Almost Married
Page 66
Jaz and Amber clapped.
Steph smiled. “And I’m going to use Dave’s little head to reach his big head.”
“Woo-hoo!” Amber cheered. “Naked works.”
Jaz nodded her approval. “Naked always works. And, if not…” She looked around. “Where is that thing? Gotta love a Bliss SatisfyHer. I’ll bet a man came up with that name. A woman would just call it what it was—The No-Man-Needed Pleasure Tool.”
“That’s not very catchy,” Amber said. “I’d just call it Bliss Starter.” She held up a hand. “No, Bliss Assistant.”
“Hey, that’s nice,” Jaz said, lifting her glass of wine in a sex-toy-approved toast. Amber toasted back. “Classy. You may have a future in the sex-toy industry.”
“Why, thank you,” Amber said. She raised her voice to a singsong high pitch. “My highly intellectual physicist father would be so proud.”
Steph piped up. “Ladies! Never mind the sex-toy industry. There’s just one small problem, a lawyer is expensive.”
“You know what?” Jaz said. “Start a Kickstarter campaign to raise the money. Ooo-hoo-hoo. Wouldn’t that play out in the press? Schoolteacher raises funds to divorce her rich rock star husband.”
“That could work, actually,” Amber said.
“I could never ask other people to fund my divorce,” Steph said. “It’s my problem, not theirs.”
Jaz stood and slung an arm over Steph’s shoulders. “I just want to see you happy. Whatever you need to do, I’m here for you.”
Amber slung an arm over Steph’s shoulders from the other side. “Me too.”
Steph blinked back tears. “You guys.”
“All right, let’s get drunk and watch a rerun of Sex and the City,” Jaz declared. “I am way into Steve. Miranda doesn’t appreciate his heart of gold.”
Steph shook her head. “Steve’s kind of geeky, isn’t he?”
Jaz took a sip of wine and put a fist on her heart. “It’s the heart, babe. All the way.”
Amber raised her fist and gave Jaz a fist bump.
Steph settled in, cozy on the sofa, cushioned by her friends. She knew what her heart wanted. She just needed to wade through all the crazy to find a way back.
Chapter Twelve
Dave couldn’t go anywhere without someone feeling sorry for him. Steph and Griffin were all over the news, the Internet, the tabloids. His guy friends tried to console him with the classic, “there’s other fish in the sea,” but he knew there never would be. Steph was it for him. But he wasn’t it for her.
His mind kept returning to the conditional statement:
IF Steph + Griffin THEN
end Steph + Dave
ELSE
Steph + Dave.
He'd never wanted a conditional statement to be false so much in his life. He wanted ELSE. But Steph had to come to him. She had to choose him and, more importantly, get rid of Griffin.
His women friends just gave him soft words and sympathetic looks. They knew how much this sucked for him. Courtney (French teacher) had even offered to kiss him in a selfie and post it online to make Steph jealous. He’d declined her kind, but misguided offer. She’d then whispered, privately away from the teachers’ lounge, even more inappropriate things they could do, which just made him chuckle.
“Thanks, Courtney, I needed that,” he said.
She tossed her hair and strode away. She was quite the jokester.
Chris kept bugging him to fight for Steph, but he was done fighting. He fought Griffin for as long as he could. He’d fought to claim Steph in the most primal way and still…he felt like he’d always have to share her. She’d always be torn between the two of them. This was exactly why polygamy was illegal. And especially rare with one woman and two men. Men did not share their woman easily.
Chris called him after work with another one of her “brilliant” ideas. He sighed heavily.
“No,” he said, “but thanks for thinking of me.”
“It would work,” she insisted. “He hogs the press with your woman, then you fight back in the press. You hog the press. There’s nothing Griffin Huntley loves more than publicity. Putting you in the spotlight would drive him nuts.”