hurrying to get to the office, thinking I was going to be there, waiting for her.
I sent her more than enough money for breakfast.
Back in the bedroom, I stared at Maggie for a few minutes.
I slowly pulled the covers down her back, over the curve of her ass.
My fingertips touched the back of her right leg and moved down to her inner thigh. When I grazed her warmth, her ass jumped up and she groaned.
“Cole?” she purred.
I leaned over the bed and dipped my fingers into her pool of wetness.
“It’s just me, darling,” I said. I kissed the middle of her back. “You need to get the fuck out of here. I have to go to work.”
Maggie reached with her left hand and touched my dick.
I sucked in a breath and watched her hand try to grip me.
She tugged at me and moved up on her knees.
My phone vibrated.
A text from Maya.
Waiting for a ride. See you soon!
Maggie stroked my dick while I stared at the message.
My eyes glanced over to Maggie’s ass sticking up in the air.
My fingers plunged into her pussy.
She groaned into the pillow.
For a second I thought about pretending Maggie was Maya.
Now that would be wrong.
And even an asshole like me had some sense of morals…
Chapter Three
Maya
Three words.
Longest. Day. Ever.
I showed up to the office and the cleaning crew was still there.
It wasn’t the first time that happened. In fact, it happened so many times, I kind of got to know them. There were a few times I even asked about their hours and pay, wondering if I would be better off cleaning the office than working in it.
Cole was the worst.
That whole Elevator Guy routine? That was more of a dream than anything else.
I had to sleep with my phone next to me, turned up to full volume, just in case he came up with some crazy idea and needed me.
As far as texting me at four in the morning… yeah, that was normal.
My best guess was that he was out all night, drinking, probably with a woman in his bed as he texted. Cole worked in real time. He would think, text, and expect me to act. Then when it came time for him to act, it was my job to make sure the idea was good enough to do.
I drank a gallon of coffee and got all the stuff together Cole needed.
He looked at it for literally thirty seconds and threw it all out.
Then he told me to leave his office.
All that work for that.
To make matters worse, when I left and went home, the smell…
Wait.
My roommate.
I was left with no choice but to have a roommate. The city was expensive. I wasn’t making a living as a writer. Far from it. So I had to find a place to live. That meant taking anything I could get.
Enter…
Beverly Bush.
No, that’s not a joke or nickname for her.
Her name was Beverly Bush.
But the best part was that when she introduced herself, she said ‘My name is Beverly Bush, but I don’t have a bush… too itchy.”
It was her version of a joke to take attention off her name. And it worked. Because from that moment on, I pictured her with a gigantic, Brillo-like bush…
Bev (as I called her) had a dream to sell shirts.
She wasn’t a fashion designer at all. She just liked to make shirts.
T-shirts with pictures and sayings on them.
She had a machine to print on t-shirts. She worked all day and all night, coming up with ideas. There was one time she had a company show interest in a shirt. They ordered a whopping one thousand t-shirts.
Bev couldn’t fulfill the order.
But she kept going.
Her dream was to get a warehouse to be able to print a lot at once.
How did she survive?
There was some kind of money coming in from her grandmother’s estate. An agreement was made that her rent and utilities were covered. Which meant her t-shirt revenue covered the rest of her bills.
Part of me was jealous of that.
I had no rich relatives - alive or dead.
There was a family story once that my late grandfather won ten thousand dollars on a scratch-off lottery ticket. He bought himself some new clothes, then spent the rest on booze and women.
So after the longest day ever, I got to go home to the mini t-shirt factory that was my apartment.
I opened the door and the smell of the ink hit me.
I waved my hands and coughed.
“Open a window,” I said.
“They’re all