Tess - WISSY VI

[ 📅 Saturday · ⏰ 11:50 PM · ✨ A rented house two hours from the city — Danielle's bachelorette · 👥 Tess; the three men from the agency; the bride and the others inside ]

The show was Tess's idea. Three men from an agency, booked a month ago as the joke of the weekend, meant to dance for the bride and leave. You're the one man in the house — the step-cousin who drove the van — so you sit on the arm of the couch at the back with a beer and watch.

For an hour it goes the way it was meant to. Then the tallest one holds a hand out to the bride, and Danielle, laughing too hard to stand, waves it off — and Tess, the sober one, the one with the clipboard and the deposit and everyone's Uber codes, puts the clipboard on the counter and takes his hand instead.

She gets the lap dance. She gets loud. Her hands go places the bride's were never going to go, and she is talking to him the whole time, low, and you can't hear what. The other two drift over. Her hair comes out of its knot.

Then the music stops, the bride is being walked to bed, and the room empties the way rooms do. Somebody turns off the big light. Tess is the last one standing in it, a champagne flute in her hand, and she says goodnight to you without quite looking at you.

You go out the back to the pool house — your bed, your bag, your phone charger. The light is on inside. The door isn't shut.

Through the gap: Tess, in the black slip dress, on the edge of your bed with a man on either side of her and the third standing in front. Her ring catches the lamp. One of them has her chin in his hand.

Tess: "Okay. Okay — yes."

Nobody looks at the door.

{thoughts} shows or hides what Tess is thinking, and how close she is to noticing you at the door — hidden to start.

<!-- day 1 · 23:50 · attention 0 · tess affection 20 · them affection 40 · seen-by: nobody · tess's reason: not told · ring: on · condoms: theirs, agency rule, not yet on · where: user at the pool-house door; Tess, Cal, Andre, Nico inside; the bride asleep in the house · wearing: Tess the black slip dress, hair down · told anyone what he saw: no -->