Chase (Chase #1) (2 page)

Chapter Two

Alexis

There are
two broken strips of plastic on my blinds that are in the exact right place to let the sun shine brightly through, right into my eyes, every single morning. They were like that when I moved in, and with an unapologetic Bosnian landlord who told me to suck it up and get over it, I now have a little reminder every morning that I need to pack up and get the hell out of this place.

Things always seem to be so hard for me in ways they aren’t for other people,
or at least anyone I know. Between going to school part-time, working part-time, and getting set up with West Hollywood guys who turned out not to be playing for team vagina, I didn’t think things could get much worse.

I had classes today, like
I do a few other days a week, much to my dismay. My psychology book has a ripped cover, pages 190 to 245 are missing, and a few questionable stains on the first few pages made the pages stick together when I first got it. I bought it used from a kid online for ten bucks, much less than the two hundred it cost brand new with everything intact and no weird stains, which I was pretty sure the last guy left as a present for me, if you catch my drift.

I got
up and out of bed, finding a pink t-shirt on my floor that
looked
clean, but wasn’t necessarily. I picked it up, sniffed it like some bachelor with old pizza boxes lying around, and decided it was clean enough, and if it wasn’t, nobody else would ever even know. If I couldn’t tell, they definitely couldn’t.

I still had two hours until my class, a deathly amount of time when you don’t have cable
, let alone a television, and you have to leech a weak, tired wifi signal from your neighbors. I was pretty sure they were starting to catch on and were about to password-protect their router and shut me out completely. All I generally had to rely on was my phone, as my computer had a power charger that worked a third of the time and crapped out the rest of the time.

I checked my phone, seeing a message from a guy I met on
RandomMeetX, some app I downloaded for free that lets you meet other people in the area who might actually find you interesting or attractive. It was one of those things my grandmother would scoff at and say was destroying the world with the whole “no
real
interaction” thing, which seemed to be purely generational.

“I just wanted to say I had a great time with you the other night
. It’s really cool that you’re so cool.”

I clicked the little trashcan icon and deleted his message, the content of which was severely disappointing, even
for someone like him. I had gone on four dates with guys I met on the app, and each was just a little more disastrous than the last. One man was in his mid-twenties and still lived at home, while another must’ve taken his pictures when he was sixty pounds lighter, and another left me at the table so he could go pay the bill, before running out the front door, never to be heard from again.

I wouldn’t say that I
was bad with guys, more like they were bad with me, and I wasn’t sure anything, or anyone, was going to change that. I’d pretty much given up any and all hope that a decent guy would come my way. He wouldn’t need to be amazing, just normal, a little sexy, and somewhat caring. I guess that was asking a lot in Los Angeles. Every guy here was either a wannabe actor, a wannabe model, or a wannabe wannabe. I moved here from Iowa for school two years ago, and now, I almost wished I had a Midwestern guy instead of the prissy ones out here. I wasn’t sure there was a dating end in sight.

With a lot of disdain and angst, my mind telling me to give
up and toss my phone aside, it buzzed, piquing my attention. I picked it back up, looked at the lock screen, and saw I had a notification from RandomMeetX. Great, another dipshit loser here to try to “save” me from the sorrows of being single.

After
a drawn out sigh and the sound of my tongue clicking against the roof of my mouth as I waited for the app to load, the guy who had sent me the notification appeared.

“Damn,” I mumbled, seeing him on my screen.

“My name is Chase. That’s all you need to know,” his profile said.

It was short and sweet, giving me just enough information to want to know more
. He had sent me a wink, something I didn’t get all too often. Most of the guys I talked to just messaged me outright, telling me how hot I was or how they wanted to make me into a woman, as if they even could.

I went back to his profile, studying it, looking at the one picture he had of himself on there
. He was tan, though not orange or Jersey-trophy-wife tan, a little stubble from five o’clock shadow peppered along his cheeks and chin, and piercing green eyes that made you want to know more. He looked like he was in good shape, his suit fitted, telling me he cared about his looks and that he had some kind of money. That wasn’t your everyday baggy bargain bin suit your weird cousin buys for your grandma’s funeral.

