Page 90 of Neighbors With Benefits

Bash: I think I found the problem. No wonder you were throwing up nothing but wine.

Me: Please refrain from describing my puke in any amount of detail ever again.

Bash: Sorry!

Aiden: Also, it wasn’t yesterday. It was two days ago, on Tuesday. Today is Thursday.

Me: Right. My internal clock is all messed up. Tuesday Jazz was an idiot. Fortunately, Today Jazz is older and wiser. And since it’s Thursday, I want to have you both over for game night again. Maybe sans-alcohol.

Me: Okay, even typing the word alcohol made my stomach lurch. I will be drinking Sprite tonight.

Aiden: Yeah, about that…

Bash: I can’t do game night tonight.

Me: What? Why not?

Bash: I’m in Iowa.

32

Bash

Sitting at the desk in my hotel, I was in the shittiest of moods.

Work was a mess. I had been rushed onto a plane Wednesday night and sent to Davenport, Iowa, an area on the Mississippi known as the Quad Cities. It happened so fast that I’d forgotten to pack headphones and a toothbrush, and had to buy new ones at a pharmacy down the street from my hotel.

And then there was Jazz.

I had no idea where we all stood. Sheseemedopen to the idea of being shared, but we hadn’t discussed it in depth. I still had metaphorical blue balls from our failed threesome attempt. I hadreallybeen looking forward to that. Don’t get me wrong: we’d made the right decision. I didn’t want our first time to be a drunken, sloppy mess. It would have been a mistake to try to make it happen, even ignoring all the vomiting.

But I wanted the threesome,badly. And now I was missing our second chance since I was out of town.

The fact that Jazz needed to get shitfaced to work up the courage to do it? That was a bad sign. It made it obvious that she wasn’t ready for something like this, no matter what she said.

And honestly, I couldn’t blame her. This was all so far outside of the norm. It had taken memonthsto wrap my head around it all, and even longer to become comfortable with the idea of sharing a woman.

Then there was Aiden. I wasn’t a jealous man, not in the traditional sense, but Iwasjealous that he got to be with her tonight while I was stuck in a Midwest hotel room. They were probably having sex right now. Sometimes life wasn’t fair.

I allowed myself to have a pity party for a few minutes, then consciously returned all of my focus to work. This Davenport situation was a mess. We thought we had this grocery chain acquisition in the bag, so to suddenly lose out to a bigger companysucked. It reflected poorly on me and Aiden.

I had been putting out fires since I arrived yesterday, scheduling meetings and making phone calls. We had to make a counter-move, and there were a few promising stores that were ideal acquisition candidates. None of them were as good as the chain we wereoriginallygoing to acquire, but we had to do something to get a foothold in the region.

But it was eight o’clock at night, and I had several more hours of work ahead of me. The coffee I had gulped down at five was beginning to wear off, but I didn’t want to go down to the lobby for another cup because then I wouldneverfall asleep.

I glanced at my cell phone, sitting on the desk to the left of my laptop. I wanted to text Jazz to see how game night was going. I didn’t want the two of them to forget about me. It made me feel like I was just a stand-in for Aiden, keeping Jazz occupied untilhewas back in town.

That’s not how it was. Logically, I knew that. But itfeltlike it.

I glanced at my phone for the tenth time in the past hour… and suddenly it lit up. A text from Jazz.

“Holy shit. Did I do that with my mind?” I wondered out loud before checking the message. It was a group text.

Jazz: How’s Iowa?

Me: It sucks. I mean the state, in general, is fine. But I don’t want to be here right now.

Jazz: I bet. I’m sorry :-(

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