The Last Eligible Billionaire(42)

I probably won’t be sharing with him that his threat of bankrupting me wasn’t actually as terrifying as he thinks it is either.

Convenient? No.

But survivable? Yes.

My dad did it. I could do it too. And I took so very little in the divorce that the only thing I’d miss is if I had to sell off my great-grandma Eileen’s old dildo collection.

She painted them and sold them at traveling art fairs. The leftovers aren’t used.

Probably.

Before I can dial Hyacinth, my phone rings in my hand, and her face lights the screen. I head for the back door, check that the house alarm isn’t set, and then sneak out into the rapidly fading evening sunset.

“Hey,” I start as I answer the video call, but she barrels over me, her face a mirror of mine, but hers is brimming with the thrill of impending gossip.

“Oh my god, Begonia, you are a fucking ROCK STAR!” She glances away from the screen. “No, Jerry, I won’t watch my language in front of the kids when my sister is dating a fucking billionaire. This is appropriate usage of the word fuck, okay?”

“Hey, Jerry,” I say to Hyacinth.

“B says hey,” she calls. Then she’s back facing me. “Talk. Now. Fast. Before Mom figures out we’re talking and tries to beep in. She is losing her mind.”

“So this thing just kinda happened.” I have to be careful. She’ll know when I’m lying, and my face is very bad at lying, especially to Hyacinth. But there’s so much else to talk about. “And I met his mom. And we’re going to New York tomorrow. And you can’t tell the news that if they call, okay? It’s actually possibly scandalous that we’re dating so soon after my divorce? I don’t know that part for sure, but it’s like, the Rutherford family. Frowning wrong at a camera is scandalous, right? And apparently there are security considerations with travel plans, blah blah blah.”

“Gossip Minute just posted a picture of you from dinner tonight and it looks like you’re giving him the Heimlich. All I can say is, what?”

“I told him the clay giraffe story while he was eating clam chowder.”

Her face twists like she’s both horrified and amused, which is fair. The clay giraffe story is legendary. “Begonia. You can’t keep the world’s last billionaire bachelor interested if you’re trying to kill him!”

“Hy. He survived. And you can’t tell me any of his other options for dinner companions would’ve been nearly as entertaining. He’s never dated a commoner before. Wait. No, he has, but none quite like me. He thinks the fact that I use drug store shampoo is adorable. Confounding, but adorable. Also, oh my god, he has this hundred-dollar-an-ounce hand cream from this spa called Silver Crocus, which is just the best name ever—wait, excuse me, it’s Silver Crocus hand crème, spelled with that funky symbol over the first e, and I keep calling it cremm-aye just to watch him stare at me like I’m one of those poison frogs that supposedly just went extinct, and yet he found me in the wild. Like, shocked and worried but still enthralled and like he can’t believe the very last poison frog in the world is his?”

“Only you, Begonia. Only you.”

“I don’t have any expectations that this is forever—I mean, who marries their first boyfriend post-divorce? Other than Mom, who loves being married?—so I’m going to enjoy the thrill of the ride while I’m on it, you know?”

“Is it…thrilling… in all the ways?” she asks.

If I tell her we’re sleeping together, she’ll know I’m lying. If I tell her we’re not, she’ll figure out this is a ruse. Hello, pickle.

I need to pick my truth carefully, so I lean into something that’s so true it hurts. “The first time he kissed me, it was like, oh my god, is this what I’ve been missing?”

Her eyes light up and she squeals, shaking the phone like she’s making excited happy hands and forgot she’s holding it.

“Shh! I don’t want to talk about it.” I’m flapping my hand too, which is making Marshmallow think it’s time to play. He leaps, then bows down on his front paws, back end waving in the air. I pull a jerky stick out of my pocket and toss it out into the night. “It’s like…sometimes you just want to enjoy something without analyzing it too much, you know?”

“Analyzing is most of the fun.”

“Do I need to talk to Jerry about that?”

She laughs.

I try to.

But honestly? Sometimes I worry about Hyacinth. She married a guy who doesn’t hit her, who provides for her, and who doesn’t cheat. Mom’s definition of perfect husband material. He also gets on her nerves sometimes, and they have lovely children together, but I just feel like…

I feel like she settled.

And I don’t want to settle anymore, so I don’t want her to either.

And I can’t tell her that, because I have to let her live her life, even when I don’t like it.

“Enough about Jerry,” she says. She knows. She knows where my brain goes, even when I feel disloyal and I don’t want her to. We’re both trying to respect each other’s life choices, and I know she was on Team Mom for a while over my divorce, even though she never said as much. “Have you met Jonas yet? Oh my god, I’d probably ask if I could lick him if I ever met him. Yes, Jerry, you knew that when you married me. Hush. He’s on my freebie list, not that it matters, because he’s a Rutherford, and he’s married now, which means he won’t let fans lick him anymore. Not that he ever did. But you can rest assured you’re the last man I’ll ever lick, okay?” She drops her voice and pulls the phone closer to her face so all I can see are her eyes and nose. “Do you think he’d let me lick him if we were in a dark room with no witnesses?”