“Nice try,” said Billy, playing his hand. “Game’s still going.”
“But I am,” protested Kara, pulling an enormous diamond ring out of her pocket.
“What the actual fuck?” bellowed Nicola, grabbing the heavy ring from Kara’s fingers.
“Jimmy J wants to marry me!”
“But you haven’t even met!” sputtered Nicola.
“Yeah, we have. He came over here last night, and he only just left to avoid awkward situations with you two. He left about twenty minutes before you got here, Billy.”
“Okay,” laughed Nicola. “So he was here when I got home last night? Whoa. Back it up.”
“Hey, whose turn is it?” said Billy with false seriousness. “I was at the center of a drug scandal, and nobody halted. Damned if I’m going to lose to the latest post-Kardashian assault on the sanctity of marriage.”
“It’s mine,” said Kara, pausing and dramatically playing her hand.
“So, after we met at Pavilions, we did the whole sexy Skyping thing for a few nights and he was just going crazy, just so blue-balled to get at me. I figured it would be funny, so I let him come over last night. And it was about the funniest thing ever.”
“Hang on,” said Nicola, playing her cards. “Okay, go!”
“There’s actually not too much to it. We fucked. A lot. He’s way better at fucking than he is at rapping.”
“It would be impossible to be worse,” said Billy, moving his game piece. “I had such a crush on him when he was a boy-bander. I can’t stand him as a TV host, though.”
“Way too smarmy,” sniffed Nicola.
“I wanted to come into your room in the middle of the night and tell you but damn, he’s a light sleeper,” said Kara. “He had me doing nude Pilates for like an hour while he walked around, touching his junk and whispering this kind of sexy stuff. At first I thought I’d burst out laughing, but he was so into it, it was contagious. So finally we got down to business and it was all that and that was kind of nice. So then we were done, the first time, and I expected him to jet; you won’t believe this, but he’s a cuddler!”
“Shut UP,” yelled Billy. “The bad boy of the 213 Crew is a softie? What about all the ‘caps he’s busted in the popo’ and how he’s ‘never shed a tear’?”
“You know his songs better than I do,” smiled Kara. “So, the thing is, he’s as controlling when it comes to cuddling as he is with his online sex sessions. He had us cuddle facing each other, and he was talking into my face the whole time, about our connection and about how comfortable and safe I made him feel. After about ten minutes, he wanted to spoon. I turned around but no … motherfucker needs to be the little spoon.…”
Nicola guffawed loudly. Billy nearly spilled his drink, and suddenly remembered to play his hand.
“Shit, I thought I had it.” Kara rolled her eyes. “Anyway, I spooned him for a long time, and he was talking about how he’s an insomniac and how he never feels as relaxed as he was feeling right now, so we did that for a while and he fell asleep in my arms. It was total coyote. My arm fell asleep. So I lay there listening to him snore like a baby, bored out of my skull and wishing I could roll over. Eventually he woke up and he turned to face me and yep, there were tears in his eyes.”
“If he wanted to talk feelings, I’m going to puke,” said Nicola, playing her hand.
“Grab a bucket, then,” continued Kara. “He said that he’d never been able to fall asleep with anyone else ever, and that he and I had a connection that was older than us, deeper than us. That same old celebrity blah blah that you see on TV all the time. I was like, this is fascinating, can you get off my fucking arm? Long story short, after about an hour of him talking and me pretending to listen, he said I was the one that he’d been looking for his whole life.…”
“And he fucking proposed?” whistled Billy.
“Kinda sorta. He presented it almost like a business arrangement. He said that he was about to break ground on a four-million-dollar house in Bel Air. He wants us to make the beautiful children that will play in the yard, which is when I should have kicked him out. He said we’d be the most beautiful couple on any red carpet. He started telling me how rich I’d be; I’d have everything I’ve ever wanted. I was so tired by this point, I actually started to get confused. It was just surreal. And then he dropped the bomb: Would I marry him? I was the one he wanted to make babies with, I was the one who would hold him while he slept every night, he would treat me like a queen and we’d be hip-hop royalty. I was so fucking tongue-tied, I was completely in shock. I just met the guy! Then he added the kicker—as much as he values marriage and the church, he can never be monogamous, and that would be a condition of our marriage. I was like, get the fuck out of here!”