“I was pissed off when I got to the beach last week after dealing with family shit for over two months. My uncle’s been bitching all summer about me taking this yearlong break, but I knew I needed it. When I got together with a few of my frat brothers before they took off to Georgia I told them I’d rather clean toilets at that shithouse diner on the cheap end of the beach than take over the company and deal with my uncle’s crap.”
“Christ, you’re a stuck-up, preppy fuck, Tarrington. That’s some nauseating bullshit if ever I’ve heard it. Your
frat brothers
?” Alex set the bottle in the sand and stuck his finger down his throat to simulate an act of gagging. “Do you guys hear yourselves? Just listening to that term makes me wanna puke my guts up.”
“They bet me ten thousand dollars I couldn’t last two weeks,” Matt said with a wince. “Like I said, I’m competitive. Two weeks of my life just to prove them wrong. It’s worth putting up with Frank and everyone else in that diner giving me shit.”
“Ten thousand dollars?” Alex repeated, suddenly very sober when he realized Matt was serious. “Someone’s gonna give you that much cash for lasting two weeks at Frank’s when I’ve lasted in that hellhole for the past four years of my life, and all I got for it is a raise to nine bucks an hour?”
Matt picked up the whiskey and mumbled against the rim, “Told you it made me sound like an asshole.”
Alex didn’t know how to feel about that. If he wasn’t drunk, he’d probably be pissed as hell about it. Will would’ve lost his fucking mind if he’d heard that, but all Alex could do was stare ahead at Holly and Melissa, laughing and giggling as they hung on each other, dancing together to a slow song lilting over the radio.
Matt was watching the spectacle too, his eyebrows raised in straight-boy fashion as if waiting for the two girls to kiss. Alex suddenly had the urge to throw sand in his face, because that always pissed him off, that straight guys had no problem at all with two women getting it on, but thought two men loving each other was an abomination against nature or God or whatever bullshit they spouted off to condone hate.
“You’re a republican, aren’t you?”
Matt turned to him in surprise. “Yeah, of course. Why?”
Alex didn’t
pretend
to gag that time; it was a genuine reaction to the casual confirmation that Matt stood for everything he hated. Alex crawled to his feet and swayed where he stood when he finally made it. He needed to get away from Matt before he punched him—or puked on his feet.
He’d never felt so worthless on so many different levels than he did at that moment. The fact that his job and his life was such a fucking joke to Matt and his frat brothers created a hollow, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, and Alex hated them for that. More so, he hated himself for letting them get to him to begin with.
Never mind the fact that God made someone that spoiled, with priorities that fucking screwed up, that unbelievably hot. The injustice of it all burned Alex to his core.
What was he thinking? Hoping to hit it with someone like Matt Tarrington. He was going to get himself killed. All straight guys were off-limits, but especially straight, republican, trust-fund brats with a fuckload of frat brothers who were bigger dickheads than Matt was. Alex knew all this, but he’d forgotten the rules.
He definitely needed to get his ass to Key West for an extended vacation. No more two-day excursions. He was going for a full week this time, and he planned to fuck his brains out until he stopped thinking with his dick and found some sort of common sense.
Alex pushed his suit down past his ass, having made the decision the moment he stood to go swimming. Both his temper and his libido needed help cooling off.
Matt frowned up at him. “What’re you doing?”
“I’m going swimming before I slam my fist into your smug face.”
“You asked,” Matt reminded him as he stood up and swayed as badly as Alex had. “And I told you it’d make me sound like an asshole.”
“I didn’t know you meant it!” Alex shouted back, feeling childish even as he said it.
Matt gave him a look. “Why would I warn you if I didn’t mean it? I knew it made me a stuck-up prick to take the bet.”
Already irritated he was letting this upset him as much as it had, Alex turned to stomp bare-assed toward the ocean without responding.
The girls squealed in surprise as Alex walked past them. Holly let out a wolf whistle once they got over the shock. Their giggles followed him all the way to the shoreline, but Alex didn’t bother to look back.
“I’m in,” Melissa announced behind him. “Skinny-dipping. I dare you.”
“Oh, hell, yeah,” Holly agreed.
