Coding made sense in my brain. It came to me as easily as breathing. When I coded, I didn’t have to deal with the real world—I made the real world. I didn’t care about school anymore, though I still went sometimes and managed a passing grade. I didn’t care about how I looked or what I wore. I didn’t even care about girls—at least, not much. If I had my computer, I could do whatever the hell I wanted. I was free.
At fifteen, Aidan, Noah, Alex, and I all left home and got an apartment. It was cheap, and of course we had to lie to the landlord to get it—we got the janitor to swear he was Noah’s father when he signed the papers. And it worked. I left that rundown high rise and its bad memories without looking back. I moved in with my friends, and not long after, Ava started camping out with us. She was eleven, just a kid who didn’t want to be home with her uncaring mother, and I barely noticed her as I worked on my code day and night.
Years later, I noticed her. But Aidan was my best friend, so I never let on. Not until that night.
Now, instead of living in that shitty old South Side apartment, I walked through the posh lobby of my building, nodding politely to the security guy. I went down to the parking garage and got in my top-of-the-line Lexus, which I drove maybe once a week, and made my way through traffic to the Langham hotel.
Ava was standing out front. She had changed—now she was wearing a leopard-print dress that barely skimmed her knees and black high heels. For a woman who worked in an industry full of stick-thin women, she had Marilyn Monroe curves. One of the posh, gray-haired guys walking out of the hotel practically tripped over his feet when he saw her.
I opened the door and called to her before George Clooney Lite could make a move. “Ava.”
Her eyes widened and she came toward me, completely oblivious to the daddy figure walking off dejected to get a cab. “I like a man with a nice car,” she said, making her voice a feminine purr.
She was playing with me, I knew that, but the sound still traveled over my skin like an electric charge. “Get in,” I said.
She did, settling into the cream leather seats and wafting me with her sweet vanilla scent. She told me where we were going, but the words tumbled out like a foreign language. Definitely French, but I didn’t recognize anything she said, even though I’d spent the past three weeks learning French from my teaching algorithm.
“I have no idea what that is,” I said.
Ava rolled her eyes. “Of course not. It’s only the poshest menswear company in the city. I made you a measuring appointment.”
I started the car, punching the coordinates she told me into my GPS. “What is a measuring appointment?”
“An appointment where you get measured, Dane. For custom clothes.”
“I already know what size I am.”
“Are we doing this or not?”
Right.
We were doing this.
Ava and me.
Six
Ava
* * *
I sat in a stylish chair, sipping a glass of champagne as Dane stood in the middle of the room, getting measured by a tailor at one of the most expensive menswear stores in Chicago. All around us were racks of custom suits, ties, and shirts, as well as books of fabric samples. In order to get the most accurate measurements, the tailor had asked Dane strip to his boxer briefs. Dane had grumbled, but eventually he’d done it. So now I toed off my heels and flexed my sore toes as Dane stood in the middle of the room, nearly naked, his back to me.
“Are you having fun?” he asked, as if he had eyes on the back of his head and could see me lick my lips.
“I’m working,” I said, enjoying the view. I let my gaze crawl over his shoulders, the sleek muscles of his back, watching the mysterious ways they moved under his skin. I stared at the way his ribcage tapered to his waist, and then I fixed on the perfect shape of his butt beneath the black underwear. The tailor needed an arm measurement, and Dane lifted an arm, making everything ripple all over again. I took another sip of champagne.
“Are we almost done?” Dane griped.
“No, sir,” the tailor said, earning my gratitude. “We still need to do the waist and the legs. If you could please turn around.”
I quickly raised my phone so Dane wouldn’t catch me ogling him as he turned. “You’ve been working out, I see,” I said casually, scrolling through my phone numbers and acting as if the sight of him was almost boring.
“A little,” Dane said. I wasn’t looking at him, so I couldn’t tell if that was humor in his voice.
“And what else?” I said, as if I was making idle conversation and I wasn’t burning to know. “Contact lenses?”
“Laser eye surgery.”