The Billionaire Book Club

by Monroe, Max

  “Hey, why don’t you put your dick in my mouth?” Thatch supplies helpfully, and Kline groans.

  “I know there’s context involved, but please don’t ever say that to me again, T.”

  “Well,” I say, more curious now than ever. “Someone is going to have to Google it.”

  “Not it,” Trent yells, followed by a resounding chorus of the same. Thatch and I are the only ones not to say it, both rolling our eyes and taking out our phones.

  I type into the search engine and scroll through the results as they pop up. I click on one of the ones near the top and start reading. “The first documented blow job was evidently good enough to resurrect an Egyptian god. The first blow job was between god-king Osiris and his—oh God, no.”

  “What?” Thatch shouts.

  “His sister-turned-wife, Isis.”

  A resounding chorus of groans rumbles around the room.

  “I’m just the messenger,” I say. “Not the creator of the information.”

  “And I can’t even blame you for starting it,” Wes says before turning to Kline. “I’m completely surprised you’ve brought this upon us.”

  Kline just laughs. He’s easily the most demurely self-assured person I’ve ever met. His confidence is quiet. Complimentary. But I have no doubt it’s every bit as expansive as my own.

  “That’s simply the way it was back then,” he reasons. “You guys are just being real pussies about it.”

  Thatch’s eyes get wide. “Oh my God, Klinehole. Did you just call us pussies?”

  Kline rolls his eyes.

  “I feel like my little boy is growing up right before my eyes. What’s next? Finding your come-filled socks all over your room?”

  “Jesus, man,” Harrison chortles.

  “You guys don’t even know. I’ve got little shits all over my house. I could start a money system with the come socks I’ll have to deal with in the future.”

  “Oh Goddd,” Wes groans. “Remind me to keep your boys away from my daughter.”

  “Ditto,” Kline adds, and the rest of us laugh again.

  Still, mine isn’t as boisterous as usual, and Theo is the one to notice. “What’s going on with you, Cap? Something seems off.”

  Thatch nods. “You’re right. You haven’t even argued with me today.”

  “There’s still time,” I remark dryly, and Trent’s eyebrows pull together.

  “Okay, there really is something going on. What’s up, Cap?” he asks.

  I sigh, drop my phone and my book on the table, and shake my head. “I overheard her. Saying that she’ll never sleep with me. ‘Not now, not ever,’ she said.”

  Quince and Trent look at each other, and I scoff as I add an important detail. “She said it several times, in fact.”

  Thatch whips a notebook off a shelf behind him and grabs a pen. I blink at the quick motion, but he doesn’t give me any time to question it.

  “How many times? Precisely.”

  “How many times what?” I ask, confusion setting in.

  “How many times did she say it?”

  “I don’t know,” I mumble, and Thatch scowls. Wes bites his lip, but the rest of the fuckers are remarkably quiet. I can’t fucking believe none of them are saying anything.

  “How many?”

  “I don’t know!” I yell. “Three or four, I guess. Maybe five.”

  “Good, good,” Thatch remarks, scribbling in his notebook. “And who did she say it to?”

  “I don’t know.” When he starts to scowl again, I throw my book at him. He deflects it easily. “She was talking to herself, but it looked like she was texting someone, maybe. Possibly.”

  “And what did she say before that? Anything?”

  I search my memory for her exact words, and though I’m not sure I hit the mark entirely, I think I’m pretty close. “I think she said something about even though she’d enjoy it, she shouldn’t. And she won’t. Not now, not ever.”

  Kline and Milo high-five, and I come close to losing my shit. “What in the ever-loving hell are you high-fiving about?”

  Thatch cuts in before they can get anything out. “All right, Cap. I’ve finished my detailed analysis, and you’re in luck. I’d say you’re right on the cusp of landing your woman.”

  “What? Are you drunk?”

