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“Eight o’clock?” she said, followed by a sympathetic sigh.
“The dry spell of the century strikes again,” Max lamented heavily, scooting over to free up a sliver of space for me between him and the armrest. We’d both been on a long run of crappy romantic luck, leaving me no option but to blow out a heavy breath as I accepted the gesture. Head on his shoulder, I sighed.
“Small talk aside, he opened the date asking about my fucking body count.”
“What the fuck?” Alice scoffed, shaking her head as she returned to her dessert.
Max smirked, adding, “I would have told him I don’t count bodies, just orgasms, and of those, there’ve been plenty.”
An aggrieved sound, more sigh than laugh, bubbled between my lips before I admitted, “I asked him if the ones in the freezer counted.”
Max’s evil cackle was one of my favorite sounds on the planet. He took way too much satisfaction out of any kind of savagery, and I loved him all the more for it. “That’s my girl,” he said, leaning his cheek on the top of my head. “What about that guy from last week? The foxy one.” I might not have been able to see him, but the Max that lived inside my brain absolutely waggled his brows. Sitting up, I turned to face them, greedily accepting the rope of licorice he offered.
“Carrick. He was nice.”
“But…?” Alice hedged, not bothering to unwrap her lips from the straw.
“Bad kisser?” Watching as I snapped off a bite of my candy, Max canted his head with narrowed eyes.
“No, he was fairly decent in that department.”
“No career path?”
“Shitty credit score?”
“Socks with sandals?”
“Bad tipper?” The two of them rattled off potential reasons for my rejection of Carrick, the semi-adequate kisser, like it had become a game to guess why none of the men I’d matched with were ever good enough. I couldn’t help but laugh as Max amended, “Oh! No tipper?”
“Super religious, so you couldn’t test the chemistry?” Alice said, a strangled shred of hope in her tone, like that objection might be redeemable. Hell, maybe it could be. My prospects were as abundant as the Sahara Desert is in trees. But they were proportionate with the amount of effort I’d given dating as of late.
The pathetic reality was that I was the absolute best at giving advice…so long as it pertained to anything aside from my love life. Try as I might, I’d been hung up on one asshole since I was fifteen. Every time I saw the same guy more than a few times and things got serious, my walls went up, because no matter how fabulously attractive or wildly successful they were, they weren’t—him. The worst part? Broderick Allen was anything but an asshole.
We’d grown up as rivals in school—which wasn’t really fair, as I had the advantage of being a few years behind him and made it my personal mission to break every record he ever set. Petty? Absolutely. But when he chose his friendship with my older brothers over our feelings for each other my senior year, I decided I no longer felt bad about our childish games. He picked them—honoring some stupid high school pact. Last summer was the first year we’d spent an excessive amount of time together since I’d left Mistyvale for college, and while I’d been endlessly subjected to everything about him I’d always loved—the gravel of his familiar laugh, the way the warm umber skin around those dark eyes wrinkled every time he smiled, his passion to advocate for literally anyone in need, even if they weren’t his responsibility, and that gorgeous, clever mind—he never made a damn move.
It was high time to move the fuck on. So, I’d returned to life on the road, which was usually where I was happiest. These speaking engagements were what I lived for, even if my thirty-two-year-old body just didn’t jump between time zones as easily as a twenty-something body did, and I was growing acutely aware of it.
Max’s lips twisted to the side, Alice’s gray-blue eyes growing concerned as they both stared me down, my silence evidently lingering far longer than appropriate. “It’s just… he’s not…”
It was Max who confirmed my spinster status and finished my thought. “Broderick.”
His name made me groan, burying my face in my hands as I growled against them before jerking them away to stuff a handful of cheddar popcorn in my mouth. Aggressively chewing over the cheese-powdered deliciousness, I rolled my eyes. “The man has had over a decade since I was officially ‘legal’—if he was going to do something, he would’ve by now—and I’m just being dragged along on a hook he doesn’t even know exists and—what is wrong with me?”
“You know, they say we store our first love in the same part of the brain as a heroin addiction,” Alice offered helpfully, as though I wasn’t the one to tell her that after her first heartbreak.
“Great. So, I’m a junkie for a man that doesn’t even want me.”
The abrupt upheaval of the snack bowl punctuated Max’s eye roll as he stood, setting the popcorn on the table. Grabby hands outreached for me as he demanded, “Get up, Elly. We’re getting you laid.”
“What?” I barked, laughing, but the man never relented and wasn’t about to change now. Snatching my hands in his, he heaved me to my feet with an eager Alice on our heels as he led us through the living room.
“That’s all you need. Hell, that’s all anybody needs. One good fuck, you’ll be right as rain, and you can focus on the important things again.”
“The Summit’s in a few weeks, right?” Alice redirected, flipping on her bedroom light as Max dragged me to the bed only to shove me onto the floral spread with a petulant bounce.
“Yeah, just before Thanksgiving,” I said flatly, resigned to my fate. Once Max and Alice made a plan, there was no escaping it. Not alive, anyway. And while I would absolutely not be climbing a stranger like a tree tonight, drinks and nachos with these two yahoos sounded like the perfect distraction. The Leaders in Thought Summit was the event of my year—hell, my decade, if I had anything to say about it.
This year’s conference was different. Having attended every fall since my first year in college, this was the year they had invited me back as a speaker. To say happy squeals had occurred the moment the phone was off would be an understatement. While my love life might’ve been barren, my ability to analyze a company and pull out their strength was what God put me on this earth for. In a few short weeks, I’d stand in front of colleagues and role models who’d inspired my love of the field and share what I’d learned with them for once.
