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“There’s a first time for everything.” Justin’s dark eyes gleamed. “You know the only constant in this world is change.”
“Does that come with a free side of zen meditation?”
“If you’d like. Want me to pencil that in for you?”
Xavier laughed. “No thanks.” He didn’t need meditation or yoga. He just needed to see Emma one last time.
Justin gave him a knowing look as if he could read his mind. “Well, I’ll leave you to it. And remember, no texting this girl Emma. You didn’t get her phone number, did you?”
“No,” Xavier replied.
“Good. Maybe there’s hope for you, after all.” Justin sauntered back to his desk.
Was there? Xavier wondered. Was he developing a thing for Emma? No, he told himself. Just one more night. One more night to scratch this little itch. One more night ought to do it. He’d never gone three nights before, never found a need to go beyond the forty-eight-hour rule. But, he admitted, he’d hardly ever come back for seconds either. Usually one night was plenty. One night and he’d felt satiated. But not with Emma. What made her different? He’d need to see her again to find out.
He pushed the little worry out of his brain. It didn’t mean he was falling in love with her, did it? The sex was amazing, more than amazing, sizzling hot, but that didn’t mean he needed to go pick out wedding bands. Plus, if he really wanted to cool things off, he ought to just start dating her. Propose. Like he did with Sasha. That would fix his want and hers—for good. They’d be a bored couple in no time.
He sat at his desk and logged in to his computer, pulling up the code for Nost. It was brilliantly simple, and yet teasingly complex. He loved it. It had been his baby and he still liked to tweak it. He remembered Happy Fun Time from last night and frowned. The man had violated pretty much every Nost behavior guideline at the bar last night. He pulled up the man’s profile. Whose pictures was he using? Not his own. Xavier squinted. No way that male model was the same man he’d seen in the Cardinals hat the night before. And the little c and v next to his name...might not even be his real name. He might not be vetted at all. He remembered the way the man had talked to Emma the night before and his blood boiled just thinking about it.
With a few keystrokes, he turned up the Facebook profile, where Xavier saw the real Happy Fun Time clearly had stolen his pictures. He’d stolen this man’s identity, whoever he was, and was using it as a front on Nost.
Xavier clacked away on the keyboard and with a few commands, barred Happy Fun Time from the app. For good. Still, uneasiness lingered. The guy used a name that wasn’t his, and he could do it again. He could slip into the roster of Nost under another stolen name at a later date. The thought irked Xavier. He wanted the app to be safe and to be fun, and it would be neither if assholes like Happy Fun Time found ways around Nost’s safety settings.
Xavier made a mental note to ask the security guys for a way around this. He worried Happy Fun Time wasn’t the only one gaming the system. Still, he’d have to have the man’s social security number in order to run the verified test. But plenty of identity thieves had numbers that weren’t theirs. Xavier shot an email to his friend, a Chicago police detective, asking his advice.
Xavier focused on his computer once more. He had the information of every Nost user at his fingertips. Yes, the site was publicly anonymous, but on the back end, there was all kinds of personal information he could find. Names, addresses, phone numbers.
His fingers paused on his keyboard. Should he look up Emma’s information?
He glanced outward through his walls of his glassed-in office at Justin’s back as he worked. He shouldn’t, he knew. It violated tons of ethics standards, but...
No. Xavier closed the window on his machine.
I shouldn’t do it. Should I?
He tried to focus on work emails, but he kept being drawn back to the minimized box on his computer screen. The Nost app database.
Eventually, he could resist no more. The temptation was just too great. What could it really hurt?
With a few clicks of the mouse, he’d pulled up Emma’s information. Emma Allaire, age twenty-eight, lived in Lincoln Square. Before he could stop himself, he’d searched her on social media, and found her Instagram account. Dozens of pictures rolled up for him, as she had her account public. As he scrolled through them: her with her friends, her with what looked like her mom, several of Emma at her favorite coffee shop on North Avenue... He felt a surge of guilt. He was snooping, stalking even. And what was he even doing? Not only was he invading her privacy, but he was doing the very thing he told himself would kill their attraction: he was trying to get to know her.
