The Pool Boy

“You can if they ask you to not come back.”

I stare at him. “Wait, what?”

Mason sighs and pushes his fingers through his hair. “I got kicked out, Layla. I’m not going back because I’m not allowed to go back.”

“Jesus Christ, Mason! For what?”

He turns and smirks at me. “I hacked their system, and they didn’t really take too kindly to that.”

“You hacked your own ivy league college? What on earth for?” I blink. “And you can do that?”

“I’m… pretty good with computers,” he chuckles. “And I did it to try out this new online encryption algorithm I’ve been working on.”

I blink. “Really?”

“Yeah, it’s… eh,” he shrugs. “It’s boring e-com stuff.”

I roll my eyes. “Mason, who do you know who started, built, and then sold a multi-million-dollar e-commerce line of lingerie?”

He grins. “You want to see it?”

“Um, hell yeah?”

Mason chuckles and slips out of bed. “Then come on.”

“Where?”

“My place.”

I pause, biting my lip. “Oh, that…” I think of waltzing into the house of my twenty-one-year-old lover and saying hello to his parents, my next-door neighbors, and my face falls.

“My parents aren’t home,” he chuckles, like he’s reading my thoughts.

I blush.

“Feel like you’re in high school again yet?”

I giggle. “A little, yeah. Except I never snuck into a boy’s house in high school. I was a nerd,” I shrug.

Mason grins. “Same.”

“Yeah, but then you got fucking hot,” I blurt out, blushing instantly.

He winks and pulls me close, and I gasp when his hand slides down to cup my ass. “Look who’s talking,” he growls. “Now come on.”

Okay,now I really do feel like I’m in high school.

I’m sitting on Mason’s lap, in his bedroom at his desk, with his laptop open in front of us. I’m not super tech savvy, but I did start Layla Rose Intimates as an online-only store, and I know enough to know that what Mason is showing me is game changing. It’s incredible, actually. He’s managed to build what looks like the fastest, most lightweight, and safest online sales processing code ever.

“So, yeah,” he shrugs. “That’s my pet project.”

I blink, and when he turns with an expression of concern at my silence, I just shake my head.

“What the fuck, Mason, this is incredible.”

He shrugs, grinning. “Thanks. The goal is to finish it off and then see if Google or Shopify wants to buy it or something.”

“Mason, do you really get what you have here?”