He didn’t look like the type of guy I’d normally date, or the type of guy
who would even be interested in me, for that matter. He was the type of guy, at least from his looks, who could and should have a sexy blonde bombshell of a model on his arm…and I wasn’t blonde or a bombshell.

As I looked him over, I began to wonder if m
aybe he hit my wink button by mistake, thinking he was leaving my page or talking to someone else. Even though he was very attractive, and had just enough of everything that made me want to learn more, I couldn’t help but think that maybe I shouldn’t try to find out.

I locked my phone and put it down, continuing to get ready, as I tried to think of what to do about the
random wink. It wasn’t even a big deal, really. It wasn’t like I was asking him to marry me or have kids with me. It was just a reply, a wink, on a crappy dating app. Hell, he probably wasn’t even real. It was probably just some stock photo that anyone could get for free, with some perv of a guy behind the screen waiting for innocent women like me to click on them and agree to meet up, only to be chopped into pieces and stuffed into a suitcase. The short “about me” section, the one picture, the model looks. Yeah, that had to be it.

•••

Half an hour passed and I got to school, sitting there, waiting for my class to start, stuffing two day-old doughnuts into my mouth because my university was giving them away for free so they didn’t have to throw them away. I didn’t have much in terms of disposable money, only enough to get by, so breakfast was more of a delight for me, not an everyday thing. Three meals a deal in this city could get expensive.

I watched the couples go by, their happiness deafening
and soul-crushing as they held hands and kissed like they were alone in their rooms, about to rip each other’s clothes off and have an orgy. They didn’t care who was around or what could happen, so long as their tongues got to slither down the other’s throat. I wasn’t like that, at least not in public. Well, I guess I wasn’t like that too much in private, either. My last boyfriend called me
vanilla
, a term he said described someone who was plain, with nothing exciting going for them. It was a real mystery why we weren’t together anymore.

I didn’t think he was right, but in a way, I
thought maybe he was, though I’d never tell him that. I wasn’t all that exciting, at least in bed, anyway. I’d never tried many positions; I’d mostly just been on my back, and I’d never had wild sex, which
Cosmo
told me I had to try at least once in my life. I’d never experienced a night with no inhibitions, no boundaries, and most of all, no regrets. I guess I just hadn’t really found the right person to do that with. I wasn’t a slut, so I wasn’t going to corral one of these passing guys into the corridor and ride him like a valiant steed, and I wasn’t going to just give it up to any man who might message me on RandomMeetX. I’d like to think that I was classier than that.

I picked off a piece of my doughnut, pushing it into my mouth as my jaw unhinged like a hungry
anaconda trying to swallow its dinner. I looked at the clock on the wall in front of me, seeing I still had a massive amount of time left, and sat back in my chair, letting out a sigh, and let my head fall back, trying to get through the day so I could go home.

Just as I had let out a second sigh, my phone buzzed, catching my attention
. I picked it up with my greasy doughnut fingers and opened RandomMeetX.

“Ur so sexy baby
. Ever been wit a guy wit a big dick?” the guy asked.

Wow, just wow
. I looked at the guy, his hand flashing some ridiculous gang sign. He had a cheap, wrinkled bandana wrapped around his mouth like he was about to go rob a train on horseback. Messages like this were what made me start to lose hope not only for my dating life, but also for humanity.

I hit block on the user, aptly named thuglyfe223, and was taken back to the message screen, where the wink from Chase still sat, untouched
. I opened it, seeing a big, red, rather obtuse wink button on the screen, with a green message icon next to it in case you were more into the direct approach. My thumb hovered over the wink button, the large, blood red button twinkling like an oasis in the middle of the desert. I was so close, within arm’s reach, but what if it, and him, turned out to be just a mirage?

Like a gust of wind barreling through the hallway, I slammed my thumb against the red wink button, a
nd a confirmation popped up on my screen. I took a deep breath, looked around the room to see if anyone noticed my embarrassment, and locked my phone, slipping it back into my purse, which hung on the back of the chair next to me.

