IOU: A Romantic Comedy Read online

  “Thank you. I appreciate everything.” I mean it. Bostic could have made my night a lot worse, and he didn’t. He’s a rare find.

  The big man frowns but tips his chin in resignation, and I reassure him, once again, with a smile. I can handle myself. Granted, I’ve never been homeless, but how hard could it be? I have a car. It’s not too hot out. And I have about ten hoodies in my backseat that will make the perfect pillow. Then, in the morning, I will find another roommate—easy-freaking-peasy. It’ll be like camping all those years ago with Mom.

  I wave at the firetruck as it pulls out of the complex. Everything has returned to normal, at least here in the parking lot. I don’t know about inside the building because I’m banned.

  Who needs an apartment anyway?

  Or a roommate?

  Certainly not me. I’d rather have my morals than to room with more liars.

  Unzipping my purse, I dig out my car keys and head toward my parking space. The 2005 sedan that awaits me is dirty with a small ding in the bumper where I bumped into a gas station pole, but it’s mine, and it’s free of cheating scumbags and lying roommates, so I call that a win and home for possibly the rest of the semester.

  I open the back door and get in, locking the doors behind me. Frank said he was kicking me out of my apartment. Not out of the parking lot. Surely, he won’t bother checking to see if I’ve vacated the premises. Frank’s lazy and considering he was already in his bathrobe, I imagine he’s two beers from beddy-bye-time.

  My phone buzzes—it’s a text from my mom.

  I hope you had a great day! Call me in the morning. Love you!

  She thinks I’m still at work, and that’s okay. We’ll let her believe that. I don’t want to talk to her right now anyway. If I do, I’m sure I’ll cry at the sound of her voice. Through this whole disaster of a night, I’ve yet to let one single tear fall, and I typically cry when I’m mad.

  I’m a passionate person, and therefore tears come a little more frequently for me than others. But that’s to be expected, right? Or maybe it’s my birth control because sometimes that shit fucks me up, and I feel like a raging psycho. But not today. Today was a good day.

  I boot up the Who Wants to be a Millionaire app and choose my city. I’ll take on London and Sasha, the other online player. Games have always been my source of comfort. I guess when you’re an only child, you learn to entertain yourself. My grandmother used to love watching Who Wants to Be a Millionaire on TV and she got me addicted. So you can imagine when the app came out, I was freaking ecstatic. I am determined to become a virtual millionaire. I’m smart and well-versed in trivia. Well, I’m not too bright. Clearly.

  But I had thought Tucker was different. Yes, I know. Let the shit go. But the betrayal is still raw. It’s not that I had a whole lot of boyfriends in my lifetime. Admittedly, Tucker has been my only one. We met in high school, and it was love at first sight for me. He was the smartest kid in our entire class. Not only that, but he was also tall, much taller than me, which was something since I always felt like a giant with my five-foot-ten frame. I wasn’t the tallest girl in our freshman class, but I might as well have been.

  Most of the guys hadn’t reached my height by ninth grade and therefore shunned anything to do with me. I got it. I made them look short. But not Tucker. Tucker was a beast, even though it seemed as if he stopped growing right around junior year. His height was one of the things that made him perfect for me. He was also fun and confident.

  So I held on for the ride through high school, following him to Havemeyer, where he received a scholarship for pre-med. A school where I didn’t receive an award. But we couldn’t be apart—we were soul mates.

  Wetness smears my phone screen and makes the trivia question unreadable. I watch as the countdown dwindles to zero, claiming Sasha as the winner by default. But I can’t make myself care. The tears have finally come.

  Tucker is gone.

  My first kiss.

  My first love.

  Gone.

  How long had he and Taylor been sleeping together? Was it just physical or—I gag—are they in love?

  They can’t be.

  Tucker and I are destined to be together.

  And Taylor, well, she’s . . . I’m not going to stoop that low and take a dig at her just because I’m feeling sorry for myself. I’m better than that. At least I think I’m better than that. But I guess Tucker sees something in her that he didn’t see in me.

  I blink through the watery tears, the lights still on in my former apartment where Tucker is probably showering the soot off Taylor, using my body wash.

