Hot Boss

by Anne Marsh

  I grab my phone and text Molly. Home soon.

  Soon is a relative term, of course—traffic sucks between Menlo Park and Santa Cruz. But I don’t want to wait to share our good news. Plus, I have big, celebratory plans.

  Just in case Mrs. Jack is otherwise occupied, I fire off another text:

  Santa Jack has the following goodies in his bag of presents if you promise to be very, very bad:

  A: Vacation home in Bora Bora.

  B: Yacht.

  C: Donate a building to your fave Ivy League school and then our kids are a shoo-in.

  D: All of the above.

  Hazel plants her butt on my desk and steals a glance at my phone. I’d like to tell you that we’re working on her sense of boundaries, but she’s a hopeless case. I’ve learned not to sext at the office, and she’s learned not to read my texts out loud. Compromise is important.

  She smacks my shoulder playfully. “You don’t have kids.”

  “Not yet, but we’re planning to get to work on that.”

  In fact, tonight seems like the perfect time to get started. Molly and I have discussed starting a family, and our plan calls for baby-making this year, with a pregnancy by next year if Mother Nature is on board.

  “A plan.” Hazel sounds dubious, although she should know just how well my plans work out. It’s no accident that she and I are billionaires.

  “Babies don’t just happen.” I mean, they obviously do, but Molly and I are going to have a planned pregnancy so that Mom and her Mini-Me are as happy and healthy as possible.

  Hazel shakes her head. “Even ignoring the obvious issue with your logic, I feel the need to point out there are numerous ways your plan can derail. Male fertility decreases with age. As does semen volume. I can get you percentages on that—or book a honeymoon suite.”

  I gently lay a hand over her mouth. “Cease. Desist.”

  Hazel’s response is to lick my palm.

  I retract my hand because...gross. “Are you five?”

  “Too much?” Hazel rolls her eyes. “You’re such a baby.”

  “I feel the need to point out that my way’s more fun, especially when it comes to babies.”

  “You need to plan less,” she counters.

  The only thing better than planning is winning, both of which I do very, very well.

  “Do you have plans?”

  “Big, celebratory, getting-naked plans?” Apparently, clarification is needed in the Hazel-verse, because she waits for my affirmatory grunt before shaking her head. “Don’t tell my mom. She wants grandbabies and she wants them the ‘natural’ way.”

  “No turkey baster?”

  Hazel shakes her head dramatically. “It’s penis in the vagina or nada as far as she’s concerned.”

  We both watch my phone. Is that weird? But Hazel’s like an extension of me. Molly’s read my text, and typing bubbles dance across the screen.

  E.

  Hazel frowns as she reads Molly’s answer. “That wasn’t one of the choices.”

  Hazel is often overly literal, but she’s right. It wasn’t. I text back: A mystery option? Awesome. I’ll be home in an hour. You can pitch me then.

  I can’t help but notice that Molly’s next text comes much faster. Much, much faster.

  I won’t be here.

  Hazel groans. “So much for celebration sex.”

  Sometimes, it’s as if Hazel can read my mind. I’m excellent with schedules, but... I look at Hazel. “What’s the over-under on me having forgotten Molly has a work trip?”

  I’m texting before Hazel can respond. What’s up?

  Molly’s response is a picture. It might be a moving van. It’s like one of those impossible-to-make-sense-of security pictures where Yahoo invites you to pick out all the streetlights and you get the easy ones, but then you’re squinting trying to figure out if poles count or wires or WTF because all you want to do is send an email, not play Pictionary.

  “Words,” Hazel mutters beside me. “Words are better.”

  Now there’s a pounding in the office.

  Stupid jackhammer construction. Who scheduled that for today? I should tell them to knock it off, to—

  The pounding’s almost drowned out by this strange whistling roar in my ears. Okay. That’s my body making those sounds. Maybe I’m having a heart attack?

  At thirty-two.

  Sitting on my ass.

  Hazel’s right, although I’d never admit it to her. I work too much. I should have had more fun.

  Hazel starts rubbing circles on my back. Oh, no. She’s doing the sympathy gesture.