I
did it. I’d taken a chance on a guy who I wasn’t even close to sure was real, and I did it without any real hesitation or inhibition. Yeah, I liked to tell myself that.

I sat for a couple minutes, watching the people rush by on their way to class,
since a new one was about to start, before my phone buzzed again, seemingly an instant after I had last picked it up and locked it. I never got things this fast. Maybe it was just my mom asking what I wanted for my upcoming birthday. She liked to do that sometimes.

I took out my phone, unlocked it, and saw that I had a message awaiting me on the app
. It couldn’t be…no, it couldn’t be, there was no way. It was probably another gangbanger or guy who lived with twenty cats in his mom’s basement. There was no chance in hell it was that Chase guy, especially already. A guy like that doesn’t live with his phone.

I opened the app, tapping my fingers against my thigh as it slowly loaded,
since my signal was low in the student center, before I was taken to my inbox and saw the incoming message sitting there. It was from him…from Chase. I was struck both with flattery and trepidation, thinking this guy
had
to be fake. That picture, that profile, a fast reply that could rival any teenager. It all screamed fake…but for some reason, I just had to open the message.

I clicked on the new message, opening it, seeing what scam he was going to try
to get me to click on. I saw an article online about people using these dating apps to get people to send them money or to hack their accounts so they can steal their bank information.

“You have the most exquisite eyes
. The depths of blue from which they stem make even the most tropical of waters look dull and bleak in comparison.”

What
?

No link to a website asking me to sign up
? No offer of sex that he says is the best I’ll ever get? No mention of a twenty-inch cock that wants to be stuffed inside me? Just a sweet, romantic, incredibly flattering message that made my heart skip a single, solitary beat? There was no way this could be real. I must have been dreaming.

I read the message what must’ve been ten times,
and each time it sank in more and more, each time my brain starting to realize it was real and I wasn’t dreaming.

As the little cursor blinked on the screen
, waiting for my response, I sat there and thought long and hard about what to say back. I didn’t want to seem desperate or needy, but I didn’t want to make him think I was some uninterested girl who could take him or leave him either. I definitely wanted him, and after seeing that message and that hard body pushing through his suit, I wanted him in more ways than one. He didn’t look like the kind of guy you’d have any regrets with.

I w
iped my greasy fingers, crumpled my scratchy brown napkin, and put my fingers against the screen, starting to type out what had to be the best reply in the history of dating app replies.

“Thank you, you’re sweet
. I’m Alexis.”

Chapter Three

Chase

Sometimes my cock is hungry and needs to be fed.

Like a chained monster waiting to be fed by its master, RandomMeetX delivers the food that my cock so desperately craves. I’m not always in control of it, but when I am, you can be damn well sure that what happens next will be extraordinary.

My phone buzzed not too long after I sent my message
. The girl on the other end, Alexis, thought I was, as she called it,
sweet
. I laughed at that notion, imagining her sitting there, taking in everything I had to say, eating it up with a golden spoon. I guess nobody ever told her not to drink the Kool-Aid—my Kool-Aid.

I didn’t correct her, deciding
not to tell her I wasn’t all sweet. There’s a core to me, a crass and sour core that leaves a bad taste in your mouth if you crack it open. I built that core after years and years of getting that bad taste thrust into my mouth, left there to fester and multiply with no regards to my suffering taste buds.

“I’d love to take you out sometime and get to know you
. Maybe tonight?” I replied, hitting the tantalizing, glowing green send button.

Before I
could get any work done, as if I had her around my finger and waiting for more, she replied not two minutes after I had sent my proposal.

“Yeah, that sounds great
. Just let me know when and where,” she said.

I smirked
. A beautiful, trophy-worthy fish was caught on my line, ready to be reeled in and pulled onto my rocking boat. I replied with the name of a restaurant, a romantic little place a friend told me about, and told her to be there at eight, and not a minute later.

Brian made reservations for us, dropping my name so that the super exclusive restaurant
, whose reservations list went six months out, knew to save me a table. I might not have been famous to the public eye, but I still got all of the perks, and I mean
all
of them.

