“What happened in the cave, Wasp?” Raven asked, knowing me too well, knowing there was a story there. “Wasp?” she pressed when I sat there with my eyes closed, finding the words harder than they should have been to admit.
This was my best friend.
We talked about sex all the time.
But this was different.
Because, I guess, in the past, sex had always been a power move on my part.
Sex with Fenway was perhaps the only time I’d been with a man and given even a small bit of my power away.
“I slept with the client,” I admitted, finding that the separation, the choice not to use his name made it easier to admit.
“Okay,” Raven said, trying to process this information. “You slept with the client because it was good for the job, or because you genuinely wanted to do it?”
“I wanted it,” I admitted. “And then I continued to want it. Day and night. For about a week,” I told her, shaking my head at myself.
“I think we both know that sex is sex. It doesn’t have to be more than that unless we want it to. So my question is this. Was it just sex? Or did it mean something to you?”
“You know the answer to that.”
“I want to hear it.”
“It meant something to me. And it was more than sex. It was everything. We fucked in that cave, and then suddenly, I wasn’t a conwoman and he wasn’t a mark. I was just a person. Who was kind of into this other person.”
“Into,” Raven repeated as though the word didn’t make sense. And, to be fair, it didn’t make sense. Not as it related to me and the opposite sex.
“Yes, into. Like a normal woman is into a normal man.”
“Wow. Okay.”
“That’s it?” I asked, feeling my lips curve upward slightly. “That’s all you have to say to this revelation?”
“I’m processing,” she told me, taking a deep breath. “If someone asked what phrase I would be more shocked at coming out of your mouth—that you were going to shave your head, forsake all material things, and dedicate your life to meditation in a hut in the woods all alone, or that you might have feelings for a guy, I’d consider the former the much more plausible option. And you’d have to be barefoot to do that, and we both know how much you like your heels.”
“I know it’s crazy. It took me a long time to see it too.” I was still processing it, if I was being honest.
“So what was it about him that was so different?”
“I honestly don’t know,” I admitted. “He was utterly ridiculous. He was not someone I should have been into.”
“Utterly ridiculous sounds interesting. You’ve always had a thing for interesting.”
“That’s true.”
“How was he ridiculous?”
“He is just over-the-top in every way. He decides at the drop of a hat to hop onto his private jet or his massive yacht and just take off to some other part of the world. He does things like rents out an entire tourist attraction so that he can show it to you when it is empty. He buys everything you look at for too long at a market. It was just… it was all crazy.”
“Maybe that’s your type.”
I guess I wouldn’t know. I’d never wanted a man for more than a night, so I didn’t stop to consider what about them I would be into. Aside from being able to hold a halfway decent conversation in the bar before heading back to a room somewhere.
I always knew that if a conversation started with something along the lines of, ‘Hey did you hear about this new conspiracy theory blowing up Facebook?” or “So, the Illuminati,” I knew I was out.
I liked lighter hair and swimmer’s builds instead of tall, dark, and handsome or insanely jacked.
Outside of those sorts of things, I didn’t have a ‘type’ because I never spent that much time with those men.
It was entirely possible that I liked ridiculous men.
“I thought opposites were supposed to attract,” I told her, knowing that I was generally the craziest person in any given room, someone willing to run off at any given moment to do something fun or interesting, someone who ran cons for a living. Sweetheart cons, nonetheless.
“You’re a nut,” Raven told me, though I sensed a ‘but’ coming. “That said, you are very rational and grounded. Sometimes people don’t see that right away. Being a conwoman who lives in a skoolie and wears ankle-breaking heels to concerts makes you seem a lot more irrational than you are. But you are a good businesswoman. You have more street smarts than anyone I know. And I am including more than those biker brothers of yours. You might be crazy, but you balance it out. Does this Fenway guy balance himself out?”