Life’s a gamble…
But Jolie doesn’t want to play games. She has too much going on, taking care of everyone and everything, most especially her three-year-old daughter. What she’s really looking for is something quick and easy peasy, lemon squeezy—in other words, a guy to call for some fun, one who won’t interfere in her life and, above all, need time and attention that she doesn’t have to give.
Enter Luca, who is equally relationship-averse. But he’s a little lonely, and he is looking for a friend. And he’s also charming, and sweet, and Jesus, is he handsome…and if one thing leads to another…
When Lady Luck deals you this hand, you may have to play it!
Double Pop
Jamie Bennett
Copyright © 2019 by Jamie Bennett
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author, except as used in a book review. Please contact the author at [email protected].
This is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental.
Book cover by Angela Haddon Book Cover Design.
What is Gambling?
Gambling consists in risking something one possesses in the hope of obtaining something better. No one can avoid gambling, because life itself forces us to make bets on Dame Fortune.
John Scarne, John Scarne’s Complete Guide to Gambling
Chapter 1
“You ready for sex?”
My friend Lanie slammed the door shut behind herself and eyed me. “If this is you propositioning me, I prefer a little subtlety,” she answered. She shoved her dripping umbrella under the low seat of my old car.
“No offense, Lanie, because you’re really cute and all, but I only want someone with a penis tonight. My standards are low, but that point is non-negotiable.” I pulled out of her driveway and down the narrow, dark little street. “I have one chance because my only normal cousin is in town staying over. I’ll be back at my apartment, showered and ready, by the time Nola wakes up. It’s the perfect set-up so I need to make this happen.” I wouldn’t ever bring random men back to the apartment I shared with my three-year-old daughter, and I couldn’t remember the last time I had an all-night sitter, if ever. So I was going to get laid. Tonight.
“Seriously, you’re just going to go off with anyone?” Lanie asked me skeptically.
“Seriously, I’m just going to go off with anyone,” I answered. “I should say, I’m just going to get off with anyone.”
She still looked like she didn’t believe me, but she was going to see. Lanie was what I called a forever girl, and she already had the perfect guy for her in her sights, in the form of her god-like roommate. There was no way that she would consider bringing home a random guy and using him for just, well, the orgasm.
But I didn’t need forever. In fact, one entire night would be too long. I wanted the wham, bam, thank you, ma’am, the easy peasy, lemon squeezy, and then I wanted to move on. I didn’t need a relationship, I didn’t even want to have to think about wearing nice shoes or straightening my hair for a night out. I didn’t want one more commitment, one more thing to nurture and worry about and spend my time on.
Yup, easy peasy, lemon squeezy, and goodbye. That was what tonight was all about.
There was no time to drive south over the Golden Gate Bridge and into San Francisco—we were getting a late start and I didn’t want all the good ones to get taken by other desperate, horny women. So instead, Lanie and I went to a bar in the ritziest little town close to where we lived, where I figured the guys would probably have their own transportation so I wouldn’t get stuck with driving him around to get the deed done, and I wouldn’t have to worry as much about him mugging me, because guys at this place wouldn’t need the paltry eight dollars and at least another in change that I had in my wallet (along with a credit card that was an inch away from maxing out).
The bar, Pijos Lounge, was already packed, and the men-to-women ratio seemed favorable to me, maybe 3:2? So the odds were good, and the goods looked all right to me, also. I scoped out several possibilities as soon as we walked in, picturing them naked, me naked, both of us in bed, naked. Doing sex stuff.
Oh, fuck. I put my hand over my eyes for a second. No, no, it was ok. I just couldn’t think that far into the actual event. There would be time enough for nakedness, I didn’t have to get ahead of myself and freak out.
“Jolie?” Lanie asked. She looked really uncomfortable, slouching over and eyes darting around. “Should we get a table? Or drinks?”
“Drinks, definitely,” I decided. I was going to need it and I wanted Lanie to relax a little. For most of the way over in the car, she had talked about the guy who was her roommate, and it was obvious that she was even more head over heels for him than ever. I thought about how it would feel to have that, to be starting off with someone and get all the butterflies and thrills and chills. The sighing, day-dreaming, bumping-noses-when-you-kissed stage.
Nope, not for me. That part of my life was over. “Yes, definitely a drink,” I repeated, and elbowed my way up to the bar for cocktails. They were so expensive at this place I almost fainted, but I reminded myself that I could have a night out. I was allowed to have a little fun, and I wasn’t going to consider how I was going to have to cut back on my groceries in order to afford it. I was going to enjoy myself, God damn it.
“Cheers,” I told Lanie, and crashed my glass into hers before I took a long swig. “Let’s find me a man.” And I went to work.
An hour later I was still looking. “I mean, there’s driving and then there’s driving,” the latest option announced. “I like to feel the power of the engine roaring up through my hands.”
“Uh huh,” I responded. All I felt from my steering wheel was a strange vibration that I knew couldn’t be good.
“I like to harness the rush,” he continued. “I think what you drive says a lot about who you are.”
Gag me. I looked over his shoulder, ready to move on from this dud to the next one.