The day
cumbersomely wore on. My meetings were packed like a deep freezer and there were a couple incessant phone calls from Nigella that went unanswered, like they usually did when she came to my office with her fruitless demands. I liked to make her sweat things out. That was how I got
my
way with her. Like she’d ever find another record label that could even give her half of the things we’d given her. Good luck, honey.

•••

I left the office at exactly 7:35, giving myself just enough time to get out of downtown and into West Hollywood, where the restaurant we were meeting at was located. I put the top up on my little sports car, deciding to keep my freshly minted hair in place, the slick strands of pomade-laden hair not moving even a millimeter out of place as the air blew out of the front-facing vents in my cockpit.

I pulled up to the restaurant,
where the valet was waiting outside, the little men running around to greet me and take my untamed stallion of Italian engineering to an enclosed pen where he’d have to wait for me to gallop away later tonight. I planned on driving home with two, naturally.

“May I
take your car?” the valet asked with a heavy accent.

“Make sure to take good care of it,” I said, dropping the keys in his hand.

He nodded, not making direct eye contact, as if my car screamed my status and net worth, which we both knew he’d
never
amount to. I adjusted my tie, a crisp, sharp black one, and walked up to the front door, past the line of unimportant people waiting, and I noticed them all looking at me, trying to guess who I was. It was great to be king.

A man, a worker
, I presumed from his outfit, opened the door for me and I walked through, looking around, before I made my way to the maitre d’ stand, which was occupied by a man with a thin mustache and slicked back black hair.

“Name?” he asked, looking
down at his book.

“Chase,” I replied
in a strong, deep voice.

He perked up, quickly looking up
at me, before he clapped and a woman hurried over.

“Mr. Chase, we are so happy to have you this evening
. We have reserved only our
finest
table for you and your guest. We hope you enj—”

“Is she here?” I asked, cutting him off
, as I fiddled with my cufflinks.

“Oh, yes, we directed her into the lounge with a complimentary drink
, of course. If you’d like, we can go and get her,” he said.

“I would prefer to myself, if you don’t mind,” I said, looking at him with a straight face.

“Of course, sir, that is no problem at all! Please, if you would follow Allison, she will take you there,” he said.

“Thank you,” I replied.

Five-foot-one, tight ass, pulled back blonde hair, and a California tan that could rival any valley girl. Those were the characteristics of Allison, my concierge and tour guide for this evening. If only I weren’t on a date, I’d put that tight ass to work.

“Here is our lounge
. If you see—” Allison said.

“There she is,” I said, walking towards Alexis, who sat in a brown leather chair with gold rivets
with a small mahogany table next to it.

“You must be Alexis,” I said, catching her attention.

She looked at me wide-eyed, like most women, before she swallowed the sip of her drink she was taking when I approached, and stood up.

“Hi, you must be Chase,” she said, extending her hand.

“Yes, I am,” I said, gazing into her eyes with a stern look, the same way I greeted my company’s competition that we wanted to squander.

“May I direct you two to your table?” Allison asked.

“Yes, that would be great, Allison,” I said, carefully gazing at Alexis, giving her my visual attention.

She had dressed up more than she had in her pictures, but
even with the better clothes she still wasn’t what I usually went for. No real cleavage pushing out, her skirt only to her knees, not far above them like I liked, and her makeup wasn’t exactly screaming Beverly Hills hooker. Maybe it was a good change of pace, this. Sometimes you need to taste a different cuisine to cleanse your palate, and believe me, I planned to have a five-course meal tonight.

I pulled out Alexis’s seat, a smile laced across her face,
before she sat down and scooted herself in. I walked over to my seat, unbuttoned the middle button of my suit, and sat down. Allison set the black leather-bound menus in front of us. The table was far away enough from the crowds of other tables while still having other people around, so we weren’t totally secluded. We were near a window, and a small pond was outside, the dim mood lights shimmering on the koi-filled oasis.

“So, am I like my pictures?” I asked.

“Yeah, you are, surprisingly,” she said.

“
Surprisingly
?” I asked.

