Elena Undone Read Online Free Page B

was used to getting what she wanted.
    “Hey…stranger,” Margaret purred. “I’ve been waiting…”
    “God baby, I’m so sorry—but I can’t.”
    “Oh, but I think you can.” Margaret came up behind her, seductively slid her fingers down the front of Peyton’s T, stopping to gently cup Peyton’s right breast. She bent over her, kissing the edge of Peyton’s neck. The chill that ran down Peyton’s spine was not desire. As Peyton was about to turn to convince Margaret to wait, Margaret leaned closer still to reveal her secret weapon: a frozen vial of sperm.
    Peyton smiled, bargaining, “Babe, I know I said Ige now I s’d be home early…but I have to get this article to Emily…how ’bout in an hour or two. Three tops?”
    Margaret’s smile slid from her face. She slammed the baby-making paraphernalia on the desk. “Right! You know what, Peyton? If it’s not a deadline, it’s your mom. Or your mom. Or your mom! Any normal person would have kept her in that home. Where she belonged. I don’t even know if it’s that safe for her to be here with all the loony tune nurses you’ve got running around this house.”
    Peyton clammed up.
    “I’m so over it, Peyton. Really. I know you think you’re some sort of goddamn saint, but you’re a martyr—”
    “Trust me, she won’t be a problem for much longer.”
    “Look, don’t make me the villain here. This was your goddamn idea. I’m ovulating now.” Margaret pursed her lips. “You have your schedule—I have mine.”
    “Margaret—”
    “You don’t have to fuck me, okay Peyton? Just squeeze this slime up my uterus.”
     
    *
     
    “Now that’s what I call high seas romance,” Wave Fontaine remarked to Peyton, as she refilled her coffee cup, having been told in mini-segments, between Wave waiting upon other customers, the series of events that let up to their “kind of royally fecked up evenin’.”
    Wave’s vernacular was unique as it comes and when people often asked where she came from, she’d respond “specifically South Manchester, but with twelve years of Glasgow thrown in for good measure. But I’d get kneecapped if I was to describe it as Scottish.” With burnished red hair, fair faced and freckles, “God sprinkled ’em all over me—even my arse for God’s sake!” Wave was an entity unto her own, with her boho-chic style, her genuine sweetness and “sincerely codependent” persona. And Peyton loved every ounce of her.
    As Wave continued on her appointed rounds of coffee pouring, she returned and gently bowed and with the most elegant turn of the hand, she filled up one of regular Pinot Latte customers she was serving. “It’s all in the wrist. Yeah, I spent years at university perfecting just this move.”
    Peyton watched her dearest friend in the world with admiration. She didn’t know how anyone could be so inordinately friendly, bubbly and bright all the time, but that was Wave. She was a spectacular mix of bawdy stage performer who’d spew out the most random crass offerings in one moment and in the next be the wisest, softest, most nurturing and loving soul Peyton had the great fortune to know. It didn’t matter what was going on, Wave was all over it, snappy, good-natured, fiercely loyal and protective.
    Peyton had seen her best friend through some rough spells after high school, and after Peyton returned from college, helped her nurse plenty “a wicked arse love ’angoverster ’ang.” But Wave’s huge light was on pretty much all the many long hours Pinot Latte  —Wave’s thriving coffee and wine house—was open, serving up “a libation for every possible mood.”
    Wave’s extraordinary person was the one thing Peyton could count on in a world where most things teetered one way or the other, where you could never be certain, and even if you felt you could, you could talk yourself out of it soon enough. Trust, always Peyton’s keenest issue with everything and everyone, did not exist with Wave. Because