| |
Mila raised her eyebrows when I walked in, and I realized I’d been away with Victor for over three hours. At least I hadn’t stained my pants after the workout my dick had gone through. I slid into my chair and went back to testing my Mexican-restaurant app. I wanted to get it done so I could move on to Victor’s project.
Like the rest of the guys I work with, I zone out when I get into a project. I get so caught up in what I’m doing that the rest of the world fades away. I wanted to forget about how sexy Victor was and how confusing I found his pursuit. But I couldn’t do it. My brain kept buzzing with images of Victor Kunin and Julian Argento. Why was it that the guy I wanted didn’t want me, and the guy who wanted me scared the shit out of me?
I spent the rest of the afternoon and the evening struggling to break the Mexican-restaurant app. We had a contract with a company that did load testing—upload your app to their server, and they’ll try to swamp it with input. I entered all kinds of weird data—fake e-mails from foreign countries, overlong data streams, and so on. Whenever a problem popped up, I figured it out and fixed it.
I was a very clean coder—no unusual characters, no extra spaces, no feedback loops that can crash the app. Even so, I finished with the last tests as the other programmers were getting ready to play online again. They assumed I’d be playing, and they weren’t happy when I said I had to go home. “Another booty call?” Noah asked.
“Something like that,” I said. I didn’t want to tell them I was working on another project, and not because I was afraid they’d assume something about my relationship with Julian. When I started at AppWorks, I thought it would be cool to use what I was learning to create my own apps. But then I read the contract Boris had us all sign, which said that he got a piece of any app we created while we worked there—even if we did all the work on our own time and our own equipment.
At least Julian’s project was a website, rather than an app, which meant I was in the clear, at least the way I read the contract.
I got home around nine, and Gavin was sitting at the kitchen table sexting someone. I happened to look over his shoulder as I passed and saw the picture he was sending. “TMI, Gavin,” I said.
“Don’t snoop, then.”
He sent his message. “So, what’s up?” he asked. “Besides you, I mean, now that you’ve seen that picture of me.”
“If I’m up, it’s not about you,” I said. “It’s about this client I had lunch with. Who then drove me back to work.” I paused for effect. “In his Porsche Panamera.”
“No way.”
“Way. It was awesome. Leather, walnut, all these buttons and dials.”
“Manual or automatic?”
“Stick shift,” I said. “And the whole time we were driving, he had his right arm resting on my thigh.”
Gavin put his phone down and looked at me. “Hold on. Rich and gay? A troll?”
“No. Very hot.” I looked away from him. “And apparently into me. We have a date Friday night.”
“Holy shit,” Gavin said. I was waiting for him to add, What’s he doing with you? but he didn’t. “This could be your ticket, bro. Make sure you display your best skills.”
“He’s not some bar pickup. We may not even get to bed. It’s only like a first date.”
“Yeah, well, don’t hold back,” Gavin said. “If you don’t put out, you’ll get kicked out. Trust me on that one.”
Because I had so few offers, I was usually glad to jump into bed with any guy who asked. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to do anything with Victor Kunin. Sure, he was sexy, but he was scary sexy, whereas Julian was sweet sexy. Did I want to hold out for the possibility I’d get to hook up with Julian? Or just take whatever was offered? It wasn’t like Julian and I were dating or anything. I was just building his website. Right?
I was glad to open up my laptop and get to work. It seemed like the only sane thing I could do was lose myself in computer code. Rajesh and Rajneesh both had e-mailed me questions, which took me a while to figure out, and then I went back to my own routines. The hours went by that night as fast as a storm rushing at me from the Everglades, with a similar sense of panic, exhilaration, and confusion. I uploaded the code for a new interface to Julian’s website, along with the routines I was testing.
I had to force myself to go to bed and get enough sleep to be able to work the next day. Wednesday morning I started work on Victor’s app. I plugged in the information Kaitlyn had collected for me—Victor’s website address, and the login information for the database of models. After lunch, I took a break and checked my e-mail. There was a message from Julian. He had seen the work I had uploaded and was impressed.
You’re the man, he wrote. Can’t wait until this is all finished and we can celebrate.
What did he mean by that, I wondered? Celebrate getting the work done? Or something more? I closed my eyes and pulled up Julian’s image before me. But his face kept morphing into Victor’s, and I couldn’t keep them separate.
This was stupid, I thought. I opened my eyes. I was mooning after a guy I hardly knew, one I couldn’t even bring up clearly in my mind. I needed to get a grip.
I left the office around seven and hurried back home. I was beginning to feel overwhelmed by Julian’s website, and I knew work was the only cure.
It was close to midnight when Julian called. I grabbed for the phone before the ringing woke one of my roommates. “I had to make a quick trip home,” Julian said. “Just to meet with a couple of my investors.”
“Everything all right?”
“Sure, sure. It’s just, you know how it is. People get nervous when they lend you money. They want to know how soon I’m going to launch, and when they can start earning their money back.”
“I’m working as fast as I can,” I said.
“You’re awesome, Larry. I showed off everything you’ve done, and my dad and the others were very impressed. Things don’t often move so quickly down here. It’s that mañana mentality. Come to think of it, it’s a lot like Miami. Maybe it’s that it’s hot and everybody speaks Spanish.”
I was still having trouble wrapping my head around the idea that Julian’s father was a big mogul, that his family was rich. “So does your family, like, live in a mansion?” I asked.
He laughed. “Nope. A big house, but that’s because I have three sisters and two brothers, and my grandparents live with us.”
And they probably each had their own bedroom and their own bathroom. That was luxury to me. “I have two brothers and two sisters,” I said. “I come right in the middle. How about you?”
“I’m the oldest,” Julian said. “My dad kept my mom busy when they were young. There’s only about a year between each of us, except for my baby brother, the accident. He’s still in high school.”
It was easy to talk to Julian. We compared notes on coming from a big family, and honestly, it sounded like we’d had many of the same experiences. Except for the fact that he’d gone to prep school when he was twelve, leaving his family, his country, and his native language behind.
I leaned back and stretched my legs. “What was that like? You went to school in New Hampshire, right? Isn’t that really cold?”
“My first year was miserable,” Julian said. “I had a heavy accent and I missed my family and I hated the cold and the bland food. But then my brother joined me the next year, and we were a team. My abuela sent us care packages with bottles of hot sauce, and Ricardo and I did these accent-reduction exercises together, and we bitched and moaned to each other. Even now, he’s my best friend. He married a Spanish woman last year and moved to Madrid to work for a big bank, but we still talk and text almost every day.”
I couldn’t imagine having such a close relationship with either of my brothers. Sure, I loved them, but in an abstract way, because I knew I was supposed to.
“How about you?” Julian asked. “You get along with your siblings?”
“Sort of,” I said. I told him about going home on Sunday, how I felt like I didn’t belong with my own family. “We don’t have anything in common. I don’t know anything about mechanics or electric power or hair and makeup. They say I got snobby once I went to college, but really, I’ve been the same way all along. They just never noticed.”
“That’s a shame,” Julian said. “My sisters went to a different boarding school, in Virginia, so Ricardo and I didn’t see them much for a few years, but by the time we were all in college, we were always in touch. They both live here in Mexico City, and I had dinner with them last night.”
I yawned, and Julian said, “I must be keeping you up. I’ll say good night and dulces sueños.”
I wished him sweet dreams too, but didn’t say that my sweetest ones lately had been of him.
