Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
“There you are,” Vi announced. “You just missed the talk about oral sex panties and fruit roll blow-jobs.”
To that, both women smiled and shook their heads. “If the night is starting with fruit roll blow-jobs and oral sex panties, I imagine it is going to be a good one,” Kit said as she moved into the room, making the air waft over to me, bringing with it the scent of her perfume that made me think of Stevie Nicks and leather, a hint of cigar smoke, and maybe even some cannabis. But as a perfume, not a smoke.
I’d never been one to wear perfume, but if I could find one that smelled like that, I just might be converted.
“Kit, Ria,” Gracie, ever the host, said. “This is Sylvie. Sylvie, Kit—Katherine, but no one calls her that—and Ria whose real name is Ariah, and she goes by both.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said, giving them what I hoped was a warm smile. “I hear you two are vloggers, right?”
“That’s us,” Kit said. “We used to only do travel vlogs, but now we’ve been kind of stationary for a while, so we are trying to diversify. Hence being late. We were trying to film something new. So, you’re with Voss, right.”
“Yep,” Sully answered for me, like he knew I was going to object again. “And I am with nobody. Free as a bird. You’re a princess,” he said to Kit before his gaze slid to Ariah. “But you… you’re…”
“So not falling for the charming surfer boy routine,” Ria cut him off, but her eyes were warm.
“What if it isn’t a routine? Maybe I’m a poor, lowly little beach bum. Who likes rom-coms and cooking.”
“Right,” Ria scoffed. “Just like Dezi is just a sweet little puppy dog with a donut addiction instead of a rabid dog when you let him off his chain.”
“Hey, we’re allowed to have layers,” Sully insisted, in no way put off by her rejection. “All I’m saying is… if you want to peel me…” he said, getting a groan out of Vi who found that too cheesy. “Or… roll me up,” he added with a sexy smirk that had Layna laughing.
“We’re missing something,” Kit decided.
“Have you ever sucked a guy off with a fruit roll wrapped around his junk?” Layna asked, making both the women’s brows raise.
“Anyway,” Willa said, clearly more of the adult of the group. “We are here to get to know Sylvie,” she said.
“There’s not that much to get to know,” I assured them. “I work at the sober house. And I grew up on the road.”
“On the road… how?” Ria asked, perching on the arm of the chair Gracie was sitting on.
And, of course, a travel vlogger would be interested in that. It wasn’t that I felt the need to keep my past secret, but I don’t think I’d ever really told anyone about it aside from Voss. Maybe bits and pieces to Russ or some of the residents, but really no one else.
“My dad was a long-haul trucker. When my mom died, he took me on the road with him. That was home.”
“Oh, God. They’re about to pick your brain for an hour about your favorite places you’ve visited,” Layna declared. “I need some sugar for this,” she added, finally opening one of the pastry boxes.
She was right, too.
Kit and Ariah both picked my brain about my travels, gushing with me about some of the locations, listening to me talk about other places that they had not been to yet.
From there, the conversation turned more toward Navesink Bank, the club, the family. Which I found equally as fascinating. And after a while, I was pretty sure I had gotten most of the names straight. As well as their professions and connections to one another.
“Voss told me you were all going to drag me to the gym when I’m better,” I said when Vi suggested it.
“It’s how we all manage to bond even with busy schedules,” Gracie said. “We have such varied work shifts and such, but we all manage to make time at least once or twice a week to get to the gym, to take a class, to refresh our skills.”
“Don’t be offended,” I started, looking at Gracie.
“But you can’t imagine someone as sweet as her hitting someone?” Layna asked. “Believe it or not, she’s a beast. So you know those rage room things that are popping up all over? Where people go in and break shit?”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding.
“You know how, when you see the videos, it’s always the soft, sweet women who go absolutely apeshit in them? That’s Gracie in a self-defense class.”
“She exaggerates,” Gracie insisted
“She does not,” Vi said.
“Luna too,” Willa piped in, drawing everyone’s attention back to the woman who had totally pulled out her book at some point, and completely tuned us out.