Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 120189 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120189 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
I grin. At least I’ve got him.
3
Trevor needs to let loose.
“I’m not hungry,” I try to tell him, stumbling over my shoes, “and I still have to pick out a tie for Monday.”
“We’re not going out for dinner, cupcake,” Elijah teases me, throwing an arm over my shoulder. “You, Trevor, need to loosen the hell up. I promise, you can plan your week’s wardrobe when we get back, down to your matching underwear.”
On a Friday night like this, the streets are crowded with partygoers, friends meeting up, and drunken laughter. The city is alive, and its inhabitants never sleep. Elijah has been one of these inhabitants for two years now. Amidst the city noise, he’s totally at home.
And then there’s me, obsessing over whether a red tie will indicate a sense of desperation over a mauve tie.
Listen to me. Using words like “mauve”. I lean into Elijah with a heavy sigh, my safety net. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
When we finally arrive, I do a hell of a lot more than seeing. I do some coughing, some gagging, and a bit of squinty-eyed ear-covering. Elijah’s brilliant idea of how to loosen me up is visiting a nightclub we’ve passed every morning on our way to the office and every evening on our way home. I’ve never been to a bar, let alone a seedy downtown hangout with thumping music and throngs of sweaty, half-clothed people everywhere you turn.
Making our way to the bar, I witness a woman grinding her body against a shirtless hunk, whose eyes are glued to her breasts. I witness another guy gyrating his hips against a girl who grasps his hair in a fist as she hungrily pulls his mouth to hers.
This place is a den of sex, sweat, and slippery skin.
And then there’s Elijah and I ordering a pair of Cokes. Neither of us will be twenty-one for three more weeks. Did I mention our birthdays are just four days apart? We’re so stinking cute.
Shoot me now. I grab Elijah’s sleeve. “Over it already.”
“This place is exactly what you need. Just let it happen.”
“Yeah. A loud nightclub where I get to watch a bunch of men and women grope each other drunkenly.”
“Hey, there are gay people here, too,” Elijah assures me. “You aren’t all alone. In fact, that’s sort of the point.”
“The point?”
“Yeah. I want you to get laid.”
I blink at him—and not just due to the eye-watering smoke drifting through the air I’m desperately trying to breathe. Also, I’m trying not to notice a bearded guy getting what I presume to be a lap dance from a woman in a miniskirt halfway down the bar. The sight is very distracting and not in the spank bank way.
“Don’t give me that face, Trevor. You are too uptight, and this internship is going to break you unless you untie those panties—”
“We’re going home. Now.”
“Nope. Denied.”
“Then I’m going home.”
“Half an hour,” he begs me. “Give me just half an hour, and if Trevor’s not having even a tiny bit of fun by then, we’ll go home and order a large pizza with lemon garlic wings.”
“Ten minutes. Teriyaki wings.”
“Fifteen. Half-and-half.”
“Deal.” I cross my arms and sit on the stool next to him.
This is a little game he won’t win, and my unfinished planner waiting for me on my desk at home is proof of that. Even sitting here at this bar where we each nurse a totally-innocent Coke—which takes ten of our precious fifteen minutes to even get—all I find myself thinking about is which color tie will go with my slate-colored slacks. Maybe red is too desperate, too “look at me”. Do I go for a pink one to indicate sophistication, or something more saturated to convey my focus and passion?
Looking good is hard work.
“That one,” Elijah says, pointing.
He’s been doing this too for the past ten minutes, pointing out every guy in the club who seems to not have a half-dressed woman rubbing their lady bits all over him. “Straight,” I blurt back, just like the last four.
“How about that one?”
“Straight, too.”
Elijah smirks at me. “How can you tell?”
“They’re all straight or taken. All of them. Can we go now? I think I left your stove on.”
“Four minutes. You promised. And no, you didn’t.”
I slurp on my Coke. “We really should be spending tonight and tomorrow researching marketing strategies and preparing for—”
“We have a whole summer to do that. Tonight, all we research is dude butts.” Elijah lifts an eyebrow. “That’s what gay guys are into, right? Butts? You’re a bunch of puppies running in circles smelling each other’s holes, right?”
I shove Elijah for that, earning a hearty laugh from him as he nearly falls off his stool.
Then, across the room, I catch sight of a man standing at a tall bar table all by himself. He looks strangely out of place wearing a clean, fitted blue suit jacket with a slight shimmer to it and crisp slacks. Through the haze of people and smoke, his eyes are aimed my way.