Imani thanked her as she rushed out the door, her feet fueled by a bad feeling. Tonya was a liar and a cheat. And she’d left her alone, in her house, with her husband.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

TONYA

“You don’t smell like a puddle.”

Mike sniffed Tonya’s neck while pulling her into his apartment. “Gardenia, baby powder.” He kissed her and then smacked his lips together, a sommelier searching for the right notes to describe a fine wine. “Maybe coffee. A touch of strawberry.”

Tonya rolled her eyes. “I haven’t eaten any fruits in twenty-four hours.”

“It must be all the sweetness mixing with…” He inhaled behind her ear where skin had sweated beneath a wool beanie. “Just a touch of sour.”

Tonya laughed. “So a little dirty, then?”

“Aren’t we all?” She felt a wet tickle as Mike’s tongue flicked her ear.

“See why I had to do that laundry?” she asked, referencing her earlier phone rant about Imani’s offended reaction to her attempt at fixing Philip’s soiled jacket. Tonya laughed to show she was over the incident—even though she wasn’t—and stepped farther into a living room that could have been the stock photo for “bachelor pad.” Black leather couch. IKEA coffee table. A notable lack of other furnishings.

“You can come over smelly,” Mike said. “Most of the time I stink of spilled liquor. Well, I did.”

Tonya extended a hand, inviting him to join her as she flopped onto the couch. “Maybe the layoffs are a blessing in disguise. You can focus more on auditions.”

Mike sat beside her but didn’t make eye contact. Instead, his gaze drifted to a shelf of liquor bottles. Light shone through empties, testifying to a recent binge. “Yeah. Maybe,” he said.

Tonya understood his lack of enthusiasm. The entertainment industry was perhaps the only arena hit harder by the pandemic than the service industry. Broadway was shut down. Moviemaking had been put on an indefinite hold. “I also didn’t want Imani coming home to a full dryer,” Tonya said, changing the subject back to their flirty banter about her laundry. “It’s bad enough that she caught me swapping out Philip’s clothes for my own.”

Mike’s gaze retreated to the hands in his lap. He’d folded them, Tonya realized. Around her, they were never stationary. His hands were always busy. Pouring drinks. Snapping for orders or attention. Caressing her body.

“That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about,” he said.

Conversation was actually on the agenda? When Mike had asked her to come over and “talk,” she’d assumed the chatting part was a euphemism for another four-letter word. She and Mike didn’t do deep conversations, though Tonya was guilty of several drunken, postcoital confessions.