Page 20 of Room Serviced
“I’d fuck Yosemite and marry Joshua Tree,” she finally said.
“Wow.”
“Yosemite’s got too many people. You have to make reservations a year in advance, there’s a lottery, it’s a whole thing. Sorry. We could have a wild, passion-fueled one-night stand, but that would be all.”
“I think I’d fuck Joshua Tree and marry Yosemite,” Max said thoughtfully. “I feel like I need trees and water for a long-term relationship.”
“Fair,” Sloane agreed. “Okay, my turn?”
“Your turn.”
“All right. Fuck, marry, kill: that guy, that lady, and that guy.” She pointed at three of the huge, gilt-framed portraits on the wall, including the one by the door they’d come in.
Max leaned back in his chair, sipped his second cocktail—this one was some sort of gin concoction that also had absinthe, since this was apparently some kind of absinthe bar—and studied them. “I’m pretty sure that’s Lord Byron, so I’d probably kill him,” he said, pointing at the first one. “I don’t think we’d get along, and he seems like he’d be bad in bed.”
“Even though he got around?”
“Yeah. He looks like he wouldn’t reciprocate, just lie back and tell you to get yourself off.”
Sloane took a long, thoughtful drink. “And complain he couldn’t breathe if you sat on his face,” she said, and Max had to take a careful breath in and let it out slowly, his eyes locked on Lord Fucking Byron so he didn’t do anything weird or inappropriate.
Such as, for example, tell Sloane that his face could double as a chair, if she’d like.
“Unconscionable,” he said after a beat. When he could, he looked over at her. “We agree about that one, then?”
“For sure. Okay, would you fuck her and marry him or fuck him and marry her?” She pointed at the other two portraits currently up for the game: a woman in perfectly respectable Edwardian garb, with a less respectable little smirk on her face, wearing a huge hat piled with birds, and the come fuck me smokeshow they’d seen when they walked into the bar.
“How do the birds figure in?” he asked.
“Wow, kinky,” Sloane said. Max grinned. “I bet if you asked nicely, she’d leave the hat on. And he’s willing to perform sex acts that include the pocket watch,” she went on, nodding at the man’s portrait.
“If he’ll perform sex acts that include the mustache, I’m in,” Max said, and he could feel his heartbeat kick up a notch as he took another sip of his drink. “He’s hot. Fuck him, marry her.”
Sloane sighed, leaning her chin in her hand, and contemplated this very seriously. Max watched her and didn’t think many thoughts.
“Yeah. Same,” she finally said. “I’m curious about the birds, but I think she and I could have a long, happy, celibate relationship filled with gossip and hats. I don’t know what Lawson and I would talk about.”
“Lawson?” Max asked, and looked over at the portrait again. Finally, it clicked. “That’s Belle’s dead husband?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s what it said.”
“Shit,” Max said, and then looked up at the ceiling. “Sorry, Belle. I meant all my thoughts respectfully.”
“I get why you mourned so hard,” Sloane added, laughing.
There was a moment where they both drank in silence while Max watched her from the corner of his eye, trying to gauge if he should go ahead and mention?—
“You know I’m bi, right?”
“Yeah, everyone knows that,” Sloane said, like he’d just told her that water was wet.
“Not everyone,” Max said. “My Uncle Dale still thinks meeting the right girl will knock the gay part out of me.”
Sloane, mid-sip, nearly choked.
“Sorry.”
“It sounds like he knows, he’s just a dick,” she said, wiping her mouth. “You’re related to him?”
