Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 77018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Theo tended to snowball things, but didn’t we all? I glanced at my crotch, then at my laptop.
“Thousands of dollars, Vance.” He sat up on the floor. “Serious money.”
What if Theo was right? What if I could make some serious money from this? Get myself out of student loan debt… Help my grandma pay down all the loans she’d incurred trying to save my grandpa.
I dragged a hand over my face, opened my laptop, and begrudgingly pulled up the Lonely Fans website.
The cursor flashed in the username text box.
“Do it, asswipe,” Theo said. “Do it.”
Hesitantly, I typed in: My Dick Travels.
Ten minutes later, Paul’s account had been set up, the picture of him in front of Times Square, the welcoming post.
It’s not like I’d set out with the life goal of taking dick selfies and opening a Lonely Fans account. It all kind of just fell into my lap like a drunk stripper at a rundown nightclub. And no guy in their right mind passed up a free ride when the opportunity presented itself.
Chapter Two
BLAKE
July-7 months later
There’s a saying that suggests bad luck comes in waves of three. Well, that ideology is a load of glitter-covered crap. Bad luck had followed me around like a lingering fart since the day I’d been born.
Take, for example, that over the past month, my bad luck to good luck ratio had been thirty-six to one.
I’d encountered everything from my apartment catching fire to my skirt getting caught in the Grand Central Station escalators and ripping clean off, baring my sensible cotton panties to the world, to having three kamikaze pigeons dive bomb my head and shit on me.
I’d tried to be positive, to conjure up my inner ray of sunshine and convince myself there was no way things could get worse. But then…things could always get worse.
I emerged from the subway into the chaos of Manhattan at eight o’clock in the morning.
Businessmen dashed down the sidewalks, swearing under their breath at the tourists blocking the flow of foot traffic while they stared up at the looming skyscrapers. Mothers wrangled screaming children off to summer camp. Car horns blared. Jackhammers hammered. Off in the distance, someone cried.
Miraculously, I made the two-block walk from the metro station to the steel and glass skyscraper housing Wanderlust Media without trampling in a wad of gum or getting crapped on by a bird. It was that magnificent fact that allowed the dangerous thought that the rest of the day may be good to cross my mind. I had a little pep in my step on my way through the revolving glass doors and into the marble lobby. Then pressed the elevator button with some extra jazz before my phone dinged in my purse. Lucky me, getting a text that early in the morning, my stupid, overly optimistic ass had thought as I dug out the device. Then wham. There it was. The rotten cherry on top of my bad luck sundae—a digital invitation to my sister Kate’s engagement party for the upcoming weekend.
The apartment fire and excessive bird shit had evidently not been enough to appease the gods of misfortune. No, they needed to rub a little more acid-laced salt in my open wounds because my lovely older sister wasn’t engaged to any old asshole. She was engaged to my asshole ex-fiancé. The asshole ex-fiancé who, eight months ago, I’d caught thrusting into her on my bed.
I took a breath, fighting back not-so-nice emotions as I stepped inside the elevator and pressed the button for the thirty-fifth floor. As soon as the doors glided shut, I took a screenshot of the invitation and sent it to my best friend, Margot. After all, a woman always needs her bestie to be livid along with her.
Three floors up, I envisioned showing up at Kate’s engagement party and raking an arm through the tower of champagne glasses I knew my uppity sister would demand. The vision ended with fire and police cars, which meant it was probably best I’d be out of town that weekend for work.
Focus on that, Blake. Focus on your holy grail of an assignment in Europe. Not how your life has gone to total shit.
Thirteen floors up, my focus shifted when my mother texted the family group chat:
Isn’t it wonderful news? Kate is so happy. They’re such a perfect match.
Because I hadn’t been engaged to the asshole. And Kate hadn’t aided in his infidelity…
Seventeen floors up, my little sister, Grace, privately texted me.
I’m against all of it! Love you! Fuck Kate!
Before I reached my floor, the family group chat had gone berserk with congratulations and heart emojis. By the time the elevator doors opened to the golden Wanderlust Media sign and its stupid logo, To wander is to wonder, I was in a super-foul mood.
Silencing my phone, I stormed out of the elevator and rounded the cubicle walls, colliding face-first with a muscular chest hidden beneath a neatly pressed baby-blue dress shirt. One whiff of his leathery cologne and my already-foul mood putrefied.