“So, what do you drive, Julie?” he asked.
It’s Jolie, you snobby dickweed. “A car.”
He smiled condescendingly. “That’s cute. Did I tell you that my family owns a vineyard in Napa?”
Moving on. “Wow, you know what’s weird?” I asked. I rubbed my fingers on my scalp. “My head is itching so much! I think I must have lice.” I leaned forward, head in his face. “Do you see anything moving?” Right on cue, he took off like he was shot from a canon. The lice line always worked. Half the crowd at Pijos tonight thought I had a major infestation.
“Not him, either? Jolie, you’re running out of possibilities,” Lanie told me, checking the time on her phone, yet again. She was itching (but not from lice) to get back to the roommate she was pining for. I had originally thought that we could find someone for her tonight also, but clearly her heart was back at home with her behemoth would-be boyfriend. I looked around the crowded bar, where the odds had seemed so good, but were now not in my favor.
“Give me five more minutes,” I said. “I’m going to find someone.”
Lanie still looked doubtful. “Do you really want to do this? You’ve already nixed a ton of possibilities.”
I stood up straight, so that I was only about a million feet shorter in my heels than she was in her flats. “I’m totally sure! Lemon squeezy is happening tonight!” I looked around, determined. Ok, there was one, sitting by himself at the bar in a Hawaiian-esque shirt. This would be easier because he wasn’
t encumbered by a bunch of stupid friends. I walked resolutely over to the stool where he was drinking something clear without ice, the tall glass nearly full.
“Hi, I’m Jolie,” I announced. “Not Julie, Jolie.”
The guy squinted at me. Close up, he wasn’t as cute as I had thought him to be from across the room. Sort of like a blurry, bad copy of Kirk Douglas but with a much weaker chin. Yeah, not much like Kirk Douglas after all, but I could pretend. I checked his hands, and there was no wedding ring and no tan line from its removal, either. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Stoney.”
“Stoney?” I repeated, then shrugged. The time to dilly-dally was long gone. “Ok, sure. Want to go to your place and have sex with me?”
“Uh…” He looked shocked. “Sex?”
“That’s what I said.” He just stared, and I peeped back at Lanie while I waited for his response. She was checking her phone and looking ready to hit the exit. “Last chance, Stoney,” I told him, and as I did, my eyes swept the room for other potential candidates. But the crowd had thinned considerably and I had already crossed off quite a few of the guys who were left. I frowned and turned back to Stoney, who was probably my last chance. “Is it going to be a yes or a no?”
“Yes. Sure, I’ll be happy to put it to you.” He smiled at me, revealing a lot of brownish teeth. Ok, that’s ok, I told myself. Just no kissing.
“Pay up your bar tab and meet me at the door,” I told him.
“Wait, are you serious?”
“I don’t have time to play, man,” I sighed. “Are you up for it or not?”
He patted his crotch. “I’ll get there.”
I walked quickly to go get Lanie and send her on her way home. “All right, I have one,” I announced. “Order a car now if you don’t want to stay here and keep looking for someone for yourself. I’m hitting the road with that guy.” I pointed over at Stoney, who waved back and nodded enthusiastically. He gulped the entire rest of his drink in one gigantic swallow, his throat moving as he chugged it down like a big glass of water, and threw some money on the bar top.
Lanie made a face like she wasn’t overly impressed by my choice, but she shrugged and typed into her phone for a minute to get her ride. She looked up from the screen and studied me, then bent to get close to my face, trying to look into my eyes. “Are you sure about this?” she demanded.
“No. But I may as well try it, right? What have I got to lose, except my self-respect?” I laughed, but this didn’t feel fun and exciting anymore. It felt more like a pit in my stomach.
“Jolie…” she started, and I knew she was going to talk me out of it and I’d end up right where I always did, back at my apartment, thinking about the dishes I had to wash, the bills I had to pay, the guy in the apartment above us who played the fucking bongo drums at all hours.
“No, this is good.” I patted Lanie’s arm. “I need it. How long until your car comes?”
“A few minutes. I’ll walk out with you.”
I raised my hand and gestured at Stoney to hurry up. He was wobbling as he walked toward us, and when he put his arm around my shoulders, he leaned a lot of his weight onto me. Holy fuck. If he was too drunk to get it on, I was going to be so…hold up. Stoney’s hand had drifted south until it rested on my breast, and when I looked up at him, he winked at me. I didn’t follow my first instinct and push his paw off, even when he squeezed like he was testing an avocado for ripeness.
He leaned down and whispered in my ear, “I’m getting the juices flowing. Getting you ready for me, Julie. I’m going to rock your world.”
I didn’t need my world to be rocked. Just one orgasm not by my own hand, that was all I wanted. I held in the sigh as he squeezed again. “My name is Jolie.”
“Sure thing, hot stuff.”
Hot stuff? “Where are you parked?” I asked Stoney when we got to the sidewalk outside. I ducked my head and escaped his heavy arm. He indicated down the block, near where I had left my tiny clunker. “Ok, lead the way. I’ll follow you, stud.” If I was hot stuff, then I could definitely call him that.
