Lily plants her fists on her hips. “Honestly, Randy?”
Only Miller and Darren raise their hands.
I look at Alex. He’s bigger than me. I still might have to take him down, though. Or at least try.
He half raises his hand, then brings up the other one as well, as if to ward me off. “She was six. We were kids. It doesn’t really count.”
“Motherfucker.”
“It doesn’t matter which of our friends have seen me naked, because if someone has your phone and they jailbreak it, everyone on the goddamn planet is going to see me naked, or partly naked, and being finger-banged by you!”
I don’t think she meant to say that last part out loud. She covers her mouth with her palm.
“Nice,” Charlene says. Then she turns and whispers something to Darren.
“No one is gonna see that video,” I reassure Lily.
“How do you know? You can’t even find your damn phone. I teach kids! I can’t have internet porn out in cyberspace!”
This is the point where Lily goes into a full meltdown. I’ve seen her cry a few times, and man, did it ever freak me out, but this is way beyond tears. This is full-on panic-sobbing. I try to hug her, but she pushes me away and goes to Sunny, which makes me feel a million times worse.
“Wait a second. Don’t you have a phone locator?” Charlene asks.
“What?”
“That app where you can locate your phone remotely?” Her tone implies I’m stupid for not knowing what she’s talking about, but there’s been panic, so my head isn’t totally clear.
“Fuck! Yes! I do. Someone give me a phone!” I hold out a hand.
Lance hands me his. It takes me two tries to log into my account, but I finally get in there. I’m praying to the internet porn gods that it’s not in another state. It shows up as being less than fifty feet away. “It’s here!”
“What?” Lily hiccups and seizes the phone so she can have a look.
“It’s here. It’s on the property.” I follow the tracker until I’m in front of Alex’s SUV. It takes another five minutes, but I find it stuck between the back seats. The battery is totally dead, but I have it.
Lily’s still a blubbering mess, but at least now she’s crying because she’s relieved, not because she thinks she’s started her career as an internet porn star. And I have to say, I’m pretty damn relieved that the relatively small pool of people who have seen her without clothes on is going to remain that way.
As a precaution, we decide it’s still a good idea to get a digital camera, as well as a mini video camera, so we can leave the phones out of it. As soon as my phone has enough power to turn on, Lily forces me to delete all of my videos. I don’t even get to watch them again, which makes me sad.
But I’m hoping she’ll let me make new ones with the video camera we’re going to buy.
As soon as we’ve had breakfast—or more like brunch—I take her into town. While we’re shopping, and I’m apologizing and constantly checking for my phone, Lily runs across a vintage-looking Polaroid camera.
“This is awesome!” she says, finally sounding like herself again.
“We should get it.”
“That’s not necessary. The digital one will be perfect.”
Her eyes are still slightly red and puffy, and her lips are swollen—something that apparently happens when she cries. I feel guilty that I caused her worry, and one way to alleviate that is to get her something that will make her happy. If a Polaroid camera puts a smile on her face and keeps it there, I’m getting it.
Lily tries to make me put it back, because it’s a little pricey. I cup her chin in my palm and tilt her head up to look in her eyes. I don’t care if it makes the store clerk uncomfortable.
“I want all the good memories from this weekend captured, and I like that I’ll get instant proof of their existence every time you take a picture with this.”
She lets me take the camera from her and give it to the guy behind the counter, who sets it next to the video camera and digital camera we selected. Then I kiss her, softly and without tongue, before I turn back to the guy, who now looks like he’s about to have a heart attack. Possibly from our PDA. Whatever.
I buy twenty packs of Polaroid film because we still have the rest of today and all day tomorrow to make a bunch of awesome memories. Also, I have plans for the bedroom tonight.
7
AREA 51 DISCOVERIES
LILY
On the way back to Alex’s cottage, Randy finds an off-roading path. He parks the truck and apologizes for scaring the crap out of me with the phone fiasco by using his tongue and his amazing cock. I’m grateful for the apology and the phone not being lost.
Beyond the humiliation of having our very prolific sex life broadcasted all over the internet, I can’t even imagine the backlash from the bunnydom. Since I started dating Randy, the bunnies have been guzzling Haterade something fierce. It got worse when he moved me into his house.
I used to think it was crazy how magazines would feature pictures of celebrities grocery shopping, or walking up the steps to their front porch. Like, seriously, who cares what grocery store people shop at? Now that I’m the one people are hypothesizing about, I can tell you a lot of people do care.
I realized this when all of a sudden Randy and I were the focal point of hockey-fanatic speculation: I was pregnant. I’d blackmailed him into letting me move in. We’d secretly gotten married—that came on the heels of Alex and Violet’s impromptu Vegas wedding, so it was the least farfetched of all the possibilities. My personal favorite was that we were somehow related and having an incestuous, torrid affair. Most of it I let roll off my back. But sometimes it was hard to take. Sometimes it still is.
So while I’m learning how to handle social media with some level of grace, there’s no way in hell I’d ever want those little videos Randy and I make—for and with each other—to go anywhere beyond us. The exception being the first one he ever sent me, which I shared only with a couple of friends. That was the night I started to fall in love with Randy, and he with me. I see it every time I watch that clip. It’s in his eyes, in the soft way he looks at me and touches me.
Everyone’s down at the dock when we get back to the cottage. Randy’s already in his swim shorts, so he sends me up to the room to get changed on my own. That’s okay since I had a shot of moody dick on the way home.