  I’m moving out, Molly texts. I want a divorce.

  Hazel’s hand freezes. “Shit-fuck-damn.”

  Yes, all of those describe my situation quite nicely.

  “I need to go home,” I say. Or maybe I don’t say anything and Hazel reads my mind, but somehow she gets me past the crowd of partying teammates and down the stairs to the parking lot. She bypasses my BMW and pops open the door to her Volvo. I bought Molly a Volvo. They have excellent safety features.

  Normally, I avoid riding shotgun with Hazel because she’s an interesting driver, but there’s nothing normal about today. There’s nothing normal about earning millions of dollars in one afternoon. Or arriving home to find your house meticulously half-empty. Or meeting the very nice process server in your driveway who hands over the stack of papers that signals the end.

  Molly and I got married straight out of college. Graduation one week, big church date the next. We have a good marriage. We love each other, we have amazing sex on a regular basis, we laugh plenty and we routinely talk about both our future and our days. Sure, we also have rough patches and bad days and the odd fight, but those are balanced out by the memories, makeup sex and inside jokes. I know Molly. Her guilty pleasures are house-hunter shows, red dahlias and kitten memes. She’s cried in my arms about shit that’s gone wrong and we’ve killed more than one bottle of tequila celebrating her happy endings. We’ve been sick together, and lonely together, and I’ve shared the best and worst of me with her.

  Except maybe I don’t know her.

  Maybe she’s been pretending.

  Or faking it.

  Or—

  “Jack?” That’s Hazel’s voice coming from far, far away. I always have a plan, but I seem to be running on empty.

  She pushes me back into her car, gets in on the other side and drives. She may talk. I don’t know. I don’t care. I just sit there and stare out the window at nothing. The sun’s going down when we start the long, steep climb to her house. My place is on the beach, but as Hazel can’t swim and prefers trees, she lives in a forest halfway up a mountain.

  After Hazel marches into her house and I follow because she has the car keys and I have nowhere else to be, I discover that she has an enormous bottle of tequila from Mexican duty-free. Drinking it seems like an excellent plan. Although I haven’t gotten drunk since college, I haven’t forgotten how, which explains why at midnight I’m lying on Hazel’s bed. It’s sort of like sinking into an enormous cloud—if clouds were made from gray and purple fur. Or maybe that’s the tequila. I squint, trying to make out one pillow from the next, but give up.

  “Here.” A bottle of water materializes in front of my face. Hazel’s bed obviously has superpowers. “Take these.”

  Hazel unfolds a hand in front of my face, revealing two aspirin. As her one hand blurs into two, the room swims, but I manage to snag her offering. I swallow obediently and then take the trash can she holds out to me.

  “Puke here,” she says.

  Hazel’s always practical.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Hazel’s not much of a talker, not when it comes to feelings, so I appreciate the effort.

  “I need to know why it happened,” I mumble into the pillow. “What I did
wrong. Why I wasn’t enough.”

  “Failure analysis.” I feel Hazel relax beside me. I’m asking for logic, not feelings. She’s back on solid ground. “Something to think about—maybe this isn’t about whether or not your marriage was good enough for Molly. Maybe this needs to be about whether or not your marriage was good enough for you.”

  “We were supposed to love each other,” I whisper. “I was supposed to make her happy and keep her safe.”

  I turn my head so I can see Hazel’s face. A little frown puckers her forehead as she thinks about what I’ve just said. She’s not the best talker, or so she argues. She looks for connections, finds patterns, breaks things down until they make sense. So I need to hear what she has to say about my marriage. If she thinks it’s over.

  “Wrong,” she says. “You have to ask, was the marriage good enough for you? Where are you going to set the bar on your happiness? What works for you? Were you happy?”

  And that’s the thing, isn’t it? I’ve had a plan my whole life. I’ve hustled, I’ve executed, I’ve proven every single day that not only am I hungry, but I’m also willing to work.

  And yet it wasn’t enough.

  Somehow my hand is tangled up in Hazel’s and it feels perfectly normal to tug her down onto the bed beside me. “You’re the best.”

