how would u feel about

  receiving some tasteful

  nudes???

  The question slams into Ryan like a sledgehammer. The words ‘tasteful nudes’ threaten to turn his brains into mush, or at least the parts that haven’t been reduced to their own kind of mush by the bass-boosted speakers of Club Insomnia.

  He’s in the #1 club for all the foreign visitors – junior executives here for a week-long business trip and young political assistants and social media influencers – that come to Nineveh and he’s staring at his phone. All around him is all the alcohol and drugs and beautiful women his eighteen-year-old self could ask for and he’s staring at his phone. Out of the corner of his eye, two gorgeous blondes with enough legs for days seduce a suit-and-tie wearing twenty-something and he’s staring at his phone. The table in front of him holds a platter of bottles of some of the most expensive shit in this place, Bacardi and Hennessey and Courvoisier and Patron, and he’s staring at his phone. Sitting next to him is Theodora Kerrigan, the daughter of a LionsBank executive and an actual actress in actual movies, alongside various stints as models for various products.

  But none of them, not even Theo – as lovely as she is, can compare to Sophia Ramos nudes.

  I’m in a public place!

  that makes it more

  exciting though ??

  how?

  you’ve gotta be

  secret about it!!!

  ??????

  Can i have a rain

  check on the nudes

  offer expires at

  midnight??

  11 tonite

  ????????

  Great, she’s thinking about it.

  only if u tell me

  where u are rn??

  It gives Ryan time to recalibrate himself. He’s at Club Insomnia, the only nightclub in nightclub-dense Nineveh that has a four-figure entrance fee for non-members. Luckily, Apollo Archer is a member and stupid enough to let a bunch of Apex Security idiots tag along. Where is the young Archer scion right now? At the bar, of course – Ryan can see the pink-haired heir to the aether throne talking up some curvy brunette with full lips and long lashes and Ryan can’t quite figure out which of the two is faker. Maybe her tits, considering their almost anti-gravity qualities. Ryan’s seen better in his day.

  Archer’s retinue has to shout to get over the music. The kid’s designated crescent booth is distressingly close to both the enormous, wall-to-wall bar and the dance floor, separated from the latter by a staircase and a railing and about six feet vertically speaking. The bar is even closer because the moment you walk down the stairs you’re at it. That means they’re close to the enormous speakers, which are currently playing some super up-tempo remix of an old, old song that Ryan hasn’t heard. There’s a midnight howl and a girl crying ‘more, more, more’ and a rebel yell and the girl crying ‘more, more, more’ and people are really grooving to it. Ryan doesn’t have his dancing shoes on.

  His options for conversation are limited, though. Paulie is there and he commands the conversation, as per usual, but Ryan doesn’t want to pay attention to his complaining because its about his fucking fantasy football teams. Oh, boo hoo, your team got torched because fucking Timothy Diallo threw for five touchdowns against your defense. That’s what he deserved for picking the defense going against the Cowboys. Then he switched to bitching about one of his teams going against a team with the Baltimore Ravens defense who forced eight turnovers, what a horrible tragedy. Go gamble on over/unders like a respectable person.

  Wait, Sophia.

  I’m at Insomnia. Hbu

  that sounds fun! who

  u with??

  The usual.

  tell theo I say hi!??

  o! im at subway

  lol ??

  By yourself?

  no u bingus ??

  im with jake

  Of course she’s with him. She’s always with him. But they’re on break. He can’t in good conscious be mad at her about that. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Theo inching ever closer to him and he’s not doing anything about it. He could start to move away. If he wanted to.

  Don’t mean he can’t be jealous. What does fucking Jacob Gilman have that he doesn’t?

  He doesn’t have an overbearing parent and she lives in the same building as him and he’s a Janissary just like she is. And he’s way better looking than you.

  He squishes the evil voice in his head telling him those words. His phone vibrates again.

  how was ur day? ??

  That’s my emoji!

