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    G-string that would cause most women to be cut in two via anus? Check .
    Maggie had found an old pair of neon puffy pants (“ Eightie s party at my old school. What? ”) and Esmerelda looked gorgeous. Her plastic brown hair didn’t do much for her, but the makers of the blowup sex doll had given her lovely red lips and a mouth that turned into a six-inch tunnel, a perfect cylinder that touched the back of her head.
    Who needs brains when you have a mouth like that?  
    The interchan g e between I-90 and I-95 meant we needed to slow down and pay the toll. As I stopped the car and reached out with my money and the ticket, the toll booth operator, a Chinese dude about our age, barely looked up.
    He did look up just enough, though, and did a double take.
    “Nice friend. She looking for a hook-up?”
    Maggie snorted.
    “She’s taken, actually,” I said.
    He gave me a WTF? l ook and peered in the back seat. “Nice shoes she’s wearing.” Maggie had given some freshman a pair of thrift sh o p white leather sandals and told them we were having a Mardi Gras contest. The freshman took them back to her room and together with a bunch of friends produced a masterpiece you could only find on Pinterest.  
    Smuggling Esmerelda out of my apartment had been second hardest part of the night . Delivering Liam’s new “girlfriend” would be the hardest.  
    Five years.
    “ Have fun in town,” the toll guy said as he handed me my change. I hit the gas and Maggie laughed.  
    “Five fucking years and all he says to me is that he’s buying female sex replacements and wants me to hand-deliver them,” I muttered as we sped over the bridge toward Newton. “Fucker.”
    “You don’t have to do this.” Maggie’s voice wa s so reasonable all it d id wa s make me see red.
    “Oh, I have to do this. You want me to deliver your sex hole ‘in person,’ Liam? Fuck you. You’re getting Esmerelda all right.” I was seething (understandably) and a little illogical (okay…a lot). But no—just no way I was letting him use me like this. No mindfucking allowed. I’d let him do that to me for five years and now…what did this mean?
    Cracking open the mind of Liam McCarthy to understand his motives was something I’d spent far too much time trying to do. Understanding him was pointless.
    Challenging him face to face was long overdue.
    “Hold on, Esme,” I said as I floored it. “You’re getting your cherry popped tonight.”
    Liam
    I had to hand it to Darla—this new place was a step up. A giant chasm down from our stage on the island of Eden, but a step up from the usual Boston-area dives.
    A real cover charge, too, which mean t we’d get a flat fee for performing plus a percentage of what came in at the door. Real money for once, and not just enough for a few beers and a tank of gas. If she kept booking us like this, Sam and I could slow down or even stop the stripping jobs.
    Sound checks were in place and Darla was at the door, hand ing out free download cards for new songs and cha t ting up the customers. She ate that shit up, which was fine. Made her useful. Kept her busy. Tonight, Joe was stuck in Philly, going through some lame-ass law thing he swore he couldn’t get out of. That meant Tyler was here to fill in on bass . The man was a walking mural, so tatted up he looked like the practice canvas for Miami Ink .  
    I had started calling him Frown because that’s all he did. The guy warmed up, played, got paid, and left. No hanging out, no partying, nothing. He was a n inked-up frown in human form, and while his performance had definitely improved over the handful of months he’d sat in for Joe, he was about as much fun as a wet, dead ra c coon.
    “ Place is filling up, isn’t it?” Sam said, appearing at my elbow. He chugged down a half-liter of water in a handful of gulps.  
    “Amy here?”
    “Nope. Papers to write.” Sam chewed on his inner cheek for a minute and said, “Charlotte, huh?” Sam was the last