My phone pings with an incoming text. “I just sent you a photo,” Crystal says. “Take a look.”
Jesus. But I do it. I look. It’s her, and she wasn’t lying. Her bikini is skimpy as fuck. Showing off her fake tits in all their questionable glory. Which isn’t doing anything for me. My martini goggles are long gone.
Another text comes through, with the name of the hotel and a room number. “So I’ll see you tonight?” she asks.
“I don’t appreciate being blackmailed, honey.”
She laughs, as if this is some kind of fucking joke. “I’m not blackmailing you, Gage. I’m inviting you on a fun little getaway. Did you really have plans for this weekend?”
As a matter of fact, I don’t. My brothers are both busy and so is everyone else I know. I can’t stand the annoyingly ritualistic family get-togethers that go along with holidays, so I generally avoid them. I prefer spontaneity. That way, I don’t have to be reminded of my own family’s horrific tragedies, which always feel more raw around this time of year. My mother died the day after Thanksgiving and my father killed himself a few weeks later. But I’m not about to tell any of that to Crystal. “Yes.”
She ignores this. “It’s eighty-three degrees, the water’s warm, the sun is shining and there’s rum on tap. Take a break from frigid Chicago. I hear a cold front is moving in.”
I glance out the expansive windows of my top-floor office. The sky is a dark, moody gray and the windows are flecked with icy rain.
Fuck it. I’ll retrieve my cuff links then catch up with my cousins. “Fine. I’ll see you tonight.”
The second my private jet touches down on the tarmac in Florida, I realize this is exactly what I need. A break from Chicago, the shitty weather and the non-stop drama. Three women are currently threatening to kill me, two are stalking me because they think they’re in love with me and one might actually have taken out a hit on me because all week I’ve had the feeling someone has been following me.
Whatever.
These things are a side effect of my lifestyle, which I don’t plan on changing any time soon.
They accuse me of being an asshole, a player, a commitment-phobe, a prick.
I don’t deny any of these charges.
At least they can’t accuse me of being a liar. I am what I am and I’m straight-up with them from the get-go. I tell them point blank I’m incapable of commitment. The mere thought of a long-term relationship practically gives me hives. Being with someone for more than a week makes me insanely restless and borderline insane, like a rabid caged animal. I tried it once.
This is possibly because I witnessed true love in its purest form in the relationship of my parents. They adored each other. To the point where it now seems like a once-in-a-lifetime kind of scenario. A star-crossed lucky score. They were careful and kind and thoughtful with each other. They laughed a lot. They had fun together. They respected each other’s eccentricities lovingly, almost worshipfully. Like they loved each other’s uniqueness far more than the normal details—my mother’s tendency to disappear into her work studio for days on end to create her wild, whimsical clothing designs; my father’s mad-scientist approach to investing his money and building houses and boats and gardens that were more than a little outrageous.
I’ve never seen a man so in love with his wife as my father was. But it only ended up destroying him. When my mother got sick, he went mad with despair. When she died, he just couldn’t handle it at all. So he hung himself with a short rope from one of the beams in our garage.
Luckily for me, I’m incapable of love so I won’t have to suffer the same fate. After seeing what it did to my father, I’m glad I’m incapable of it. Devastation on that level isn’t something I want to experience. I loved her too, of course. And I was also devastated, like we all were. But for him it was different. He just couldn’t fathom a life without her. He simply didn’t want one.
I can’t imagine adoring a woman, or caring that much about anything at all.
I’ve never felt even an inkling of adoration. Lust, sure. Affection, maybe, once or twice. But the whole topic of true love bores me to tears. Unlike my father, I’m far more likely to find a woman’s quirks crushingly annoying than cute and endearing. I can’t laugh at inane jokes that aren’t funny just because I’m into the person telling them—because I’m not that into them. Ever. Most of the time I don’t even like them. Every single time, all I’m thinking about is how to end it.
For better or worse, I don’t have it in me to love like that.
I’ve come to terms with my limitations. The word marriage gives me an allergic reaction and I’ve never felt any emotion even close to jealousy or possessiveness or a longing for more. I have no interest in anything more prolonged than a very temporary happy ending.
So I’ve accepted my fate as a bachelor and a player. I’m rich as fuck, I’m 6’3’’ and built like a porn star (their words, not mine, but I’m hardly going to argue). Because of my money, my status as an investment prodigy, my looks and my so-called style, I’ve achieved a certain amount of pop culture fame. I ranked fifth on People’s Sexiest Man Alive list last year and soon after that I was photographed for the cover of GQ, which did a feature on me. After that it was the Wall Street Journal, then Forbes. “The savvy of Warren Buffett meets the allure of a young George Clooney,” was the headline. Which made me laugh. I couldn’t care less about shit like that aside from the obvious perk of having women dropping their panties at the snap of my fingers because of it.
But right now I’m seriously regretting the whole thing with Crystal. My plan at this point is to get my cuff links and get the fuck out of there. She can blackmail me into coming to Florida but there’s no way in hell I’m spending the entire weekend with her.
I disembark from my jet. The flight attendant—a new one—smiles at me demurely. I wink at her and she blushes. Maybe on the way home I’ll give her what she wants. I walk over to my waiting car, pulling out my phone as I give the driver the hotel address and slide into the back seat. As we start driving, I call Travis.
“Gage,” he answers. “Good to hear from you, man.”
“I just landed in Key West.”
“No shit. Come to our show on Friday night. The venue’s location has been changed twice because the info leaked and they don’t want it getting swarmed. I’ll text you the address on Friday and I’ll let the door people know you’re coming.”
Friday is two days from now. “You in town tonight?” I ask hopefully.
“No, we’ve got a sold out show at Greensboro tonight. We’re still in North Carolina. We get to Florida at around noon on Friday.”
Damn. “How’s the family?”
“Good, man. Everybody’s good. When are you and your brothers coming to Nashville? We need a family reunion one of these days.”
“Yeah, we’re overdue.”
“I hear Caleb’s home. How is he?”