yet another weekend at the beach in the name of work. I wondered why I had even bothered browbeating her into a share. Or Nick, for that matter. I guess I had some stupid idea that a summer out at the beach with my two best friends would be fun, though I was starting to think Zoe and Nick were like my little friend Chad. They didn’t know a good thing when they had it. Zoe was probably still filming poodles, and Nick…if I knew Nick, he was probably down at The Inn or The Out, the only two bars in town, chatting up anyone who would listen about his latest get-rich-and-maintain-his-integrity scheme, a record label he was developing. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he found investors here. Nick could be pretty charming. In high school he had convinced the football coach he could create software that might predict the most successful plays based on the stats of the players. Of course, he got caught smoking pot in the woods behind the school a week later, losing any support he had gained for the project. But that was classic Nick. He was brilliant enough to be the next Bill Gates, except he tended to use that B.S. in Business Administration of his for b.s. more than anything else.
It was starting to get on my nerves.
But then, I was on my last nerve tonight, even more so when I saw the lights of our beach house twinkling in the distance. God, it was a beautiful house. An oceanfront, sprawling three-bedroom ranch hovering high above the beach.
“Maggie’s Dream.” My boss, Tom, had named it for his wife. Though now that I thought about it, Maggie’s Dream would have been a lot better sans Maggie.
There was a price to pay for an ocean view. And my price, I had discovered, was Maggie.
I had met them both at the beginning of last summer, at the beach, of course. Maggie seemed fine then—from a distance anyway. She was simply the smiling, semi-Stepford wife of Tom Landon. I adored Tom immediately. Maybe because we had so much in common—we both worked in the garment industry, though I was in retail at the time. Our acquaintance turned quickly into a business relationship when I bought some products from Tom’s ladies’ wear line, Luxe, to put in the store I managed. But The Bomb Boutique was a bit too downtown hip for me to carry more than a few well-styled pieces from Tom’s line, and then it was mostly accessories—handbags and the odd belt. We became friends, though, so much so that I used to tease him about how he needed to add a little hipness to his line if he hoped to win over customers like The Bomb. As it turned out, I won Tom over. By the end of the summer, he approached me about a new venture he was working on, an urban leather outerwear line. And with the promise of a fat salary as the head sales rep for Edge, he lured me on board. It was the best decision I’d ever made. I loved my job. In fact, I lived for my job. Even had dreams of managing Edge myself some day.
Those dreams ended when Maggie came to work for Edge. Suddenly Ms. Stay-At-Home Wife wanted a career, and Tom—sweet, generous Tom—handed her mine on a silver platter.
Now I had to share a beach house with her. For sixteen weekends. Actually, counting this weekend it was only twelve now, since I’d already managed to survive four. Barely.
I started to walk again, feeling my irritation with Maggie rear its head once more, remembering the row she’d started with me tonight for blowing off the big dinner she was planning. As if, just because I was sharing a house with her this summer, I had to be her fucking buddy. Like I really felt like sitting around the table praising her lamb chops when I had a piece of prime booty waiting for me at the dock. She even went as far as saying that I wasn’t a team player, implying that I was somehow threatening my job by ditching out on her dinner party.
Fucking prima donna.
If I’d only known she would be like this when I took this share, I might not have taken it. But I had put the money down back in February—a full month before Maggie had taken over the management of Edge and made my life a misery.
I shuddered as I reached the wooden walkway to the house, wondering if Maggie was still reigning like a queen over her stupid dinner party. The house did seem kind of quiet.
Fuck it. I wasn’t going in there. Wasn’t going to tolerate the satisfied smile on her face when I walked in after the all-too-brief date I had shrugged off her little party for. After all, it couldn’t be any later than nine-thirty.
I headed for the beach, figuring a moonlit walk might do me good.
It was the weekend after all.
And I didn’t have to answer to anyone.
Not tonight.
And if I had things my way…
Never again.
3
Nick
Women. You can’t live with them and you can’t…
“I’m having a few beers, for chrissakes, Bern. What’s the big deal?” I said into my cell phone, wishing my reception, which was usually nonexistent at The Inn, would give out at this point. This conversation had already gone on way too long. As in six months too long. But this was what Bernadine and I had come to.
“So you’re trying to tell me you’re just sitting in a bar on a Saturday night all by yourself,” she said, for the fifth time in as many minutes.
“It’s Kismet, Bern. There’s nothing else to do.” I almost pointed out that she might have been here with me, if she hadn’t up and moved to San Francisco six months earlier. But I really didn’t want to start that argument again. This long-distance relationship stuff sucked big-time, especially when the woman in question got jealous if I so much as sneezed in the vicinity of another woman.
“And there’s no one there with you?” she asked now.
I looked around at the crowd lining the bar and surrounding the pool table. “Well, there are lots of people here, Bern. But even if I was with someone, don’t you think I might have blown my chances with her, considering that I’ve been on this phone arguing with you for the past fifteen minutes?”
“Fuck you, Nick.”
Click.
Shit. That sure wasn’t my reception going out.
“Another beer, dude?” asked the bartender as I put my cell phone down on the bar once more.
I picked up my beer bottle, which was down to the last quarter. The last quarter of my fourth beer and she still wasn’t here. Okay, so I hadn’t been completely honest with Bern. I was waiting for someone, and, yes, someone female, but it wasn’t like that. At least, not on my end anyway. This was strictly business, but from the way things were going so far, it looked like I might have to fuck Maggie, if only to get the upper hand in this deal we were working on. Though at the moment, I had no hand to play. It was almost nine-thirty already. I’d been waiting for her nearly two hours. Actually, I’d moved on from waiting to just simply drinking. Maybe Maggie had gotten that spice or whatever she was missing for her meal and decided to stay home and cook after all. Which didn’t make sense, seeing as Sage had already taken off and Tom had given up and gone over to a friend’s house. He was pissed and I couldn’t blame him. Surely she could have figured out something else to do with all those lamp chops besides whatever the hell was called for in that recipe she was making. But I could see Maggie was like a dog with a bone when it came to her dinner parties. She was pretty upset when she realized her dinner plan was not happening tonight. I thought I had managed to talk her out of cooking, even offered to buy her a burger at The Inn. She told me she just needed to clean up the aborted dinner she’d started. “I’ll
