Beach Reads Box Set

by Madden-Mills, Ilsa

  She shook her head and smiled, propping her mismatched-sock feet on the arm of our couch. “I gotta say, that wiener is pretty fucking awful. But, Georgie, you work for a company that specializes in an app called TapNext, not the White House.”

  After a brief beat of silence, we laughed at the same time, and I raised one eyebrow in question. “You’re comparing TapNext to the White House?”

  “You’re right,” she agreed. “Bad analogy. There’s probably more dick pics there.” A giant, mischievous grin consumed Cassie’s face as she grabbed the remote.

  “Cassie…” I pointed in her direction, but it was too late. She was already standing on top of our coffee table, using the remote for a microphone.

  My best friend had this thing with making parody songs out of pretty much anything when inspired. And she didn’t do it quietly. No way, quiet was not Cassie’s style. She sang like she was Adele performing at the Grammys.

  “I call this one White House Lovin’,” Cassie announced.

  I groaned but secretly couldn’t wait to see what she would come up with. Think Kristen Wiig on Saturday Night Live kind of hilarious shit. That was Cass.

  “Blue-dress intern, found my pants fast…”

  “White House intern, it was a blast…”

  She was singing her little heart out.

  “This girl, she was crazy for D…”

  Snapping fingers. Pelvic thrusts. Head bobs. Cassie wasn’t missing a beat.

  “Met the prez, down on both knees…”

  One verse in and the dick pic bandit had been forgotten. I hopped off the couch and tackled her to the floor. She screamed. I laughed. And five minutes later, Cassie was back on the coffee table while I sang backup to the rest of her ridiculous song.

  Tell me, whore… Tell me, whore…

  Admit it, you’re singing it too.

  Later that night, once I had cozied myself in bed and was so very close to reaching that heavenly REM cycle, the ping of my phone pecked at me. I groaned my way out of Dreamland slowly. God, it was time to make some major life changes. For example, the alert settings for my TapNext profile in my phone. It was either that or murder, and I’m the kind of person who likes to dip a toe in the pool water to test it rather than cannonball my way in.

  Rubbing a hand over my face, I forced my eyes opened and snatched the phone off my antique nightstand. I barely resisted the urge to slam it back down, thus breaking it into a million tiny pieces. Luckily, my rational thinking wasn’t as sleepy as the rest of me and realized the amount of work that would result from such an impulsive decision.

  Cleaning and shopping and transferring my contacts, oh my.

  Yeah, screw that.

  BAD_Ruck (2:09AM): It’s NOT my dick.

  It’s not his dick?

  What the double actual fuck?

  No. Nope. This was so not the right time to deal with this bullshit.

  Not. Answering.

  The sides of my pillow exploded upward with the force of my punch and made the perfect cushion for my face when it slammed down beside my hand. I had so much shit to do at work tomorrow, and dealing with BAD_Ruck and his proclivity for awful crotch selfies and unintelligible responses was not going to be on my agenda.

  I was focused on getting shut-eye, confident that sleep and I would spoon the fuck out of each other until the sun rose the following morning. I channeled Buddha for my inner Zen, humming my way toward unconscious bliss. It was either that, or grab my vibrator and participate in a ménage à moi.

  Thankfully, my return to sleep came easily that night. No hands-on approach required.

  The next day, while I was getting ready for work, I decided to give BAD_Ruck a piece of my mind. I spit toothpaste into the sink, rinsed my mouth out with water, and turned off the faucet. Striding into my room with purpose, I grabbed my phone off the nightstand and sent the dick gremlin a response.

  Suck. On. That. Buddy.

  Chapter Two

  Kline

  TAPRoseNEXT (7:03AM): Then it’s someone else’s dick? WORSE. Threat Level EXPLODED.

  “Good morning, Mr. Brooks.”

  “Good morning, Frank,” I replied, picking my head up from the crime scene on my phone just long enough to meet his honest amber eyes before sliding into the soft leather seat of my Town Car.

