Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Luke

It was lunchtime on Friday when my team leader strolled into my office. He looked as tired as I felt—we’d all had a really long week. The new higher-ups were issuing and reissuing impossible deadlines, and we were all feeling the crunch.

“Thank fuck the weekend is here, man. I can’t sit through one more meeting without saying something that would probably get me fired,” he said as he flopped gracelessly into the chair opposite my desk.

“Right there with you.” I groaned and loosened my tie. I flicked the top button open behind the knot and loosed the tie a bit more.

Summer was coming, and even in San Diego, where the weather was close to perfect most of the year, it was hotter than usual. The whole country was experiencing a heat wave, and I had a passing thought that maybe that was why everyone seemed to be at the end of their ropes.

Liam was a great guy. A hard worker and out-of-the-box thinker. He was a real asset to my team. We also hit it off on a personal level and often hung out outside the office.

“Are you going to finally come out with us tonight?” he asked with a new surge of energy in his voice.

“I was thinking about it. What kind of plans do you have?”

He rolled his eyes and gave me a deadpan stare. “Are you really asking?”

I laughed at his response and nodded. I guess that was a pretty dumb thing to have asked. All the guy ever wanted to do was drink and fuck, and with the stories I’d been hearing lately, he’d been doing plenty of both.

Liam hooked up with a girl at one of the clubs down by the beach a few weeks ago and introduced a couple of our friends to her friends. This would make the fourth weekend in a row of partying like they were back in school. My buddies seemed to be loving life, but honestly, it wasn’t a scene I was into.

During my college years, I pretty much got all of that out of my system. Since graduating and hitting the workforce, I buckled down and lived a pretty routine life. In the past year, all my efforts had started paying off. I had advanced to manager of the sales department for one of the leading advertising firms in the city. With the promotion came a ton of new responsibilities, but a nice fat pay increase made all the stress worth it. Even if it felt like all I did was work these days, I was pretty happy with the way things shaped up.

The one complaint I had was that I had no one to share it with. My extended family was still on the East Coast, where I grew up, and because I worked such long hours, I never had time or energy to get out and meet anyone new. It was to the point I was considering getting a cat from the local shelter just so I felt like someone needed me outside the building where I spent the majority of my time.

I sensed myself feeling jealous every Monday morning when the guys all collected near the coffee bar in our staff lounge and traded stories about their weekend escapades. From what I could gather, they were hanging out with girls from one of the local colleges, and I lost interest right there and then. What would a thirty-seven-year-old man have in common with a college girl not even old enough to legally drink? It sounded like a complication I didn’t need or want in my life.

Vocalizing those concerns didn’t stop the guys from trying to get me to come out with them weekend after weekend. Honestly, though, I was getting so lonely I was considering doing it.

Liam finally looked up from the phone in his palm, and the grin on his face told me he was texting the co-ed.

“So you in? We’re all meeting in the Gaslamp at nine. I’ll shoot you the address,” he offered while feverishly typing away on the device. “Damn, this chic is so hot. Look, she just sent me nudes.”

He stood up and came closer to my desk, but when he flipped his screen toward me, I looked away. I didn’t want to see what his girlfriend had to offer—especially if I had to sit across a table from her later that night.

“Dude,” I said with my palm extended. “Show some class—or the girl a little respect at the very least.”

“Are you kidding? She has an Only Fans account with more members than employees of this company. She loves showing her tits to anyone who wants to look.”

I shook my head. “Yeah, not my scene.” I turned toward my computer. Hopefully, when I looked up next, he’d have his phone back in his pocket.

“All right, I’m out of here. I’ll send you the address. I hope you actually tear yourself away from your houseplants or whatever the hell you do in that fancy penthouse of yours and come out among the living.” Liam walked toward my door, stuffing his phone in the breast pocket of his suit jacket.

“Yeah, we’ll see,” I answered, not sure why I couldn’t just commit. Something about hanging out with girls that young felt sleazy to me. I didn’t need the ridiculous drama that came with that age group or having to worry about some ambitious young thing getting starry-eyed hopes up about chaining me down, either.

Two years ago, my parents passed away within months of each other. My father was a wealthy man when he died, and I was the estate’s sole beneficiary. Even though I didn’t have to work as hard as I did, I always wanted him to be proud of my accomplishments. Plus, I had something to prove to myself.

I was more than my father’s money, and I wouldn’t put on the brakes until I felt established as my own man. It was important to me. Whether my peers could understand my needs or not, that was who I was at my core.

About an hour later, as I made my way through the rows of cars in the parking structure connected to our building, my phone buzzed in my pocket. As promised, Liam sent me the map location of where everyone was meeting. I grinned when I read the accompanying message.

Don’t be a loser. See you around 9!

I couldn’t come up with anything clever to text back, so I shoved my phone back into my slacks and unlocked my car. The ride home was miserable, of course. Traffic going north on the 5 freeway where it merged with the 805 was a damn nightmare at almost every hour of the day. At quitting time on a Friday afternoon? Words couldn’t describe the fresh hell created when so many cars tried to cram into the same space at the same time.

The last thing I wanted to do when I got inside my home was even think about leaving again. Many nights went the same way. I ended up ordering food to be delivered and sat on my sofa in my boxers with a plate on my lap.

Alone.

I flipped on the local news while I waited for tonight’s takeout to arrive. Before long, I was dozing on the couch just to be woken by the doorman from the building waiting in my vestibule with dinner.

I sprang to my feet, which had both fallen asleep from the odd position I napped in. When I took the first few steps, I instantly stumbled forward. Pins and needles tortured my legs from the knees down, and I broke my fall with outstretched arms.

“Fuck!” I shouted and rolled onto my back on the gleaming tile floor.

“Mr. Allen? Are you okay, sir?” came through the door.

