corner, drinking beer and watching the show with my new neighbors and their… friends. Around two a.m., beer turned into shots of tequila—a lot of them—and somehow I’d managed to stumble home shortly after the sun had come up.
The only thing I knew for certain was that I hadn’t slept with any of those chicks, but Gil and Gavin had. In fact, Gil and Gavin had double-teamed the exuberant brunette right there on the couch. Based on her pleading and excited squeals, she’d been quite content to be filled to the brim, and none of them seemed bothered by an audience, so I hadn’t bothered to get up.
Now, I wished I’d had the sense to take ibuprofen before I’d passed out on my couch a few hours ago.
Remembering I’d left the ibuprofen in my office, I stumbled in that direction. The light was on, which I didn’t remember doing, and my laptop was open. After grabbing the bottle from the top desk drawer and shaking two out, I touched the track pad to wake the computer, then stared down at the screen.
Chapter One
It was a cold winter night. Three women naked. No, wait. Make that four women. A pussy-licking orgy on one side, double penetration on the other.
Okay. What the fuck had I been thinking?
Cold winter night? That flat-out sucked.
Now, the pussy-licking orgy… That wasn’t a bad storyline, though I would’ve had to do a hell of a lot better than twenty-six words. Especially if I’d had the crazy notion that that had the makings of a novel.
Apparently, I’d mistakenly thought I could write in my inebriated state, which explained the bullshit I was looking at now. Pressing the delete key, I watched the words disappear as I shook my head.
I needed coffee. Desperately.
Popping two ibuprofen in my mouth, I downed them without water, hoping like hell they would kick the hangover and right my world before I did something stupid. Like attempt to write again. If that was what I’d resorted to writing while intoxicated, I probably needed to lay off the alcohol. Or lock up my laptop.
Or both.
Making my way to the kitchen, I flipped on the light, then flipped it off again when my head screamed at me.
“Meow.”
Peering down, I saw Cat padding out from the laundry room.
“Hope you had a better night than I did,” I told the cat, not expecting a response.
Cat rarely paid any attention to me unless he was hungry or his water bowl was empty. Sometimes I wondered if Abby was right, that Cat was pissed because I hadn’t bothered to give him a real name.
I trekked into the laundry room to find his bowls turned upside down—which was his way of telling me I was a shitty human. I didn’t even want to check out my closet because the last time I’d forgotten to feed him, he’d clawed up two of my T-shirts and hacked up hairballs and left them in my shoe.
Grabbing the food from the cabinet, I filled one bowl and set it on the floor before adding water to the other.
“There. You’re all set. Leave my clothes and my shoes alone.”
Back in the kitchen, I stopped beside the coffeepot, grabbed a clean mug hanging on the rack above it, but before I could get the coffee grounds out of the cabinet, my gaze slid over to the center island, where a black, leather-bound notebook with cursive lettering scrolled across the front sat. It was the one Abby had given me two weeks ago for my thirty-sixth birthday. Beside it, a pen.
I smiled, remembering the way Abby’s glittering green eyes had lit up when I’d unwrapped the gift.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked, smiling back at her, trying desperately to hide my confusion.
“You’re s’posed to write a book in it. What d’ya think?”
Now, as I stared down at it, I flipped open the front cover, reading the choppy block letters scribbled across the first page. Not for the first time, I wondered what had spurred Abby to want me to write a book in a notebook.
To Uncle Jake. I hope you write a best seller in this one day. Love, Abby.
Yeah, well … I hoped I wrote a best seller anywhere at this point. Fuck, I was game to cop a squat on the sidewalk out front with a piece of chalk if that would do the trick. I could picture it now, front page of the Austin American-Statesman: Best-selling author has psychotic break. The