Chapter One
Mike
My best friend Reece and his broad, Gia, lived in a fucking palace.
I sometimes forgot how big the house was. All of us in our circle of friends were rich, but Reece was stupid rich. Richer than anyone I’d ever known, and that was saying something, since I was richer than anyone most people had ever known.
When I said stuff like that, people would think I was bragging. And I guess I was proud of my rise to billions thanks to my tech genius.
But really, I would probably brag anyway, because I was a boastful New Yorker. It was what we did. If you were a kid from Brooklyn who made it anywhere in this world and you were not bragging, then I’d say there was probably something wrong with you.
Most Americans, as far as I knew, didn’t tend to have stately mansions as homes, and in New York, they were even harder to come by. The best I had managed to do in my 20’s was a three-floor condo on the Upper West Side. To get a detached house anywhere near Manhattan required next level wealth, which I hadn’t acquired until my 30’s.
Reece had all that, and even more, but the kid was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, thanks to his grand-dad’s money. Mine had been made the “new money” way: with the sweat I poured into my keyboard as I coded.
Once I got to Reece’s huge house, I handed the keys of my Ashton Martin to the valet and made my way up the stairs, turning my collar up against the gathering autumn cold.
I was always happy to see Reece and the guys, but these particular circumstances were a bit weird. I had never been to a baby shower before. The way I understood it, they were supposed to be female only affairs, the “baby rabies,” as my sister SISTERNAME referred to that stage where every woman wants to have a baby, just dripping off the walls.
Not that this was a bad thing, mind you. I ain’t no sexist. I’ve been to many male-only gatherings and thought baby showers were usually female-only, is all. I’d just never heard of such a crossover — a co-ed baby shower — and wasn’t sure how it would work.
I didn’t know much about babies. It had been so long since I had been one and, as a single guy doing my best to avoid having a baby, I wasn’t really that interested in learning about them.
I just hoped there would be booze. If I couldn’t hide out at home and be depressed, like I was used to doing these days, then I could at least drink and be depressed.
“Jäger is on the table,” Reece said, taking my coat.
“How did – ”
“Lucky guess,” he said, heading for one of his many bedrooms.
“Thanks,” I said, heading for the drinks table a bit too quickly to be dignified.
I hurried to get myself good and drunk, so I would feel less out of place, and also so that I would have liquid courage to successfully dodge – or answer, if I had to – all the questions I was anticipating people would ask me. Everyone had been really worried about me lately. And some people were just fucking nosy.
I don’t know what the medically recommended number of Jäger shots was, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t thirteen.
“Don’t,” my good friend Simon said, literally covering the bottle to stop me from pouring number fourteen.
“What are you – ”
“Stopping you from making an even bigger mistake,” he replied.
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” I said.
“Are you still, you know, down in the dumps?” Simon asked.
That was one way to put it. It was quite a nice euphemism, if you really thought about it. I sometimes did feel as if I was in some garbage pile somewhere, no one noticing me down there as more trash continued to be dumped on top of me.
Simon knew better than to go into specifics. Particularly about my “On The Go” app. That was more than could be said for others.
It was part of why I was relieved to see that Derek hadn’t shown up. He was asking me nosy questions.
It had been a brilliant idea. Basically, it was a celebrity tabloid meets Wikipedia meets Snapchat meets Facebook’s or Yelp’s “Check In” feature, in which people could tag themselves out and about with whomever they happened to be cavorting with, and dish the dirt on themselves and others.
It was like Facebook without the shame. And more popular, too, as it turned out everyone liked to pretend they were online “social media influencers” and famous in some way or another. I should have made millions but She Who Shall Not Be Named stole it out from under me – cut me out of my own invention, despite the fact that I fucking programmed it from the ground up.