For a split second, I felt relief. This was what Marley was worried about me seeing. She probably thought with my tendency to overreact and freak out, I’d lose my mind when I saw this. But sex? Come on, Marley. I was a big girl–not literally, because I was more like a below average height girl, but emotionally? Big. Very big.

So what was…

And then I saw it. The tattoos on the fingers. The splayed hands of the man next to the naked ass. There were letters inked into the pad of each finger. “S.U.C.K.I.T.D.U.D.ES.” And yes, the last finger had two letters on it, because the owner of the tattoo had been drunk and thought it was worth breaking the pattern of one letter per finger to make sure all the dudes were told to suck it, not just the one.

Why do I know this, you ask? That’s easy. Because those stupid hands belonged to my stupid boyfriend. My former boyfriend, Eric.

My heart had been pounding a steady, anxious rhythm, but now it shifted from hard to fast. I could feel it in my ears and my eyes. I looked at those big, angry red letters at the bottom of the pages.

“Fuck you, Eric. You said you loved me. I hope you love losing your job, asshole. -Em.”

I wasn’t sure if Em was the woman whose ass was on display, but I had a sinking feeling it wasn’t. Em was probably the other woman Eric was cheating on me with. The other woman he was saying “I love you” to.

It felt like I was floating a few inches above my body, almost like watching myself from the outside. I drifted back through the crowd, eyes glazed over. I kept going until I reached an empty area with two long, padded benches arranged in an “L” shape. I plopped down and stared forward.

The word “asshole” kept repeating in my mind, and not just because Eric was an asshole. It wasn’t because that was the word his other, other woman had used, either. It was because that image had so perfectly captured that woman’s asshole. It was right there in black and white, plain for everybody to see. And somehow, that felt appropriate. That was life, wasn’t it? We dressed things up and made them out to be romantic. We looked over flaws and faults. But when we really zoomed in and paid attention, everything had its own puckered, dirty little secret. The boss who isn’t as well-off as he pretends. The lifestyle social influencer family that fights every time the cameras were off.

I guess my dirty little secret was that my boyfriend was going balls deep behind my back at work.

Welcome to the asshole club, Pearl.

3

DEAN

I was a man who paid attention to detail. Rigorous attention. And when it came to the bodies of women I enjoyed, I was on another level of focus. I knew every curve, freckle, and mole. I knew that weird little spot where their skin didn’t wrinkle because of a birth mark. I knew if they didn’t moisturize their feet before bed they’d wake up with crocodile fins. I liked the details, and I learned them like it was my job.