I roll my eyes. “Kitty, no offense, but you’re batting zero as far as I’m concerned. Theonetime I begged you to set me up with a certain someone, you refused and said it wasn’t a match.”
Kat scoffs. “Because you were a slut.”
“Whatever.” I roll my eyes. “The point is, Henn, you gotta let me pay you, man. Please. I’ll feel like a douche otherwise.”
Henn shakes his head. “Would it make you feel any better to learn I recently got paid a mint for a job I did for Josh and Jonas in Vegas? I can afford to do thispro bono.”
“Henny’s amill-ion-airenow,” Kat says proudly.
“Holy shit,” I say, flabbergasted. “Josh and Jonas paid you amillionbucks for a job?”
Henn shrugs. “It was a big job.”
“What was it?”
“Saving the world,” Henn replies.
“From the evil empire,” Kat chirps, and the two of them chuckle.
I can’t tell if they’re yanking my chain or what the fuck they could possibly be talking about if they’re serious, but all of a sudden, I’m too excited to care. “All right, then, cool. Thanks so much. You really think you can find her?”
“I don’t see why not,” Henn says. “If she’s a flight attendant who flew from L.A. to Seattle on the day in question, then it’s only a matter of time before I find her.”
“Well, she’s either a flight attendant or she’s got some seriously fucked up fashion sense,” I say.
We all laugh.
“Don’t worry, I’ll find her,” Henn says. “Fair warning, though, it might take me a while to get going on your job—I’ve got a bunch of other projects already in the pipeline.”
“Oh, I totally understand.”
Kat looks down at her watch and her eyes pop out of her head. “Holy-I-Totally-Lost-Track-of-Time, Batman!” she blurts. She lurches over to the office door and swings it open violently, blasting the small room with the last bars of “Bailando.” “Consider this meeting officially adjourned, fellas. Josh is gonna be here any minute for a private grand-opening-celebration, and you two cock-blockers most definitely can’t be here when he arrives.”
15
Ryan
“I’ll put your food order in and be right back with your drinks,” the waitress says.
“Thanks,” I say. I turn to say something to the highly attractive woman sitting across from me—a mortgage broker in a little black dress whom I met earlier tonight at a real-estate-industry mixer in the bar downstairs—but for the life of me I can’t think of anything to say to her.Why the hell did I agree to grab a bite with this woman, again?After only ten minutes of sitting here in this restaurant with her, I’m already wishing I’d accepted Keane’s invitation to get stoned with him and Zander and play Call of Duty, instead.
“I love your tattoos, Ryan,” my date coos from across the table.
Shit. I can’t for the life of me remember if this woman’s name is Kylie or Kayla or Kiera and, at this point, it’d be too awkward to ask her a fourth time. “Thanks,” I say, and then (because my mother would cut off my balls if I didn’t reply to a woman’s compliment with one of my own), I hastily add, “I, uh, like your dress.”
Kayla-Kylie-Kiera glances down at her little black dress. “Thank you. I just got it yesterday.” She looks back up at me and twirls a strand of her dark hair around her finger. “Did I mention I’ve always had a thing for tattoos?”
I nod. Actually, she’s mentioned it, like, seven times in the space of an hour. “Do you have any?” I ask, simply because it’s too weird for me not to saysomethingto hold up my end of the conversation, as vapid and uninteresting as it is.
“No, but I’m thinking I might get one soon. Maybe an angel with a tear running down its cheek? I just have to figure out where to put it. Do you have tattoos on your torso, or just on your arms?”
Why am I not feeling this at all? She’s objectively gorgeous—so what’s my problem?“Um. I’ve got some on my chest and one on my left ribcage, too.”
She motions to the tattoo on my left forearm. “Are all of them pirate-themed?”
“Not all of them. But, yeah, a lot of them. I’ve got a big bottle of rum on my rib-cage.”
“Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of rum?” she asks.