  A sob catches in my throat.

  How did this happen? How did I become this girl?

  I can remember all these big dreams I had growing up. I wanted to save the sea lions. Save the otters and whales. Discover a cure for dementia. I wanted to be the best family counselor this state had ever seen.

  Granted, I’m working on the counseling degree, but the rest of it . . . those poor sea animals? I gave up that dream and scholarship when Tucker was accepted to Havemeyer. Although Havemeyer has a marine biology program, it has a waiting list longer than Tucker’s lies.

  Counseling is still a good career, though, and the odds of making it in marine biology are slim to none. I needed to be realistic. I couldn’t travel from coast to coast if Tucker had a staff position at the hospital. I would have never seen him, much less been able to have a family.

  I tear my eyes away from the window when the lights to my old apartment go off. They’re going to bed. Tucker and Taylor are snuggling down in her room, consoling each other from my madness.

  Pfft. Who am I kidding? Knowing Tucker and his need for a release before bed, I’m positive they are celebrating their newfound freedom of not having to hide their affair anymore.

  His chain has been cut free.

  I turn off my phone and tuck it into my side like it’s Lawrence, my poor stuffed sea lion that I left in the apartment, and close my eyes.

  In the morning, things will be different.

  In the morning, I’ll go back to Lawrence.

  In the morning, it’ll be a new beginning.

  Rumor has it the price of my company is a cold, lifeless soul.

  “You’re either in, or you’re out, Tweener. Make a decision or go giggle with the girls next door.”

  Rowan is two seconds from hauling Jacob, aka Tweener, out of his chair and shoving his head through the felt table. The newbie is working his last frazzled nerve.

  I pass him a joint. “Relax. Tweener is new.” Precisely why the fresh-faced kid shouldn’t be here. Guys like Tweener look like they should be out playing croquet while downing light beers. They don’t look like they should be sitting around the poker table, testing my friend and game enforcer’s patience.

  Wednesday night poker is not amateur night. I created it that way. The cutthroat game of Texas Hold’em at my table is not some drunken card game that every half-decent solitaire player at Havemeyer University can play. With a two-thousand-dollar buy-in, you either have the cash or you don’t play. There is no in-between. Poker, at my table, is invite-only, and if Sebastian, the grinning idiot across from me, weren’t my closest friend, I wouldn’t have let him bring this newbie.

  “You may want to wipe that fucking smile off your face,” I say, aiming a stern look at Sebastian, “because if he goes belly up, you’re not leaving here until you cover his debt.” I know he covered his buy-in too. No way did this kid have two grand to piss away.

  Sebastian plucks the joint from Rowan’s mouth and takes a long drag, his smirk never wavering. “You know what you need, Mav?”

  Yeah, I’m not biting. Sebastian is the last person I would take advice from, even if he had any valuable information to offer.

  Sebastian is Havemeyer’s celebrity. He’s semi-talented with a guitar, but he’s mostly known for his outlandish reality clips. Basically, he’s all show. Nothing in his life is real. It’s all an act—all for the fake f
ame and publicity.

  I ignore Sebastian’s smirk and follow Rowan’s glare to Tweener, who has yet to make a play. I’m not sure how high Rowan is at this moment, but I don’t think it’s enough to keep him from tossing the kid out of here in the next few seconds. Rather than goading me, Sebastian should focus more on helping his cameraman survive the night. What was he thinking bringing him here anyway?

  “What you need, Mav, is a bad fuck or mediocre blow job. Wait, no, I got it!” He shuffles in his chair excitedly. “A sloppy rim job! That would loosen you up.”

  I don’t make eye contact. Poker is a game of timing and knowing your opponent. You can have the shittiest hand at the table, but if you know your opponent, you can bluff your way to a win. For example, Sebastian is running his mouth. I know he has a semi-decent hand—probably chasing the straight if my theory is correct.

  Every player has a tell.

  Talking shit is Sebastian’s. By running his mouth, he can get you so worked up and pissed off that you forget to pay attention to the players around you. He knows I won’t fall for it, but that doesn’t stop him from attempting to distract Rowan.

