“Thanks for your wonderful vote of confidence. So it’s a he then. Who is this guy?”
“You already know him.”
And at that, everything around me began to spin and swirl: Perry, the pig, the tourists, the brick road, the Starbucks up on 1st, as a heavy hunk of lead settled in my stomach. It wasn’t the crab, it was that I knew who he was talking about, and that the person was also standing across the road from me, staring at me above the crowd of people and passing cars.
One ginger f**king head.
I dropped the phone and it clattered to my feet. Perry let out a little cry, trying to go for it while juggling the crab cocktails. I didn’t know if it was yet another phone broke and I didn’t really care. Because I was locked in a surreal staring match with someone I had hoped to never see again.
Maximus was outside of a bookstore, rain jacket on, white and orange plaid shirt peeking out underneath. He smiled at me, at the dumb f**king expression that must have been on my face, and started to cross the street.
“Oh good, it’s not broken,” Perry said, straightening up and peering at my phone, shaking it. “I think you lost Jimmy though. Dex?”
“We’ve got bad news,” I managed to say, still staring at Maximus as he sauntered over.
“What did Jimmy propose?” she asked. “What was the…the f**k is he doing here?”
Yup. She saw him too. I reached for her hand, as if we were preparing to meet a ghost head-on, but no ghosts deserved a punch to the nuts as much as this vag-burglar did.
“Howdy, Dex,” he said in his stupid drawl with his stupid lopsided grin. He nodded chivalrously at Perry. “Little lady.”
“Little lady? Who the f**k are you, John Wayne?” I sneered.
“Here to save the day,” he said, his legs wide apart, arms folded across his chest.
“The hell you are.”
“So Jimmy already told you, has he?”
“Told him what?” Perry asked. “What the hell are you doing here anyway? How did you find us?”
He shrugged with one shoulder. “It’s a small city.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, this feeling of unease spreading through me. It wasn’t just the unease of him here, of Jimmy proposing that we work with him, but that he had just found us here, randomly and at the right moment, which seemed to make it not random at all. Suddenly, it occurred to me that nothing with Maximus was random, and I had to bury that little insight away so I could concentrate on the greater threat.
“Dex, what’s going on?” Perry asked.
I shot her a quick look. “Jimmy was about to tell me that we can get the sponsorship if we add a third person to our party. Him.” I jerked my head in his direction.
Her eyes got big like saucers. It was a relief to know she felt the same way I did. Now that I knew that Perry and Maximus had slept together while we were…well, not talking…a part of me wondered if she still harbored feelings for him. And when I was feeling really insecure, I wondered if her reluctance to be with me was a cause of that. Even if she didn’t have feelings for him, his dick had been inside of her, and that made me want to go on a killing spree every time I was reminded of it. Such as now.
“You can’t be serious!” she exclaimed, looking horrified. That’s my girl. Keep at it, kiddo.
“Oh, I’m afraid Jimmy is very serious,” Maximus said. “And you two don’t have much of a choice. You either bring me on board or you’re out of a job.”
Perry shook her head. “No. This is ridiculous. Dex, Jimmy is always saying shit like this and it doesn’t stick.”
I sighed loudly, running a hand through my hair. Oxygen seemed rare at the moment and solid thought was escaping me. The universe was conspiring to bring Maximus Jacobs back into my life, and I couldn’t figure out why, other than that the universe had a shitty sense of humor and liked f**king me up the ass. Horny bastard.
“This time it’s sticking, honey,” Maximus said.
“Don’t call me that,” Perry sniped.
I glared at him too. “Don’t you act like you know shit all, dickweed, because you don’t know shit. I’ve been working with Jimmy for the past three years.”
“And yet here I am, brought in to be your saving grace.”
“How much did you bribe him to get the job?” I asked, not holding back. “How much?”
He rolled his eyes. “Right, because this is my dream job, chaperoning you two.”
“You aren’t chaperoning anything! Perry and I have agreed to nothing, and like hell if we’ll let you be a part of what we started.” My phone chose that moment to ring. I eyed it. Jimmy. Fuck.
“What?” I yelled into it.
“You hung up on me.”
“I dropped my phone. It doesn’t matter. I know what you were going to say. He’s right here. Somehow.” I squinted at Maximus over that last part. He smiled back at me. It was so f**king hard to get to him and so damn easy for him to get to me.
“So then you know. So what do you guys say?”
“I say you can shove this idea—”
“Dex!” Perry interjected, grabbing my arm. “How about discussing it with me first before you screw us both over.”
My mouth flapped open. “You can’t be seriously considering this!”
She looked at Maximus and back to me and nodded at the phone. “Jimmy said we have no choice. It’s either this or nothing at all.”
“She’s right, Dex,” Jimmy said in my ear. “This is your option. You either bring Mr. Jacobs on board as your, I don’t know, let’s call him a production manager, or you don’t have Experiment in Terror anymore. One choice gives you security and a sponsorship. The other choice gives you nothing. Or you can keep being a stubborn ass and screw your partner out of something good just because you and your ex-buddy have some old beef to deal with. What do you say?”
I say f**k you. I say no way. I say I’d rather cut off my balls and I love my f**king balls. But I looked at Perry, and even though I knew how much it would bother her to do this with Maximus, I also knew she needed hope in her future. I saw how desperate she was for that, how badly she needed something solid in her life right now, something more than just me. She wanted to have something be a constant when everything with her family and her mental health and her income was up in the air. She wanted something she could count on and I didn’t even have to hear her thoughts to know that.