Page 98 of Ex Marks the Spot

“Yeah, but I got the girl, so . . .”

Hartley smiles up at me. “What I’m hearing you say is, I’m worth more than a million bucks?”

Boyd reaches the restaurant first and holds the door open for Old Bay, the Bombshells, Treva, and Hartley. When I bring up the rear of the group, he grabs my arm and pulls me aside.

“From one man to another, I’m just saying...you should look into a Prince Albert.”

It comes out in the same tone he’d use to say, “I forgot my grocery list at home,” so it takes me a few additional seconds to process his words. In fact, I’m still working on it when he continues with,

“We have four months before the NDA’s up, right? That’s plenty of time for it to heal and I promise, you’ll both thank me.”

Then he pats me on the back and ushers me inside along with the rest of our group.

“Why do you look like you just saw a jackalpottamus?” Hartley asks as she fits her hand into mine.

“Because I did, and his name is Prince Albert.”

“What?” Her free hand flies to her mouth to cover a bubble of surprised laughter. “Do I even want to know?”

“Boyd said I should look into a piercing, but it’s not happening no matter how much he insists we’d both thank him.”

I shudder at the idea of a needle going anywhere near my dick.

Screw. That.

“If you were to get one, I’d probably think of Boyd every time I looked at it anyway.” She scrunches her nose at the thought. “Also, as you may recall,I’m a huge fan of the existing model. No need to install after-market accessories.”

“Our table’s ready,” Haylee says, rescuing me from what would’ve been an epic boner in about thirty seconds.

We follow the hostess to the back of the Greek restaurant Alexis found a few blocks from our hotel. None of us is ready to acknowledge our flights home tomorrow, so we’re pretending it’s just another dinner on the race.

It’s funny how only three weeks ago, everyone at our table but Hartley was a stranger. I wouldn’t have been able to pick them out of a crowd. I wouldn’t have known their strengths and weaknesses, their fears, their hopes. Now it feels like we’ve known each other forever.

If I’m being honest, it’s nice to have fresh blood in my friendship pool. Part of what’s been so difficult about staying in Green Valley is the barrage of reassurance I’ve gotten from my family and friends. It sounds backward, especially considering the fucked-up family situation Boyd’s dealing with, but hear me out.

Ella told me a long time ago that she had to learn the difference between “true friends” and “truth friends.”

True friends are your ride-or-dies. They’re the ones you can call for encouragement or for help hiding a dead body. Truth friends are the ones who will tell you the things you need to hear, even if you don’t want to hear them.

Basically, Ella said true friends will tell you that you look great in those jeans, and truth friends will tell you that your ass looks fat.

And for the last six years, I’ve been walking around feeling like my ass looks fat while my family and friends have told me how great I look in my jeans. I’m not searching for any ego strokes, but it’s really nice to hear from outside sources that being the manager of a car wash instead of a school psychologist doesn’t make my ass look fat.

Hartley said she loves my car wash ass but still thinks I’ll look better in a new pair of teacher jeans. Her suggestion in Greece caught me off guard at first. The only way I’d ever envisioned myself in a school was in the guidance department.

The substitute thing was basically a favor to my mom several years ago when the high school lost a few teachers to retirement. They needed help, I was a living body with a college degree and no criminal history, and Rhett was able to man the car wash on days I was needed at the school.

She’s right that I’ve enjoyed my time in the classroom. Getting a front-row seat to history for the last three weeks has been awesome too. Once I thoughtabout it objectively, it made perfect sense. Technically that means I’m leaving the race with a new-ish girlfriend and a new-ish career and now I need the next four months to hurry up.

“Hey, how tall do you think that Athena statue at the hotel was?”

I shake off my thoughts and focus on what Hartley asked. “It was a couple of feet bigger than me, so eight feet maybe?”

“I can assure you there was not an eight-foot statue of Athena at the hotel in Greece,” Treva says.

Gianna shakes her head along with Alexis. “We didn’t see it either.”

“How could you have missed it? It was right there in the center of the lobby in all its marble glory.”

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