“Clara?” I said, lifting my head and seeing our other best friend, standing in the doorway with a small rolling suitcase and a big grin.

“She said you finally got your ass on a train, so I got on one too!”

“My mouth is burning. I think. Is my mouth still where it used to be?” Natalie asked.

“Why do you order such spicy food if you can’t handle it?” Clara asked from her perch on the arm of the sofa. She hoovered up a bowl of chicken curry that I couldn’t even get within two feet of, and I had a pretty strong palate. She tipped up the edge of her bowl and slurped the rest of the sauce, smacking her lips.

“I love it. It’s so spicy, but I love it,” Natalie replied, moving toward the kitchen and stopping to check her reflection in the mirror. “But look how puffy it made my lips! It’s like a lip plumper!”

While she preened, I rolled toward Clara on the couch. “I still can’t believe you’re here.”

“I needed an excuse to get out of Boston for the weekend; things are positively stale there right now.” She looked toward my bowl of laksa. “Are you going to finish that?”

“I’m stuffed. Hit it.” As I passed her my takeout, I marveled that someone could eat so much and never gain a pound.

Clara and Natalie couldn’t be more opposite, and I wondered, not for the first time, that if we hadn’t all been away from home for our first time, if we ever would’ve become friends.

Clara was petite and athletic, with an almost boyish figure. A long-distance runner since high school, she walked with a powerful stride. She had an economy of movement that served her well as she competed in marathons and triathlons all over the world. With closely cropped blond hair and caramel colored eyes, she was a quiet beauty.

The most well traveled of our trio, Clara had a job that most people envied but few can actually do. After leaving culinary school, she enrolled in Cornell’s prestigious hotel management program. Rather than spend her nights and weekends working the front desk at the Brookline Marriott, though, she parlayed her keen eye and analytical mind into a position with a branding agency in Boston. She helped failing hotels in the United States and abroad get back on their feet, specializing in older historic hotels. So she traveled almost nonstop, sometimes spending weeks on site.

“Stale? Why? What’s going on?” I asked as she shoveled in the last few bites of food.

“I don’t really know. Work just seems a bit off at the moment. There might be some changes up top, and it makes for a weird vibe. I’m heading out of town next month, though, which will be nice.”

“And what glamorous city are you off to next? London? Amsterdam? Rio?”

“Orlando.” She sighed. Then burped slightly, which she apologized for with a sheepish grin.

“Orlando? That’s a little . . . different for you,” I replied, crinkling my eyebrows.

“It’s a little awful for me. What the hell do I know about magical mice?” she snorted, pushing the bowl away from her and patting her nonexistent tummy.

“What’s a magical mouse? Is that like a Rabbit?” Natalie asked, swooshing back in from the kitchen and depositing herself on the floor on front of me.

Clara looked at her sideways. “No, it’s—”

“Because let me tell you, nothing beats a Rabbit. Not a hand, not a dick, not even those little remote-control ones that fit right inside your panties. Nothing beats a Rabbit.” Natalie paused. “Although a tongue is a close second.”

“It has to be the right tongue, though,” Clara interjected. “Attached to the right face.”

“Not always. Some of the best sex I’ve ever had is with ugly guys. That guy I dated last year who worked on the trapeze, down at South Street Seaport? Face like a shovel, but holy shit, could he give fantastic head,” Natalie said, examining her pedicure. “I mean, some guys just get so into it—like, you’re ready to black out, it’s so good, and it’s almost too much, and you’re like, hello, I just came, like, eleven times in a row. But they keep on going; they could keep that shit up all night long. I swear, some guys just live to be facedown in it twenty-four-seven; they’re not happy unless they’ve got some girl’s thighs wrapped around their head and a tongue full of pussy. I’ve always wondered, when you clamp down around their head, y’know, lock on when you go full freeze, if it plugs their ears, kind of like when a plane reaches cruising altitude? And when you finally let go, do their ears pop?”

She looked up to find Clara and me staring at her. She’d said all of this in one breath, by the way. “What?”

Silence. Then, “Do their ears pop?” Clara repeated.

“Oh please, like you’ve never wondered that!”

“Nat, I can honestly tell you, I have never in my life wondered about that,” I said, hand on my chest.

“Oh, so Leo never made you nearly pass out? No wonder you hightailed it out of there,” Natalie said in sympathy.

“No, no, that’s not at all what I said. Leo is—”

“Is Leo the farmer she told me about?” Clara asked Natalie, who nodded.

“—amazing in bed. Incredibly amazing. No complaints there. But—”

“Yep, Farmer Leo Maxwell, who apparently paid more attention to his ee-eye-ee-eye instead of making her scream the more important oh!” Natalie replied, looking at Clara in a conspiratorial way.

“That’s not true! Leo made me very oh, all the time with the oh, nonstop ohs, and—”

“Wait wait wait, did you say Leo Maxwell? The farmer is Leo Maxwell? Blond guy? Early thirties? Drop-dead sex on a silo?” Clara asked, fumbling for her phone.

“Yes, he’s blond, and we didn’t have sex on a silo, we didn’t even have sex in the silo, but we were in a silo when he licked my spine and—”

Natalie interjected, “Atta boy, Leo! Did he keep going and lick your—”

“Okay, shut up. Is this your Leo?” Clara asked, shoving her phone in my face.

Oh yeah. That was my Leo. The picture showed a more City Leo than I was used to seeing, but even in this grainy picture you could see the gorgeous. Climbing out of a limo, wearing a black suit tailored perfectly to his strong, lean frame. Striking green eyes that were sharp, calculating, assessing. A little hard? I swiped to the next image. Another City Leo pic, this one in front of a publicity backdrop on some red carpet. Maybe some fund-raiser? This time he was dressed in a gray suit, looking all Billionaire Boys Club and Your Penthouse or Mine?

But while I could appreciate these pictures, in my mind’s eye he’d always be dressed in well-worn jeans, a vintage concert tee, two weeks’ worth of scruffy beard that felt incredible on the soft skin between my thighs, and kind green eyes. An easy grin. Peaceful and happy and so content in his world. City Leo was obviously good-looking, but I preferred Country Leo.

I came back to the conversation, where Natalie and Clara were talking animatedly.

“So wait, he left New York when—”

“Exactly, after the baby was born. She disappeared, and then he all but disappeared. He was gone, no parties, no trips—he sank everything he had into making that farm his life,” Clara said.

I blinked. “Okay, wait. So you guys both knew Leo?” I asked, confused.

“Knew him, no. Knew of him, of course. I just never put two and two together that Leo Maxwell was your Farmer Leo,” Natalie said, lying back on the floor and kicking her legs up in the air. “There was no one in this town who didn’t know Leo Maxwell. Everyone was trying to land that guy—what a fucking catch!”

“Seriously, Roxie, he was a young Mr. Big. Until he met Melissa. And once she sank her claws into him, that was it. No one ever really knew what happened; just that they were together, she was pregnant, there was a rumor they were getting married, then they weren’t together, and then once the baby was born he took his daughter and headed upstate. She bounced around town for a while, but eventually took off for Europe. I think she married some Russian guy. No idea what happened between her and Leo, though. It was just . . . over.”