THE RESTAURANT INSIDE the hotel is busy, people darting in and out, the staff trying to keep up. The food was good, not great, but the service has been attentive.
The waitress makes her way to us. Tall, blonde, wicked green eyes, huge tits that are on display in a low-cut, tight top . . . our waitress is definitely an 8.5 on a 10-scale. A year ago, I would’ve been all over that. Or she would’ve been all over me, more likely, and I would’ve taken her up on her offer. These are the easy pieces, the ones you don’t even have to work for. Today, however, I have zero interest.
I take a swig of my beer and watch her approach. I try to gauge my response, try to see if there’s still something inside me that wants to fuck her sideways.
I wait for my dick to twitch. With each bounce of her round breasts, I wait for the indication from my body that it wants to release. In hers.
It doesn’t.
Not one fucking part of me reacts. And while this normally would’ve been a concerning reaction, I couldn’t be fucking happier about it.
She catches my eye and smiles, fluttering her lashes. I’ve seen this look a million times. It says, ‘if you wanna fuck, I’ll fuck.’ Instead of smirking like usual, patting myself on the back for not even having to try to get her attention, I look away. She huffs, but not before trying the same thing on Max.
I actually laugh out loud. There’s zero chance of me banging this chick, but with that being said, there’s less of a chance than that of Max doing it. I have loyalty. He has loyalty and morals.
“Can I get you guys anything else?” She holds our plates so her tits squeeze together, the tops rounding above the neckline of her shirt.
“I don’t need anything,” I smile, nodding to Max. “What about you?”
“Nah, I’m good. Thank ya though.”
I’ve always considered predictability a bad trait—boring, monotonous. But the longer I live, the more I’m starting to appreciate it. Sure, I still like being spontaneous. We are in fucking Vegas. But there’s a level of comfort, a feeling of being able to let your defenses down when you know how someone’s going to react to a situation. I always know how Max will react to things.
I just wish I knew how other people would react to certain things . . .
“Wanna bring us the check?” I ask the waitress. She nods and flaunts off, swinging her hips for my benefit. “You about ready?”
“I wanna finish this beer first,” Max says, taking a sip from the bottle in his hand. “So, you ready for everything?”
“Yeah. We’ve got everything nailed down, I think. Can you think of anything we overlooked? You made a schedule and a bid list and everything for this, right?”
“Yeah, I’ve approached this like any other project we’ve been on. We have a schedule, contracts, the whole shebang,” he laughs. “I think everything is covered, but it’s not like I’ve done this before.”
“Yeah, well, this may be your practice round, but that doesn’t mean you can fuck it up.”
“I won’t.”
We exchange a look and I know he won’t. It’s Max, after all. He’s predictable. What’s important to those he cares about is important to him. And he doesn’t want me to kill him. That helps, I’m sure.
There’s a comfortable silence between us, the product of a friendship that’s spanned years. He’s seen me at my best and my worst, helped me make decisions, helped me bury my father. We’ve loved some of the same people, lost some of the same friends. Looking at what my life is now and what it’s going to become, he’s the only consistent part of my life both pre and post-Jada.
“Who would’ve thought I’d be getting married before you? Man, life’s fucked up,” I say.
“It is.” He watches the television above my head. His jaw tenses and the vein at his temple pulses.
“What’s going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re acting strange.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m fucking serious, Max. What’s up?”
He sighs and sits the bottle on the table, peeling the label back. He thinks about what he’s going to say. “Kari and I were watching television last night and a commercial came on about a wedding package or some shit. I made a comment about getting married. I wasn’t even insinuating that we should get married here because you know I wouldn’t do that. I was just talking in general and she completely balked. She put that wall up of hers and changed the subject.”
“You’ve said that before. She doesn’t want to talk about it.”
“Yeah, man, she doesn’t. If she just would say, ‘I don’t wanna get married right now,’ I’d be okay with it. But she won’t even say that. She just gets pissed off or walks out of the room. And being here is making her even weirder about it. Like she expects me to drive her to a chapel and make her marry me.”
“Maybe you should,” I laugh. “It’d take the pressure off.”
“Yeah. She’d have my balls faster than I could blink.”
“What do you think is her problem? I don’t get it. She’s all crazy about helping Jada and I get ours together. And you want to get married.”
He shrugs and I feel sorry for him. He’s a great guy. There’s no reason Max Quinn shouldn’t be married and having babies, except for the fact that the one girl he wants doesn’t want either thing. It sucks.
“We’ve all had time to run around, play the field. I don’t get what her hang-up is. She obviously loves you.”
“I don’t know. I can’t figure it out to save my soul.”
“So, what do you do? I mean, do you just stick it out with her and hope she comes around? Or do you just call it quits and find someone that requires less work?”
He shrugs again. “I don’t know, Alexander. I love her. I love her more than anything, you know that. But I feel like I can’t make any progress with her because I don’t understand her. And she won’t let me in far enough to figure it out.”
“Well,” I say, climbing out of the booth. “I, for one, am totally for the white chapel shit. I’ll drive you there myself.”
“I bet you would,” he says, tossing a twenty dollar bill on the table. “You’d love to see her kill me.”
“Kari’s a good girl. If you don’t lock her up quick, you might get stuck with something like that.” I grin and nod towards the waitress coming back our way. “She’d be a good piece of ass.”
Max quirks a brow, not wanting to encourage me to continue.
Too late.
“You might want to try that out since you’re so unsure about what you’re gonna do with Kari. Sampling the goods never hurt anybody.” I smile, trying to gauge his reaction. I want to rile him up just a bit. “Hell, she might be down at the pool right now getting some—”
“Shut your mouth, Cane. I’m not fucking kidding.”
I roar with laughter. “Now we’re getting somewhere!”
“You’re such an asshole.”
“It’s been said before.”