Playing It Safe

CHAPTER TWO


Ni?a, estas de madre,” my assistant calls out to me while walking into my office.

That’s Lisette, my Girl Friday, telling me, in no uncertain terms, that I’m a hot mess. I don’t speak fluent Spanish, but I’ve lived in Miami my entire life. I know the basics, and of course over the years I’ve learned a variety of curse words and phrases, so I get by … and she’s right.

I am a hot mess.

I have been for the past three and a half weeks since my date with Dick when I swore off men. So yeah, Lisette pretty much just hit the nail on the head. It’s not like I’m some crazed sexual deviant, but come on! Three weeks! That’s one hell of a dry spell, and it might also explain why I’ve been lusting over the UPS guy every time he drops by my office.

From my vantage point, I have a clear shot of the receptionist’s desk. Without fail, at one fifteen p.m. every day, give or take a few minutes, he appears before my eyes like a mirage in the desert. Then circa 1970s cheesy porn music starts playing in my head, and what do I have? A recipe for disaster, that’s what. Because what I’ve left out is that Mr. UPS Guy is probably in his mid to late fifties, with a beer belly and bald. I’m not knocking bald men. Nope, not at all. Some men can really rock that look, like The Rock and Bruce Willis. But this guy isn’t even close to that caliber of hotness.

Did I mention that he has really nice calves? They’re like perfectly formed muscles shifting ever so slightly and sexily as he prances in front of me.

You don’t believe me?

Well, trust me, he does.

“Ugh, Lisette, I know I’ve been in a piss-poor mood lately. Sorry.”

Lisette eyes me carefully while getting her pad and pen ready for our daily afternoon meeting. As I’ve come to expect, her ensemble is perfect, with a smart charcoal-gray pantsuit that is complemented by a black chiffon blouse. If I didn’t know her so well, I would never be able to tell she’s not a natural blonde. Then again, I know she goes far out of her way to ensure that nobody ever knows that about her. She’s a Miami native, just like me, and she married her high school sweetheart. They have twin boys who are about to go off to college. She doesn’t look a day over thirty, and that’s only my best guess since she keeps that kind of intel on lockdown. But whenever I get an opportunity, I ply her with drinks to see how much I can get out of her. It never works; she just ends up sloppy and drunk off her ass. Lisette is also the only woman I know who can pull off blood-red lipstick year-round. She can work the shit out of that look better than any runway model could. And it doesn’t matter if you bump into her at a grocery store on a Sunday afternoon; undoubtedly she’ll be sporting the red even if the rest of her looks like crap. I’ve known her for … I can’t say for sure how long I’ve known her, since she started off working here as my dad’s assistant. Needless to say, we go way back—waaaay back. We usually get together at least once a day to go over any loose ends on upcoming events my company is planning or hosting. These afternoon “meetings” usually consist of about a half hour of actual business, immediately followed by another half hour of shooting the shit and gossiping.


“Then do something about it,” she says in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Do something about what?” I ask.

“It. As in, go out and find yourself a man,” she answers with an expression on her face that suggests I’m a moron for not knowing what she’s talking about.

I swivel my seat so that I’m completely facing her, picking the stress ball up off my desk at the same time. Lately, I’ve been squeezing the living shit out of this thing; f*cker could burst at any moment by the way I keep gripping it. It’ll pay off eventually because the next guy I give a hand job to is going to see stars.

Lisette’s eyes dart to my hand as it’s flexing and tightening itself, before raising an eyebrow in defiance. “Don’t give me that look, Julia. You’ve just had a run of bad luck in the man department. Everybody goes through those once in their life before meeting their Prince Charming. But you need to actually get your ass out there to meet him and not lock yourself up in your house all weekend, doing God knows what.” She immediately crosses herself, as if what she just said implies that I’m skinning cats or some crazy shit like that, and that the power of prayer is going to absolve me somehow.

I clench my fist around the stress ball and roll my neck around like a prize fighter getting ready to do battle before I hear it crack. “First of all, I’ve been busy redecorating Sabrina’s old room.” This is such bullshit, although I have given it quite a lot of thought while watching an exorbitant amount of television. I can’t help it if I have to catch up on Jax Teller, but she doesn’t need to know this. “Secondly, do I need to remind you of the long list of losers that I’ve had the pleasure of dating over the last year?”

“It wasn’t that bad,” she says, dismissing me quickly, even though she damn well knows it totally was.

I chuck the stress ball onto my desk, and it lands smack-dab on my keyboard. A distressing amount of beeps sound off in the background while I stand up and plant my hands on my desk, ready to remind her of just how bad it really was.

“First, there was Jack, who told me he was into ‘alternative films,’ which really meant he liked to watch porn all day. Then there was Dave, who apparently thought I looked so much like his beloved ex-girlfriend that when we finally had sex he shouted her name when he came. Then there’s Ryan, who told me on our very first date that he didn’t have a bank account, had never filed taxes, and had worked on a drug farm. Let’s see, oh! Then there’s Vincent, who—”

“?Por favor! Stop, I get it. You’ve had some bad luck.”

“Bad luck?” I say with a mocking laugh. “Bad luck is more like not winning the pick six by one number. Or when you get a flat tire. Or getting your period while you’re at the beach. This is so much worse than bad luck. This is just … Jesus, I don’t even know what you call this, but I sure as shit can tell you it’s not just bad luck!”

Lisette is trying to stifle her giggle fit by covering her plump, red-coated lips with her hand and looking everywhere but at me. Between her sputtering laughter, I sit down again and calmly pluck the stress ball off the keyboard and being to massage it, hoping that it will help me center my chi, or whatever you call that nonsense. After about ten seconds of squeezing it to death, I give up and throw it back onto my desk, where it lands with a loud thud, barely missing my coffee cup.