  “Fortifying her resistance as opposed to her desires is often the last step before giving in, Cap,” Kline explains. “Just look at Heart of a Highlander,” he says, shaking his copy of the book. “The tension is at its highest point right before she blows him, is it not?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “But nothing,” Trent interjects. “It’s just part of the process. Keep doing what you’re doing. Hey, come up with an excuse to take her away for the weekend. To your lake cabin. It’ll be like the highlander and Lady Viola.”

  Thatch nods. “Hell yes! A weekend away! It’s just the ticket.”

  Kline’s eyes are kind as he translates everyone else’s gibberish into something I can understand. Something that catches me off guard. “You’re getting through. Pretty soon, Ruby is going to be in love with you.”

  Everyone around the table nods, and a knot forms in my stomach.

  Love?

  I highly doubt that’s the case, but I can’t really blame them for going the l-o-v-e route. I mean, that’s essentially how I roped these sappy bastards into this whole book club shindig in the first place.

  Ruby getting naked and falling in lust with me? Hell yes.

  But…falling in love? With me?

  I shake my head a little to clear my thoughts and rub a hand against my tightening chest. It feels foreign and warm and a little like I can’t breathe.

  I’m not sure what Thatch put in the appetizers tonight, but it must cause indigestion.

  Surely, though, I’ll be over that soon, and if these fuckers are right, I know what to do.

  Weekend getaway, party of two, please.

  Ruby

  My parents arrived last night in a flourish of glory and fanfare. I was sleeping, as most humans are at three thirty in the morning, when a banging started on the door worthy of a SWAT team with a ramrod.

  Knowing my mother, I couldn’t completely eliminate that option, so I rushed out of bed, threw a robe over my shoulders, and ran the fifteen short feet to the door in an attempt to spare its life. My apartment isn’t even close to the Taj Mahal, but littering all three hundred square feet with the shards of my former door didn’t exactly seem like it would do anything to improve the place.

  Seeing my mom’s excited face when I opened the door was almost as bad as seeing the actual SWAT team would have been.

  Cut to a few hours later, and the three of us are sitting around my coffee table on pillows, eating bagels from the shop below my apartment.

  “I just don’t understand,” I say for the twentieth time since they arrived. “Why on earth would you show up unannounced?”

  “Unannounced?” my mom shrieks in challenge. “I told you we were coming a month ago.”

  “You never got back to me with the actual dates,” I argue back. “I figured you’d tell me the dates before you arrived on my doorstep in the middle of the night.”

  “You know what I don’t understand?” my dad interjects. “How I’m supposed to have any privacy for my morning constitutional behind a goddamn shower curtain? What the hell?” he grumbles. “New York City’s never heard of bathroom doors?”

  “The landlord is working on it,” I mutter on a lie. My landlord is a skeevy guy named Randy, and he’s way more likely to take doors off than put them on.

  Plus, I’m not going to tell my dear old dad this, but that shower curtain serving as the bathroom door has been here since before I moved in.

  “I thought you were paying $2,500 a month for a place, for shit’s sake,” my dad grumbles some more as my mom worries her lip before asking, “How strong are the locks?”

  Instead of explaining to my dad that I am paying that much in rent for this
glorified shithole or getting into an hour-long discussion with my mom about hardware, I sigh heavily and shove a bite of bagel into my mouth.

  It tastes like a last meal before my execution.

  A horn blares below my window for the fourth time in a row, and I roll my eyes at New York’s display of hospitality.

  As if my parents weren’t already disillusioned enough with my life choices, some cabbie on a power trip really wants to drive the point home.

  When it honks a sixth time, I get annoyed enough to get up off my pillow, and my mom follows. It’s six o’clock in the morning, for God’s sake, and I got next to no sleep last night because I had to entertain the nosy, paranoid, and very opinionated Rockfords. This isn’t the time to mess with me. I’m liable to lose my shit like Daenerys and burn everything to the ground.

  I shove open the window and peek my head out over the fire escape, prepared to give some asshole stranger hell, but when I look down, all I find is an asshole I know.

  Cap, dressed in jeans and a blue-and-white flannel shirt, stands in the door of his Range Rover, looking up at me.

