by Lauren Rowe
I inhale deeply as the cool night air on the veranda hits my face and settle myself into one of the cushioned wicker chairs overlooking the shimmering river in the distance.
I’m just so flabbergasted at today’s turn of events, I can’t process. Jonas is gonna get engaged to a girl he’s basically just met—and Uncle William is thrilled about the idea. Shit, Uncle William just encouraged Jonas to do it. I never would have predicted that in a million-trillion years. And that wasn’t even the first time Uncle William shocked the hell out of me tonight: he absolutely floored me with his reaction when he found out both Jonas and I are leaving Faraday & Sons, too. I thought for sure he’d try to persuade us to stay—maybe talk about honor and obligation and how much it meant to our father to have his sons carry the mantle of Faraday & Sons. But he didn’t say any of it. All he did was look both of us in the eyes and say, “I’m proud of you boys. Always follow your hearts.” I swear to God, wonders never cease.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. I grab it and grin at the text message on my screen.
“Hi, Playboy!” Kat’s message says. “Wanted to give you a little update on what your generous donation to the Kat and Hannah Hedonism Fund has bought you!” She adds a string of emojis: red hearts, clapping hands, a champagne bottle, a donkey and handcuffs. I laugh out loud. “We’re having SO MUCH FUN!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you, my dearest, darlingest Playboy!!!! You are the most generous man in the whole wide world! And the sexiest, too!!!!!!! MEOW!” She adds a dog emoji. I don’t know what the fuck that’s supposed to mean, especially in light of her “meow,” but I laugh anyway.
A second message comes in right on the heels of the first one. “Oops. I meant...” She adds a cat emoji. “The dog and cat were right next to each other on the emoji menu and I pressed the wrong one. The cat is me! MEOW! I’m Kitty Kat and this is you.” She adds a muscled arm emoji. “Because you’re so big and strong and sexy!! And together we’re...” She adds an emoji of a fireworks display.
I can’t wipe the smile off my face. Something tells me Kat is drunk-texting right now. And I love it. I’m about to write a reply when I get another message from her.
“And now—dooh-dooh-dooh!!!” Kat writes, followed by a trumpet emoji. “It’s time for a slideshow created especially for you, my dearest, darlingest Playboy with the Heart of Gold! Here you go!”
A photo of Kat and Hannah by the pool, toasting the camera with fruity-looking drinks, hits my screen. Kat’s holding up a white napkin with the message, “THANK YOU, JOSH!” scrawled across it in black ink.
There’s no time to reply. Another photo lands on my screen: Kat and Hannah in fluffy white bathrobes, sitting on an overstuffed white couch, toasting the camera with what looks like ice water. They look like they’re in a spa waiting room. Again, Kat’s got a napkin with a message written across it: “YOU ROCK, JOSHUA WILLIAM FARADAY!”
Another photo. Kat and Hannah draped around a shirtless, greased-up, tanning-bed-muscle guy, all three of them standing under a neon sign that says “Thunder from Down Under.” I laugh out loud at the expressions on the girls’ faces in this shot. They’re both making “O” faces. The writing on Kat’s napkin this time is too lengthy and small to read, so I touch my screen and zoom in on the napkin ’til it’s legible. “This man just impregnated both of us, Josh!” the napkin says. “Your money hard at work!” I burst out laughing.
If the glistening guy in the photo didn’t look so completely gay, I might blanche at this note. But, what am I thinking? Probably not, actually. Kat’s fucking hysterical, no matter what she does. She just kills me. And I must say, Hannah seems to be quite the sidekick for my adorable little terrorist—a great girl through and through. Henn sure thought so when the four of us had a three-hour dinner and then went dancing last night. Talk about instant chemistry—Henn and Hannah clicked like they’d known each other for years. Same sense of humor; same quirky-hipster-cool dorkiness; and, oh my God, what a comedy duo on the dance floor those two turned out to be.
