Walk on the Wilder Side by Serena Bell

9

Rachel

“Louisa,” I plead over the phone. “I need your help.”

Louisa is a first-class bestie. After I saw Werner’s butt, Louisa helped me pack up my stuff and get the hell out of that apartment. I slept at her place that night, and we shuttled the rest of my stuff into storage and found me a plane ticket. Meanwhile, she pushed boxes of tissues, glasses of water, chocolate, and wine at me, listened as I told the story of where perfect had landed me, and instructed me that I should have a rebound fling with “that bad boy.”

Ages ago, I’d mentioned that Brody was my first crush. Unrequited. She wanted to know if I’d ever tried to see if it could be requited, and I said that Brody had never given me even the slightest sign that he was interested in my existence, let alone my lady bits.

Anyway, I told Louisa, by the time I’d had the wherewithal to stage anything like a seduction, Connor had gone off to college and Brody had stopped coming around. She said that was lame, and I said it was life.

We were probably both right.

“You got it! What’s up?” she asks me now, in response to my SOS.

“I need to bag the bad boy.”

She screams on the other end of the phone, and I have to pull it away from my ear. When it’s safe to resume holding it by my head, she says, “Rachel Perez, are you going to do something that’s not in the plan?! Say it isn’t so!”

Louisa and I are opposites-attract friends. She has never had a plan in her life, and I have rarely moved a muscle without one. It works, somehow, the way these things do. But we make fun of each other a lot, which is probably how we cope with how impatient we make each other. Like, Louisa is basically never on time. Ever. And I pretty much won’t say yes to anything if I don’t have twenty-four hours to plan it.

“You have to tell me everything. Everything!”

“It’s a long, zany story.”

“I’ve got time.”

It’s hard to know where to start, but I tell her about my mom breaking her foot and about the first girls’ night out.

“Wait, what?” Louisa demands. “You? You’re selling sex toys? How does that even happen? Was that in the plan?”

“No,” I say. “It was definitely not in the plan. But I kind of love it.”

I tell her about the parties I’ve done. How the women talk to each other, the confessions they make, and the healing they do.

“That’s really cool. But what does this have to do with the bad boy?”

“I told you it was a long story. The bad boy?”

“Yesssss?”

“He has a boat.”

“Okaaayy?”

“And, long story, but the gist is, his family owns an outdoor adventure business—you know, it’s the Pacific Northwest—and they’re trying to get more business from spa-and-wedding tourists, and he asked me to do a girls’ night out on his boat.”

“And you said yes?” she demands. “To selling sex toys on his boat?”

I can’t exactly claim credit for that decision. I explain about how I didn’t know it was sex toys. And neither did Brody.

“But then I found out and I did it anyway.”

I tell her about the women at my first party and how they inspired me with their bruised but brave sex lives and their honesty.

“Holy shit, Rush Creek Rachel is incredibly badass.”

She kind of is, I think.

“Yeah, well, she needs to be even more bad…tushy.” Gopher butt, I’m talking about myself in the third person. “I need to be even more badtushy. I need to seduce him.”

I could swear Louisa is cheering.

I start to explain about Jack Buddy and she jumps in. “Oh, my God, I used to love that thing when I was dating this guy who was totally obsessed with hand jobs!”

I tell her about Brody’s studied disinterest, and, most importantly, what happened after the party. How Brody was staring at my mouth, how he looked up guiltily and said, “Connor would kill me,” and how we both knew he didn’t mean for selling vibrating bunnies on his boat. And I update her on the state of the union with the parties, that after he said he didn’t want to do any more, he agreed to do at least a second one, in a few days.

“So? So? What are you going to do about it?”

“Well,” I say. “I don’t know. It’s confusing. He is my brother’s best friend. This could be the small town equivalent of a diplomatic incident. Maybe even declaration-of-war level.”

“Rachel,” she says sternly. “You are not going to miss your chance to bag the bad boy because your big brother might get testy with you.”

“No,” I agree. “That would be criminal.”

“So? What’s the plan?”

“I guess… I’m going to seduce Brody Wilder, on his boat, with a sparkly purple dildo?”

She giggles. “It sounds like a kinky game of Clue. I guess now we know what the rope and the candle were really for.”

“Candlestick.”

I can practically hear her rolling her eyes. “Candle. Like, wax. You know.”

“Wax?”

“Oh, Rachel,” she groans. “You have so, so much fun ahead of you.”

“I need a strategy,” I say.

“Do you?” she asks. “It sounds like you’re doing pretty well without a plan.”

I picture the smolder in Brody’s green eyes and decide she’s right. Also, for the first time in my life without a plan sounds strangely wonderful.

“Oh, shit!” Louisa cuts into my fantasy, sounding panicked. “I just realized I’m supposed to be on a work call as of three minutes ago. Gotta run. Enjoy your walk on the wild side!”

“My walk on the Wilder side,” I correct, giddy. “It’s way wilder than picking your scarf with your eyes closed, right?”

That’s one of the things Louisa makes fun of me for, that I have fifty-five days worth of interchangeable work clothes (eleven shirts, five pants; can be worn in any combo), but I choose my scarves daily with my eyes closed, to shake things up.

Louisa snorts. “Fuck yeah. Have fun, girl!”

We say goodbye, and I swipe to hang up.

“Who was that?” a deep voice behind me asks from the doorway, and I nearly jump out of my skin.

“Connor! I didn’t know you were here! Where’s your truck?”

And, oh, megadooky! Was he listening?

“Dad took it to Home Depot. I was helping Mom with some stuff. Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.”

Nah. He couldn’t have been listening, because he doesn’t look particularly concerned. And I know Connor doesn’t hold back when he has an opinion, which he definitely would if he’d heard anything I’d said about Brody.

Connor is intensely protective of me, and always has been. One of my most cherished memories is of the time when Connor was teaching me to ride a bike. He kept saying, “I won’t let you fall, Rachey!” Finally my dad came outside and made Connor let him take over. It took me all of five minutes after that to ride on my own. When Connor grumped about my dad taking all the credit for his hard work, my dad told Connor: “You can’t teach someone to ride a bike if you won’t let her fall.”

Yep. That’s Connor.

The universe must be looking out for me, because a moment later, my dad pulls up and climbs out of the truck, and Connor gives me an unconcerned wave, jumps in, and drives away.

Whew.

If I’m going to walk on the Wilder side, I should probably do it a little more stealthily.