Tattooed Troublemaker - Elise Faber Page 0,45

plunked my now-empty bottle onto the table. “I—”

Sam glanced over my head, talking to Lane rather than me. “Yup, within the last week.”

“Remind me why you’re here, barging uninvited into my life again?”

“Dude,” Lane said, brushing back his over-grown hair. We’d grown up in Santa Cruz, a beach community south of San Francisco, and if I’d learned anything over my life, it was that a surfer might grow older, might get a little gray around the edges, but you’d never fully get rid of the beach bum attitude.

And Lane’s hair was definitely beach bum.

Good thing he worked for a tech company, whose dress code was so non-existent that even the CEO dressing up for investor meetings meant trading his regular T-shirts for special meeting T-shirts—meaning they were stain-and-hole-free.

“Dude,” I grumbled. “At what age is a man too old to use the word dude?”

“A regular man?” Lane asked, faux thoughtfully tapping his finger to his lips. “Or a Californian man? Because you know as well as I do that dude isn’t just a word. It’s a way of life.”

I glanced at Sam. “How long has he been like this?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say since we were over Dallas,” Sam stage-whispered. “Apparently, he finished a big project just before we left and celebrations were in order.”

“Still not explaining why you’re here,” I pointed out.

“The project was more than big. It was almost a year’s worth of work and a huge deal for the future of the company.” He paused, waiting for us both to nod and make appropriate noises of approval. “Plus, we’ve let you brood long enough,” he said once Sam and I had done that. “And don’t even deny it. The whole world can see you’re wearing your Broody Brows. Put them away and let us save the day.”

That was what I was afraid of.

Lane was a force of nature on a bad day.

On a good day, after closing out a big project and managing to get me on my back foot by surprising me, and he’d be raring to go.

“I’m tired,” I said. “I’ve worked every day of the last month, and I just want to sit on this couch and watch . . .”

I glanced at the TV, frowning at what I saw was playing there.

Sam lifted a brow. “Gilmore Girls? You need a Rory and Lorelei fix, do you?”

I shuddered, grabbing the remote and shutting it off. “Hell, no, but also, how in the hell do you know their names?”

“Johanna likes it.” Sam shrugged. “I’ve seen a few episodes. It’s actually not—”

“Pussy-whipped.”

In fairness, Lane hid the sentiment in a cough.

Albeit, not very well.

“Okay, so your plan is to get blitzed, eat food that’s bad for you, and watch TV that has your cock shriveling up into your body?” Lane asked, after he’d fended off Sam, who’d reached over me and tried to sock him. For two men who were five and three years older than me, respectively, I was suddenly feeling like the mature one.

That was a sad, sad statement on the way of the world.

“Yup,” I muttered, leaning forward to grab the remote. I flipped through the channels until I found a replay of an old hockey game.

There, that should be suitably manly for Lane.

“Works for me,” he said while pulling out his phone.

“What are you doing?” Sam asked.

Lane held up his cell. “Instacart. We need supplies.”

I rolled my eyes but didn’t protest. If Sam and Lane were hanging around, we’d need more food than what currently occupied my fridge. “How long are you guys staying?”

“We fly out Monday morning,” Sam said.

So two days.

Good. Then I could go back to wallowing. I nodded, stood, and gathered the trash, the empties, bringing them into the small kitchen off to the side. No surprise, Sam got up and followed me, not saying anything, just leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest.

“What?” I muttered.

One brow lifted in answer.

Fucking annoying, intervening best friends. “I’m fine,” I said, shoving the pizza box into the trash with perhaps the slightest bit of extra force. It crumpled into a satisfying ball before I dropped the empties on top of it.

No buzz.

No getting lost in carbs and booze.

Nothing but my best friend and brother flying across the country because they were worried about me.

Fuck. I was an asshole.

But I already knew that, didn’t I? It was part of the reason I’d been trying to get drunk before noon. Pathetic. Useless—

I closed my eyes for a long moment, trying