Yet another photo lands on my screen. This time it’s Kat and Hannah sitting at a table in what appears to be a high-end restaurant, holding up wine goblets and a napkin that says, “To Josh Faraday, our generous benefactor!”
I can’t help smiling. I can’t believe this is the same girl who didn’t chase me even once during my last trip to Manhattan a couple weeks ago. She played it so fucking cool that whole week, didn’t she? Doing nothing but replying to my few, brief douchebag-texts to her, always making sure not to say a damned thing to reveal her interest in me. I knew her game, of course—since it was the same game I was playing with her—but, still, it surprised the hell out of me she could hold out so long without revealing a single crack in her hard-to-get armor.
This time, though, the woman’s got no game whatsoever. And I love it. She’s been peppering my inbox with adorable and affectionate texts almost nonstop since even before I boarded my flight for NYC. And I’ve been doing the same to her, pretty much nonstop. I can’t help myself—I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Kat since I kissed her goodbye early this morning and headed to the airport. Man, that was one bed I was sorry to leave.
Another photo lands on my screen. This time, the photo is Kat all by herself, alone in the same bed I left her in this morning. She’s wearing her barely there white tank top and G-string—the same clothes she was wearing this morning when I kissed her goodbye. Her hair’s tousled. Her eyes are half-mast and full of arousal. Man, that’s the look that makes my cock tingle—the same look she gets right after she comes. I’d bet anything she took this photo right after getting herself off—and, hopefully, thinking of me while she did it.
But that’s not even the best part of the photo. The best part, the thing that’s making my heart pound painfully in my chest, is what Kat’s napkin says this time: “Wish you were here.”
“Me, too,” I say aloud into the darkness of the night. In fact, there’s no place I’d rather be than in bed next to Katherine Ulla Morgan. I take a deep breath, my mind smelling her phantom scent all around me. Damn. I miss her.
I touch the button on my phone to call her, my skin buzzing, my heart panging—but before the call connects, the French door behind me opens and Jonas walks onto the veranda. I quickly disconnect the call.
Fifty-Seven
Josh
“Hey, bro,” I say to Jonas, glancing behind him to see if he’s alone. He is. Good. I’m eager to talk to my brother man-to-man for a bit, just the two of us.
Jonas hands me a bottle of beer and takes the wicker chair next to mine, overlooking the moonlit river. “Uncle William’s moved on to showing Sarah photos of his fly-fishing trips,” Jonas says.
“Aaaah! Run away!” I say.
“As fast as my legs would carry me.”
I take a sip of my beer. “That man sure can talk about fish.”
“He sure can.”
“Even a fish would get sick of Uncle William’s stories about fish,” I say. “They’d be like, ‘Dude. Talk about humans occasionally. Please. You’re hurting my fish-ears.’”
Jonas chuckles. “The man loves his fish.”
“Do fish have ears?” I ask.
“Sort of,” Jonas says. “Fish don’t have traditional ears, but they have ear parts inside their heads that pick up sounds in the water. Functionally, they’re ears, even if not technically so.”
I laugh. “You’re a fount of useless knowledge, Jonas Patrick Faraday.”
He swigs his beer, smiling. “I really am.”
There’s a long beat as we both drink our beers and look out at the spectacular view of the river.
“Uncle William sure handled the news of our double-departure awfully well,” I say. “He shocked the fuck out of me.”
“I know. I thought it’d be like jumping off a cliff to tell him, and it was more like stepping off a curb.”
“It almost seemed like he was expecting it, didn’t it?”
“Totally,” Jonas agrees. �
��I had that exact same thought.”
We gaze out at the lights on the Hudson forty floors below for another long moment, drinking our beers.
“I can’t wait to get started building our baby,” Jonas finally says. “I have so many ideas for Climb & Conquer, my head’s been going a mile a minute.”
“As opposed to when?”
Jonas laughs.
“I’m pumped, too,” I say, laughing. “Telling Uncle William felt like getting freed from a lifelong cage.”
“That’s exactly how I felt,” Jonas says. “I feel like I’m floating.”