  Fucking Thatch.

  I swear, somehow he took doing what would already be really fucking annoying and advanced it to the next level. If he didn’t have the same ability with money, I probably would have dropped him by now.

  To the bottom of the ocean. With a cinder block attached to his ankles.

  She was right, of course. Sending a picture of someone else’s dick was considerably worse than sending a picture of your own.

  Especially this one.

  Three rings trilled in my ear before his sleep-laden voice forced one hungover syllable past his lips. “’Lo?”

  “A dick, Thatch? Really?” I asked immediately, pinching the bridge of my nose to stave off a headache.

  No amount of lingering alcohol could stop his answering laugh.

  His throat cleared a little more with each chuckle, and by the time he responded, he was speaking clearly. “You’re the one using my picture for your profile, bro. It was only fair that I unleashed the gargoyle dick.”

  Gargoyle dick. Too fucking right. A winglike knob, a hunchback, and questionable coloring all lent themselves to his description. I’d left my phone on the bar without hawk-eyeing it for two fucking minutes, and the asshole had somehow managed to send one of the world’s worst illicit pictures to some poor—now blind—woman in that time.

  “That profile was only payback for the last awful thing you did to me.”

  “Which was?” he asked, altogether too amused.

  “Who knows,” I admitted, staring up at the passing high-rises and shaking my head. “I can’t keep up.”

  “Then join in, K. Live a little, for fuck’s sake.”

  The burgeoning sun glinted off of a pane of perfectly smooth glass at the top of a building and reflected a rainbow right into the window of my car.

  “I’m living just fine,” I argued.

  “Yeah.” He laughed and scoffed at once. “Say hi to Walter for me.”

  That was Thatch’s version of calling me a cat lady.

  “Hey, fuck you!” I said, only to be met with dead air. I pulled the phone away from my ear to discover he’d ended the call.

  “Fuck that guy,” I muttered, somehow calling more of Frank’s attention to myself than I had with all the yelling.

  “Sir?”

  “No worries, Frank.” I paused for a second and looked back out the window. “You wouldn’t happen to know a hit man, would you?”

  I glanced up front in preparation for his reaction.

  “Um,” he murmured hesitantly, flicking his eyes between me and the road in the rearview mirror. “No, sir.”

  I shook my head as I smiled, a brief chuckle tickling the back of my throat.

  “Good. That’s good,” I remarked, just as we pulled up to the curb in front of my building.

  Flexing the door handle in my hand, I shoved the door open with the toe of my shoe.

  “Mr. Brooks,” Frank started to protest, as usual, jerking into motion in order to hop out to help me, but I just couldn’t get into the mindset where his and my time was well spent waiting on him to walk around the car just to do something my opposable thumbs and lack of paralysis made shockingly simple.

  I smiled in response before he could get out, meeting his eyes in the rearview mirror before exiting.

  “Have a good day, Frank. I’ll see you at six.”

  With the slam of the door, I buttoned my suit jacket as I walked, twenty audible smacks of my soles eating up the concrete courtyard in front of my building in no time.

  New Yorkers buzzed around me, continuing a marathon life that started the moment they opened their eyes. That was the vibe of this city—active and elite and totally fucking foc
used. No one had time for each other because they barely had time for themselves. And yet, each and every single one of them would still proclaim it the “best city on Earth” without prompting or persuasion.

  As my hand met the metal of the handle, I surveyed the lobby of the Winthrop Building, home to Brooks Media, to find the front desk employees and security guards scurrying to make themselves look busy when they weren’t.

  I bit my lip to keep from laughing. I’d never been the kind of boss to rule with an iron fist, and not once had I uttered a word of micromanagement to loyal employees like the ones practically shoving their hands in their staplers in order to look busy.

  But being CEO of a company of this size and magnitude had a way of creating its own intimidation factor, whether it was intended or not. And, sometimes, the weight of unintended consequences was heavier than gold.

  “Morning, Paul.”

  He nodded.

  “Brian.”

