Free It Started as a Joke (All the Presidents' Beds, #1) by Kit Helix

I t started as a joke.
    We were eating lunch at a posh spot with white cloth napkins folded into swans.  Fifteen dollars a glass for house Cabernet, fifty dollar prix fixe lunch menu, you get the gist.  I hadn’t seen my bestie Sandra in a long time, and she was dead set on me getting a taste of the finer things in life. 
    “Hey Al, what would you do if you could go back in time?” she asked.  It was an innocuous question, plucked from the ether and just as quick to return to it.
    “I’d probably go back and fuck every president, though not in succession,” I deadpanned. 
    “Even Taft?”
    “Especially that fat bastard.  And don’t ask me if Grover Cleveland would get it twice, because you know he would.”
    Sandra was having a tough time keeping her foie gras in her mouth.  Each laugh was punctuated by a quick gesture to her lips to make sure she hadn’t spit her food all over her face. 
    “William Henry Harrison would be tough,” I said, “as he was only president for a few days before dying.  I don’t know how I’d worm my way in there.”
    “But JFK.  Damn.  I guess I could see it,” Sandra said.
    “You take JFK; I’ll go for the grizzled face of Andrew Jackson.  You don’t get the name ‘Old Hickory’ if you don’t know how to wield that stick.”
    Our waiter came over with a glass of water for each of us.  It seemed that our gales of laughter had convinced him we’d been oversold (seriously? At 1 in the afternoon on a weekday?), and he deftly absconded with our wine glasses.
    Sandra, of course, took this as an affront.  When he came back moments later to bring us our dessert, she glared at him.
    “You think I’m some lightweight, Pepe? You think Asian girls can’t hold their booze? What do you have to say for yourself, Pepe?”
    Since it was inevitable that she would involve me anyway, I added my two cents.
    “Or Anglo-Americans?” I nearly punctuated the statement with a bitchy “Pepe,” but I didn’t want to seem racist.  Though when I looked at his vest, I noticed his name was, in fact, Pepe.
    “No, I just...” his feeble attempt at a response was instantly overwhelmed by Sandra.
    “You just nothing.  You’re taking those last glasses of wine off my bill; there was still at least enough to wet my lips when you took them, and that’s as good as a whole glass.”
    “Ma’am,” he began.
    “You just got ‘Ma’am-ed,’” I laughed.
    “Do I look like Mrs. Papadopoulos to you?  Are you Webster, a tiny black boy adopted by his white godfather?  Did you just ‘Ma’am’ me?” she raged.  It was all an act, of course.  Sandra wasn’t mad; she just got off on this sort of thing.  She loved seeing other people sweat. 
    “No, ma’am.  I mean, no miss,” he stammered.
    “Did he just call me ‘miss?’ Does he not see this massive rock on my finger?  Does he not know that my husband owns half this block and this sorry-ass restaurant is merely a tenant in his real estate portfolio,” she said.
    “He does not, as far as I can tell, see that massive rock on your finger,” I deadpanned (which is my favorite kind of panning, so get used to it). 
    “I...uh...,” Pepe was flummoxed.  Words didn’t even begin to form on his lips; he was a chorus of vowels. 
    At that moment, a rogue manager appeared.  He wore the standard restaurant manager outfit of slightly-nicer-clothes-than-the-staff and crushed dreams.
    “Is there a problem, ladies?” he smarmed.  They always smarm when they see Sandra.  Even if they don’t know who she is, managers can smell the money emanating from her pores.
    “No, and you need to go.  Pepe here was doing an excellent job,” Sandra replied.
    “Top notch,” I agreed.
    “Well,” the manager began.
    “Shoo.  We are not flowers, and you are not a bee,” Sandra said.  “Disappear.”
    The manager scuttled off to the back, presumably overflowing with outrage and regaling the back of the house with tales of the