CHAPTER1
Edith
(DECEMBER 26TH)
Working out beyond exhausted and with a carb hangover was not my best idea ever. I’m on the struggle bus, and there’s a sixty-five percent chance that I’m going to puke. Maybe even seventy. As I finish my last set of leg presses at the gym, I regret the decisions of past Edith.
It’s all Apollo’s fault.
It’s always Apollo’s fucking fault.
It was his stupid Christmas party last night that led me here.
The grumpy bastard himself grumbles at the free weights he’s lifting across the room. His teeth are gritted, exertion clear on his face, a thin sheen of sweat coating his biceps and seeping through his tank top. Despite the permanent funk of body odor lingering in the gym, I can’t help but admire the lines of my ripped best friend.
I hate him.
Usually, he keeps his festive celebrations to a single Christmas Eve party, but this year one shindig wasn’t enough for the prince of darkness and his fancy-pants siblings. So I ended up breaking my own rule and staying out late two nights in a row. I rarely drink, special occasions only. But I did go a little crazy with the carbs over the past couple nights, and my body really doesn’t like me for it. In fact, let’s go ahead and make that a seventy-five percent chance of puking.
There’s no room in my life for vices, only dancing. And apparently my best friend, Apollo de la Peña, local hockey god with the name of anactualgod. He counts as a vice too. Because something about him prevents me from saying, “No, Apollo. I’m staying home tonight with a hot bubble bath and a great read.”
The man in question stands about twelve feet away from my machine doing arm curls next to the weight rack in front of the mirror.
I’ve known him for years. He’s like an annoying brother, but even I can appreciate the definition in his arms as he raises the weight up and down. He also has the perfect hockey bubble butt. The shiny tech material of his shorts stretches across his ass, and I’m in the perfect position to ogle.
Ballet boy butts are similar to hockey butts in being excessively muscled, but ballet butts are a little sleeker, a little more heart-shaped from the way they work. Also, dance belts and tights means it's all butts all day in my world. I’m generally blind to the ballet butts but something abouthishockey bubble butt catches my attention in those shiny short shorts.
He pauses his set, cocking his head, a couple stray beads of sweat dripping from his nose. “You checkin’ out my ass?”
And the rest of him, but I’d never tell. He’d never let me live it down. Plus, it’s kind of weird letting my eyes linger on any piece of him that’s currently exposed and rippling with exertion. I shrug, bring my knees up toward my chest before pushing the plate back to the machine.
“What can I say? I know a fine ass when I see one, Señor de la Peña.”
He glares at me, muttering something to himself as he wipes down the weight and replaces it on the rack. Picking up his bottle from the floor, he tips it at me. “Almost finished? Or should I do something else?”
Sure, he’s sweaty, but he’s chipper and seemingly ready to do another workout without missing a beat.
Jerk.
“Almost dead, you mean.” I wince. It’s best to quit while I’m only a little behind. “My insides hate me. There’s every chance I’m going to throw up in your way-too-extra car on the way home.”
Despite being a fancy-pants rich boy, his life is relatively normal. That is, until it comes to his apartment and his vehicle. We live in the most expensive building in downtown Cedar Rapids.
There’s no way I could afford the apartment I live in by myself. My parents, on the other hand, are loaded and spend most of their time sailing the world on expensive yachts and drinking Champagne that tastes like paint thinner.
Not together, however—never together. The last time my parents were in the same room together there was a shift in the earth’s tectonic plates that caused rumblings across three continents. Mom’s on her second marriage, and Dad likes the carefree life and women barely older than me. But who am I to judge?
When I told them where I wanted to live, they didn’t bat an eyelid. In fact, less than a week later I had the deed to the apartment with my name on it in hand, and the key to the place across the hall from my best friend.
Is it guilt money? Or more that they just have so much of it that they don’t care what they do with it, or what I do with it either? Regardless, I’ll take it.
“No one forced those garlic knots down your throat,princesa.” His intense stare bores into me. But his grumpasaurus ass doesn’t scare me.
I don’t even bother to roll my eyes at the more-than-a-decade-old nickname. When we met, it was Halloween, and I was dressed like a Disney princess. He’s called me princess ever since. It grates on any woman he dates which makes me love it just a little bit. But I’d never tell him that out loud either.
Jabbing my finger in his direction, I scowl at him. “Lies. You did.”
He smirks at me with a shrug. “You need to learn to let your hair down every now and then.”