  “Mr. Brooks.”

  The button for the elevator glared its illumination prior to my arrival—more help from the overzealous employees, I’m sure—and the indicating ding of its descent to the bottom floor preceded the opening of the shiny mirrored doors by less than a second.

  I stepped in promptly without another word, offering only a smile. I knew anything else I said would only cause stress or anxiety, despite my efforts to convey the opposite. For a lot of people, their boss was never going to be a comfortable fit as a friend—no matter how nice a guy he was. The best thing I could do was recognize, accept, and respect that.

  I sunk my hips into the rear wall as the doors slid closed in front of me and shoved my hands into the depths of my pants pockets to keep from scrubbing them repeatedly up and down my face.

  I rarely overindulged, so I wasn’t hungover, but Thatch’s antics, both in person and online, were wearing me out. It wasn’t that I didn’t think the gargoyle dick was funny—because it was—but it was really one of those funnier-when-it’s-not-happening-to-you things.

  In fact, that rang surprisingly true for most of Thatch’s prank-veiled torture.

  The direction of my thoughts and the weight of my phone bumping against my hand had me pulling it out of my pocket against my better judgment.

  I hovered my thumb over the TapNext app icon.

  With one quick click, I had the ability to make a bad situation worse.

  The screen flashed and the app loaded as soon as my thumb made contact.

  BAD_Ruck (7:26AM): Despite what the gargoyle dick conveys, I promise I’m NOT a sexual terrorist.

  Clutching the phone tightly in my fist, I shamefully knocked it against my forehead multiple times.

  “Fucking brilliant.”

  I should have just dropped it. Moved on. I didn’t fucking know this woman, for God’s sake, but I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t stand for even my fake dating profile persona to be remembered like this.

  Here lies this man to rest. He will be remembered: Sexual Terrorist, Social Media Nuisance, Unfortunate Genital Development.

  The elevator settled smoothly to rest on the fifteenth floor, and as the doors opened, I stepped out. My receptionist stood waiting with a stack of messages, having been warned of my arrival by the staff one hundred and fifty-some-odd feet below.

  Neat and conservative clothes encased her sixty-eight-year-old frame, and stark white hair salted its way through her dark mocha bun.

  Her smile was genuine, though, years of age, wisdom, and experience coloring her view of her thirty-four-years-young “boss.” When it came to the infrastructure and real office inner workings, she ran this show.

  The ends of my lips tipped up, forming wrinkles at the corners of my eyes.

  “Good morning, lovely Meryl.”

  She clicked her tongue. “You better find some other roll to butter up, Mr. Brooks. It may be early, but my allowance of saturated fats is all used up for the day.”

  “Geez.” I winced, clutching my chest in imaginary pain. “You wound me.” A grin crept onto one end of my mouth and a wink briefly closed the eye on the same side. “And it’s Kline. Call me Kline, for shit’s sake.”

  “Ten years. Same conversation every day for every single one of them,” she grumbled.

  “There’s a lesson in there somewhere, Meryl, and I think it has to do with bending to my will.” I took the messages gently from her hand and bumped her with just the tip of my elbow.

  “I’m consistently persistent.”

  “So am I,” she retorted.

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “Four urgent messages from new potential investors on top, and multiple urgent IT problems below those,” she called to my back as I walked away.

  I shook my head to myself. Potential investors were always urgent.

  Pausing briefly and turning to look over my shoulder, I asked, “And you’re giving me the messages from IT, why?”

  Things like that normally came from my personal assistant.

  “Because I am,” she called back, not even looking up from her desk. “And because Pam is at home with a sick baby.”

  I leaned my head back in understanding and bit my lip to stop a laugh from escaping.

  “Ah. And we all know the only soft spot in your entire body is reserved for the babies.”

  “Precisely,” she confirmed unapologetically, looking over the frames of her glasses and winking.

  I turned to head for my office again, but she wasn’t done talking.

