“Got it!” he yelled, and she turned back to me.
“We don’t have much time. Hop into the shower and get ready—”
“What are you talking about?” I dropped my bag on the couch before going into the kitchen. I was about to grab something from the fridge when she closed it.
“I’m talking about your date tonight. Don’t eat, just drink.” She handed me a bottle of water.
“What date?” I took the water from her. “I didn’t agree to anything, and he didn’t ask.”
He’d demanded.
“You said over the phone he would see you tonight.”
I nodded. “He did. However, I never said I would.”
She sighed loudly before calling, “Mark!”
Rolling my eyes, I grabbed a bag of kettle corn and returned to the living room. Before I made it, Mark snatched the bag from my hands and threw it at Cleo, who threw him an apple, which he gave to me.
“Guys!”
“Felicity, are we going to ignore the fact that on your first night out fishing with us, you caught the Loch Ness Monster?” Cleo said.
“The Loch Ness Monster?”
r /> They lifted their hands and spread them wider to give me a measurement. I couldn’t help but laugh.
“You both need professional help.”
“I dated a psychiatrist once.” Mark shook his head. “Believe me, they are way more fucked up than we are.”
“Besides, we don’t just call him the Lock Ness Monster because he’s…blessed. But because he doesn’t exist in our circles, Felicity.”
That caught my attention. “What do you mean?”
“He isn’t a sugar daddy. But the women he’s been seen around are all the same: smart, pretty, successful,” Mark replied as he hopped onto the barstool.
“If that’s true, how do you know he’s…” I almost lifted my hands. Dear God, I’d been friends with them too long. “How do you know he’s blessed?”
“Thank you for asking.” Cleo grinned and raised her phone. On the screen was a grainy paparazzi photo of Theodore on the beach, and a rather large, thick bulge in his swim trunks had been circled and highlighted.
Holy… Don’t even, Felicity.
“Guys, I’m tired—”
“Are you really so afraid you’re going to enjoy yourself?” Mark frowned, his tone a lot more serious than it needed to be. “The reason we signed you up isn’t because we thought you needed a new purse or shoes.”
“Though….” Cleo started to say, but he gave her look.
“For years we’ve watched you work harder than anyone we’ve ever met, and honestly that makes no sense to me because you aren’t saving up for anything. It’s like you just like to work. You don’t go out unless we force you to. You don’t socialize unless we force you to. You work then come house, and when we’re gone, you do nothing but read. You’re twenty-four-years old, Felicity, not eighty-four. So tell me, what’s so wrong with having fun?”
“If you really didn’t want to do this,” Cleo whispered, placing her phone on the counter, “we wouldn’t force you. You know that, right? But it feels like part of you really wants to. So why stop yourself? There is a wild side to all of us. Why not indulge a little?”
Luckily, my phone rang before I could respond, and without checking the caller ID, I moved away from them to answer. “Hello?”
“I have a car waiting outside your place. The driver will bring you to me whenever you’re ready.”
“What?” I rushed to the balcony. The cool breeze felt refreshing on my skin when I looked down, and there he was, hat and all, in front of my building with a white Bentley behind him. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”