Dirty Sweet Wild (Bad Billionaires 2)

“What is it?”

I looked at the ceiling again, feeling the burn of embarrassment crawling up my neck. “I need a blood test.”

Helen looked through the forms on her desk. “We can do that. What for?”

I cleared my throat. “STD’s.”

She had found the form, and she put it on her clipboard, her eyebrows rising. “You plan to become sexually active?”

She knew the deal, because doctors always ask that shit, no matter how humiliating it is to answer no. That was me. No. Four years of no. Now I had to humiliate myself even further. “I already, um, was.”

She blinked at me. “Max, are you telling me you had unprotected sex?”

“Maybe. Sort of. Yes.”

“With a man or a woman?”

Jesus. Could this get any worse? “A woman.”

“Okay. And are you in a relationship with this woman?”

I couldn’t admit that I didn’t even know her name. She’d never told me, just gotten dressed and walked out the door. See ya, she’d said. That was it. See ya.

“No,” I managed. “No relationship.”

“But this woman was on birth control, right?”

I scratched my beard. “Well, I assumed.”

Helen’s eyes went wide. “Oh, for God’s sake,” she said. She scribbled furiously on the blood test form. “I’m used to lecturing eighteen-year-old boys about this, not twenty-nine-year-old men.”

I closed my eyes briefly, wishing Hell would open up and swallow me right now. “You don’t have to lecture me.”

“Apparently I do.” She tore off the form with a brisk swish and handed it to me. “Take this,” she said, “and pray. Also, get in touch with this woman and ask for a medical history. Ask her to do a pregnancy test in three to four weeks.”

Right. I was going to call the strip-o-gram company and ask for the number of their hottest blonde, in case I knocked her up two days ago. “Fine,” I said, to get Helen off my back. I slid off the table and put my leg back on, then my jeans.

By the time I’d tied my shoes, she had rifled through her doctor’s cupboard of goodies and turned back around to me. “And for God’s sake take these,” she said, handing me two big handfuls of condoms. “And use them.”

“Jesus, Helen,” I said, looking down at the dozens of condoms in her hands. “What the hell? I’m not going on tour with a punk band.”

“Just take them,” she said, shoving them at me. I took them and pushed them in my pockets, the plastic packets sliding together, trying to slip out again.

“These will last me until I’m ninety,” I grumbled, stuffing them deeper into my pockets.

“Good,” she said. “Now get out of here, Casanova, and get your blood drawn.”

An hour later I was at the Shop-Save, paying for my groceries. I’d gone there almost without thinking, even though the Shop-Save was shitty, a little grimy, and depressing. Force of habit. Five million bucks in the bank, and I was still going to the same old places.

I pulled my wallet out of my pocket, the bored cashier looking on, and a cascade of condoms fell onto the floor.

Well, that was just fucking great.

The cashier, a girl of about nineteen, couldn’t suppress a snicker. The woman behind me in line wasn’t as amused. She was carrying a two-year-old boy, who was crowing and reaching his hands out, trying to get down so he could investigate the condoms on the ground. The woman gave me a look that said I was pretty much on her shit list.

I bent down and picked the condoms up, shoving them in my pockets again, my leg aching as I got down on the floor and then back up. The cashier was still smirking as she handed me my change. “Jeez, you’re popular, huh?” she said.

I didn’t answer. I just took my bag of groceries and left, limping a little now. I was done. This day was done. I had nothing else to fucking say.