  “But don’t you worry—”

  Shit. Anything that started with Meryl telling me not to worry meant I should worry. I should really worry.

  “Leslie’s here to pick up her slack.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t know if it was in disbelief or resentment, but whatever it was, I couldn’t stop the motion.

  Meryl’s eyes started to gleam.

  “And since you hired her and all, I figured you wouldn’t mind taking her directly under your knowledgeable wing for the day.”

  Fuck.

  I let my head fall back with a groan briefly before resigning myself to a day from hell and getting back on my way.

  One foot in front of the other, I walked toward my doom, knowing the only people I had to blame, other than myself, were my family. And I couldn’t even really blame them. I was an adult, a business owner, and the leader of my own goddamn life. It had been my choice to hire the airhe—Leslie—whether I had done it out of obligation or not.

  Still. “Fuck.”

  “Good morning, Mr. Brooks,” she greeted as soon as I rounded the corner, the last syllable of my name trailing straight into a giggle.

  God, that’s painful.

  Her eyes were bright, lips pouty, and her forearms squeezed into her breasts. Her black hair teased and sprayed, several curls rolled over her shoulders and hung nearly all the way down to her pointy nails. And she eye fucked me relentlessly, pounding me harder with every step I took.

  I plastered a smile on my face and tried to make it genuine. She was really a nice person—just devoid of each and every quality I looked for in both lovers and friends.

  “Come on, Leslie.” I gestured, turning away from her nearly exposed—completely office inappropriate—breasts and walking straight into my office with efficiency I knew Cynthia, my head of Human Resources, would appreciate.

  The boss in me wanted to tell her to put them away. The man in me knew I wouldn’t be able to do that without opening some sort of door for a sexual harassment suit. Situations like this were ripe for postulation.

  “You’re with me today,” I went on, walking straight to my desk and shucking the suit jacket from my shoulders to hang on the hook to the back and right of me.

  “Here,” I offered when she didn’t move or speak, holding the messages from potential investors Meryl had handed me not five minutes ago out to her. “Take these to Dean and have him make some precursory calls. He can schedule calls for me this afternoon with any of them that show signs of legitimacy.�
�

  A fake-lashed blink followed by a blank stare.

  I even shook them a little, but she didn’t respond.

  Right. Small words.

  “Ask Dean to call these people back. He’ll know if it’s worth my time talking to them, and if it is, I’m free to do so this afternoon.”

  “Got it!” she said with a wink, jumping from one heel to the other, spinning, and sashaying her way out of my office.

  I wasn’t a psychic, but one thing was increasingly clear—I was going to need to stop and buy an extra bottle of scotch tonight.

  Chapter Three

  Georgia

  I dove through the subway doors mere seconds before they crushed me to my death.

  Okay, maybe that seems a tad dramatic, but if you lived in New York, you’d understand the sentiment I’m trying to portray.

  The subway waited for no one. It didn’t care if you were the next big shark on Wall Street. If you didn’t reach those doors in time, fuhgeddaboutit.

  I loved my job. I loved working at my job, once I managed to get my “never on time” ass there. It was that whole getting out of bed thing that caused me the most grief. Morning person, I was not. My body preferred to wake up on its own time. Therefore, my snooze button was ridden hard and put away extremely wet.

  Every day was a race against time, and today was no exception.

  I found a seat across from a thirty-something-year-old guy whose nose stayed buried in a book. He was hot by all accounts—brooding eyes, red flannel shirt, beanie-adorned bedhead, and cheekbones that would make Michelangelo’s David look soft.

  His book: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto by Chuck Klosterman.

  I knew that book well. I’d fiddled around with it during undergrad at NYU. It was a handwritten bomb of pop culture references and reflections on pretty much anything that mattered to young people. The Real World, porn, kittens, Star Wars, you name it and Klosterman discussed it. His witty take on American culture was supposed to be ironic in an existential kind of way. But I wouldn’t say any of the topics were deeply examined, which was probably why the book had left me with a Tumblr-like aftertaste in my mouth.