This is bad. Even without the head injury we’re getting down to the wire. I charge $35,000 for a match, and Jules thinks he’s meeting the woman of his dreams this weekend. I can only hope she’ll decide to forgive me for whatever I did—and fast.
25Am I a T-Swift fan?
26And I’ve already determined that I’m not dramatic.
CHAPTER
TEN
As we head north on the PCH toward Long Beach, Max plays a neuroscience podcast calledThe Naked Neuroscientists—nerd alert. This particular episode about memory was obviously selected in my honor and Max looks like he would be taking notes if his hands were free, but all of the science talk makes me as sleepy as if I were drinking a glass of warm milk with cookies. Two minutes of mnemonics discussion and I’m out.
When the engine shuts off and the sudden silence wakes me up (how does that work?), all I want to do is go back to sleep or maybe drive back to Laguna with Max and admire the ocean view I was too busy to stop for an hour ago. Reality is too much. “Ugh.” I rub the sleep from my eyes and groan. “I still have to find Crystal.”
Max opens the door and gives me a hand out of the car. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Max, should you be worrying about your project, too?I’m glad you’re working for me, but I don’t want you to lose your career, if you need to…” I trail off because it’s not like I know what he should be doing.
“No. This is where I want to be.” He offers me an arm to help me to the back door, either because I look too sleepy to walk or because he wants to be close.
I might not know my own mother, but I know I’m not a person to question a win-win situation. Thank you, Max.
As we pick our way through the lamplight to the back door, Max drops a bombshell. “Mia, I hate to say this but do you have anything else to wear? That dress, it’s pretty, but…”
While he disarms the alarm system, I smell my pits. I still smell mostly like whatever designer perfume I put on prehead injury, but there are some strong base notes that aren’t quite floral.
“Don’t get me wrong, it looks great. I think you got some coffee on it earlier, though, and I don’t know what that is,” he says, pointing to a smear of something along the hem, blood.27
He’s right. I’ve been working this cocktail dress a little too hard. It’s remarkably resilient fabric but it’s not made out of yoga pants. “I don’t have anything else.”
“No problem. JP has a dry-cleaning service. They’ll do it overnight. You just have to message them.”
Wow—perks of being a billionaire. Crystal’s giving me a headache, but the rest of this gig is pretty sweet.
“Mind if I grab one of those for the night?” I ask, pointing at Max’s mountain of T-shirts on the couch.
“Go for it.”
Max’s T-shirt features a picture of a guy dribbling a brain like a basketball and the sloganNEUROSCIENCE. GET IN THE GAME! “Do you play basketball?” I ask.
“Departmental team,” he says.
All those nerdy lab geeks playing basketball. I clutch my heart at the vision of their awkward hooping.
I settle on the couch in Max’s T-shirt, which smells like him—Old Spice deodorant, laundry soap, and a hint of something that must be pheromones because I want to bury my face in it.
Gotta snap out of it, though, and think about my “real” life.
I backtrack through Jules’s files in my GoldRush app. According to his “ideal mate survey,” he wants a woman between 5’9” and 5’11” who plays the harp, plus some other equally absurd qualifications. Was he joking?
Maybe there’s a harp-playing Crystal lookalike on Craigslist? I think it’s a long shot but my first search is a fucking B.I.N.G.O.
Beautiful princess lookalike for birthday parties! Elsa, Ariel, Snow White, Cinderella, Jasmine, Mulan, and Tiana.
“OMG Max, I figured it out.” I explain my stroke of brilliance. “So all I have to do is decide which princess Jules is the most into.”
One of the princesses even plays the harp. A birthday (or date, hopefully!) can include:
¦Balloon art
