Avoiding Intimacy by K. A. Linde

be, making Alexa feel better.
    “What does it matter?”
    “Oh, come on. Don’t be shy,” Ravenna continued.
    “Yeah, I mean, we all knew what you were really doing all those days and nights trapped in his apartment,” Brigitte pointed out.
    “Do you, now?” Chyna asked, a smile playing across her features as she stared out at the darkened sky.
    The moon was bright overlooking the city, but the stars weren’t all that visible with all the lights reflecting up into the atmosphere. It reminded her of New York, and for the first time, she felt a twinge of homesickness.
    “Forget it,” Giovanna sighed. “She’s not going to tell us. She has kept it a secret this long. She didn’t even tell us she was having sex with him.”
    “What if I wasn’t?” Chyna asked, turning back around. She crossed one bare leg over the other and watched the shimmer of her nude dress play off the dim lighting in the room.
    All three girls laughed and shook their head in disbelief.
    “You were,” Ravenna insisted. “The man is too obvious.”
    “Well, we did work in his apartment,”
    Chyna said, licking her lips.
    “Yeah, I bet you used his camera.”
    Giovanna winked.
    Chyna couldn’t hold back her laugh at that comment. It was too true for her to even begin to deny it. Marco was obsessed with his camera, and he liked to capture everything behind his lens.
    “Oh my God! Did you make a sex tape?” Brigitte cried, standing from her chaise when the thought hit her.
    Chyna bit her bottom lip and raised an eyebrow as she tried to hold onto her sense of mystery.
    “You did! That’s so hot! Can I see it?”
    “Brigitte!” Giovanna yelled.
    At the same time, Ravenna cried, “Me, too!”
    “I’m not showing it to you!” Chyna shouted, also standing in her excitement.
    “So, you did make one!” everyone cried at once.
    Chyna covered her mouth. She was laughing so hard. It hadn’t seemed so funny at the time when they were making it, or when they had watched it after, or when they had immediately jumped right in between the sheets again because they were so hot from watching it. Now, standing there with Brigitte, Ravenna, and Giovanna, the idea that she had made a sex tape seemed utterly hilarious.
    Ravenna put her hand against the wall to steady herself. “So, really, can we see it?”
    “No!” Chyna cried. “I’m not showing anyone else.”
    “Ugh,” Brigitte muttered. “At least tell us if he’s good or not.”
    “He’s better than good,” Chyna finally relented.
    “Natasha told me he was kind of kinky,” Ravenna said, straightening and eyeing Chyna more closely.
    Natasha? Chyna didn’t know a Natasha. They had worked with more than two dozen other girls this summer, but Natasha didn’t sound familiar. “Who?”
    “She was selected as Marco’s centerpiece two years ago,” Ravenna told her. “I was a favorite, but Natasha was selected before me. I’m not really sure why. She wasn’t all that spectacular.”
    Chyna had never thought about whether or not this had happened with another girl before. To be perfectly honest, she hadn’t cared whether or not he had been sleeping with other models while they had been together, let alone whom he had slept with before her. She was still getting the personal attention, and as. As long as she was still getting what she wanted—the modeling and the man—then she didn’t care if he diddled half of Milan. He still came back to her either way, so it hadn’t mattered. But, she was curious about this Natasha character.
    “And, she said he was kinky?” Chyna asked, desperate to ask a different question.
    “Yeah. I wasn’t that close with her, but a friend of mine said that she’d tell her stories about getting tied up to some kind of furniture. I wanted all the dirty details, but Natasha was pretty tight-lipped, kind of like you. So, tell me,” Ravenna said with a curious expression, “does he tie you up? And, what kind of sex furniture does he have? I’ve