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Everyone chuckles. Except me. “Leave me out of it,” I say flatly, “My threesome was a one-time experience, and I’m not interested in repeating it. The only thing I have time for right now is work.”
Bailey leans forward. “It’s not one or the other,” she says. “You don’t have to choose between a career and a relationship. You can have both.”
I shake my head. “You’ve forgotten my terrible luck with men. Let’s run through the last two men I dated, shall we? There was Stan, who dined me and wooed me, until the moment we had sex. At that point, he decided to reconcile with his wife. A wife he’d conveniently forgotten to mention in the two months we were dating.”
I take a long gulp of my drink, and the rum warms my throat. “Then there was George.”
A collective groan greets that. In an ocean of shitty guys, George had managed to rise to the top. Not only had I found him fucking some bimbo on my bed, on my birthday, but he’d also ended up stealing money from me.
“You really do have terrible luck with men,” Wendy says.
“No,” I correct her. “It’s not luck. I’m cursed. Normal guys turn to jerks when they start dating me.”
“This again?” Katie, who’s been happily married for many years, frowns in my direction. “I’ll give you Stan and George, but what about Carter and Dominic? They weren’t jerks.”
No, they weren’t. They’d been… amazing. They’d been the stuff fantasies are made of. And I don’t want to dwell on Dominic and Carter. I just can’t. I’ve single-handedly dashed my dreams to the ground. Hot as they were, I have other things to worry about.
Piper jumps to my defense. “Leave it be,” she says. “I get where Gabby’s coming from, and I agree with her. It’s hard to be self-employed, and it’s brutally hard to run a business. There’s no space for anything else. If Gabby starts her company, then, for the first few years, that’s all she’ll have time for.” She turns to me with a smile. “You’re close, right? Think about it. This time next year, you’ll be running your own business.”
Once again, shame steals the words from my lips. I can’t bring myself to confess that I lost all of my seed money and more on Saturday night. If they find out, they’ll insist on rushing to the rescue. Bailey will empty out her savings account for me. Wendy will offer to be a silent investor in my new firm.
They’re my best friends, and I love them. But I don’t want them to rescue me, any more than I want my parents to bail me out.
This is my problem. I got into this crazy situation without any help. Now, I need to figure out how to get out.