  Good. Did u hear

  what happened to

  Santiago

  did something

  happen?

  Yea, Anastasia

  called him a bunch

  of homophobic

  slurs

  ??????????

  good for her! hes

  a big ??????

  That’s one way of putting it. If Voronin wasn’t there she would’ve climbed over the table and ripped his throat out. He’s been fucking going on and on about that Grand Opening for weeks now; sure, he’s put a lot of money on it and who knows where he got that money from. Considering it’s a casino, probably people who don’t like to be kept waiting for their loans to be repaid. But even if it wasn’t mandatory, doing a diplomatic service or something, he’d probably still go. She’d be there. Last he saw her she was vomiting her blood onto his boots.

  Btw, you’re at the

  casino tomorrow

  right? Im being forced

  to go lol

  yea

  Ryan waits.

  And waits.

  And waits some more.

  Is something wrong?

  ?????? fucking

  santiago wants

  me to hang off

  his fucking arm all

  night!! ??????

  Oh. Too good to be true.

  My condolences.

  ??youre not the

  one who has to deal

  with him! ??

  Sorry

  Sheesh

  Lmao ??im not

  mad at u bingus ??

  hes just so controlling

  i want to scream ?????

  So is my dad, are the words his brain wants his fingers to type. But his dad doesn’t have a contract over his entire body until he’s thirty, and all the associated rights. For Sophia, it means Santiago owns everything about her – royalties from movies and modeling appearances. He chooses what she does. Given that she’s no longer in his sight all the time, Ryan figures he’s getting more controlling when he can see her. So he doesn’t type So is my dad and saves his relationship with her. Instead he types something dumber.

  If I killed him how

  would u feel?

  At first, Sophia doesn’t respond. Probably shouldn’t’ve sent that! Three dots stay on screen for a concerning amount of time.

  did u know that

  he forced me to

  go on break?

  Why?

  Why?

  because im a

  ?movie star??

  and he said i cant

  be seen ‘frolicking’

  with some soldier

  boy

  I’m more than

  some ‘soldier boy’

  Yes, yes, backup linebacker at Texas A&M for four straight years. Big deal. Could’ve gone pro if not for the tangibles and intangibles. Now you kill people for a living instead. In the background, Paulie’s yelling about the Denver Broncos and how much they suck and big Flynn, Colorado-born, is getting defensive about his beloved shitty team. He feels someone lean against his arm, sees copper-red hair and jade-green eyes and a bright smile and a face full of freckles. There’s a girl, all black and red, including her hair, pulling Paulie back from the brink. He's not actually going to fight Flynn because the shitty, 1 win and 6 losses Broncos beat his slightly less shitty, 2 wins and 5 losses Philly Eagles, right? The girl at Paulie’s side is wearing knee-high boots with platforms four inches high and a black and red checkerboard skirt and a leather jacket stylistically torn to bits. Astounding how Paulie pulled that one in. He never seemed the type to be after goths.

  His phone vibrates again.

  he doesn’t see it

  that way. if it wasnt

  for davison id be

  in dubai or geneva

  ‘dating’ some grimy

  old oil sheik or some

  actor who he wants

  to be in a movie or

  something

  If it wasn’t for Davison. Her situation must be dire if she’s thankful for Scott Fucking Davison, spook supreme. Everything his father has told him about Davison sets off alarms. Makes him anxious even when he’s sitting far across a table. His dad said that if it wasn’t for the Coalition of Peace he’d be a war criminal, and an indicted one at that. Do you know how hard it is to indict an American war criminal? Everything that’s ever been written about him is buried underneath three layers of vantablack ink.

  ok but what if I

  killed him for u

  ??????

  Im being serious!

  well bingus you

  would be executed??

  by his lendors but

  i would ??you

  for however long

  you have left alive

  might be worth it

  let me ?? up first

  and when i do ill

  tell u when to ??

  the bastard

  hopefully he doesn’t

  read your texts

  last time he did

  davison sent dawn

  and jake after him

  ??????

  they broke his nose

  it was hysterical

  ????

  is that why you

  like him?

  who?