  Right. We’re almost-not-quite holding hands. I let go and try to pretend that didn’t happen. Whatever it was. Instead, I reach around and attempt a friendly slap on the back, but I’m a drunken elephant and she’s mouse-sized, so instead I face-plant her into the pillows.

  Christ. Shoot me now.

  “Fuck. Did I kill you?” I palm the back of her neck and tug her up. Brown eyes stare at me. Hazel has pretty eyes. Perhaps my new best friend, Tequila, has unearthed my inner poet?

  Yeah. Unlikely.

  Hazel’s hand curls around the back of my neck. Her fingers squeeze gently and then she shoves me ruthlessly down. “Pass out, you nut. Wake up tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Present day

  MY NEIGHBOR IS hosting one hell of a party. The bass beat sets my bed to vibrating harder than the time I took a girlfriend to a Motel 6 and we tried out the Magic Fingers Vibrating Bed. Sadly, those beds don’t seem to be standard hotel-room issue anymore. I open my to-do app and make a quick note to track one down—that would make an awesome wedding gift for Dev and Lola.

  That party next door is their engagement party, although they’re not actually hosting it at Dev’s house. Dev, Max and I bought houses in a row on the same beach in Santa Cruz. It sounds weirder than it is. We’ve known each other since freshman year at UC Santa Cruz. As the first to move into our dorm, Devlin King and I had been standing in the three-bedroom oceanfront suite wondering how a bunch of broke freshmen guys had scored the best digs in a dorm full of seniors when Max blazed in and explained the secret. He’d hacked into the campus housing software, rigged the lottery in our favor and then picked out this place. High-handed? Sure. Borderline felonious? Maybe. But Max had good intentions and I’d decided we could housebreak him and teach him a few moral values along the way. Win-win. The three of us had become best friends, then billionaires. We’re the kings of Silicon Valley, California. There’s nothing we can’t buy or hack.

  Still.

  Who would have thought Max, the king of kink, would be hosting a celebration of true love and happily-ever-after? Let’s get real—he earned a fortune coding an app that hooks up horny people for hot, meaningless, no-strings sex. Quite frankly, milestone celebration planning is usually my bailiwick, but the fact that I’m still reorganizing my life after my divorce means I’m not in the fiesta mood. Ergo, Max stepped in when Dev proposed a personal kind of merger to his CEO girlfriend, the kind that comes with a diamond ring and a church date.

  When the noise next door swells to deafening proportions, I plug in my headset and turn up the volume on my playlist. Coleman and Reed is scheduled to close an important round of funding for Silicon Valley’s newest and hottest start-up later this week, making it all-hands-on-deck at the office. And even if things were slow at work or if I’d decided to do the FIRE thing, achieving financial independence and retiring early at thirty-two, I still wouldn’t go over to the party next door. I’d rather have a root canal with no drugs. Hunt angry lions with my bare hands in Africa. Fight for a cheap TV at the Black Friday sales.

  Why would I make those choices? For starters, going to the party means finding a clean shirt. It’s currently me, my blue jeans and a bare chest, because why bother getting dressed? Plus, there are people at Max’s. Happy, cheerful, celebrating people who will wonder—and then outright ask—how Molly is or if I’m dating. Everyone has a cousin Jo or Sue or Amy Beth that I should meet. But I’m okay by myself. Hopping back on the dating merry-go-round isn’t part of my life plan...

  Yeah. I need help.

  My phone buzzes once, twice, and I eventually locate it underneath my pillow. I’ve missed a text from Hazel:

  I’m stopping by. Scream now if you’re naked or on the throne.

  Should I respond?

  Nope.

  Sure enough, there’s a brisk but brief application of knuckles to my bedroom door and the door flies open. Hazel marches in, one hand shielding her eyes, the other clutching two bottles of champagne to her chest. Brown hair, cut bluntly to stop in a perfect line between her jaw and her shoulder, swings about her face in a sleek, smooth curtain.

  “Are you decent?”

  She’s practically hopping up and down. I watched a video this morning of a labradoodle bouncing in place, wiggling its butt with canine glee as its owner arrived to collect it from doggy day care. That happy pooch has nothing on Hazel.