“You need to work on your aim,” Lisette says while still snickering.

“I need to work on a lot of things,” I mutter under my breath.

She stops laughing long enough and coolly announces, “You’re gonna be fine. I bet your Prince Charming is right around the corner, and when you least expect it, he’ll swoop in to save the day. Girl, I can just feel it. He’s coming.”

“His Garmin must be telling him to come by way of Bumf*ck, Egypt.”

“You know what I’m going to do,” she goes on to say, ignoring me completely. “When I get home tonight, I’m going to encender una vela in your name to Santa Bárbara.”

I roll my eyes because Lisette has been lighting so many candles to one saint or another in my name for years that by now it seems like a waste of a perfectly good matchstick. Not once have I seen anything come from it. However, if it makes her feel better and gets her off my back about my pathetic love life, fine.

“You’ll see,” she chirps, “it’s going to work, chica.”

With a loud pfft, I turn my attention back to the computer and pull up the coming week’s schedule. Three events are lined up: a grand opening of a new restaurant/bar in Coconut Grove, an engagement party at a home in Key Biscayne, and finally, at the end of the week, an opening at the Art Gallery here in South Beach.

That last one, the one at the Art Gallery, should be a cakewalk considering I’ve been handling their events and openings exclusively for the better part of the last year. And that would be thanks to Alex Holt, the owner.

Alex is kind of an enigma. Well maybe not, but there is something about him that I can’t quite put my finger on. My best friend Sabrina worked for him at the gallery before moving to Philly. At some point, he made it clear that he had the hots for her, but she was already in too deep with her boyfriend, Tyler. Well, not technically, but deep enough that Alex didn’t stand a chance.

Sounds like a f*cking soap opera, right?

Anyway, the shit hit the fan, then yada, yada, yada, she moved away. But not before I made a deal with him that I still had to repay him for. I kind of told him that I would do any event of his choosing, free of charge, if he got Sabrina’s résumé to the right person at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He did, she got the job, and almost a year later, he still hasn’t collected on my debt. He hasn’t even brought it up to me once, and I see him quite regularly. And we’ve become good friends.

Well, good friends is a bit of an overstatement; good enough is probably more of an accurate depiction. It doesn’t help that he’s hot as hell either. I’m not going to lie; the man is sex on a stick. He is gorgeous with a capital G. If Josh Holloway is ever in need of a stunt double, well look no further, because Alex should be the first and only person he would need to call. Our “friendship” could be described more by saying we playfully argue and exchange one too many flirtatious comments that drive me crazy. I didn’t even say anything yet about those dimples of his. Sweet baby Jesus, it’s just not fair.

“Julia, what the hell is wrong with you?” Lisette asks in a concerned voice, while I’m still conjuring up images of Alex’s dimples.

“What? Nothing’s wrong,” I say a tad too defensively, playing it off with a shrug of my shoulders. The last thing I need is for Lisette to drag out my daydreams of Alex in any way, shape, or form. “Just thinking about how crazy the schedule is for this week.”

“It’s not that bad. We’ve done three events in one week before. You can do this with your eyes closed and your hands tied behind your back.”

My mind goes straight to the gutter. Thoughts of being blindfolded and bound to a bed, at Alex’s hands and completely at his mercy, start whirling around in my head. God, it would be good … soooo good. Like earth-shattering good. Like speaking in tongues good. And I’m not even that into being tied up. But for Alex … damn, I’d haul my ass on over to Home Depot and buy the rope myself.


You know how I know he’d be amazing? Because there are some men—and when I say some, I mean a select few of the species—that the first thing you do when you meet them is picture how many sexual positions you can recreate from the Kama Sutra. Alex, without a doubt, is one of those men.

Okay, okay, so maybe I have a little crush on him. I don’t think I would act on it, though. The guy did boldly go where no man has gone before, or at least he tried to with my best friend. That would be like sloppy seconds, right? Maybe incestuous in Bizarro World since she’s like the sister I never had? Eww, so gross! I really need to come up with another way of looking at this whole situation. There are times, however, that it feels like he wants something to happen. Like he’s waiting for me to make a move. Goading me even. These instances are becoming more frequent to the point that I’m constantly questioning the parameters of our friendship. But the second I teeter on the brink of doing something about it, I reel myself back in.

“Earth to Julia! Come in, Julia!” Lisette’s hands are cupped around her mouth when her voice snaps me back to reality.

Shaking off the mental hopscotch I just played, I get back to the business at hand. “Sorry,” I quickly answer. “Was just thinking about all the redecorating I’m planning on doing this weekend. Where were we?”

Her cackle fills the room instantly. “?Por favor! You were not thinking about redecorating.”

“I was! I was thinking of color palettes.”

She narrows her eyes at me and says, “You forget how well I know you. If you don’t want to share, fine. But remember, I’ve got my eyes on you.” Then she lifts her two fingers and points them toward her eyes, then at me, and then back to herself again.

“Whatever.”

“Yeah right, whatever,” she says, mimicking my dismissive tone. “Fine, can we discuss the Grandersons’ party then?”

“Yup, hang on a second while I pull up their file.”

A few strokes of the keyboard later and the details of the party we’re planning at the Grandersons’ home in Key Biscayne this Wednesday night are up and ready for review. I do a quick scan of the particulars before turning my head to face Lisette again, but not before I take note of the time on the corner of my monitor: 1:12 p.m.

“Lisette, sweetie, can you move your seat over to the right just a hair, please? The glare coming from the window behind you is killing my eyes.”

She smiles and does as I ask before going into details about the party. Everything seems to be in order, and then like clockwork, my eyes feast upon a vision standing at the receptionist’s desk. There he is. Mr. UPS Guy in all his UPS uniformed glory.

Bow chicka bow wow …