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Don’t play with me, Ramos.

  You know who

  I mean

  lol I know ??

  hes just really nice

  and very very hot and

  hes good at baking

  and cooking and he

  has killer abs AND

  he can draw and paint

  and hes a big sweetie

  Jesus.

  ???? BUT ????

  But what?

  hes not u ????

  Well that feels great. He’s all these things but he’s not you, who isn’t all those things.

  bingus???

  He figures he should probably respond, but with what?

  you know that he

  spent his entire life

  training to be like

  that ??

  That doesn’t mean

  anything

  You’re at Subway with him! Who knows what else you’ve done with him! I just offered to kill your captor and this is how you respond?

  You’re on break, you moron. It was your call too. You wanted to evaluate your options or something. Did any really have a chance of measuring up or did you want to sleep with other girls for a few weeks?

  He feels Theo put a hand on one of his forearms. One of those other girls. And she’s engaged, to boot.

  “Is that Sophia?” she asks.

  For a moment, Ryan puts his phone down. It vibrates in his hand.

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “You seem bummed about something?”

  Ryan just shakes his head. When he stops, Theo brushes a few stray locks from his face.

  “She’s with, him.”

  “Him?”

  “That Janissary I’ve told you about. The one she always has eyes for. Looks at him, her eyes go all googly and shit.”

  “Ahh, the hot one,” Theo replies, practically whispering in his ear. “You wanna know something?”

  “Not really,” Ryan replies, even though he’s going to know something whether he wants to or not. He can smell the alcohol on her breath. It’s not pungent, but she’s had a few. Off by the bar, her betrothed puts one of his arms around that brunette. She’s not even that hot! She looks like a porn star! Probably is!

  “I think he’s a bit of a freak.”

  He’s a Janissary! They’re all freaks! Except Sophia!

  “Like, he was engineered in a lab to be that hot. He’s like a cartoon character or something.”

  “Are you into cartoon characters?”

  “Some of them,” Theo says, smiling. There’s an idea behind her eyes and it’s not a particularly good one. She runs her tongue over her front teeth and Ryan scooches over a few inches, towards the exit, and she scooches closer to him. How do I let her down, gently?

  “But, the thing about you is that you just, happened, to be hot. And strong, and brave, and so good in bed.”

  Brotherman, she is coming onto you like a redlining freight train. Play the smart game here. In the background, Paulie is doing a bit he calls ‘Nazi Pinocchio’ which barely passes for comedy. ‘I’m Nazi Pinocchio, and I looooooooooooooooove the Jews,’ he says and then mimes his nose extending three feet. That’s really it. No more substance. ‘I’m Nazi Pinocchio, and I looooooooooove Polish people, oooooooooh,’ and his nose grows longer.

  “Is there a reason you’re acting like this?” he asks her.

  Theo grabs his head with both hands and redirects it not towards her but towards her pink-haired husband-to-be. That girl is still with him and he’s found another. Blonde, an absurd slutty cowgirl outfit on. It’s almost Halloween, after all. He’s probably telling her about how her brother is an NFL wide receiver who caught all five touchdowns yesterday from Timmy Diallo. Probably calls him the Young Messiah or something, the way everyone does because the poor guy’s middle name is Kisibaa, Malian for either saviour or messiah. It’s a catchy nickname among the less religiously minded Cowboys fanbase. ‘Well, my brother is Artemis Archer,’ is always the prick’s starter. ‘Plays on the Cowboys. I’m better looking than he is.’ But he’s tattooed to high heaven and your hair’s dyed pink.

  “That’s the reason,” Theo says. “I know you still love her but I like getting my revenge with you.”

