Insecure (Love Triumphs 1)

He looked at Dillon and they both did impersonations of carp, mouths dropped open. There were famous faces in this room and they were imposters. Jay had warned them it was going to get extreme in a different way when the money started to flow, but the true money didn’t happen till the next capital raising closed and that was another month off, and the truly big time—a stock exchange listing—that was years off, if ever.

Mace had a how did I get here moment while the waitress put their drinks down. They’d been so busy since they arrived it’d been all about the work. He’d not seen anything other than the glass walls of the new office, the shuttered windows of his apartment, the screens at the gym and the blurry scenery out the window of the car he drove everyday from home to the office.

San Francisco was thirty minutes away. He looked down the neck of his beer. Apart from the airport he’d never been there, but now he was sitting in a private club where the price of entry was tech stardom, drinking on the company tab. They were a long way from Buster’s kitchen table, a table he should’ve kept for sentimental reasons; it was where Ipseity was born.

“Disneyland,” said Dillon.

God, no. Did he mean go there? At least he hadn’t said Vegas. He looked up. Punky had slipped away. Dillon was watching him.

“Dude, it’s like being in Disneyland.”

Maybe Dillon wasn’t as drunk as he’d thought. Yeah, that’s what it was like, this club, these people, this town, the whole notion the two of them came up with an idea then built it and now they were on the cusp of becoming seriously fuck off rich.

“Gotta be enough,” Dillon said. More than either of their tiny minds truly could’ve imagined. “To wildest dreams.” He held out his bottle.

Mace clinked it with his and they both drank. They were going to make it, so why did he feel ground down, dissatisfied? He needed a kick to the head to adjust his attitude.

“Fuck this, we’re supposed to be happy.”

Mace put his hands up surrender style. “I’m happy. Not a thing to bitch about.”

Dillon laughed. “Fuck off.”

He shrugged. “We’re beyond exhausted. No wonder we’re weirded out.”

Dillon’s eyes were on Punky, halfway across the room, on her bright hair and tight arse. “I liked her.” He looked back at Mace. “You should never have let her go, dude.”

“I didn’t let her go. She ended it.” They’d had this discussion a dozen times. Never willingly on Mace’s part. “She moved on. Got her life back. I didn’t fit. Why are we talking about this?”

Dillon gestured at Punky, a stupid little boy lost look on his face.

Mace laughed. “You can’t fall in love with every chick you buy a drink for.”

“No, just the good ones. She was a good one.”

Did he mean Punky, who he’d known for long enough to exchanged spit, but not names, or was he still talking about Cinta?

“We have to fall in love with someone.”

“Why?” He made a similar gesture to Dillon’s to encompass the room. “Big freaking pond, a lot of willing fish. Not a lot of time.”

“Not a lot of time,” Dillon repeated, looking into the bottom of his empty bottle. “But too much to be alone.”

All right. This maudlin crap was over. He was done. “We’re going home.” He shoved Dillon till he stood, then walked him to the entrance. “Sleep for two days and we start the crazy again Monday.”

The cab driver had the radio on. Despite the cackle, Dillon closed his eyes and was asleep before they left the club’s drive. Mace listened to the newsbreak. Yesterday there’d been a shooting in a shopping centre in Cincinnati, eleven people killed. This morning a large fire burned in Texas, threatening homes and businesses. A manufacturer had been charged for poisoning the ground water of a small town in Nevada where birth defects were common, and there was a tornado warning for Oklahoma.

One bad news story after another. That’s what news was anyway, but he didn’t want to hear it now. He sat forward and spoke to the driver. “You mind turning that off?”

“Sure, honey.”

“Thanks.”

“The world can be a scary place, right?” she said. “But we never think anything bad is going to happen to us. And when it happens to you, well, then you wonder how you never noticed it all before.”

They rode the next ten minutes in silence, except for Dillon’s snores. They dropped him off, and too done in to walk the couple of blocks between their apartments, Mace kept the cab.

Outside his building he paid the driver and she smiled. “You look tired. Get some sleep, honey, and tomorrow you hug the ones you love, because you never know what might happen.”