  “See, you don’t need a good dick sucking, just a simple, mediocre, wet the tip and fondle the balls until you’re so frustrated you come just so you can send the pretty little thing home. You need to loosen up, Mav. Accept that people aren’t perfect and need to learn.”

  He’s not just talking about my empty bed at night. He’s attempting to tell me that I shouldn’t expect every player who comes to the table to be a pro. I don’t. I know not everyone is perfect. The issue is, I enjoy simplicity and predictability in my life—something Sebastian doesn’t understand. But I guess when you’re always putting on a show for the public, you can’t grasp that some people don’t want their lives on display. Faking a persona is exhausting. I should know. I live a lie.

  Most days, I can’t remember who the real Maverick is anymore. Does he even like poker? Or was poker a matter of survival at the time? I’ll never know because, at this point, I can never give it up. It’s who I am now.

  Unlike Sebastian, I don’t thrive on drama or overshare one hundred percent of the time. I merely choose to keep my lies to myself and refrain from participating in his cesspool of nightly debauchery. I appreciate boundaries and enjoy time to myself. Respecting my sanity and choosing never to have overnight guests is how I’ve gotten through this past year. I don’t need—or want—a sloppy rim job or a lackluster fuck. More than that, I don’t want to forget to hide my shit, and my secrets get out.

  Also, I genuinely don’t trust people. And after all the favors I’ve doled out, I don’t trust anyone. Everything can be bought. Even the most moral soul can be sold for a price. Life is a contract. Friendships. Marriages. Employment. It’s all there in black and white. Once time has been served, or the contract hasn’t been fulfilled to their standards, it’s over.

  I will never not have a contract. I learned early on that people will shit on you the minute they feel it is socially acceptable. It doesn’t matter how many years of friendship or love you’ve had together.

  All this to say, Sebastian, my closest friend, knows this. He knows my preference—or jaded insanity as he likes to call it—so him saying all of this right now is worthless and is only to buy Tweener more goddamned time to make a play.

  Sebastian pauses, waiting for me to acknowledge his joke.

  I lift a brow in warning, but it doesn’t deter him. He’s long lost his fear of me. Unlike most people, I knew Sebastian before I became the Maverick Lexington.

  “I’m telling you, man. You haven’t lived until you’ve come to the worst fuck ever.”

  Tingling starts in my lips as I fight the involuntary twitch. A lip twitch is my tell. One that everyone, apart from Tweener, knows.

  I tap out a cigarette I’ll never smoke and shove it between my lips. The feeling of the filter not only calms the twitch, but the scent reminds me of calmer days—days when I used to sit here for hours in a cloud of smoke, winning one hand after another until the sun came up.

  I cared about nothing.

  But that was before—before everything changed.

  “Sebastian,” I finally meet his gaze, “if your friend doesn’t check or bet, I’m going to shove this beer bottle up your goddamned ass and see how you enjoy a sloppy rim job.”

  Sebastian spews his beer with his boisterous laugh. “And here I thought you were in a bad mood today,” he gurgles out between chuckles.

  “Dammit, Bash. You got the cards wet.”

  I sigh, watching Rowan wipe off the cards, a low growl aimed in Tweener’s direction.

  “Check or bet. Now!”

  Tweener jumps as Rowan’s burly fist slams down on the table.

  I sigh. It’s been a long night, and honestly, my head isn’t in the game tonight. Instead, I’d rather they all just get the fuck out.

  Tweener locks eyes with Sebastian.

  “I swear to God, I will—”

  My words cut short as Tweener rushes out, “Check. I check.”

  Fucking finally.

  I nod, rolling the cigarette between my lips. “Row?”

  He looks at me and then at Sebastian. He knows we both have good hands, but he doesn’t. How do I know? His aggression flares, and he worries his ear, the tips turning a light shade of red. Yep, he has shit.

  “Fuck you both,” he says, slamming his cards down. “I fold.”

  Good. He was never in this game anyway.

  Sebastian, acting as the dealer tonight, throws down the river card, the last card in a hand, and tosses a handful of chips into the pot. He raises the bet. I’m right. He’s after the straight. That’s fine because I have the nuts, the best possible hand.

