Page 85 of The Art of Almost Losing It
DANI
“Ireally think you need to consider losing your virginity to Graham.”
“Piper!” I shriek and race to the door of the conference room I’ve commandeered and jerk the sliding door shut. “Seriously, I don’t need everyone at Svensson Investment knowing I’m ayou-know-what.”
“‘Virgin’ is not a dirty word.”
“It is when you’re almost thirty and all of your mom’s friends’ daughters are married and having babies.”
Piper sits down across from me and opens up her laptop so that to anyone passing by it will look like we’re working.
“You heard him at dinner the other night. Graham likes you!”
“He was just playing along. He was pissed after.”
“About what? The fact that Vivienne Belmont kept throwing shade on your wedding planning ideas when they’re too cheap to spring for the fancy wedding-planning firms like Weddings in the City?”
“I think she’s mad because she believes Colette deserved to have a billionaire fiancé. Vivienne’s whole dynamic with my mom is that she’s got the richer husband, she has the prettierdaughter, she’s more deserving of happiness. And me being”—I use air quotes—“with Grahamis messing with the natural order of things.”
“Guess Colette shouldn’t have settled for your loser brother. No offense.”
“To be fair, if my parents had been half as hard on him as they were on me, he might have made something of himself in life. You remember how it was when I was, like, thirteen. How Vivienne kept going on and on to my mom about how she was so sure that I was going to get pregnant as a teenager, and then my parents doubled down on all the ‘don’t have sex’ talks.”
“Oh, I know. I’m the one who has to deal with the fallout of your virginity crisis.”
“Ugh, stop saying ‘virginity.’”
“I will if you lose it. Preferably to Graham.”
“I can’t sleep with him. We’re not like that.”
“If you go on about how you’re not the type of girl he likes, I’m sending a mass email to everyone in the company with photos of your stuffed animal collection,” my cousin warns me.
“I’m just being realistic.”
“If you were, then you’d know that your fake boyfriend’s not going to say no if you offer to sleep with him—and then it’s like ‘give a mouse a cookie’ territory.”
“I don’t want to be a sex goddess,” I groan. “I just want my own room and one of those fancy Japanese toasters.”
My phone goes off.
“That better not be Colette complaining on the group chat.”
I glance at it. “It’s Graham.”
“What does he want?”
“To talk.” I make air quotes. “He’s probably trying to get me to agree to close our arrangement and pay me off.” I give a dejected sigh. “I’m wondering if I don’t need to say yes. I hate that a very small part of me is furiously shoveling coal onto thefires of fantasy desires about the billionaire boyfriend. I never should have brought him home to meet my parents.”
“No! Don’t take the money. Then Colette’s just going to go after him.”
“She’s not.” I snort. “She’s marrying my brother.”
“She’ll try to upgrade. Especially because the other two girl-squad girls are not engaged yet. They’ll go after him if you dump him, and then Colette will lose her shit.”
“Maybe I should just let them. This has all been too much social time for me anyway. If that’s what being a billionaire’s girlfriend is, I don’t want it.”
“Really? You don’t want to be paraded around in a pretty dress on a hot, rich, powerful guy’s arm?”