  His smile is a mile wide, and to be honest, my heart feels like it skips an actual beat.

  Freaking traitor heart.

  “Come on,” he yells up at me obnoxiously. “Pack a bag, doll. We’re going to the lake.”

  “Who’s that?” my mom asks from a startlingly close proximity. I jump as she leans out beside me to take a look. “Is he a sex trafficker?”

  My eyebrows rise with the possibilities of several inappropriate jokes, but thankfully, I’m smart enough to think better of it.

  Instead, I go for the most direct answer I can think of. “He’s my boss.”

  “Ruby!” Cap yells loudly again. “Who’s with you? You have some sort of girl-on-girl thing going?”

  My cheeks bloom into a cloud of rosiness, and I clench my fists beside me.

  I shake my head and then butt my mom out of the way so I can rush back inside. There’s no way I’m going to stand at my window and yell back and forth with him, especially if he’s going to be so….so…him.

  I grab my phone off the coffee table, and my dad startles inside the bathroom like I’ve just knocked on his stall door in a public restroom. “Someone’s in here!” he shouts.

  “I know, Dad. I’m not even near the bathroom.”

  I scroll through my recent calls quickly to Cap’s contact info and put the phone to my ear while it rings.

  “Why the hell are you calling me?” he answers.

  “So you don’t wake up my whole freaking neighborhood with comments about me having sex with a woman! Who is my mother, by the way.”

  He groans a little, and the sound is highly erotic. “Ah, man. You ruined it. And my imagination was doing such a good job, too.”

  “Why are you here?” I ask, cutting to the chase. “I know I may give the impression of a sweet girl, but it’s freaking six a.m. on a Saturday, and I haven’t had time to put makeup over the dragon yet.”

  “I told you at the window. Pack a bag, we’re going to the lake.”

  “Um, no. My parents are here. Surprise drop-in last night. So, you can go to the lake and have fun, but I have to pass. I’m a little busy enjoying my last meal and entertaining the parental units in a way-too-confined space.”

  “Well…that does change things a little…but why don’t you bring them?”

  “What?” I almost shriek. “No. No. I am not bringing my parents on some random trip to the lake with you.”

  The pipes in my bathroom shriek as the bathroom toilet flushes, and when the sink is turned on, those fucking pipes groan, add more shrieks, and make a fucking remix.

  “Jesus,” my dad mutters from behind the shower curtain.

  Holy Stephen King novels and horror flicks. They’ve been here not even three hours, and my nerves are already shot to shit.

  Hand to my face, I turn into a real-life version of the facepalm emoji.

  “Come on, Ruby,” Cap says into my ear, his voice cajoling. “My cabin has seven bedrooms. It’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t care if your cabin has seven bedrooms, Cap!”

  My dad pops out from behind the curtain unceremoniously, and I jump as he reaches out and takes the phone from my ear.

  “Seven bedrooms, you say?” He pauses with my phone now pressed to his ear. “Yep, yep. How many baths?”

  “Dad!” I hiss, trying unsuccessfully to grab the phone. He holds a stiff arm on my forehead so all my arms can do is pinwheel.

  “Fantastic. I assume they all have doors?” He chuckles then. “Great. Give us ten. We’ll all be down,” he says insanely and then hangs. Up. The. Phone.

  “Dad!”

  “I’m a grown man, Ruby. I’m not going to spend the next three days shitting in a photo booth. We’re going to the damn lake with your boss. Pack a bag and get your ass in gear.” He looks from me to my mom and adds, “You too, Connie.”

  After years of living with Mark and Connie Rockford, I know I have no hope of changing the outcome. All I can do here is pack a bag, say a prayer, and hope that a weekend away with Caplin Hawkins and my parents doesn’t actually kill me.

  We’ve been on the road to Cap’s cabin in Upstate New York for an hour and a half when my face starts to go numb.

  All the back-and-forth between blushing in embarrassment and cringing in horror has used facial muscles I didn’t even know I had.