  I grin and tip my chin at Sebastian. “Straight on the river?”

  He doesn’t look as cocky as he did a minute ago.

  “Fuck.” He groans.

  Fuck is right. Fucking up happy endings is what I do best.

  I toss my cards out on the table. “I got the boat. Now get the fuck out of my apartment.”

  Sebastian leans back in his chair, rocking on just two legs. “Let me win it back?”

  “No.” I stand, tossing the unlit cigarette onto the table. I was serious when I meant for them to get out. I need time to sort out my shit—sort out the text burning through my phone screen all evening.

  I walk back to my bedroom, ignoring the pile of cash and chips on the table. No one is crazy enough to steal from me. When they’re gone, and I’ve dealt with this text, I’ll go back and clean it up.

  Tugging my shirt off, I sit on the bed and grab my phone from the nightstand. I swipe away all the requests for meetings and favors, looking for the only text that matters. The one that turned my night into shit.

  IOH-MB: I’m ready to cash in my favor.

  My chest clenches. It did the same thing when I read it earlier. Owing someone a favor is a rarity for me. Sebastian would tell you it should be documented. I will tell you what it truly is. A mistake. One that will never happen again. But I’m not one to go back on my promises, so whether or not I can buy off this favor, I will complete it personally. I got myself into this mess, and this favor will be the end of it.

  I take a deep breath, and my fingers tap across the keys.

  Me: I thought you didn’t want a favor from me.

  The dots appear at the bottom of the screen, and my stomach begs for the cigarette I left on the poker table.

  IOH-MB: I reconsidered. The offer has no expiration date, correct?

  My hand clenches around the phone. This is not good. So not good.

  Me: That’s how it works. What do you need?

  I lean over my knees and rake a hand through my hair. Am I fucking sweating?

  IOH-MB: Tomorrow. 11 am. You know the place.

  So goddamned careless. If I weren’t so tense, I’d go to the gym and ask Rowan to beat the shit out of me so that I remember never to let this happen again. Me—owing someo
ne else a fucking favor. Unbelievable.

  Me: I’ll be there.

  I will fucking be there. Fuck me.

  I spring from the bed and throw open the door. I need a beer. I need anything; at this point, a sloppy rim job doesn’t sound too horrible.

  Banging my head on the refrigerator a few times, I let out an angry growl and snatch open the door, grabbing a beer. I won’t drink the fucker, even if I want to down it in one go. That would be too easy for me. Instead, I’ll punish myself for getting into this situation by holding the cold glass in my hands, allowing the aroma to tempt me with its promise of washing away the stress with one long pull. I don’t owe favors. I haven’t since . . . it doesn’t matter. I can handle whatever it is. If I can’t, I’ll know someone who can.

  It’s simple.

  It’s fine.

  I pop the top on the bottle, the releasing hiss calming as I sulk through the living room and plant my ass in one of the plastic chairs on the balcony. It’s pitch-black, save for a few porch lights. I like it that way. I feel secluded—at ease even. I’m an introvert by nature, but ever since I’ve been at Havemeyer, I’ve retreated even more.

  My life is messy and complicated. And I’m not sure how to fucking fix it. Realistically, there’s nothing to fix. I’m doing fine in all my classes. My family is taken care of. They haven’t had to worry about sending me any money, thanks to my poker nights. So what if I can’t sleep and my mind is in constant overdrive? Boo-fucking-hoo.

  I take a longing look at the beer bottle clutched in my hand, swaying it back and forth until I have the angle just right, and pour the stream between the slats of wood down to the balcony below me.

  “What the hell?” A female voice shrieks.

  An errant smile tugs at my face. It feels suitable for once—relieving.

  “Shh. Be quiet!” My neighbor below scolds. I don’t know his fucking name and don’t plan on learning it. He’s a decent guy—has a cute girlfriend that he takes out on date nights every Friday, which inevitably leads to them cooing bullshit words like love and forever. It grates on my nerves and ruins my shitty mood. Hence the beer interruption.