“Me, too. Exactly. To Climb & Conquer,” I say, holding up my beer. “And to the Faraday twins—two fucking beasts among men.”
“Hear, hear,” Jonas says, clinking my beer with his. “Fuck yeah.”
“Fuck yeah,” I agree.
“I’ll finalize the press release on my flight home. We can release it on Monday.”
“Awesome,” I say.
“Fuck yeah,” Jonas says.
“Fuck yeah.”
We look out at the river for a moment, drinking our beers, each of us apparently lost in our excited thoughts.
“So Uncle William sure took to Sarah right off the bat,” I say.
“Oh my God. You should have seen him when we first got here last night,” Jonas says. “I kept warning Sarah before we arrived not to take it personally if Uncle William was kinda standoffish or super formal, you know?—but he acted like she was his long-lost daughter the minute he laid eyes on her. Just fell totally and completely in love with her.”
I chuckle. “Just like you,” I say.
Jonas grins. “Just like me.”
“Congrats, by the way,” I say. “She’s perfect for you. I don’t know how you managed to find her. She’s a needle in a haystack.”
Jonas beams a smile at me but doesn’t reply.
“So you told her?”
Jonas looks at me funny, obviously not catching my meaning.
“The three little words?” I clarify.
“Oh.” Jonas’ grin broadens. “Yeah. I told her.” I can tell he’s blushing, even in the moonlight.
“First time ever saying it?”
“Yeah.” His smile broadens yet again.
“Did it freak you out to say it?”
“Not in the slightest. It just felt good—really, really good.”
I ponder that for a minute. “You were never tempted to say it before Sarah?”
Jonas crinkles his nose like I’ve said something distasteful. “No.”
“Not even to Amanda?”
Jonas shrugs. “Well, I knew I was ‘supposed’ to say it to Amanda based on the passage of time—I knew she wanted me to say it to her. But, no, I was never even tempted. Did you ever say it to Emma?”
I nod. “It took me three years, but yeah.”
“Three years? Wow, and here I thought I was the emotionally stunted asshole of the two of us.”
I shrug and sip my beer. “Not something to say lightly.”
Jonas makes a sound that tells me he agrees with my statement. “Emma’s the only girl you’ve ever said it to?” he asks.
I nod.
“Damn. She hung in there for three fucking years, waiting for you to say it?”
I shrug. “Yeah. But we had the whole long-distance thing, you know—three years wasn’t really three years if you add up the time we were actually in the same room.”
“How’d it feel when you said it to her?” Jonas asks. “Did it feel good or did it freak you out?”
“Both.”
“Did she say it back?”
“Yeah, she said it back—and for a brief moment in time, I felt kind of like, ‘Phew. That’s a relief. I’m normal.’” I shake my head. “But in retrospect, exchanging those words just lulled me into a false sense of security. Once I said them, I started thinking it was safe to say some other shit too—and, as I found out pretty damned quick, it wasn’t.”
I can feel Jonas’ eyes on me, but he doesn’t speak.
“As it turns out, saying the words doesn’t make the feelings real.” I pause. “It was like Emma was signing a software licensing agreement—she just scrolled to the bottom and pressed ‘I agree.’”
Jonas makes a sympathetic sound.
“In fact, come to think of it, Emma didn’t actually say the words back to me. She just said, ‘Me, too.’”
“Ooph.”
“Yeah.” I pause. “Ooph.”
There’s a beat.
“I thought I loved her—I really did,” I say. “But now that I’m watching you and Sarah, I realize I probably didn’t. I mean can you really love someone if they don’t love you back?”
My question is rhetorical, but Jonas answers me, anyway. “I like to think I’d love Sarah even if she didn’t love me back. And yet I can’t imagine I would have been able to love her like I do if she didn’t love me. The way Sarah loves me makes me feel like it’s safe to love her all the way.”
There’s another beat during which we both look out at the sprawling view of the river. This has to be the most unexpected conversation of my entire life.
