Ignoring Julian’s glare, Nick folded his arms, his gaze flickering between Zach and Marcus. “Well, the thing about bets is that they should always be extreme on both sides. So betting that you can’t get a guy’s phone number is boring because Zach could do that. There’s no fun in it. Why not bet instead on Zach picking a guy up and having a fling with him for the weekend.”
Julian sputtered. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Wait a minute, Julian. Let Nick talk.” Zach couldn’t help it. He wanted to hear more of what Nick had to say.
“At least Zach will have a good time. But here’s where the good part comes in.” Nick’s eyes danced with laughter. “The other half of the bet revolves around whether you succeed or fail. If Zach fails, he has to let us fix him up every weekend for three months. Knowing how much he hates clubbing and dating, it’s a pretty good incentive to win.”
“You have an evil mind, Nick. I knew I liked you.” Marcus grinned and drank his mimosa.
“Hold on hotshot, I’m not finished. If Zach wins and has his sex-filled weekend?” Nick leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. “You, my man, have to remain celibate for three months.”
Julian sat silent for a moment, then whooped with laughter while Marcus spit his drink out, coughing his outrage. “What? Are you fucking kidding me? Three months? I haven’t gone without a guy for threedayssince before college.” With disgust, he peered into his empty glass and called the waiter over for a refill. “Besides, it’s stupid. Everyone knows, Zach would never agree to that. He’s too nice and not into flings. He’d lose and then be forced to come to the club, which he hates.”
Marcus’s words stung. “Don’t you think I can do it? Or is it that you don’t think anyone will want me?”
“Don’t be a schmuck.” Marcus’s eyes hardened. “Of course you can, but you believe in true love, not hook-ups.” Marcus made little quote signs with his fingers and smirked.
“You make love sound like a disease instead of something people all over the world hope for.”
“Not everyone. And since when did you become interested in meeting guys and having random sex? That’s not who you are.” Zach winced at Marcus’s harsh voice.
Given that Zach wasn’t so sure he knew who he was himself, why Marcus appointed himself knower of all things Zach Cohen was a mystery.
Zach considered Marcus, who was busy wiping his mouth. “Maybe I’ll surprise you.”
Sulking in his chair, Marcus huffed. “This is payback for when we were kids and I’d always get to the ice cream truck first, isn’t it?” He waited for the waiter to set the fresh drinks down. “All these years you waited for the right time and place to get your revenge.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Iam?” Marcus scoffed and gazed at him with speculative eyes. “I’ve never pretended to be anyone other than who I am. Can you say the same?”
Zach had no answer. What was he supposed to say—that he was tired of being a nobody? But if he stopped, would anyone even notice?
These thoughts and more ran through his mind the next day during the ride to Atlantic City. There were nights he wouldn’t have minded a simple hook-up, if only to hold someone close in the dark. He wanted to be kissed by a lover. Not that he hadn’t been kissed by various men, but the rapid press of lips and hurried plunge of some man’s tongue in his mouth as a prelude to sex hardly passed for what Zach craved. He ached for hard, deep kisses; those smutty, filthy, feel-it-deep-in-your-balls type kisses that would leave you breathless for hours.
He’d never had them, but he knew they existed. However—Zach shifted in his seat as the hotel towers along the Boardwalk came into view—finding someone to trust not only your body with but also your heart had proved elusive for him. The affair with Nathan had made trusting another person with his heart an almost impossible dream.
Hiding away in his basement, talking to men online had become his norm. Zach knew he had a problem. Years of put-downs and humiliation will do that; when you’ve been told no one would want you, that you’re boring and nothing special, eventually you believe it.
And maybe Marcus was right. Not everyone was destined for the happily-ever-after life of love; he’d thought he’d found his soul mate in Nathan, but had been soundly kicked in the teeth by his cruel, parting shot.
“You’re just…not there. Sometimes I forget you’re even in the room when we’re together. I need someone to have fun with, not a goldfish swimming around in a bowl, staring at me.”
Hurt beyond belief, Zach had no idea Nathan harbored such resentment toward him.
“Why did you stay with me?” Immediately Zach regretted asking.
“You give good head, and you were always there whenever I wanted to get laid.”Nathan had hefted his backpack over his shoulder.“I’d be an idiot to turn it down.”
There were other, more insidious ways Nathan had hurt him, imprinting themselves like a permanent scar on his heart, but those Zach buried deep, incapable of letting the hurt and humiliation see the light. He’d never told anyone the extent of his shame.
And since then, he’d allowed himself at the most a few dates with a man before moving on, unwilling to risk getting close. By cutting off intimacy, there was little chance of getting hurt again. At least he was the one in charge. Maybe Julian and Nick were the anomaly, and Marcus’s single life was the way to live.
The car pulled into the curving drive in front of the Tropicana Hotel on the Boardwalk, and Zach steeled himself to face the crowds. He’d accepted the invitation to the Next Big App conference to award the winner of their app design contest the prize, also agreeing to moderate several panel discussions. Normally he hated these social events; they’d always made him feel awkward and inept, but the promise he made to himself—that this weekend he was going to try and be a different man—bolstered his resolve to push forward and transform himself from computer geek to a more self-confident Zach.
After all the years spent watching Marcus and Julian, Zach had the behavior well memorized. He’d spent his youth in Marcus’s domineering shadow, crippled by shyness and inadequacy. It didn’t matter to Zach that his mother told him how smart he was, and how proud his father would’ve been that he’d skipped two grades and would graduate high school at sixteen. Nothing could change the nerdy little kid with glasses; the one who always knew the answer to the hardest math problem, but not how to get picked for teams at gym.
Marcus could only help him so much.
