Page 4 of Sweeter

Marley prods my shoulder. “That’s my thing! You can’t say it, as well.”

“But I’ve always said it!”

She throws her head back and laughs, her hair copper in the artificial light. “Okay, compromise? You say ‘what a time to be alive’ on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and I get the rest of the week. Deal?”

“Deal,” I say, because I want Marley Ellis to like me.

“Great. Now we have to get you out of here without starting another wine war.” Marley smooths her hands down her tight pink dress. I follow the line of her fingers along the flat of her stomach and across her hips. She turns slightly and I see the curve of her ass, soft and round as a peach. A throb runs down my cock and I shove a hand into my jeans pocket to hide the distortion.

“Your business partner isn’t around?”

I try to look serious and not like I’ve been staring at her ass. “No, he flew to Bali this morning or I’d have dragged him to the bar and let everyone pour their drinks onhishead.”

“Is he coming back?”

Marley’s skin is so white, I can see the lavender web of veins beneath it. I imagine her pale and glowing in my bed, the way she’d bruise if I fucked her too roughly, spanked her too hard...

I clear my throat, shove my other fist into my pocket. “I don’t know if Felix is coming back. This could have been his last fuck-you to Montana.”

Marley shakes her head. “Tech bros.”

“How do you know he’s a tech bro?”

She holds up three fingers. “He spontaneously flew to Bali. This catfish thing is exactly the right combo of computer savvy and gross. And he’s your friend and you’re a tech bro.”

“I’m not.”

Marley puts her hands on her hips. “What’s your app?”

I look at the linoleum floor. “Hellfire.”

Marley looks at me like I raised the antichrist. “Oh man.”

“You’ve…uh, heard of it?”

She laughs, but the sound isn’t bright and bubbly anymore. “Have I heard of it? Do you know how many bad dates I’ve been on since that app got diarrhea-d into the world?”

I want to joke it might have been worth it to end up here, but jealousy trips me on the way. I want to ask who the dates were, how they fucked it up, what her type is. Not me, I guess. Especially now I’ve dropped this bombshell. “Sorry if you’ve had shitty experiences. That wasn’t the plan.”

“Yeah, I read the New York Times article. ‘Hellfire: the Trojan horse of Tinder.’” Marley’s expression is stony. “You know helping men ‘Trojan horse’ their way into dating is creepy, right?”

I grimace. “Yeah, I hate the Trojan horse thing. Hellfire wasn’t meant to be so…”

“Gross?”

“Cynical. The idea is to get douchebags to put fewer shirtless pics in their profiles, not trick women into going out with them.”

Marley doesn’t look convinced, and why would she? Hellfire’s reputation is trash. At this stage, calling it ‘the Trojan horse of Tinder’ is a compliment. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t popular. Five hundred downloads a day, last time I checked.

“Sorry about your dates,” I tell Marley. “You can throw a drink at me if you want?”

“I don’t want.” She looks at me curiously. “How in the world of fuck did you invent Hellfire?”

“Helpinvent Hellfire,” I correct. “I don’t know. Me and Felix were screwing around, trying to get better Tinder matches. It was a goof, getting our pictures to change depending on whoever swiped right, but then Felix uploaded it, and ‘Hellfire’ took off like million bad idea rockets.”

Marley frowns. “Don’t be mean to yourself. I mean, your app still sucks ass, but it’s cool you made something that got so huge. Why did you call it Hellfire?”

“It sounded cool. I didn’t expect it to get big. Hardly any apps do.”

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