Big Rock(3)

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.

It’s a win-win relationship.

Like tomorrow night. Fido won’t bitch and moan when I come home late. Because I fully expect to be stumbling through the door in the wee hours. I’m working tonight, but Jenny’s back on shift tomorrow, and I need to take my man Nick out to celebrate. His hit TV show was just re-upped for another season on Comedy Nation, and we plan to toast many times over at a watering hole in Gramercy Park. Besides, there’s a hot bartender there I’ve talked to a few times. Her name is Lena, and she makes a mean Harvey Wallbanger, so she put her name in my contacts as the drink itself. Well, part of the drink. Bang Her.

Sounds promising enough, and by promising I mean, a sure thing.

I take off and make my way uptown on the subway to the Upper East Side, my parents’ stomping ground. Yeah, they’re well off, but they’re also—shocker—not *s. That’s right. This isn’t the story of a guy with a rich, shithead dad and a cold, bitchy mom. This is the tale of a guy who likes his parents and whose parents like him. Guess what else? My parents like each other, too.

How do I know this?

Because I’m not f*cking deaf. No, I didn’t hear that when I was a kid. Instead, I heard my mom whistling a happy tune every morning when she woke up. I learned some good lessons from them. Happy wife = happy life, and one way to make a woman happy is in the bedroom.

Today though, my job is to make Dad happy, and Dad wants his offspring with him at this breakfast meeting, including my little sister, Harper. She walks toward me on Eighty-Second Street, her red hair like a sheet of flame. When she reaches me, she pretends she’s about to take a quarter from behind my ear.

“Look what I found. Wait. What’s that here?” She waves her hand behind my other ear and produces a tampon.

Her mouth falls into a shocked O. “Spencer Holiday. You’re carrying tampons now? When did you start getting your period?”