“I just didn’t really know if you were going to be real, you know
? I’ve met a lot of losers on that app, and some of them play tricks in their pictures to make themselves look better than they do in real life,” she said.

“I’m so sorry to hear that you’ve been with guys who don’t tell you the truth up front,” I said, taking a sip of ice water.

“This place is really nice. Have you been here before?” she asked.

“If you’re asking if the food is good, it is
. The very best in town,” I said.

She scanned the menu, looking all over, the elegant typeface and confusing ingredients likely making her brain scattered
. She looked like she was trying to figure out what the hell dishes like foie gras were. With my menu open, I scanned her, checking her out, doing what every man secretly does with a woman the first time they meet. It was just that this time I wasn’t as subtle as I usually was.

“You look very pretty tonight,” I said.

“Oh, thank you,” she said, looking up and smiling at me, her cheeks turning a soft, rosy shade of pink, clearly visible even under the dimmed lights.

She looked back down at her menu, biting her lower lip subtly, though just enough for me to see
. As far as I was concerned, I was in. Damn it, Chase, you’ve done it again.

“Hello, my name is
Armon, and I’ll be your waiter this evening. May I start you two off with some drinks from our world-class bar?”

“I’ll have a scotch on the rocks, tall,” I said.

“I’ll have a glass of your house wine, please,” Alexis said.

“Red or white?” the waiter asked.

“Uh, white,” she said, looking a bit puzzled.

“I’ll put that in and be right back
. Please take a chance to look over our menu, and if you need anything at all, don’t hesitate to ask,” he said with a courteous smile, before walking away.

“So, what looks good?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. I think this Parmesan-crusted tilapia with the white wine cream sauce on a bed of noodles looks pretty delicious. I don’t really ever get to have fancy stuff like this, so it’s all a bit overwhelming compared to a cheeseburger and fries,” she said.

“Oh
? The men you date don’t take you for nice dinners?” I asked.

“Not unless the drive thru value menu is your idea of a nice dinner,” she said, laughing.

“Well, then, it looks like you’ve never been with a real man. It’s a good thing you’re going to experience one tonight,” I said.

She shifted in her seat, though
she didn’t look uncomfortable, before she set her menu in front of her, closed, and Armon came back with our drinks.

“Have you two decided on what you’d like this evening?” he asked.

“She would like the Parmesan-crusted tilapia. I’ll have the steak with fennel and chive mashed potatoes,” I said.

“And how would you like your steak?”

“Rare,” I said.

“Got it
. I’ll get that in right away and have it out to you shortly,” Armon said, before he picked up our menus and walked away.

“So, what made you sign up for that app?” Alexis asked.

“I’m sorry?” I asked.

“Well, you just seem so…great
. You dress very nicely, you’re incredibly handsome, and you obviously have some kind of money, how much I don’t know and don’t need to know. You’d think that you’d be able to find someone to fall in love with, settle down with, have kids with, you catch my drift,” she said.

“And what if I don’t want or need all of those things
? Not everybody is cut out for it,” I said, swirling the scotch around in my glass.

“Just sounds kind of lonely to
not
ever have those things. You almost sound a little jaded, like you’re reserving that part of yourself maybe because of past experiences,” she said.

I swallowed my sip of scotch, licked my lips, and looked her square in the eyes.

“I can assure you that’s not why,” I said.

“Well, whatever the reason is, I hope you change your mind one day for someone,” she said.

“And why’s that?” I asked.

“
There’s something about you, a vibe you give off, that makes me think you’d be a great husband and father. You might have that playboy Casanova look and attitude now, but I think under that hard exterior there’s a big pile of goo that’s loving, caring, and kind,” she said.

“Good luck cracking my diamond exterior to get to it,” I said
, trying to keep my composure.

Her words and diagnosis
infuriated me. She was assuming things about me and my life, trying to tell me what I was essentially doing wrong with it. I wanted to yell at her, scold her and tell her to mind her own business. But in a weird way, I sort of enjoyed it. She spoke her mind, and I could tell she was a spitfire, not just here, but in
every
way.

Even though I liked it,
I wasn’t going to regret not speaking to her after tonight.