  The phone in his hands vibrates again. Sophia’s still there.

  youre organic

  is what i meant

  hes the product

  of the best academy

  ?? to ever exist so

  it makes sense ??

  to me that he’d be

  all of those things

  hes an expected

  result ?? and

  youre a

  spectacular

  miracle ??

  “See?” Theo echoes. “Spectacular, miracle.”

  and hes totally got

  his ?????? on

  someone else too

  we’re fun toys

  for each other??

  Are you telling me this? Or are you telling yourself this?

  Who do u think

  he has the hots

  for?

  who do u think???

  Yeah, that makes sense. Her.

  but shes all ??

  at romance stuff

  You cant teach

  her how?

  i use ?? for

  a good reason??

  That’s an interesting tidbit to know. Might keep it up his sleeve in case she ever tries to replicate what she did yesterday.

  o! ive gotta go

  soon so i have a

  question: do

  u want a ??

  that i have

  Im not paying

  your speeding

  tickets!

  lmao ??????

  bingus that’s ash’s

  job ??

  santiago booked

  the oxford group

  to perform

  hamlet for his

  grand reveal

  tomorrow

  and ash bought

  four tickets

  and i cant

  go because of

  the ????head

  Does Ryan Witherspoon look like the kind of guy who’d be into Shakespeare?

  i know paulie’s going

  and so is theo ?????

  and bran

  Ryan’s eyes go wide and he looks over at the woman currently pouring a splash of Hennessy into a glass. Wait, two glasses. Paulie has thankfully quieted down, hopefully assigning Nazi Pinocchio to the dustbin of comedic history. His girl– Bran, Branwen Ryan, daughter of some British aristocrat – leans on his shoulder. Him and Flynn talk about football again. Flynn’s mentioning some Japanese quarterback, Ren Uchida or something, playing at San Jose State. He likes his game but doesn’t mention that the kid is playing against inferior competition. Third-stringer Ryan would’ve been a starting linebacker for some of their opponents. Four hundred passing yards and four passing touchdowns sounds incredibly impressive until you learn it was against Wyoming. Lior’s there too. He just drinks and looks like he’d rather be somewhere else. If Apollo Archer could pull two girls, Lior could pull one at the very least solely with the virtue that he was six-nine. But he’d rather drink and stay miserable.

  theo needs to watch

  her mouth btw she

  was talking about u

  and her ?ing when

  we were out three

  nights ago

  What? Not that it wasn’t true. And they did way more than just that! Sure, he was standing up when they were in the act but that’s nothing revolutionary, right?

  if it makes u feel

  better she also says ur

  good in ??? lol

  u have to promise

  me that you’ll do

  that to me when we

  can get back together

  ??????

  Don’t ask to sixty-nine and then send those emojis!

  I promise lol

  Come on, dude!

  When can we get

  back together

  anyways?

  Come on, dude! You don’t even care about the optics! Thirstiest motherfucker on Earth over here, come gawk at how fucking dehydrated he is.

  ?? don’t know

  Ryan leans back in his seat. Exhales through his nose. Theo offers him one of the glasses and he accepts, takes a swig. Burns going down, but it’s good. Real good. Not three hundred dollars good but Ryan didn’t have to pay for it. He sees Apollo Archer and his pink head of hair escort the two ladies off further into the nightclub, and once he’s out of sight Theo puts an arm around Ryan’s shoulders.

  but there’s no

  rule in the ??

  that says we can’t

  meet up once

  for one night ??

  do you have a

  plan for this

  ‘one night’

  still working it out

  ill let u know when

  I think?? of

  something ????

  u want the ticket

  or not?

  You probably have better things to do than sit through four hours of Hamlet.

  yeah sure

  hell yea ill give

  it to ash and shell

  give it to u tomorrow

  ?? ?? ??

  And now he just locked himself into Hamlet. This ‘one night’ she’s cooking up better be worth it!

