“Fuck you, Nick.”
Click.
Shit. That sure wasn’t my reception going out.
“Another beer, dude?” asked the bartender as I put my cell phone down on the bar once more.
I picked up my beer bottle, which was down to the last quarter. The last quarter of my fourth beer and she still wasn’t here. Okay, so I hadn’t been completely honest with Bern. I was waiting for someone, and, yes, someone female, but it wasn’t like that. At least, not on my end anyway. This was strictly business, but from the way things were going so far, it looked like 1 might have to fuck Maggie, if only to get the upper hand in this deal we were working on. Though at the moment, I had no hand to play. It was almost nine-thirty already. I’d been waiting for her nearly two hours. Actually, I’d moved on from waiting to just simply drinking. Maybe Maggie had gotten that spice or whatever she was missing for her meal and decided to stay home and cook after all. Which didn’t make sense, seeing as Sage had already taken off and Tom had given up and gone over to a friend’s house. He was pissed and I couldn’t blame him. Surely she could have figured out something else to do with all those lamp chops besides whatever the hell was called for in that recipe she was making. But I could see Maggie was like a dog with a bone when it came to her dinner parties. She was pretty upset when she realized her dinner plan was not happening tonight. I thought I had managed to talk her out of cooking, even offered to buy her a burger at The Inn. She told me she just needed to clean up the aborted dinner she’d started.“I’ll meet you at The Inn in half an hour,” she’d said. Yeah, right. Time is money, babe. And since it was her money we were talking about, you’d think she’d be a little more punctual.
“Another beer, dude?”
“I’m thinking, man,” I replied.
“Don’t think too hard,” the bartender said with a chuckle before he ambled away.
Yeah, yeah, buddy. Why don’t you go blow a few more brain cells at the other end of the bar?
I looked at my near-empty beer. I shouldn’t have another. And not just because I was outta cash. It was the principle of the thing, really. I’m not sure what principle exactly—but all I know is that I shouldn’t be paying five bucks a pop for beer when I got a six-pack I paid nine bucks for at the house. Not that I felt like going back there. It was the kind of thing four beers on an empty stomach could do to a guy. I suddenly had the urge to party all night. Come to think of it, there were some pretty hot chicks over there by the pool table.
See what you’ve done now, Bern? You’re driving me to other women.
Yeah, as if one woman wasn’t enough trouble. I had the feeling that getting involved with Maggie—even on a business level—was going to be trouble, too, which was why I was hoping to talk to her tonight. But since she was the first person to show a real interest in my company—even suggested she was going to put her money where her mouth was—I had to treat the matter…delicately.
Still, I was grateful for Maggie’s interest in my latest venture. In fact, when she first said she wanted to invest in the music label I’m starting up, I was pretty fucking pumped. Capital was the only thing I was lacking. I had a business plan, even had a band lined up for the launch, which was going to be huge with all the PR I was planning. Even Sage was excited about my ideas, and Sage didn’t get excited about anything I did ever since I lost all that money in that pyramid scheme. The only thing she seemed to get excited about lately was this damn beach house. Had some grand idea that getting me and Zoe out here for the summer would be like high school all over again. Sage loved high school. Why wouldn’t she? She was like the fucking mayor of Babylon High. She knew everyone. And since me and Zoe were her best friends, everyone knew us, too.
Fire Island was more like high school than I even imagined it would be. Sage also knew everyone on Fire Island, but then she had been coming out here three summers already. Tonight I’d had another little taste of high school when Sage ditched me to hang out with that dock boy. No one could get between Sage and her booty.
I didn’t mind. What Sage didn’t know was that my little investment in this share was paying off big, in ways I hadn’t expected.
Yeah, I had hoped to find investors when I came out here. I’m not stupid. I knew there were not a few people out here that might have money to sink into a solid business investment such as Revelation Records. I just hadn’t expected one of those people to be Maggie Landon. I didn’t even know her, which is probably why our first weekend out here I started telling her about the label I was planning. Just making conversation, you know? Tom was out fishing, Zoe was taking a jog, Sage was down by the beach, working on that dock boy she was probably sleeping with right about now, and I was stuck in the house with Maggie, mostly because the sun was making me nauseous and I was hungry. I also knew that if Maggie wasn’t on the beach, she was in the house cooking. She was like some kind of Martha Stewart on speed, the way she was always whipping something together. When Maggie cooked, she was usually looking for someone
