Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 121916 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121916 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
“He’s such a dick.”
“The worst.”
“Have you seen Ruby yet?”
“Not since we drove here together this morning. She texted me she’s getting ready in some far-off guest room with Laila.”
“Yeah, Laila told me.” He arches an eyebrow. “So, how’s it been going with Ruby the Roomie? Mission accomplished yet?”
I flap my lips together. “We’re still BFFs.”
“Fuck.”
“On day one, right after Ruby got to my place, things looked really promising, man. In fact, I stupidly thought the mission was going to be accomplished that very night. But then things stalled after that, for reasons I don’t understand, and I haven’t been able to steer them in the right direction again.”
“What the fuck have you been doing every night for almost a week, when she’s been lying next to you in bed—singing her lullabies?”
“That’s the thing. She hasn’t been sleeping next to me. She got herself a goddamned air mattress. So now, it’s like we’re nineteen again, and she’s got a boyfriend, and I’m the depressed bestie who dropped out of college who visits her on weekends and sleeps on her goddamned floor.”
“How did you let this happen? What about the insomnia thing? I thought Ruby was going to cuddle you to—”
“She said she’d still help me with that, if needed. But I keep forgetting to fake insomnia because I’m having so much fun talking to her. It feels like old times, man. We talk and talk and never run out of things to say. I mean, that’s the good news and the bad news, I guess. We’re genuinely having fun together.”
Savage grips his newly coiffed hair for emphasis. “Did you not listen to me at all?” he shouts. “I told you to make things sexually charged. I told you to—”
“I did! Savage, I swear, I executed your plan perfectly, on day one. And it was totally working. But then, I don’t know, everything just kind of went straight back into the friend zone from there, and that’s where it’s stayed.”
He sighs. “Tell me exactly what you did on day one, when you were cooking with gas. Tell me every fucking thing.”
“Dude, I was a Jedi Master. When she first arrived at my place, I had my fridge stocked with all her favorite foods, and I had bouquets of her favorite flowers sitting nice and pretty on my—"
“What the fuck? No, no, no! I asked what did you do to seduce her, ya dumbfuck, not romance her.”
“I was getting to that.”
“We’re not at the romance stage of the plan yet, remember? We’re at the seduction phase. The fling-as-endgame phase.”
“I know that.”
“Obviously not. Kendrick, Ruby likes bad boys she has to chase—a guy who needs fixing and taming. Not a golden retriever on a fucking leash!”
I scowl. “I’m not a golden retriever, and I’m not on a leash.”
Savage snorts. “Yes, you are. To both. For Ruby you are, anyway. Now, don’t get me wrong, that girl adores that about you. But it’s what makes you her bestie. If you want her to actually want to fuck you, though, then you’re going to have to be a Doberman—the same way you are with all the other women you actually fuck. You have to think of Ruby as a tour fling and treat her accordingly.”
“I can’t do that. I don’t even know what that means.”
“Yes, you do. You treat tour flings like you don’t give a shit about them. At least, compared to the way you treat Ruby.”
I scoff. “I love Ruby, Savage. I treat other people differently because I don’t love them. Because I can’t love anybody but her. You think I haven’t tried? I have! To death. But it’s not possible, because nobody I’ve ever been with has even come close to making me feel the way Ruby does.”
He looks at me sympathetically. “I get it. I really do, man. But that’s all the more reason you need to stick with the plan and make her chase you, not the other way around. Fuck flowers. Fuck stocking the fridge. Seduce the girl.”
“Giving her flowers and all that was only the first items on my list. You cut me off before I got to the good stuff. Trust me, on day one, I was killing the Doberman game. I was smashing it.”
Savage crosses his arms. “Okay, tell me every Doberman-like thing you did.”
“Okay, so for context—"
“I don’t want context! I want bullet points. Seduction is war, remember? Tell me what weapons you’ve brought into battle.”
“Would you let me talk, for fuck’s sake? Jesus.” I gather myself. “You know my lyrics journal? Ruby saw it on my hotel bed in Vancouver, right after my birthday party, and she briefly glimpsed this long, crazy-ass song I’d written about her.”
“Shit. A love song?”
“Basically, yeah. Thank god, I snatched the book away before she read anything but the title.” I smirk. “Which she misread, by the way, thanks to my handwriting.” I snicker. “She thinks I wrote a song called ‘Spank,’ when actually it was called ‘Spark.’”