Traffic Girl - Rita

Author's Note: This is the shortest chapter in quite a while, but it has major plot implications. I hope you enjoy it. There are always twists and turns to come.

* * *

The drive home went faster than the trip to the St. Regis. I was floating. A world of ridiculous possibilities dashed through my head. But when I got home, I walked in on an unexpected, erotic scene.

"I'm going to squirt again!" Kat cried out.

Rita was between her legs, licking her pussy and pushing a toy in and out of her ass. Kat came hard and, true to her word, squirted vigorously all over Rita. It was beautiful to watch, and I loved seeing the glowing adoration in their faces as they kissed a final time as the coupling ended.

"That was so fucking hot," I said, announcing my presence after a few minutes.

"Hi daddy!" Kat said, smiling.

"You're back sooner than I expected," Rita said. "I wouldn't have thought Juliet could wear you out so quickly."

"I have a feeling you both already know why I'm back this soon," I said.

"To talk to us and make sure we're okay with the fact that Juliet wants to hang out with you more often?" Kat said.

"We talked to Jess already," Rita said.

"And it's totally fine," Kat said. "Of course it's fine! We love Juliet!"

"But we do have one condition," Rita said playfully.

"Yeah," Kat agreed.

"And what is that?" I asked.

"We want to play with Juliet, too!" Rita said. "She's so much fun!"

I laughed. "Well, I guess I shouldn't have been so nervous about talking to you about this," I said.

"One serious thing, though," Kat said. "I know how attracted you are to Juliet. But don't get too close, okay? You can't get in too deep. If you get hurt? We all get hurt."

"Understood, Kitty Kat," I said.

Shit, I thought to myself, could it really be this easy? That wasn't bad at all. It turned out, however, that the wild card came from a different direction. Out of the blue, Jess burst through the door. She was hysterical and in tears. She fanned her face, trying to calm down and regain any grasp on her composure.

"Sweetie," Rita said, approaching her, "what's wrong?"

Jess collapsed into Rita, who was still naked. They embraced. Kat stood up, a look of concern straining her face.

"What is it?" Kat said.

We all stood around Jess now, partly to hold her up and partly to console her. It took a little time, but she finally stopped hyperventilating and calmed down enough to speak. Her voice was still breathless and soft.

"Peter," she said. "He's dead. Kelly is at the hospital. They think it was an aneurysm."

"Peter?" I said, my jaw dropping.

"Oh my god, that's awful," Kat said.

"He was so young!" Rita said.

"Can you call Kelly, John?" Jess said. "I told her you'd call her right away."

I did as instructed. Kelly had been with Peter when it happened. They were headed to dinner with friends to celebrate his return from the grueling months of filming.

"And he just looked at me one minute and froze," Kelly said between sobs. "Just absolutely froze solid, and that was it. He was gone."

"I'm so sorry, Kelly," I said. "Are you okay? Under the circumstances."

"I'm okay," she said with poise. "But I don't know what to do, John. I need help."

"Jess and I can take a redeye tonight," I offered.

"Will you bring Juliet back with you?" she asked. "I think there are going to be a lot of questions, especially about the movie. And there's always a power vacuum that comes with these kinds of events in this savage fucking town."

"I'm packing right now," I said. "I'll call you when we land."

* * *

Jess, Juliet, and I touched down in LA before dawn, just about the same time Kat and Rita were waking up for work back home in Houston. Juliet sat a row in front of us, wearing a hooded sweatshirt and hat that had successfully kept her from being identified during the flight.

"I love you, too," I said into my phone. Jess squeezed my thigh. "Jess sends her love, too. We'll let you know as soon as we find out what's going on."

I turned to Jess, and she looked at me with eyes as tired as my own. "Okay," I said. "Let's go figure out what we can do to help."

The first order of business was Kelly. She was a mess. She and Peter had been close for many years, and she owed a great deal of her success and client base at the agency to him. It was a blow, which also came in close proximity to having lost her husband. Jess took point with Kelly, trying to distract her and also steer discussions toward Infinity.

Juliet might have been a bigger mess. After having held herself together on the flight, she broke down at Kelly's house. She was borderline incoherent, mumbling over and over that she had to talk to Stephen. But Stephen wasn't picking up her calls. I felt helpless. She waved me away when I tried to console her. She just kept calling Stephen over and over. Finally, after about thirty minutes, he picked up. She blubbered into the phone, but Stephen was able to calm her down. A degree of ease came over her.

