I laugh. “Geez. Where’s the fun in that?”
They all ignore me.
“How’s she liking it?” Kline asks.
“All those numbers?” Wes questions with a laugh. “She loves it. Pretty sure she’s going to be managing my hedge fund by the time she’s twenty.” Kline smiles. “Win’s feeling the blues, though. Says her baby is growing up too fast.”
Milo smiles, even though I’m not sure he’s ever met Wes’s stepdaughter, and I don’t miss the pathetic fucking longing that goes with it. The bastard’s been a fucking goner since he got involved with his best friend Evan’s little sister. Now, he’s engaged to be married and apparently ready to add some mini-Milos into the mix.
Wait a minute…
“Oh God,” I groan at him, throwing my head back dramatically. “Don’t tell me Maybe is pregnant already.”
“Is she?” Trent asks, his inflection going noticeably upward at the end. Because, unlike me, he’s excited.
Love-sick fools. The whole lot of ’em.
“No,” Milo says with a little smile. “I’m just thinking about the day she will be.”
“Ugh,” I groan, miming sticking a finger down my throat. “First of all, you just got en-fucking-gaged, you bastard. And secondly, are we really talking about women and babies during poker night? And not, like, the good part of women, like how well their pretty mouths can wrap around our cocks. But how lovely they are?”
Trent laughs. “Yeah, Cap. If you stopped sleeping your way through the entire city, you might find out why.”
I scoff. “Fuck that. I’m not like you guys. I like a plethora of pussy, and I like it often. I’m not gonna tie myself to one chick for the sake of…what? Insanity?”
Trent shakes his head, while Milo smiles behind his drink, the fucker. They’re absolutely convinced I’ll be just like them one day, twiddling my dick while some high-class chick shops with my money.
But they don’t know me like they think they do. I like my life the way it is. Full of freedom and fucking and anything else I want to do.
My time is my own, and my body, a free agent.
I get to sample the best of the best, over and over if I want or just take a taste. I have my cake, and I eat it too, and fuck anyone who thinks just because it’s the way of the world, I need to change my ways.
In fact, after today, there’s a new pussy on the horizon, new fun to be had.
The pretty blonde with the hot body at the library who apparently likes to listen to audiobooks that are reminiscent of some of sixteen-year-old Cap’s favorite pornos.
Goddamn, she was something. A petite little bombshell whose choice in listening pleasure has me more than intrigued.
She didn’t give me her name, but it doesn’t matter. I am a man who thrives off a good challenge, and I already know my future romp with her will be a better time than any of these fuckers has ever had.
And hell, who doesn’t love a good naughty librarian fantasy?
Certainly not me.
That pretty little librarian doesn’t know it yet, but she’s the new chase.
My new mission.
And I won’t stop until I’ve tasted her and fucked these guys and their monogamy right out of my damn head.
Ruby
As I head to my last class of the day, I ignore the way fatigue threatens to settle into my muscles and bones. I don’t have time to be tired. Hell, I never have time to be tired. Between law school and narration work and all the other shit I manage to fill in my not-at-all free time, I’m barely keeping my head above water most days.
I snag a banana and a granola bar out of my bag and look both ways before doing what I love to call the New York bob-and-weave across the busy street and back onto the sidewalk.
It only takes me two blocks to scarf down the pathetic and very late lunch, but thankfully, the constant ache that had settled into my stomach wanes.
I’m a girl who loves to eat but one who is so busy somedays, she rarely remembers to actually do so. With the way I love carbs, it speaks more of just how busy my life is than anything else.
A piercing whistle cuts through the sound of the Avett Brothers’ “Live and Die” streaming through my headphones, and I turn to look over my shoulder and up the crowded NYC sidewalk.
A tall figure with dark brown hair and a tacky mustache stands out above the rest and makes me smile.
My best friend Kevin has been my rock throughout the entirety of law school. We’re both in our third year at NYU Law, but he’s a couple years younger than I am. I took a year and a half off between getting my bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern California to travel the United States, exploring all the corners of our country few people get to see.
It was sketchy sometimes, being a woman by herself on the road, and drained all of the money I’d saved from odds-and-ends jobs during high school and undergrad, but by and large, it’s become the most impactful year and a half of my life thus far.
I’ve seen so many different facets of life that exist here—right here in this country—and the different ways they live and work. There are cultures and subcultures and nuances even below that, that I, a California girl, never would have known existed otherwise.
And I like to think it’s made me more open-minded about—and more respectful of—other people’s opinions.
Not to mention, it made me learn how to stretch a dollar to surprising lengths.
Kevin finally winds his way through the crowd and falls into step beside me. I’d say we’re shoulder to shoulder, but in reality, his shoulder is about two feet above mine. At seven foot two, he has to duck to go through doorways. I, despite many years of wishing for long legs, barely clear five feet. The sight of us walking together must be hilarious to outsiders.
“You sure stand out in a crowd, man.” I flash him a cheeky grin. “Waldo would be horrified to be your height. They’d have to rename the books Here’s Waldo just because he could never get anything by anyone.”
Kevin rolls his eyes at my teasing—something I’m always doing to him—and picks me up and into his side with one arm.
My feet tread air above the ground until I squeal my apologies. “Geez. Okay, I’m sorry, all right? You can put me down. And all this after I covered your shift at the library yesterday!”
“The two actions aren’t mutually exclusive, Gem,” he says, using the nickname he came up with for me our first year as he reacquaints me with Earth’s gravity. He lifts one finger. “Thanks for covering my shift.” Then he lifts another. “Stop mocking my height.” I shake my head as he smiles. “See? Two different things.”
“Whatever, Mom. How’d lunch with Julie’s parents go anyway?”
He groans and tightens the straps on his backpack. After a couple years of friendship, I know Kevin well enough to know that means he’s trying to figure out how to say something was fucking awful without just outright saying it was fucking awful. He’s polite like that. “Fine, I guess. Her dad kept asking me to tell him stories from my NBA days…”
I wince. Kevin played in the NBA for a month and a half before he broke his back in a car accident, and the doctors told him he could never play again. As a result, anytime anyone brings up his glory years, he doesn’t really feel much glory at all. I can’t imagine his fiancée’s father being the one asking the questions would make it any easier. How, exactly, do you tell your future father-in-law to fuck off?