Alex wasn’t surprised when Holly jumped on him a few minutes later. Her bikini was obviously abandoned somewhere on the sand. There was nothing but warm, sandy skin against his as she wrapped her legs around him and clung to his neck. He caressed her thigh, needing the comfort as he waded into the ocean.
The tide was high, and they dropped when they hit one of the tide pools, putting Alex into the water up to his waist. He ran one hand through his hair to push it away from his face while still holding on to Holly. He was drunk enough to make swimming dangerous, especially with Holly on him, but he still went for it.
He dived in, knowing Holly would expect it before he did it. The salt water stung his eyes, the surf was rough, but the ocean was his home. He swam out far enough to feel safe in the sea, alone with only Holly for company. Then his feet touched the sandy bottom, and he turned around, looking back at the shore, seeing that Matt had followed Alex’s lead by walking to the ocean—naked.
“Motherfucker.” Alex growled in annoyance.
Melissa had lingered near the shore, now as naked as the rest of them. She was saying something to Matt and even from a distance, Alex could see her eyeing him. He wasn’t at all surprised when she jumped on Matt the same as Holly had done to Alex.
“Posers,” Alex said bitterly.
“Hmm,” Holly agreed, still wrapped around him like a second skin. She stroked his wet hair from his face. “It’s a nice sight, though. You see what I see. It’s big enough to spy from a distance.”
Alex noticed, but all he said was, “Whatever.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Alex sighed because he didn’t want Holly to hurt like he hurt. He didn’t want her to feel like dirt on the shoes of the upper crust that used Mirabella Island like their playground and stepped on all the people who worked to make it such a beautiful place to live. “I think I’m turning into Will.”
Holly giggled. “You like girls now?”
“No, I just hate assholes like Matt Tarrington.”
“That’s too bad,” Holly said, her voice singsong in a way that made it obvious she was very drunk. “’Cause you may not be interested in what the full package looked like, but he sure was.”
“What?” Alex asked, turning his head to try and meet her gaze.
Holly giggled again and pressed her face into the curve of his neck as she said with stark amusement, “He was checking you out.”
“Bullshit.”
“I saw it, Alex, and he wasn’t even subtle about it.” Holly laughed harder. “Too bad you hate him now.”
Chapter Five
Matt had gone to class plenty of times still drunk after a night of partying, but he had never worked in a restaurant on a Sunday when the air-conditioning was as good as broken. By nine o’ clock the temperature gauge on the kitchen wall said it was ninety degrees, and Matt knew from yesterday it only got hotter as the day went on.
He could actually smell the beer bleeding from his pores, and he was reminded once again why partying was starting to get old. He should be in bed, not sweating his ass off in this kitchen. The food cooking just made him more nauseated. The coffee he kept drinking to keep him from dropping where he stood felt like acid in his stomach.
“You gotta eat, man,” Alex announced as he turned from the grill and put a plate on the deck next to Matt. “You look like you’re gonna puke all over these orders.”
Matt really wanted to tell Alex to stop talking about puking, because it wasn’t helping his problem. Instead he just grabbed the English muffin out of the four-slice toaster he’d stolen off his mother’s kitchen counter when he’d stopped by her place at four-thirty this morning before work. His mother was probably freaking out, thinking she’d been robbed by a very selective thief, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care. At least the toast wasn’t fucking burned.
He tossed it on the plate and put it up with the other orders. Then he hit the bell without checking the orders. He could barely decipher the tickets sober. Melissa appeared within a minute, looking as exhausted and hungover as Matt and Alex.
“Gimme.” Melissa grabbed the ticket and blinked at it and then looked at the plates. “This is supposed to be whole wheat, not English muffin.”
Matt groaned. “Shit.”
“It’s okay, baby. You got other skills.” Melissa gave him a lazy smile as she grabbed the English muffin off the plate and tossed it in the garbage. “Drop some whole wheat, and I’ll take the rest of this out.”
Matt actually felt his cheeks flame, and he wasn’t real sure why. He turned around and looked at Alex after Melissa left with the plates, hoping he hadn’t heard that. Alex just met his gaze and quirked an eyebrow, making it obvious he knew exactly what Matt had done once he’d walked Melissa home after they’d gone skinny-dipping.