“Yes, you will. If you get my meaning.” He winked suggestively again, but I didn’t get any meaning from that at all, and his winking was just way wrong. I shook my head and turned to Lanie.
“You ok waiting here?” I asked her. I reached out and took her hand, needing a little moral support.
She leaned down again. “Hey, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”
“Yes, I do. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.” I glanced over at Stoney, who was wobbling a little as he stood. “I’ll text you later,” I told Lanie. “After.”
She nodded at me, looking worried and still very doubtful about my choice. And as Stoney stumbled down the street ahead of me, I felt increasingly doubtful myself. I saw the white hibiscus on his shirt turn the corner, so I waved once again at Lanie and hurried to catch up—he was moving fast for someone so off-kilter. I started to run as the sky opened up and rain that had been holding off for a while came down again. “Hey. Hey! Stoney!”
He stopped mid-block next to a park. I sometimes brought my daughter there to ride on her little balance bike because it was always safe and clean. Stoney spun around to face me so fast that he almost went down. “What’s up, Julie?” he yelled back to me, hands out to steady himself. Obviously, that last, large drink he had tossed down was having its effects.
“It’s Jolie. With an O.” I stopped too, not wanting to get any nearer to him on the sidewalk. So how was I going to have sex with him, if half a block was too close for me? I pressed my hand to my forehead. “Wait, you can’t drive,” I called. “How much did you drink?”
A man walked by him on the far side of the park, a big guy, and Stoney wavered into his path. They bumped shoulders and Stoney almost went down again. The other guy put up his hand like he was sorry, but it hadn’t been his fault.
“Fuck you,” Stoney told him, the clearest words he had spoken since we had left the bar.
The other guy didn’t slow down. “Sleep it off, idiot,” he called back.
“Fuck you!” Stoney yelled, and I put my hand on my forehead again. What was I doing with this drunk, belligerent asswipe?
The big guy stopped this time and looked back at Stoney, who was wobbling around as he stood there. Then the stranger shook his head and kept going, passing under the bright streetlight that was illuminating the falling rain. It lit up his blonde hair, too.
“Let’s go, Julie!” Stoney spun around again, took two steps, and fell to the side. He flipped head over heels over the little gate at the entrance to the park, and crashed into a bush.
“Oh, fuck!” I took off running toward him, and to my utter shock, the big blonde guy ran over too, and beat me there.
Stoney was moaning in the shrubbery. I had the terrible urge to run away and leave him, thrashing around in the manicured boxwood hedge in the rain. “Are you ok?” I asked instead.
He kicked his feet wildly. “I hit my head. My shirt is all wet. I must be pouring out blood!”
“Your shirt is wet with water. It’s been raining all day,” the stranger said. He took Stoney’s feet and yanked him free of the branches. I squatted next to where he had landed on the ground and shone the flashlight of my phone into his face. It wasn’t bleeding much, but he was definitely scratched up, and he had hit his head for real. A big goose egg was already rising up on his forehead.
“What do you want to do with him?” the other man asked me. Because, despite my best intentions, the guy who was supposed to be a string-free fling had now turned into my responsibility.
I sighed. The rain came down harder and I pushed wet waves of hair back from my face. “I guess I’ll take him to the hospital,” I answered. “Get up, Stoney.” I reached my hands out to him and tried to tug him up, but it was like moving real stones. I got nowhere.
“Let me,” the big guy said. He lifted Stoney to his feet and Stoney made the unmistakable sounds of impeding spew. “Oh, shit.” The blonde guy
flipped him around to face away, but not fast enough: both the guy and I were treated to a small shower of vomit, him on his pants and shoes, but lucky me—it went right onto my bare legs.
I closed my eyes for a moment. I was a mom and I taught second grade, so I was no stranger to disgusting fluids being randomly placed on my person. I just hadn’t expected it on my only date-night shoes. I opened my eyes and breathed through my mouth so at least I wouldn’t smell it. “Sorry about the puke,” I told the stranger stiffly. “I’ll take him from here.”
He was looking at his own shoes, and the vomit on them. “Where’s your car?” he asked me, just as stiffly. “I’ll get him into it.”
I pointed about half a block down the street and tried to assist him in walking Stoney over. Stoney seemed to have perked up after the upchuck, but I knew that it was a bad sign, given the expanding lump on his head. Throwing up might have indicated a concussion and not just too much of whatever he had knocked back at the bar the moment before we left.
Fuck! This was not, in any way, shape, or form, how this night was supposed to go, for anyone involved in the situation. I snuck a peek at the other guy, because after getting a closer look at him in the park, I felt sure that I knew him. We had met…I tried to think. I didn’t get around too much so there weren’t that many occasions that I could have—oh, shit! Was he the dad of one of my students? He looked a little young for that, but just in case, I turned my face away from the streetlights. I did not need a description of this fun evening batted around the parent community at my school, and I certainly didn’t need my boss finding out about it.
Stoney started singing to himself in time with his shuffling footsteps. His voice was actually pretty good, I considered. His hand came to rest on my boob again and I pinched it, hard. He wasn’t drunk or injured enough for me to ignore that, and his hand went away.
Double Pop Page 1
