“I can’t believe you’re leaving me,” Marie said, as she folded up my favorite sweater, her fuzzy curly red hair sprouting wildly from her head. She’d shown up a few minutes ago to help me pack. We’d ordered pizza and opened a bottle of wine and gotten to work. “And so quickly! I don’t even have time to throw you a party!”

“I know,” I replied. “I’m sorry that it’s all so sudden.”

“I just don’t understand how she convinced you,” she said. “I would have thought you’d have used this opportunity to put some distance between you and Matilda, once and for all.”

Marie and I had been friends since middle school. We’d met in a painting class at daVinci Arts Middle School—the school that parents sent their weird artsy kids to that they didn’t know what else to do with.

We were the most timid of our whole class when we’d first arrived, in awe of the bigger, cooler, artsy kids on the verge of high school, most of them already sporting dyed hair and Doc Martens. Marie blossomed, quickly adapting to the quirky unstructured atmosphere. She surrounding herself with all the cool kids.

I was like a fish out of water.

My classmates were performers—loud, wild, constantly moving and expressing themselves. I’d spent my childhood cutting out paper dolls and then making my own clothes for them, eventually moving to sewing real ones, but I’d spent most of my time tucked away in a corner all by myself.

Marie quickly recognized that I was struggling. She took me under her wing, made sure to include me in everything and dared anyone to say a cross word about me, even though my shyness was painful at times.

After a while, she managed to make me feel comfortable and in my own way, I guess I blossomed too. We’ve been inseparable ever since. We endured high school and college together and we always thought we’d still be standing next to each other after graduation.

I couldn’t blame her for being upset about this. I’d upended our entire plan.

“I don’t know why I agreed,” I said, feeling awful for lying to her. “I just wanted to make her happy, I guess.”

“Making your mother happy is not usually a priority for you,” she said, eyeing me suspiciously. “Are you sure there isn’t something you aren’t telling me?”

“Well,” I hesitated. Marie knew me better than anyone. Of course she would sniff this out. “I sort of…connected…with my Mom’s boss.”

“What do you mean, connected?” she asked, squinting her eyes.

“Honestly,” I replied, relieved to let the words spill out of me. “Marie, if you tell anyone about this I’ll die… It was unexpected! He just came in and took charge…I didn’t really know what to do. And then it was so fucking incredible…” I was breathless just thinking about Bear’s hands on me.

“What the hell are you talking about? Slow down. Start from the beginning,” she said, sitting on my bed.

“Okay,” I said, sinking into the comfort of the quilt my Grandma had sewn for me. “I wasn’t going to go. I told my mother I wasn’t interested in moving to New York. God, do you remember how big those fucking rats were? But then Bear sort of…changed my mind.”

“Bear?” she asked, cocking her head to the side.

“Yeah. His name is Bear Dalton.”

“Your Mom’s boss’s name is Bear? For fuck’s sake! Who names their kid Bear? Why didn’t you ever tell me this?”

“I don’t know. But he’s certainly not a kid,” I said, a slow smile spreading across my face. I could still feel him inside me, my skin was still burning from his touch, even days later. “And I guess he’s my boss now, too.”

“He gave you a job? Why didn’t you say so?”

“I’m telling you now!”

“Well, what is it? How much does it pay?”

“You sound like Matilda! I - I - don’t really know…” I murmured, my voice trailing off as I realized how ridiculous this all sounded now that I was putting it into words.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” she laughed.

“Alright, look. He fucked me.”

“What!” Her mouth practically fell on the floor.

“I mean, we had sex…” A blush crept up my face. Marie and I talked about sex all the time but for some reason I felt like this was different. Should I have been ashamed about what happened? Should I have kept it to myself? There’s no way in hell I could have kept this from Marie much longer.

“You had sex with your Mom’s boss? That’s kind of…hot,” she smiled.

“My boss, too, technically,” I shrugged.

“So let me get this straight,” she laughed. “You fucked your new boss but you don’t know how much he’s going to pay you or what the job is but you’ve agreed to move clear across the country to do this mystery job?”

“Basically, yes,” I said.

“Damn. That’s insane. He must have been one incredible lay,” she shook her head.

“There wasn’t any lying down involved, he bent me over the table in a private room at Departure,” I said.

Her laughter roared through my apartment.

“Sounds romantic,” she managed to spit out through her hysterical laughter.

I shook my head, second guessing my decision to confide in her.

“Look, it’s crazy, believe me I know that. He just…damn, he just had this pull. He’s so fucking handsome. And sophisticated. And rich. And sexy as hell…”

“Oh, my god! I have to see this guy,” she said, grabbing my computer and punching in Bear’s name on a google search page. Hundreds of pictures popped up, just as I knew they would, because I’d already spent hours and hours searching for info on Bear myself last night.

“Holy fuck,” Marie whispered. “He doesn’t even look real…”

“Yeah, none of this feels real either.”

“You already fucked him, Chloe? I just don’t understand,” she shook her head again, before looking back at me. “Does Matilda know?”

“No!” I yelled. “God, no!”

“Well, damn woman. Sounds like you’ve got an adventure ahead of you.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I said.

“Big dick?”

“God, Marie! Is that all that matters to you?” I laughed.

“Most of the time, yes, yes it is,” she nodded. “So?”

“Yeah,” I replied, a slow, secret smile spreading across my face as Bear’s beautiful cock flashed in my head. “It’s huge.”

Her squeals rang in my ears and I reached for my wine glass, pouring it down my throat.

What the hell had I gotten myself into?