  “I’m wearing pants,” I say gravely. “But you should add counting to ten to your door-knocking routine. What if I were shy?”

  “You’re not shy. You surf half-naked all the time. I watch you from the beach.” Hazel drops her hand, sets the champagne on the floor and takes me in. Brown eyes meet mine and then dip quickly to my bare chest. A mischievous grin tugs at the corners of her mouth as she crash-lands on the corner of the bed nearest the door and looks at me upside down.

  She’s a constant in my life, familiar and welcome. She has a strong face and bold eyebrows. Brown eyes. High cheekbones with three freckles she claims look just like Orion’s Belt. There’s another freckle in her ear, although she disavows all knowledge of it. She’s of average height and curvy. She likes long walks on the beach—not because they’re romantic, but to stay in shape. Hazel only needs people in small doses, so the running part happens when she spots a fellow walker (she claims it’s a HIIT workout, but I know the truth).

  Her gaze returns to my chest. I should probably figure out why. Whatever. It’s a little weird, but it’s also not as if I’m a virgin princess in a tower. My naked chest has been previously ogled. Still, I shove to my feet, pad into my walk-in closet and retrieve a T-shirt from a hanger. The laundry service delivers them washed and pressed once a week.

  “Why are you here, Hazel?”

  The bed rustles and creaks, which is the most action it’s seen in ages. Footsteps pad across the floor and stop in the doorway. When I finish pulling the shirt over my head and can see again, Hazel’s standing in the doorway, watching me. We need to have another conversation about boundaries.

  She’s wearing her usual Saturday uniform of leggings and a tank top. A gold chain with an infinity loop nestles in the hollow of her throat and she’s tied an oversize men’s flannel shirt around her waist because she worries constantly that she’ll be cold. It doesn’t matter that we live in California or that the temperature will hit ninety this afternoon—she’s prepared for arctic temperatures and the ice-cream aisle at the grocery store. Hazel herself isn’t pretty or gorgeous. She’s none of those adjectives you come up with when asked what your date looks like, but something about her makes you look
at her and smile, even when she’s driving you completely nuts. She’s just so alive and full of energy that it lights up her eyes and the room. She’s not particularly easy to be around, but she’s never boring. In a world full of taupe and beige, Hazel’s carmine and verdigris, framboise and vermilion. It’s certainly made for an interesting business partnership.

  “I’m here to stage an intervention.” Hazel waves a hand at me just in case there’s any doubt about who the intended recipient is. “You need to get back out there.”

  “To Max’s party?”

  I wander out of my closet and lean against the wall. I can’t wait to hear this plan.

  Hazel hands me one of the champagne bottles and plops down onto the bed. “Open sesame.”

  “I need the magic word.”

  “Please buy me a drink, Mr. Reed.” She makes a hurry-up gesture. “I stole high-end champagne for you, so you should be thanking me.”

  I peel back the foil carefully. Given Hazel’s vigorous delivery, odds are high I end up wearing champagne. I retrieve a towel from the bathroom and then grab my water glass. Hazel will have to share because I haven’t gotten around to replacing the glasses Molly took with her. Hazel watches as I cover the cork and the cage with the towel.

  “Why are you here?” I untwist the cage and then work the bottle clockwise until the cork pops free.

  She throws her arms wide. “I’m hiding from the party. The big question is why you’re here.”

  “It’s my house.” I pour a glass of champagne and hold it out to Hazel.

  She swipes the bottle from me instead and takes a swig. “I call bullshit, Mr. Reed. You’re hiding from life.”

  I take a sip from the glass. She’s right about one thing. Max bought the good stuff for this party. “You don’t want to celebrate Dev’s engagement?”

  Brown eyes widen dramatically. “Usually Max has pool parties. Everyone over there today is wearing fancy clothes and there are no naked bodies in the pool.”

  “You don’t even like swimming, so why do you care?”

  Hazel can’t swim. Her reasons include allergies to swimwear, bikini-line maintenance and chlorine. It’s her loss. Pretty much all my nonwork time now is spent in the ocean.