  It’s Sophia, she’s worth everything, dipshit.

  ive gotta go ??

  the bosslady is

  calling

  see u soon

  bingus! ????

  ????????

  Funny way of saying ‘I love you.’

  Ill see u later

  too <3

  He didn’t have a funny pet name for her. He couldn’t think of one. None of them were stupider than ‘Bingus.’ None of them were funnier, either. Bingus. Her first was chico trueno, ‘thunderboy’, but that one was too many syllables. Gringo didn’t sound hot coming off the tongue. Mi amour made it sound like he was a sidepiece and she was a stereotype. Bingus it was.

  His phone falls silent after he bids her farewell. For a minute, he listens to whatever it was Flynn and Branwen and Paulie were prattling on about. A game, of sorts, with surely no possible correlation to the mostly empty bottles of Patron and Smirnoff on the table, where they tried to find the funniest possible suffix to accompany ‘she suckin me.’

  “She suckin’ me mysteriously.”

  “She suckin’ me in a way once thought obsolete.”

  “She’s suckin’ me in a manner most ignominious.”

  That one is Branwen. Big words for the aristocrat’s kid, the eleventy-seventh descendant of some feudal lord under one of the English kings or queens. That sort of wealth builds exponentially across generations; means that she can be out here saying stuff like “She suckin’ me prodigiously,” while being some low-tier fashion designer and being able to afford rent in Nineveh.

  “She suckin’ me apocalyptically,” Paulie says, which sends the trio into a fit of uncontrollable laughter, and that’s when Theo decides to move. She stands and grabs Ryan by the wrists and drags him away. Ryan’s not going to fight her on this.

  Club Insomnia has special rooms off in the nooks and crannies of the building, rooms fitted with small beds and clothing hangers for your worn garments, tissues and condoms and wipes on small stools. A blind man could figure out their purpose. Theo drags him up stairs and out of sight of the rest of the group and around corners and through hallways and into a room marked 4B with a heart-shaped bed in the middle of the room. Theo locks it from within; a holographic display on the door changes from ‘unoccupied’ to ‘occupied.’

  Alright, buddy. Showtime.

  By sheer luck, a coffee maker sits on a table. Presumably to get people to sober up after a night of sloshed fucking. But in this case…

  Theo peels off her upper layers and starts to take off her leggings. She halts when she spies Ryan putting a pod into the machine and filling it with water from the sink.

  “What are you doing?” She crosses her arms under her chest. Her bra is doing a tremendous job at pushing her chest up, making it appear fuller. Not that it needed it. The freckles on her face extend further down than you’d think.

  “You’re not sober enough for this,” Ryan replies. The machine whrrrs and coffee gently drips into a plain white mug underneath.

  “I’m not, hic, drunk through!”

  “I’m not going to have this on my consciousness,” Ryan replies. “If we’re going to do this, we’re doing it sober. Or as sober as possible.”

  “You’re so selfish.”

  “I could say the same about you.”

  Theo pouts in his direction but relents and flops backwards onto the bed. The sheets are smooth and pink. Presumably so that a janitor can easily ID any stains.

  “At least you, hic, care,” she mutters. Ryan takes a seat next to her, and flops down the same way. He feels her fingers interlace within his.

  “I hate him.”

  “I know,” Ryan replies.

  “Can you kill him?”

  Ryan laughs. Guess he has permission now. Apollo Archer isn’t exactly Santiago, though.

  “It’ll have to look like an accident.”

  “I know,” Theo huffs. The coffee machine beeps. “That thing’s, hic, quick.”

  Ryan gets up, offers her the mug. She sips and grimaces at the taste, which means it’s working as intended. Ryan hangs his A&M letterman jacket, dark maroon and white, on one of the hangars and sets next to her as she slowly takes it in.

  Twenty minutes pass. Ryan’s enchanted with her. The heavy dusting of freckles give her the kind of Irish look that you’d expect from someone with the surname of Kerrigan. He’s tried to count them before, but his hands usually wander when he gets off her face. He’s learned to not even bother starting on her face so his hands can start their wandering quicker.

