Her Billionaires(21)

Oh, good morning! Yeah, I’m not really functional without two or three cups of coffee myself

with a little grin icon.

See, now, this was the problem with trying to find the right women. He didn’t want to be the sloppy second that the women settled for. He wanted someone both he and Dylan could share, equally. When it came to their limited experience trying to find the right, single woman, Dylan had always been the front man and Mike had been the wingman. He was tired of being the wingman. Maybe it was time, really, for the best man to win. That comment to Dylan had most definitely not been just a joke—he’d been very, intensely serious.

And that man was stepping up to the plate now, ready for his turn at bat. Oh God, he was getting sick of the baseball metaphors.

The app beeped as she replied with:

So I see you’re like, Mr. Triathlon and ski dude, and my idea of exercise is walking across the room to get the remote.

Oh, man. She was chatting him up. There was a natural opportunity here and he—he couldn’t blow it. He couldn’t blow it. He sat there in his boxer briefs, typing away with one finger on his ridiculous smart phone interface and realized that the boxer briefs were getting awfully uncomfortable. Because as he typed, he stared at her little avatar with those sweet dimples, and that amazing, intelligent look on her face and decided that his body’s response was telling him pretty much all he needed to know.

He typed out something that sounded good on the surface, and then the second that he typed it—augh!—he wanted to take it back.

lolol, yeah don’t be afraid, we could just go for a hike if you want.

Oh, I think I just asked you out.

Yeah I did.

and then he ended it with a question mark.

Shit, a hike? A hike? God, could that be any lamer? Why couldn’t you come up with something romantic? Beating himself up came naturally, and this time he had good cause—a hike? Dylan had taken him up on his advice and taken Laura out to the fancy Asian fusion place that so many of the women they had dated loved to go to but, then again, he could count “all of the women they dated” on one hand.

All of the women had also flatly and resoundingly rejected what they were offering, which was, he had to admit, pretty unique. However, settling for second best had left them both hollow and incomplete, and now they had an added complication. 2.2 billion of them, to be exact.

A hike, yeah, I’d like that. That sounds really cool.

The words sat on the screen like fairy dust, as if some unseen spirit had conjured them from a mystical layer in the universe and plopped them on Mike’s phone. Seriously? She said yes?

She liked the hike idea. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. He sucked down more coffee, the hot liquid helping to regenerate his brain cells, making him come alive and think think think to say the right answer.

Which was...? Smacking his forehead, he ran both hands over his head: twitchy fingers through his hair, his other palm grazing a day’s growth on his chin. Jesus. She was saying yes! The coffee felt like a pool of hot lead in his gut now as he raced to reply, typing out a response. OK, OK, breathe dude. Breathe, breathe, breathe. What could he say?

What could he say? Keep it simple. With a shaking finger, he wrote:

OK. So, how about this afternoon. After work? You wanna do lunch and then go for hike? I know a great spot in this State Park, a nice easy trail, it won’t be too hard on you.

He hit enter and then realized that that was probably one of the stupidest things he could have said, his fingers itching to find some magical “retract” button, a switch he could flip to withdraw his words from cyberspace.

Fuck! He wasn’t implying that she was out of the shape, he didn’t mean to... oh, shit. Mike, you idiot! He buried his head in his hands and fully expected her little icon to go away and disappear, and for Laura to think he was just a double failure at this shit, to go running back to Dylan—who knew how to handle women. Then again, if he was that good, why was Laura chatting right now?

She replied:

Sounds good. I’ll wear my hiking boots, don’t worry. I have feet, I can walk, I can use them, I can even move them independently while chewing gum.

And funny, too! He laughed and wrote back:

OK, phew, good to know. I like bipeds

and typed down his phone number. Laura sent hers back and he realized that he needed to say something, yet had no idea what to say because this was the first time that he had actually found a woman, on his own, without Dylan.

Yeah, yeah, yeah— technically Dylan had found her, but Dylan had no idea that he was independently pursuing her. The not-inconsequential fact that he had just essentially sniped her couldn’t be ignored, either.