Page 56 of Honey Cut
A pause.
“Lox?” prompts Nat.
A sigh that I hear loud and clear through my earbud. “I think it’s nothing, but I’m not getting a door lock confirmation from the fire exit.”
Goran sounds worried. “What does that mean?”
“It means that I can’t be sure the door is currently locked or, if it is, if it willstaylocked. Or if it will register being unlocked and opened, since there’s currently no signal.”
Goran sounds even more worried now. “So what doesthatmean?”
“It means I’ll come out there and fix it.” Lox’s voice is undeniably grumpy. “I don’t know when. Whenever I can get over there. I can hardly hop a commercial flight when half the government believes I’m a domestic terrorist.”
“What should we do until then?” asks Nat.
“Does the fire exit have a big sign on it that says,Secret shit this way?”
“No,” answers Goran. “There are cameras though.”
“Then monitor the feeds and call it good. I’ll try to get out there…at some point.”
And Lox hangs up.
* * *
There’sno time to hunt for the fire door after that because Mark and I are expected at dinner and then at the opera. Mark behaves as we arrive at the Kennedy Center and begin to schmooze in the lobby—althoughbehaveis a relative term for him. He possessively strokes the back of my neck and plucks at the sheer cape of my black Jenny Packham dress. He leans in to murmur in my ear, this name or that name, this scandal or that scandal, until his cool voice and warm breath have left goose bumps all over my shoulders and chest. His favorite thing is to brush his palm discreetly over my paddle-bruised backside and watch me shiver.
Not for the first time, I think about how evanescent the line between reality andpretendis. My bottom really is sore; Mark really is treating himself to the sight of my shivers in public.
He knew it would be like this, all those years ago. He knew our performance would be tangible and corporeal and able to be witnessed. He knew that any pretending we did would have to mirror what couldn’t be feigned.
Bruises. Touches.
Sighs and sweat and shivers—blushes and stippled, goose-bumped skin.
He tried to warn me that our bodies would have to prove our lies, but no warning could have prepared me for how it actually feels, for this yearslong betrayal of my flesh. For my body to tell the truth rather than sell it.
Arjun and Evander are there, transformed into two handsome but vanilla boyfriends who are the social toast of the town. Arjun owns a global chain of luxury hotels, and Evander—whose real name is Theo—seems to have the enviable job of being the playboy heir to a shipping empire. They hold hands and peck each other on the cheek, and no one else here would know that Theo/Evander had a massive dildo in his ass last night while Arjun hit him with an electric flyswatter.
The crowd gathers around us as people come to clumsily propitiate Mark for favors, and then about ten minutes before the opera is set to begin, a commotion stirs near the door. I look up to see Tristan at the far end of the lobby, eyes alert as the president of the United States strolls inside the Kennedy Center, his wife on his arm.
They are even more attractive in person, which I would not have thought possible, with President Embry Moore’s sky-blue eyes and aristocratic features, and his wife Greer Colchester-Moore’s sunlight hair and faintly clefted chin. They make their way toward us, their security detail fanning out into the lobby, the First Lady’s bright-red dress catching the light as she walks, making no secret of the gravid curve of her abdomen.
“Mark,” President Moore says. He shakes hands with my husband. “It’s good to see you. I’m sorry we weren’t able to make it to the wedding.”
“I wasn’t feeling my best,” the First Lady volunteers with an apologetic smile. “I asked him if we could go to our river house and take it easy for a few days.” Her silver eyes turn to me. “You must be Isolde.”
I take her hand, smiling back, and we make easy small talk, fluent in the same rich-girl language. Greer Colchester-Moore, née Galloway, had a very similar upbringing to mine. She’d been political royalty rather than financial royalty, but it was largely the same life, all told. Boarding schools followed by expensive universities followed by the kind of career that called for a closet full of silk blouses. Although I doubt she’s also had a secret job poisoning archbishops and smothering evil priests.
There is another way we’re similar, however.
The rumor goes that Greer had been in love with President Moore when he was stillVicePresidentMoore and she was married to Maxen Colchester, his best friend. It’s an unconfirmed rumor—substantiated by Embry and Greer’s quick marriage after President Colchester’s assassination, maybe—but still.
What’s not a rumor is that Embry was in love with President Colchester, something Embry told the world during his election night victory speech. Which means the vice president loved the presidentandthe president’s wife, and she loved him and her husband too. I wonder what it felt like for the three of them, to want what was impossible to have, if it felt anything like what Tristan and I feel now.
But maybe not. Because Tristan looks like someone kicked a puppy in front of him, and I feel like my heart has been burning in small battered flames like a rack of votive candles in a church, but when I look at Greer and Embry now, they look…happy. Embry is constantly touching her, the small of her back, her hand, the swell of her stomach. And she is looking at him like he’s all she can see.
So maybe whatever happened between the three of them isn’t the same at all.