It would have been easier if Alex said something bitter and cutting, but he wasn’t that kind of person. Instead he just ignored the elephant in the kitchen—Matt being a fuckface prick for being there—and kept taking up the slack for Matt’s incompetence.
“Have fun last night?” Alex finally asked as he worked in front of the flattop that had to be twice as hot as Matt’s position by the warmers and toaster. “Melissa’s pretty hot.”
Matt took a breath, trying to find the right response. Melissa was hot,
very hot
, and she was sweet and fun, and he supposed they had a good time together. He should just spew out the usual bullshit he delivered to all his other friends, but he and Alex weren’t exactly friends, and Matt was a little too hungover and tired to put the effort into the lie when the guy probably hated him.
“Do you give a shit if I had fun?” he finally asked.
Alex was quiet for a long moment. Then he turned around and put a plate of home fries next to Matt. “Put biscuits and gravy on that one.”
Matt did as told and placed it up on the deck as he blinked wearily. He kept trying to shake off the horrible feeling that had been clinging to him since he’d realized how deeply one stupid bet had insulted Alex.
“I’m not gonna take the money,” Matt finally said out loud because he’d never been one to face an elephant in the room without trying to take it down. “I was drunk last night; what I said came out wrong. It was just the principle of the matter, to prove that I could do it.”
“You can’t do it,” Alex said bitterly. “You suck at this job. Just fucking quit so Frank’ll put a real cook on for the weekends.”
“What if I could get good at it?” Matt asked, because quitting and leaving a failure
and
an asshole didn’t sit well with him. “I’m getting better. I solved the toast problem.”
“Yeah, you did solve the toast problem,” Alex reluctantly agreed. “Usual toasters don’t typically stand up to restaurant work, but that’s not a normal toaster. How pissed is your mama gonna be that you stole her two-hundred-dollar toaster for this shithole?”
Matt laughed. “Pretty fucking pissed. She’s gonna be pissed about a lot of things, like—”
“You slumming with the locals,” Alex finished for him.
“That wasn’t what I was going to say.” Matt turned to give him an apologetic look. “I actually think you’re—” He paused, not sure how to say this and not sound totally cheesy. “You’re a cool guy, Alex. I’m sorry if I insulted you. That was never my intention.”
Alex gaped as if stunned by the genuineness; then he snorted in laughter. “Aw, shucks, Matty. Don’t worry about it. I think I’m over it.”
“You think?”
“Either that or I’m too drunk and tired to give a fuck. Ask me tomorrow how I feel about it.” Alex handed him another plate. “English muffin on that one.”
Matt put an English muffin on the plate. “I’m not working tomorrow.”
“Yeah, me either, thank God,” Alex said tiredly. “We’re working the same schedule since I’m the one stuck training you.”
“What’re you doing tomorrow?” Matt asked, his cheeks getting hot once more for an entirely different reason, one he didn’t want to acknowledge, even to himself. “What do you do on your days off?”
“When I get two or three days off in a row, I’ll take off on a fishing trip to Key West, but since it’s just Monday, I’ll probably end up fucking around with the beach shacks all day.”
“Yeah, I forgot you maintain all those rentals,” Matt mused for a second before he asked, “Need help? I’m not doing anything.”
He winced even as he said it, but he couldn’t take it back once it was out. Against his better judgment he glanced back at Alex, seeing that he’d stopped his work at the flattop and was just standing there with his shoulders stiff and the outline of his hard jaw locked.
All the tiny hairs on the back of Matt’s neck stood on end in nervousness, and his already unstable stomach felt leaden. They both knew Matt wasn’t any better at maintaining rental properties than he was at cooking. Offering to help was—odd.
Melissa bounced in before Matt could think of an excuse. “Is table seven up? They’re getting restless.”
Alex put a plate next to Matt in response and said, “White toast.”
“I need my wheat too,” Melissa reminded him. “From table two. Remember you forgot.”
“Right, fuck.” Matt groaned as he loaded the toaster. It wasn’t even that busy yet. Everyone was at church, and he was still struggling. “I dunno how I’m gonna get through today.”
“I know how you feel.” Melissa sighed. “I can barely keep my eyes open.”
“Sorry.” Matt grinned. She really was a cute girl. He sort of wished he hadn’t been so drunk last night. It all felt like a blur. “You should’ve told me to keep my hands to myself.”