"Okay," Juliet said when she hung up. "I just need to breathe and relax. Stephen says the movie is going to be okay. Everything will be okay. Petey is going to take over. I didn't realize that while Peter was so focused on filming, Petey had basically been running the company. Stephen says he won't miss a beat."

"But obviously we will have to make sure Petey has support and time to grieve," Kelly said.

"So what do we do next?" Jess asked.

"Well, it's really too early to do anything else," Kelly said. "So, do you want to take a xanax or smoke some weed to calm down?"

"Both," Juliet said. "I'm a wreck."

Kelly stood up and walked toward the bathroom. At the same time, she instructed Jess on where to find a bong and marijuana.

"We're going to need the bong," Kelly said with a sniffled laugh.

The sun had started to bathe the LA morning with gentle light, and it was a smoggy start to the day. We added to that a fog of our own by ripping through a ton of weed on the bong. An acrid cloud hung over us as we sat with our feet in Kelly's pool and got thoroughly stoned. The girls cried a lot and told stories.

"You know, he never tried to touch me," Juliet said. "He always looked out for me. He was really, really good to me and never took advantage or tried to leverage that."

"Peter was ahead of time on consent," Kelly said with a laugh. "He was a dirty fucker and could be a rough bastard, but he wasn't anything close to someone like Harvey."

"I felt like he always just knew what I wanted, even if I didn't," Jess said.

"I think the only thing bigger than his dick was his personality," Kelly said with a laugh. "He owned every room he walked into."

I sat and listened. I hadn't been that close to Peter. We had shared some oddly intimate moments, in our own way, but our biggest interactions had been purely business. The larger-than-life persona, though, was something I couldn't argue with, and it certainly would be missed.

We smoked a lot of weed, and eventually Juliet left to go meet Stephen. I tried to keep my own emotions at arms' length, but I couldn't help but feel she was running away from me. I knew that wasn't fair, but my perspective was self-centered. I didn't appreciate that she and Stephen had just gone through filming together, with Peter there the whole time. It was a unique dynamic. So I just kept my feelings under wraps, deep down knowing they were invalid and selfish.

Kelly also left us after a few hours, as the morning turned toward afternoon. She was going to meet Petey, who had reached out. I hadn't realized what a close family confidante Kelly was for him, and it really hit home how far away from the daily life of people like Kelly and Juliet I was. While Jess and I were alone, I shared that with her.

"It's another world out here, John," Jess said. "It's not like back home."

"I realize that," I said.

"I'm not sure you fully do," she said. "You're stuck in our bubble. And I don't blame you. It's perfect. At the same time, it's not the way most people live. We're different."

"I definitely know that," I said. "What we have is unique."

"And don't forget the greater degree of comfort we have," she said. "And stability. We basically have no worries. Life has become a game. We're so lucky it can be."

"I don't always think of that," I acknowledged.

"And Peter being gone," Jess continued, "he was such a key part of their livelihood. He provided them with a lot of stability and safety."

"So now it's time for other people to step up," I said.

"Exactly," she said. "But with that opportunity comes uncertainty. People don't always react well to that kind of change."

I nodded. I got it. I liked our bubble. But I also knew it wasn't a shared reality beyond our small group. It was an important blind spot to overcome because part of the opportunity created by Peter's untimely death was for me. Or so I thought. If I played my cards right. Jess saw it, too.

"There's going to be a big opening for you here," she said, as if reading my mind. "If things go well with this movie -- Peter's last movie -- you will have a foothold out here that anyone would kill for."

"And they might just be happy to kill me for it," I said jokingly.

"There's just one thing, though, my love," Jess added.

"What's that?" I asked.

"We are going to have to spend more time out here in LA," she said. "A lot more."

"You're probably right," I said. "But it could really be worthwhile."

"We might need to get a place out here," she offered tentatively.

"We might," I echoed.

I really wasn't sure how we would work it out, and I wasn't quite prepared to think about it in detail. To do so meant considering Kat and Rita's careers. It meant more juggling. It meant upsetting our happy equilibrium. And if Juliet still meant what she had told me back in Houston, it could make life a great deal more complicated. And risky. Could I afford to take the chance, I wondered? At the same time, I thought, how could I afford not to take it?

If we didn't do this just right, there were going to be consequences for our happy bubble. Serious consequences.