Max, Jack and I are neighbors. There wasn’t much on the market when we bought, so three houses in a row required the flexibility of a yogini. Max drew the short straw and had to settle for Casa de Pinkie.
My board bumps sand—and kneecaps. I open my eyes.
Max frowns down at me. “Did someone piss in your cornflakes?”
In no mood to discuss my epic screwup, I flash him the bird. “Did you raid my kitchen again?”
“Not in the last two weeks. And there was definitely no golden shower action, although I may have stolen a beer.”
A beer sounds great, but Max is empty-handed, the tease. He also isn’t dressed for surfing. Instead of a wet suit, he wears knee-length black swim trunks, a white T-shirt with a pink bow tie bedazzled at the throat, and a two-thousand-dollar tuxedo jacket that’s slowly absorbing salt spray. Crap. Tonight is the launch party for Max’s newest dating app.
The party is the love child of his publicist and PR person. Max himself is adamantly antisocial, but he’s been promised loads of D-list celebrities and paparazzi, so it’s party time. Speaking from experience, many guests will regret the open bar when they check their social media in the morning. I promised weeks ago to make an appearance, although I drew the line at participating in a bachelor auction featuring the best of Billionaire Bachelors.
“Party time,” Max announces.
I stand up, haul my board out of the water, peel off my wet suit and follow Max to his staircase. Max will loan me a shirt to go with my board shorts, and the party’s likely to be clothing-optional anyhow.
Because I’m pathetic, I check my phone. After the third time I went swimming with it, I realized that I either had to take up skinny-dipping or take preventative measures. I opted for a waterproof phone condom. There are no messages from Lola.
Max’s pool contains more women than water and appears to be swimsuit-optional. A bar with blow-up palm trees, pink flamingos and a tiki man with a gigantic dick round out the decor. Music pounds because Max hates silence. He codes to earsplitting music—it’s a miracle he retains any hearing.
“Classy.” Coming up behind us, Jack slings an arm around our shoulders.
My phone dings and I look down. Two-for-one pizza offer. Delete.
The arm around my shoulder digs into my armpit. “You didn’t surf today.”
I make a show of checking my phone. “I went in to work. I may also have made a tactical mistake.”
Neither Max nor Jack seem surprised, although it’s Max who correctly interprets tactical mistake and asks the obvious question. “Did you bang her?”
“Technically? No.”
Jack shakes his head. “I told you being her intern wouldn’t have a happy ending.”
“Yeah, well, Lola definitely didn’t get her happy ending,” I overshare.
“Gonna need a few more words about that.”
Max snags three longneck beers from a passing waiter while I try to find the words to explain. His pool is now filled with foam and the photographers are going nuts. This might have something to do with the behavior of Max’s VIP guests. It’s raining bikini tops on our private beach.
I finally settle on a strictly factual account. “I got her consent. We fooled around. I tied her up—which was also consensual—I came and then I left her.”
“Tied up.” Jack pops the top on his bottle.
“Yes.”
“High and dry.”
I shrug. “I’m certain she took care of business later, but yes.”
“You have any idea how much trouble you’re in?” Jack keeps his voice low, an effort that I appreciate. I don’t need to find today’s episode of stupidity plastered across a gossip website.
“Depends on whether Lola has a sense of humor or not.”
Shit.
I’m in so much trouble.
Jack, of course, presses his point. He’s the responsible one, which is one of many reasons why he’s also the only one of us who has actually managed monogamy, marriage and genuine friendship with not one but two girls. “You think there’s anything funny about tying a girl up and leaving her like that? What if someone else comes in while she’s tied up? What if that someone takes advantage or takes pictures or just sees that mental image in his or her head every single time they see Lola after this?”
“I used a tie,” I point out. “Not cables or plastic handcuffs.”
Max cuffs my shoulder. “Even I know that this is not about the delivery mechanism for your kinky fantasies.”
Maybe we could have had sex. Maybe we could have had something really great or even something that was just nice. But now I’ve likely made her feel frustrated and stupid—plus, I’ve probably screwed up my chances of busting my software pirate. It’s a clusterfuck of epic proportions.
“Should I text her and apologize?”
Jack smacks my other shoulder hard enough that I almost land in the pool. “You want to put your stupidity in writing?”
No, I want to put it behind me, but that doesn’t seem to be an option.
I point my bottle at Jack. “I don’t have her phone number.” Which is an oversight I can remedy with a laptop.
“No,” Jack says. “You don’t get to do that.”
Max just grins. “What aren’t we doing?”
“No hacking,” Jack tells him. “You’ve reformed.”
There’s an eighties movie about a kid who hacks into the Department of Defense computer system and plays games with the artificial intelligence brain controlling the country’s nuclear arsenal. The kid isn’t thinking about nuclear winter or accidentally wiping out the world; he’s just a curious smart-ass who thinks it would be fun and wants to see if he can pull it off. That kid could have been Max’s mini-me. Or his doppelgänger. Max loves hacking and he’s really, really good at it.
I slide a sidelong glance at Max. “Does she have a Happily Ever After account?”
Max pulls a pained face. “Privacy laws, man. I can’t disclose that kind of stuff.”
“People post dick pics and beaver shots!”
Max just shrugs. “If Lola wants to post her phone number, she can. She can draw it on her tits in black Sharpie and take a picture. I don’t care as long as she’s the one initiating, but you can’t look without her permission.”
“You suck,” I tell him, and he takes a bow.
For the next couple of hours, I put on my happy face and concentrate on having Max’s back even if I don’t want to be here. I turn
