone of silence shit. Don’t say a word to my brother or you’re dead to me.”
“Pft. We both know that’s an empty threat, but I stand by the girl code. Chicks before dicks.” She holds up three fingers in the Girl Scout salute.
“There’s this… night club. People wear masks and it’s anonymous.”
“Just say sex club, I can handle it.”
“Fine. It’s a crazy exclusive kink club, okay? I followed Jonas there, thinking it was a dance studio or something. And I sort of conned my way in.”
Sutton leans her elbow on the table, and props her cheek in her hand and stares at me, mouth hanging open. “Excuse me, Body Snatchers. Can you please return my best friend? You know, the one who didn’t even have the lady balls to tell Jonas Flynn she had a crush on him?”
“Shut up,” I laugh. “I know this sounds insane. I can’t believe I did it either. But I did. And he saw me in the club—“
“The sex club,” Sutton interrupts pointedly.
“He saw me in the sex club.” I repeat. Sutton nods her approval and I continue. “But I was wearing a mask, and he didn’t know it was me. He asked if I was… participating, and honestly, he was kind of a dick about it and you know how I get when someone challenges me.”
Sutton grins. “So he, what? Dared you to fuck him and you did?”
“No,” I say firmly. “We didn’t—fuck. But he…” Oh, Jesus. I cannot tell her about the pussy spanking. “He got me off.”
Sutton gives me a disbelieving smile. “That’s it?”
“There’s more, but I’m not talking about this in the middle of a fucking pumpkin patch. Anyway, he told me to think it over and come back if I wanted to see him again—”
“Which you obviously did.”
I nod. “You interrupt a lot, you know that?”
Sutton laughs. “So I’ve been told. You saw him again, and he still didn’t know it was you? I can’t wrap my head around that.”
“I love that that’s the sticking point for you in all of this,” I say, shaking my head at her.
Sutton rolls her eyes. “I just don’t buy it. How long did it take you to realize who he was?”