“Emma never looked at me the way Sarah looks at you, bro,” I say softly. “Not once.” My heart squeezes painfully in my chest at the admission. “Seeing you and Sarah together makes me realize Emma never loved me.”
Jonas makes a sympathetic noise. “Then she wasn’t The One.”
I swallow hard, swig my beer, and look out at the Hudson again. A light from some sort of boat is skimming slowly across the black water in the distance.
“Josh, you’re better off,” Jonas says. “If a woman doesn’t look at you the way Sarah looks at me, then she’s not worthy of you.”
I nod, but I don’t say anything. When the fuck did Jonas become the wise and powerful brother in this duo? The guy falls in love with the greatest girl in the world, and suddenly he’s some kind of love guru?
“So, on a related topic,” Jonas says, “how’s it going with Kat?”
A huge smile involuntarily bursts across my face at the mere mention of Kat’s name. “Good.”
“You like her?”
I bite my lip, but I can’t control the goofy grin that’s taken over my face. “Yeah, I like her. She’s a handful, though. Kinda crazy.”
“Oh, well, that’s good, right?—you like crazy.”
“I sure do.”
Jonas chuckles.
“Which is a good thing,” I say, “because she’s batshit crazy. And stubborn as shit. But she’s also super cool and sweet and funny and smoking hot, too. A handful, like I say.”
“Sounds fun.”
“She’s the most fun I’ve ever had, if you know what I mean. Oh my God, the woman’s like a dude in the best possible way.” I snicker despite myself. “She doesn’t... hold back.”
“Excellent.”
“I didn’t even know a woman like Kat existed. She’s like a whole new species of freaky-ass fish that washes to shore after a nuclear disaster.”
Jonas laughs.
“That’s what I told her, actually. I told her she’s a freaky-ass fish.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yeah, I did.”
Jonas bursts out laughing. “Now there’s some Valentine’s Day bullshit if I ever heard it.” Oh, man, he’s laughing his ass off, which, in turn, makes me laugh, too. “You told her that? And here I thought I was the dumb Faraday twin,” Jonas says, still laughing.
We laugh our asses off together for quite some time. Finally, Jonas wipes his eyes and takes a sip of his beer. “That’s hilarious, Josh.”
“I’m a charming son of a bitch, what can I say?”
Jonas shakes his head. “A woman like that, you better make sure you deliver what she expects—don’t fuck it up.”
I shoot him a look that says he’s a moron. “I can’t fuck it up—I just told you, she’s like a dude. She’s a slam-dunk, every time. She’s amazing—a unicorn.”
&nbs
p; “Oh, ho, ho. That’s what you might think with a girl like that. Just be careful—a unicorn will lull you into a false sense of confidence. Don’t start getting lazy.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“If you don’t know then I can’t explain it to you.”
“Try.”
He sighs. “She’s really good at getting herself off, right?”
I don’t reply. I’m a gentleman, after all.
“So that means she doesn’t actually need you,” he continues. “You’re nothing but a luxury item to her—a Lamborghini, if you will. And as you of all people should know, no one buys a Lamborghini for basic transportation. They get the Lamborghini because they want all the stupid bells and whistles (and because they’re an idiot with their money).”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Jonas shrugs. “I’m just sayin’ a girl can get dissatisfied pretty damn quick with her ridiculously expensive Lamborghini if it doesn’t deliver everything that’s been promised in the brochure.”
My heart is racing. I don’t know how it’s possible, but my idiot brother is actually making a shit-ton of sense.
“So as your girl’s designated Lamborghini,” Jonas says, “you need to make it your sacred mission to give her everything she expects from a two-hundred-thousand-dollar car.” He swigs his beer. “You gotta convince that woman she actually needs a goddamned Lamborghini.”
Shit. He’s right. “So what do I need to do?” I ask.
“You gotta be able to do stuff for her she can’t do for herself. Make her come so hard, she’s literally addicted to you.”
“Oh, well, that I can do. Believe me, I know how to make a woman come hard.”