Page 96 of Promise Me Nothing
“Yup.”
“We drove for thirty minutes so you could take me to get donuts.”
“The best donuts.”
“Ah, well… see, you should have led with the word ‘best’ and I would have nodded in understanding,” I tease.
He smiles and helps me climb off his bike.
“So where are we, anyway?”
“Santa Monica. We drove through Venice Beach on our way here.”
“Oh yeah, I’ve heard of Venice,” I say as we get closer to the pretty pink building that looks to be filled with an absolutely obscene amount of sugar. “That’s the place with all the crazies, right?”
He chuckles. “Yes, though it really is a fun place to spend a day. The big cities along the coast are Hermosa, Marina Del Rey, Venice, Santa Monica, and then there’s a bit of a stretch until you hit Malibu.”
“Hey, that’s where Lucas is.”
Wyatt pauses. “What?”
“Lucas went to Malibu this weekend. He’s surfing in a charity event.”
He nods and opens the door for me, and I’m assaulted by the delicious smell. Our conversation halts as we bend over and peruse the offerings. I’m tempted to buy a dozen, but I know I’ll have no way of taking any of them home, and eating them all tonight just isn’t an option. So I settle on two. A long, twisty maple bar, and a round chocolate covered in coconut. Wyatt grabs a huge bear claw and a coffee.
Then we head to the tables in the back, a little courtyard with overhead fairy lights and wooden benches. It’s a quirky little place, and I love it.
“So what’s your plan for the weekend?” Lucas asks, ripping the paper bag open so our donuts have a makeshift plate. “With Lucas gone, I mean.”
I lift a shoulder and pick up the maple bar. “It doesn’t really matter. I work the entire weekend, so I wouldn’t have been able to do anything fun anyways.”
Then I take a bite of my donut, the tasty maple and sugary sweetness hitting my tongue in a burst. I close my eyes on a moan. “Oh god, Wyatt. This is amazing.”
I open my eyes again and find him frozen, his eyes heated as he watches me.
“Sorry. I’m a loud eater.”
He smirks, then bites into his own pastry. He nods as he chews, letting out his own noise of appreciation, then sets it down and reaches over to take a sip of his coffee.
“So what do you do, Wyatt?” I say, pulling another piece of donut off and popping it into my mouth. “Where do you work?”
He holds his cup loosely between his fingers. “Well, I used to work for a startup business in San Francisco. But recently, I’ve actually started working for Otto’s company.”
I shake my head. “I didn’t know he had a company.”
Wyatt’s eyebrows lift. “Oh really? He and Lucas are business partners. I just thought you would have known.”
I laugh. “Lucas and I have been trying to get to know each other, but there’s still a lot we haven’t gotten to yet.”
He nods.
“So what is it?” I stretch my legs out below the table. “The company, I mean.”
“It’s called Elite X. It’s a social club.”
I laugh. “I have no idea what that even means.”
Wyatt smiles over the brim of his coffee cup. “It just means we get people together to do stuff that they’re all interested in doing. Otto calls it ‘curated experiences’. That’s what the X stands for. But I guess the best way to explain it is that people pay us to give them an awesome time. We do group functions, like whiskey tasting at an exclusive club. Or small gatherings with celebrities. But we’re looking into expanding into travel experiences, because that’s what the market is looking like right now. And that’s where I come in.”