  My mom has asked one million questions worthy of a background check—all of which Cap has answered with surprising patience—and my dad has grumbled a million and one times in the background about anything and everything he can think of. Potholes, crazy drivers, tollbooths, you name it, and Mark has an opinion.

  When we pull into a gas station and Cap climbs out of the driver seat, I actually consider begging him to leave me here to hitchhike home. He sets the gas to pump and then rounds the hood to head inside the store.

  My dad rolls down his window, and I do the same, fearful of what might transpire if I don’t at least monitor their communication.

  Cap notices the motion and turns back to the car. I actually start to feel light-headed from how fucking handsome he is. “Can I get you anything inside, Mr. Rockford?”

  “Sure thing, kiddo,” my dad responds without shame or hesitation. “Some stool softeners and some Imodium.”

  My head sinks into my hands, and I sink deeper into my seat. Oh my God, why are my parents so embarrassing?

  “Don’t those two have opposing purposes?” Cap asks good-naturedly, and my dad, being my dad, doesn’t hesitate to explain.

  “You bet. But my intestines are like a sausage casing, son. I can jam a whole lot of shit in there without any movement, but eventually, the casing’s gonna burst, and the results aren’t pretty.”

  I can’t even look up to see Cap’s reaction. I’m so mortified, my eyes have actually lost all function. But evidently, my ears still work, because I can easily distinguish a smile in Cap’s voice when he replies, “Oh yes, sir. I get it. I’ll grab both for you and be out in just a minute.”

  “Thanks,” my dad says, and it’s immediately followed by the sound of his window rolling up.

  I’m still drowning in the situation, scrubbing at my face vigorously, when a gentle hand lands on my elbow. I startle and pull up my head to find Cap standing dangerously close to my door.

  “What about you, doll?” he questions softly. “Can I get you anything?”

  “Some arsenic maybe,” I suggest, and his teeth sink playfully into his bottom lip. My eyes shoot to the movement like heat-seeking missiles.

  He nods toward the back seat where Mark and Connie are arguing over the fact that my dad has now taken off his shoes. “I like them.”

  I shake my head. “They’re crazy.”

  “Yeah,” he says with a smile. “But it’s the good kind of crazy.”

  He squeezes my arm and steps away to head back toward the store, and I study him intently.

  Maybe t
hat’s the best way to describe him too.

  The good kind of crazy.

  Cap

  My house on Oneida Lake is one of my favorite places in the world. It was one of the first major purchases I made outside of my apartment in SoHo—one of the first uses of my so-called wealth.

  The house is big and inviting, filled with space and amenities, and I guess I intended it as a place for fun. A place for my friends to get together, a place to vacation with big groups, a weekend home of sorts.

  Of course, the reality has been different, my schedule only allowing for so much. I’ve been here just ten times in the entire span that I’ve owned it, and I’ve had a group of people with me only half of those.

  I’ve barely even broken it in, and still, this time somehow feels distinctive.

  “I was thinking of taking Ruby to a race up in Oswego tonight,” I say as my housekeeper Greta sets out lunch on the table in front of us. Mark’s eyes light up at the spread, and I smile to myself.

  Mark and Connie Rockford are a walking comedy show, and I love that about them. Aside from fitting in with my personality, it gives me hope that Ruby’s got the same don’t give a fuck spirit inside of her, just waiting to be released. I’ve seen glimpses of it along the way, but it’s almost like she’s just too busy to remember to use it.

  “I’d be thrilled if you all want to come along too. I know you came out with the intention of visiting your daughter, so I don’t want to be the jerk who robs you of your time with her.”

  Ruby makes wide eyes at me across the table, and I smirk. She’s so talented at being annoyed with me, it doesn’t even take her any effort at all to turn her face into a glare.

  “Oswego, you say, son?” Ruby’s dad asks, and I have to bite my lip as she chokes on his last word. He’s said it more than once since I met him this morning, and even if I didn’t like it personally, I’d love it just because Ruby freaks out every time he does it.