  “Anything else on your mind?” Ryan asks.

  “Not really,” Theo replies, taking another sip. “What’d you talk about with Sophia?”

  “Hamlet tickets.”

  “Are you going in her place?”

  “I said so.”

  “Fuck yeah. Hamlet’s four hours long and boring, we can sneak off somewhere quiet,” she replies. “The fucking thing’s on Halloween and the casino has a strict no-costumes rule!”

  “That’s dumb.”

  “Sophia says he wants it to be a prestigious casino. Very serious. He’s got all these marble statues of Roman emperors and that kind of stuff, according to her at least.”

  “Sophia says a lot of things. So do you.”

  “What do you mean?” her eyebrow arcs. But she doesn’t seem defensive. She knows what this is about. Maybe she played the long game.

  “Sophia said you were talking about you and me, um…” He can’t spit out the words. He was raised a good Methodist boy.

  “You did it, you can say it.”

  “You know what we did.”

  “Wanna do it again?”

  Ryan pauses. “Do you?”

  “That’s the hottest thing anyone’s ever done to me.”

  For her it was hot. For him, it was an exercise in a) focusing on the target, her nether regions; b) making sure that his arms kept her in the right spot, and c) making sure that his knees didn’t buckle and she didn’t drop her on her head as she was, in Paulie’s words, suckin’ him apocalyptically. Highly stressful. But when he climaxed in her mouth he came inches from blacking out.

  Wait.

  If that was the case, maybe it was hot for him, too.

  “Well?” Theo asks. It’s almost a purr.

  Ryan starts to unbutton his shirt. Good thing he didn’t repeat his denim-on-denim disasterpiece from yesterday. Theo leaps to her feet and pulls him onto the bed, soft, memory foam probably, and she mounts him. She hurriedly pulls off her leggings and socks and straddles him in her black underwear, some expensive brand of lingerie that Ryan wasn’t gay enough to know about. Her hands unbutton his shirt one button at a time, moving further and further down. She lets him pull off his belt and helps her pull off his jeans, but when his hands reach for the band of his boxer-briefs he grabs them and pulls her towards him. He sits up straight and sheds his loose shirt as his lips meet hers. She tastes like coffee now, strong and bitter. He feels her legs wrap around his waist, and his lips separate from her lips and kiss her jawline and down her neck and chest and her arms around his neck tense. Her breaths are quick and heated, he can feel the heaving of her chest against his, separated by thin, thin silks.

  “Ryan?” her voice is quiet.

  He looks at her. His eyes must look like saucers. But she presses her forehead against his. His movements come to a halt.

  “I didn’t say you could stop,” she whispers. His hand moves down the curves of her figure before settling on her hip and moving inward, over her legs and the inside of her thigh and underneath the silk underwear and she shudders with all of her body against him, warm, breathing in his ear as he kisses her collarbone and struggles with the latch of her top. Two fingers search for a familiar opening below and she moans ever so gently as his fingers get closer, closer, closer before they find their mark and she coos softly.

  His fingers raise, and she takes the hand in hers, before putting both fingers in her mouth. Then she kisses him, her tongue finding his, and the two fall backwards onto the heart-shaped bed.

  She pushes herself up ever so slightly, her face hovering an inch from his.

  “You ready?” One of her hands traces the ridges and valleys of his abdominals, then tugging on his boxer-briefs and with his hands, he helps her pull them down past his knees and ankles and she tosses it aside.

  “Let’s make him real jealous,” she purrs. Ryan can’t do much in this world. He’s specialized in finding new ways to kill people for the past five or so years. But this, making some pissy scion jealous? That he can do.

  He sends his apologies to the janitor who has to clean the room into the future. He’s going to make a mess out of this place. And one out of Theo, too.

  every woman on the planet.