Billionaire Beast

“I don’t know,” I tell her. “What do you want me to say? You’re my roommate and—”

“I’m not your roommate right now,” she says. “Just answer the question and I’ll let you go back to whatever it is that you do.”

“Honestly,” I tell her, trying to find that line between looking enough to form an opinion and staring, “it’s pretty perfect. Not too big, not too small. Good curvature.”

I really hope she doesn’t remember any of this.

“Yeah?” she says. “Chad told me that I had a huge butt,” she sputters.

“Why don’t we just get your pants on?” I ask, and walk closer to the couch.

“He said a lot of things, actually.”

“Well, I don’t know who this Chad guy is, but he sounds like an asshole,” I tell her. “Now, you’re going to need to turn around so we can pull these up, all right?”

Like a foal or a drunken toddler, she slowly makes her way to her feet, her legs shaking and unsteady beneath her.

She turns around to face me, her pants falling to her ankles.

Sure, I may sleep with a different woman every night, but I’m not completely without respect, so I avert my eyes as best I can as I bend down and pull her pants up.

“I’m such a mess,” she says, starting to cry.

“You’re just drunk,” I tell her. “Once you get some sleep and maybe a bit to eat, you’ll start feeling better.”

I’m still holding her pants up, as zipping or buttoning them would be a bit too familiar as a platonic roommate. She fastens the button and zips herself up, then falls back onto the couch.

“What is the matter with me?” she asks.

“Nothing,” I tell her. “You’ve just had a bit to drink—”

“I’m drunk,” she says. “Yeah, I get that. I mean, why is it that everything has to be so screwed up? My sexually inappropriate boss just told me that there’s an opening at the firm and that they’d love to hire me on permanently, but he looked like he was going to burst a blood vessel by being decent to me for once.”

“Leila,” I tell her. “I know you don’t think so right now, but this will all be better after you’ve had a chance to sleep it off, all right? I’m going to bring you a blanket and put on a movie for you. You can sleep on the couch.”

“I think you’re right,” she says.

“Good, do you want me to grab a blanket from your room, or—”

“No, I mean about what you were saying before. When you said that sleeping with someone is what it takes to move on sometimes. That’s what I was trying to do earlier, but that idiot got in a cab and left me there.”

“He left you?” I ask.

She relays the story and I do my best not to crack a smile.

“Some guys are like that,” I tell her. “People can get weird when they haven’t been with someone for a while.”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“But do you know what’s going to help even more?”

“Yeah, yeah, sleep and alcohol wearing off and blah, blah, blah,” she answers.

“That’s right,” I tell her. “Do you want me to grab you a blanket?”

“You know, Dane,” she says.

“Yeah?”