Sin With Me

25

BRODY

“Check. One, two. Check, check, checkeroo.”

“You’re good!” calls SpongeBob from behind the amp. He pops his square blond head around the big black amp box, grinning, showing off the space where his tooth went missing when he took a drunken header into a curb on our Eurotrash tour in Germany last year. He was so f****d-up he didn’t feel a thing. I haven’t asked him why he hasn’t gotten it fixed, because he’d probably answer with some supremely SpongeBob-y thing like, “Dude, I’ve got, like, two dozen others.”

Some of my best friends are roadies, but they’re generally not the sharpest tools in the shed.

“Cool, man. Thanks.”

I jump down off the stage and survey the setup. My backyard is f*****g huge—you could land a jumbo jet out here—and has an amazing view of the Pacific. It also has a private beach, two swimming pools, a separate guest house, and an enormous stand of king palm trees that have been growing on the property since it was first developed back in the forties.

They’re the perfect backdrop for a beach rock ‘n’ roll show.

“Hey! Asshole!”

A grinning Nico is headed toward me from the open patio doors. Beside him, Kat smacks his arm and appears to be scolding him as they get closer.

Chicks don’t get how much we guys enjoy giving each other s**t.

“What’s up, dickface?” I say, giving him a hug.

“Not much, ballsack.”

“Better to be a ballsack than a taint, like you. Ballsacks are very useful. No real use for a taint.”

Nico grins. “Unless you’re a taint-licker. Like you.”

Kat throws her hands in the air. “For God’s sake, you two! Can you find some friendly insults that don’t involve the four inches between your balls and your butthole?”

Nico and I look at each other. At the same time we say, “No.”

“Ugh. Typical.” Kat gives me a hug. When she pulls back, she looks at my flip-flops, my board shorts, and my T-shirt and says, “You look like you just got back from swimming.”

“Surfing.” I run a hand through my wet hair. “Do it every chance I can. The private beach is mainly the reason I bought this place.”

“Right,” says Nico, looking around. “Couldn’t have anything to do with the view.”

“Or the fifty-thousand-square-foot house,” adds Kat, lifting her hand to shade her eyes from the bright afternoon sun.

“It’s only eighty-five hundred square feet.”

“Oh, excuse me.” She rolls her eyes. “Eighty-five hundred square feet on about four million acres.”

“Two acres. You’re incredibly bad at judging the size of things, you know that?” I smile at Nico. “She probably thinks your tiny Johnson is like, ten inches long, am I right?”

Kat spreads her hands about two feet wide. She says with a straight face, “I don’t know, is this ten inches?”

Nico smirks at me.

Touché. Moving on. “So did Grace come with you guys?”

Kat uncomfortably shifts her weight from one foot to the other. “Um. No. Have you talked to her?”

I look between her and Nico, who only shrugs. “Not for a few days. Why?”

“Well . . . she’s coming. But she’s bringing Marcus. She said you told her to.”

I’m thrilled she’s coming, because I’ve spent days obsessing over whether or not she would, what she would wear, and my approach when she showed up in a red dress, but then I stop short, pulled up by the second part of that statement. “She’s bringing Marcus.”

So the competition’s name is Marcus. Cool name. Sounds . . . concerning.

“Oh yeah, I told her to bring him,” I say casually, dragging my hand through my hair again. I squint off into the distance. “She, uh . . . she likes this guy, huh?”

Nico makes a noise like a snort, only way more caustic. “Yeah, the way a cat likes a mouse.”

Kat sends him a death glare the likes of which I’ve never seen, and which, if I were on the receiving end, would shrivel my balls to the size of raisins. She hisses, “One more word, superstar, and you’re sleeping on the couch tonight.”

Unperturbed by this outburst, Nico gazes down at her. A slow, cocky smile spreads across his face. “Yeah? You think you could sleep without me, baby?”

Her cheeks turn pink. She looks primly down at her shoes. He laughs out loud, drags her against his chest, and gives her an embarrassingly intimate kiss.

“Get a room for f**k’s sake,” I mutter, looking away.

I’m not mad. Just jealous as f**k.

I know something like what Nico and Kat have isn’t in the cards for a guy like me. I might not believe in God anymore, but I do believe in karma because she’s been kicking me in the teeth in the relationship department for years. A good woman falling in love with me is about as likely as seeing a flock of pigs fly overhead.

I’m not complaining, though. It’s not as if I deserve to be happy. I’m just really good at pretending I am.