Chapter 5

• Megan brooded for the first two weeks of the New Year and would have kept doing so if Emily hadn’t charged into her apartment and forcibly dragged her out to a wine bar in her neighborhood. It was more Megan’s scene than Emily’s, but she had been accommodating enough to not suggest somewhere farther away when she was obviously in a mood.
• She hadn’t thought to warn him that the clientele was a relatively low-key and conservative after-work crowd, so she’d whipped off her fur coat to expose leggings and an animal-print leotard beneath an oversized pink sweater that hung off one thin shoulder. She also wore glitter eyelashes.
• “Speed dating.” In other words, a revolving door of strangers all expecting Megan to be charming and entertaining.
• A room full of people selling themselves to each other but none actually acting like themselves. “You can’t be serious.”
• “It’s perfect.”
• Megan was two feet away from Emily, but she spoke loud enough to convey her passion on the subject to everyone in their corner of the room. Emily blamed it on being accustomed to speaking to customers over surround-sound Top 40, but Megan was positive she was just a stereotypically loud New Yorker. One who attracted a lot of attention.
• “It’s not perfect, and can you please keep your voice down?”
• “Why?” Emily looked around. She made direct eye contact with an older gentleman in a pinstriped gray suit. A wicked smile crossed her face. “Daddy Warbucks over there seems to like me just fine.”
• “Then go speed dating with him.”
• “Ugh. You’re such a—”
• “A drag? A stiff? A bore? Please, enlighten me. Maybe you’ll come up with an insult I haven’t heard before.”
• Emily stopped ogling the silver fox in the silver suit and pointed one black lacquered nail at Megan. “I was going to call you a pain in the ass, you paranoid. There ain’t no kind of reason why you should be turning up your pointy nose at speed dating. It’s perfect for you.”
• “I just can’t see how.”
• “It’s practice.”
• “Practice for…?”
• Emily waved her hand in such a sharp, sudden gesture that she nearly knocked over the bottle they’d been sharing. “Dating, you schmuck. When’s the last time you’ve even been on a date? And riding Oliver’s humongous cock while drunk doesn’t count. Especially because you can’t remember and give me all the juicy details.”
• Megan regretted telling Emily about any of it, but the words had burst from her lips as soon as she’d asked. She still only remembered bits and pieces of everything that had happened, but her most prominent memory was the fiery burn of Oliver’s dick stretching her. The raw blend of pain and pleasure. Even two weeks later, the thought of it caused flames to lick at her gut, leading to more frequent masturbation than she had ever experienced before.
• “I don’t know. I dated David,” Megan replied to Emily.
• “And then y’all packed up the U-Haul truck in like a month. Yeah, no. That doesn’t count,” Emily retorted.
• Megan thought hard about her past encounters with other men but came up with a short list. She had secretly dated a boy while in college, but he had come from a similar background and had married some well-connected young lady only a month after graduation. Their dating had been limited to studying and occasionally kissing or touching, as Megan had been too shy and paranoid to attempt much more. For some people, college was a time when they were free of the watchful eyes and expectations of their families, but that had not been Megan’s experience. Her university’s graduating class had been full of the sons and daughters of New York’s elite.
• “It didn’t take much for rumors to start and for whispers to extend from Rhode Island to Manhattan,” Megan explained.
• “When I first started dating, I dated a business associate of my father’s,” Megan continued.
• Emily’s wickedly arched brows shot up. “Older?”
• “Much. He… he came on to me, and I was so desperate for attention from someone that I began sleeping with him. But he was married and heartless, and everything was awkward,” Megan revealed.
• “Huh,” Emily responded, cupping her cheek with her hand and gazing at Megan with her huge dark eyes. “And you’re asking me why I think you need practice?”
• Megan clenched her jaw as she refilled their glasses. Emily made a hem-hem noise when she only filled a quarter of het glass, and she went against her father’s sommelier teachings by pouring her the rest of the bottle of red wine. Emily puckered her lips at her in gratitude, and she scoffed.
• “Even if I saw your point,” Megan said. “How will speed dating help? I’ll barely be able to converse with one person, or am I wrongly understanding the logistics?”
• “No, no, you’ve got it right, but that’s the whole point. Sweetie,” Emily grabbed Megan’s hand and squeezed, “you don’t even know what you’re looking for. You need to just throw yourself into the pool and find the right toys to play with.”
• “That analogy…”
• “Shut up. Listen. You admit you’re lacking in experience. What better way to figure out what you should be saying or doing to attract someone than to have twenty or thirty minidates in a couple of hours? Okay, maybe not that much, but you’re not going to see these guys again! It’s just practice. It will be fun.”
• It sounded like a nightmare, but Megan found herself nodding. “When is this thing?”
• Emily beamed. “In an hour.”
• “Oh dear Lord.”
• “Oh calm the hell down. It’s going to be great.”
• IT WAS not great. It was as awkward as Megan had anticipated.
• The speed dating preceded a mixer, and judging by the expensive watches that were peeking out of tailored suit jackets, the crowd was predominantly wealthy, Manhattanites. Megan had expected it to be a mixed group of men from various backgrounds, but the scene was overwhelmingly homogeneous in a way that repelled her. Even so, she had let Emily talk her into it, so she committed herself to the task.
• If she looked at it as a task to be accomplished, it was easier. Or so she had thought.
• When it came to being polite and courteous, Megan was more than capable. She introduced herself, talked about her job, what brought her here, and politely istened to her partner’s responses to the same questions. She had thought it would be straightforward. By the time they were both done sharing, time would be up, and for the most part, that was indeed the case. Generally, the conversations went like this:
• “My name is Emily Harrington. I’m thirty-six, and my most recent position was as a CFO at a new social media platform for artists.”
• “Oh, really? What’s it called?”
• And Megan would tell them.
• “Are you involved in the programming or the developing?”
• Megan smiled as she explained that she had been the CFO, or chief financial officer.
• “Do you have a profile on the site? It sounds really unique,” her partner asked.
• Grudgingly, Megan explained that she had never made a profile because she wasn’t a creative professional. The response was often an awkward silence, followed by a slight smile and a glance at their watch. Maybe this was why she had been let go from her position. Her lack of passion for the startup’s ideals, despite being excellent in her role, hadn’t sat well with the founders, and it seemed her fellow speed daters agreed.
• Megan tried not to take it personally, but she couldn’t help but notice Emily cracking jokes and causing his partners to laugh from across the room. Her own table was the least animated of the bunch, and she wondered if people were dreading coming to her, if it was painfully obvious that she was boring.
• She hoped not, but by her fifth go around, she was convinced her partners had lost interest before she had even spoken a single word. By the seventh go around, she was considering ghosting the event, collecting herself and ducking out before anyone could notice. Emily wouldn’t mind; he was having a great time on his own.
• When the bell rang for the eighth time, Megan glanced at her own watch and then at the door. There was a thirty-second lapse between rounds. If she moved quickly—
• “Emily Harrington Surprise, surprise,” a low, velvet voice interrupted her thoughts.
• Megan’s eyes widened, her fingers spasmed, and her heart sped up as she recognized Oliver’s voice.