Hustling to my feet, I gave a little whimper after taking a careful step.

Shit, that didn’t feel so good. Plus, how embarrassing.

As I pulled the one side of the double door open, Bobby, the kind doorman from downstairs, raised his fist to knock again.

“Oh, good. I heard a clatter and was worried I’d be giving CPR again tonight,” the man joked. Under his breath he muttered, “I gotta stop taking the night shifts.”

“Just clumsy. Sorry about that,” I apologized and reached for the white plastic bag he extended.

He was quick to accept the tip I offered and disappeared into the elevator before I could explain the cause of the commotion he just heard.

I set a place at my breakfast bar and unpacked the Thai food I’d ordered. I wasn’t very hungry but knew if I didn’t eat now, I’d be raiding the refrigerator in the middle of the night. Plus, there was still a chance—however small it may be—that I would be going out later, and drinking on an empty stomach was never a good idea.

Scrolling through social media while I ate, I was convinced I needed a cat. How sweet would it be to come home to a little fluffy ball of energy every night? The next few screens flipped by, and I stopped on an ad with a tagline that caught my eye.

Tired of being lonely?

“Why yes, yes I am,” I answered into the cavernous space of my kitchen.

There was a link beneath a picture of a successful-looking couple dressed to the nines for a night on the town. And nothing else. No other explanation or images, just the link at the bottom in familiar blue text that told me it was a live link. If I clicked on that combination of letters and symbols, I’d rocket through cyberspace and land on the company’s website.

I shoveled a forkful of sticky rice into my mouth and threw caution to the wind. With a quick click, my screen went dark and instantly refilled with an image of the same sexy couple and the company’s logo. Immediately I thought it was a cover for some sort of multi-level marketing scam and that I had just committed myself to months of spam email and unwanted solicitations.

A woman filled my screen next with sultry green eyes and the poutiest red lips I’d ever seen. What the hell was this?

“Are you lonely?” she purred.

I was transfixed.

“Have you tried meeting people just to be disappointed? Left wanting more? A real connection?”

Man, whoever designed this landing page knew how to hook a guy, that was for sure.

I clicked on the drop-down menu and my screen went black. Okay, not what I was expecting. After a few seconds, a montage of images scrolled by. Gorgeous woman after gorgeous woman, every color, shape, size, and age drifted in and out of focus.

What the hell is this? Maybe a call girl service…

The last thing I needed was to get mixed up with something illegal. I just landed this great position at a firm I basically never thought I’d advance in. On the other hand, this was my personal phone, so what would be the harm in just looking at what this service was all about?

Why couldn’t I be like other guys my age? Just let down my guard and cut loose a bit? Instead, I always had these damn inner debates where I talked myself out of anything that resembled fun.

So I kept scrolling and clicking through the site. Indeed, the company was some version of a call-girl service barely disguised as a dating service. Dating services weren’t illegal, but let’s call a spade a spade here.

There was no denying the women listed were stunning. At least four of them appealed to me in all the ways I’d want a woman to appeal to me.

My friends always teased me that I had too high of expectations when dating, but I saw it differently. I was at an age where I was looking for a lifelong mate. I’d had plenty of meaningless hookups at this point, and now I wanted to find a wife.

I finished my dinner and cleaned up the takeout trash and lone fork I’d used. No wonder my dishwasher was never full. It took a long time to compile a full load when I was chipping away at the goal one fork at a time.

Looking at that dating site really got me down. I felt like a lecherous loser even considering paying for a service like that, regardless of the professional presentation they’d managed to create. It still felt like prostitution in my gut, and that wasn’t something I wanted to take part in.

Who knew how they really treated those women, if they paid them fairly, and what the women themselves had to go through to put themselves in that position?

Yeah, I’d stick with the good old-fashioned meet-a-girl-by-chance method. If it was meant to be, it was meant to be. Right? My whole mood soured after that.

I texted Liam and told him not to wait around for me. I wasn’t coming. Then promptly turned my phone off and crawled into bed. There would be a string of messages from the guy when I turned it back on in the morning, all making me feel worse than I already did.

I set my alarm to hit the gym first thing before heading to the shelter. If I didn’t get a workout in early, I usually didn’t do it at all. The shelter shift I had scheduled started at nine, so I’d still get plenty of sleep.

Routinely, I volunteered at the local no-kill animal shelter near my home. I loved it all. Walking the dogs, brushing the cats, all of it! If I could just interact with animals all day every day, I’d be a happy man. Maybe I should’ve been a veterinarian instead of a marketing genius.

The shelter’s director had emailed me earlier in the week to ask if I could handle a group of volunteers from the local college, and I’d agreed. At least I wouldn’t be cleaning cages on my own.

On my own. Alone. The theme was getting a little too thick in my life. I fell asleep feeling sorry for myself and tried to think of new places I could go to meet people. Once my brain turned off, though, I didn’t move an inch the rest of the night.

When my alarm went off in the morning, I was refreshed and ready to take on the day. My attitude had improved with sleep as well. I’m sure the increased length of time spent away from work helped too.

Usually, by Sunday afternoon, I was just finding my groove again as a vital, ambitious young man…only to realize Monday was right around the corner, and I’d get beat down all over again. Something had to change. I couldn’t keep living in this pattern.

With those desperate feelings, I set off for the gym. I decided to walk since it was less than a mile from my penthouse, and the shelter wasn’t far beyond that. The weather was perfect, and the moment the morning sunshine hit my face, I felt a sense of renewal.

Today was going to be a great day. I had to keep repeating it to myself so the negative thoughts wouldn’t seep in through the cracks. It was a technique that usually worked, and by the time I hit the weight circuit at my gym, I genuinely felt good.

Now if I could just carry this feeling through the day, I’d be set.