Big Rock

She’s not far off. I usually do.

Earlier this month, I met a total babe at the gym. She worked out hard, then worked out even harder with me when I bent her over the back of the couch in my apartment. She texted me the next day, telling me how her thighs were aching, and she’d loved it. She said if I ever made it to Los Angeles, would I please look her up, because she wanted to ride my ride again.

Of course she did. Once you’ve had filet mignon, you don’t want to go back to hamburger helper.

I saved her number. You never know, right? Nothing wrong with two adults enjoying the night and parting ways in the morning with a spring in the step courtesy of multiple Os bestowed.

That’s how it should be. The first rule of dating is this—always please the woman first, then ideally a second time before you get yours in. The next two are equally simple—don’t get attached, and never, ever be a douche. I follow my own rules, and they have given me the good life. I’m twenty-eight, single, rich, hot, and a gentleman. Like it’s a surprise when I get laid.

But tonight, my dick is off duty. Early bedtime.

I shake my head in answer to Charlotte’s question as I resume cleaning the counters. “Nah, I have a seven-thirty breakfast tomorrow with my dad and some guy he’s trying to sell the store to. I need to be fresh and ready to impress.”

She points to the door. “Go get your beauty sleep, Spencer. I’ll close up.”

“I don’t think so. I came to fill in for Jenny. You go home. I’ll hail you a cab.”

“You do know I’ve lived in New York for five years, right? I know how to hail a cab late at night.”

“I am well aware of your independent ways. But I don’t care—I’m sending you home. Whatever you’re doing here, you can do at your apartment,” I tell her as I toss the washrag in the sink. “Wait. You’re not worried that Bradley Dipstick is going to be roaming around the lobby trying to give you flowers at this time of night?”

“No. He usually plans his apology ambushes for the daylight hours. Yesterday, he sent me a three-foot-tall teddy bear holding a red satin heart that said, Please forgive me. What the hell am I supposed to do with that?”

“Send it back to him. At his office. With red lipstick on the heart spelling out N.O.” Charlotte’s ex-boyfriend is a grade A, top-choice douchenozzle, and the bastard will never get her back. I hold up a hand. “Wait. Is there any chance this teddy bear has a middle finger on his paw?”

She laughs. “Now that’s a good idea. I just wish the whole building didn’t know my business.”

“I know. I wish you didn’t have to run into him ever again in the whole history of time.”

I hail her a cab, give her a peck on the cheek, and send her home. After I close up, I head to my pad in the West Village—the sixth floor of a kickass brownstone with a terrace that has a view of all lower Manhattan. Perfect on a June night like this.

I toss my keys on the entryway table as I scroll through my recent messages on my phone. I laugh when my sister Harper texts me a photo from a gossip mag, one from a few weeks ago, of me out with the hot woman from the gym. Turns out she’s a celebrity trainer from some reality TV show. And I’m the “noted New York City playboy”—same thing the magazine called me when I was seen with a hot new chef at a restaurant opening in Miami last month.

Tonight, I’m a good boy though.

I make no promises for tomorrow.





CHAPTER TWO


Button-down shirt. Tie. Charcoal-gray pants. Dark brown hair, green eyes, chiseled jaw.

Yep, it’s all working.

I fully approve of myself this Friday morning, and if I were a dude in a cheesy movie, I’d give myself two thumbs up.

But honestly, I’m not that kind of guy. I mean, who does that?

Instead, I turn to my cat, Fido, and ask him what he thinks. His response is simple—he struts off in the other direction, his tail high in the air.

Fido and I have an understanding: I feed him, and he doesn’t cock-block me. He’d appeared on my balcony a year ago, meowing at the sliding glass door, wearing a tag that said “Princess Poppy.” I checked his collar, and found he belonged to this sweet little old lady in the building who’d just moved on to the Great Beyond. That sweet little old lady had, evidently, confused him for a girl. She’d left no relatives, nor any forwarding instructions for the cat. I took him in, ditched his pink sparkly collar, and gave him a name befitting his manhood.