Edgar Lorne left as quickly as he’d come and we watched him walk purposefully away, protection on all sides.
“What do ya want to bet those guys are trained to whisper into his ear to get him out of boring conversations?” I asked.
“I’d bet, but I probably wouldn’t get ‘great returns’ on it,” Keegan said, rolling his eyes. “Come on, let’s find that pool.”
As we continued down the path, he rubbed his hands together. “Man, I’m getting hammered tonight.”
“Is your girl going to be fine with that?” I asked. Keegan and Jules had started going out five or six months ago, but I’d only ever heard her name. What kind of dynamic they had together was yet to be seen.
He waved me off. “Man, Jules is cool. She parties. And she’s hot. Just wait ‘til you see her.”
I could already imagine. Keegan’s type tended to be unbelievably gorgeous yet also completely unbearable. But typically he ditched them after a few weeks, a month at the most. Sam’s disease was spreading.
“Can’t wait,” I muttered.
“Besides,” he continued, “we aren’t going that hard this week.”
“Hey, you don’t know how it’s gonna go. They didn’t expect to go that hard in The Hangover.”
Keegan snorted. “Didn’t Zach Galifianakis drug them though? I think we’re good.” He glanced at me. “Unless you got plans you want to let me in on?”
“Nah, nothing like that. All my drugging is consensual.”
“Creepy, but okay.”
“Feck off. You know what I mean.”
“I actually don’t.”
“Anyway, none of you better pussy out on the bachelor party. We have that at least.” It came out a little more surly that I’d wanted it to, but screw it. I was never one to keep my opinions bottled up.
I wasn’t looking at Keegan as we walked, but I could hear the frown in his voice when he said, “When have you known any of us to pussy out?”
And, because once I started, I always had a hard time stopping, I heard myself say, “Sam seems to be pussying out of the Knights.”
Keegan didn’t answer as he tried to work out what I meant. For a genius merchandiser, he sure could be dense. “Wait, you don’t mean because he’s getting married do you?” he asked like it was some kind of revelation.
I snorted. “What the hell do you think I mean?”
Keegan shook his head. “That’s ridiculous. He can still have friends once he gets married.”
Goddamn. How could some people be so clueless?
“Right,” I said, hearing myself getting heated but not really caring. “That’s what they always feckin’ say. And then it turns into ‘Sorry mate, but we’re staying in tonight’ and ‘Dude, we just had a kid’ and then that bullshit morphs into ‘Why don’t you get a girl?’, acting like I’m the crazy one when I’ve stayed the same and they’ve lost their damn mind. And then, then, they got the gall to be shocked when she fucks their brother and jacks their Harley.”
Keegan was silent for two beats. “Is this a personal story?” he asked.
Shit.
“No,” I said flatly. “It’s a prediction for the goddamn future. Nothing good is going to come out of this wedding, and as far as I’m concerned we’re shite friends for letting it happen.”
He considered my words. Then asked, “I have a girlfriend. Does that mean I’m pussying out too?” There was a challenge in his words and I could tell he didn’t agree with my views on Sam and Beck. But whatever. Screw him too. They’d all see I was right in the end.
“No, but you’re toeing the line,” I said, stopping on the path and turning to him. “Here’s my advice. Get the most outta her pussy and throw her to the side. The minute she brainwashes you into putting a rock on her finger is the day you might as well shoot yourself in the head.”
“You’re a real dick, you know that, Mac?” Keegan was angry and towered over me with his fists clenched by his sides. “If you’re so against this wedding, why the hell did you come here in the first place?”
“Still hoping someone is gonna listen to me,” I said. I turned back the way we’d come. “You go ahead,” I said. “I’m going to find a bar.”
“Yeah, maybe you should have gone with Twain,” Keegan said after me as I walked away. I could see from the look on his face that this conversation was going to find its way back to Mason. But whatever. That pansy couldn’t touch me.
I tried to swallow the anger I felt toward Sam and Keegan and really the whole lot of them. A drink would be good. Or, even better, a fuck.
“Better yet, a drink and a fuck,” I reasoned out loud, earning a glare from a passing couple with their kids. I must have looked insane, standing there alone talking to myself. Maybe I was. Or, more likely, maybe the entire world was going fecking crazy.
When you paid top dollar for the top resort in the top location, any need you wanted satisfied was never much further than a discrete phone call to the right person. Drugs, girls, a orangutan on a unicycle juggling pies — if you wanted it, you could get it and be given it with a smile on the face of whatever poor sap had to clean up all the pie when you were through.
I wasn’t one for girls you had to pay for. (Only in the strictest sense, of course. I’d definitely shelled out way more than necessary on bottle service for chicks and their friends.) There was a convenience in hookers, I’d been told by some guys around the Tempest. Call a number, get laid. But I could do that with a list I kept on my phone and have a girl that actually wanted to be there and (probably) wasn’t going to give me crabs. I didn’t care what anyone said — everyone’s performance declines when it’s their job, no matter what the profession. It just takes all the fun outta shit.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t fly any girls in on this short notice so I had two options, seduce an available random or find that wedding chick and get to work.
Option one was more work than I was willing to do at the moment, so option two it would have to be.
I dialed the number she gave me, and she picked up on the first ring.
“Hello?” Her voice was honey-smooth.
“It’s Mac Walsh. I have a problem that I need you to assist me with.”
“Where are you?”
I told her.
“There’s an out-of-the-way bathroom near the Surf’s Up pool. Can you find your way there?”
I told her I’d find it and hung up. An out-of-the-way bathroom, huh? Not what I’d expected, but I supposed it was quicker than going all the way back to the room.
I figured I had time for a quick drink and ducked into a nearby tiki bar.
I ordered quickly. As I was waiting for my drink, I made eye contact with a pair of bright blue eyes in the mirror behind the bottles. I turned to look down the bar and saw, sitting alone at the end, the most striking blonde woman I’d ever seen.
I raised an eyebrow at her and she smiled coyly back before taking a sip of her martini.
Damn. Maybe I’d abandoned option one too quickly. This wedding might be a disaster on wheels, but I might want to just live full time at the resort. (Well, only if I didn’t have to worry about running into Edgar Lorne all the time.)