Dear Dickbag,

My fiancée brought it to my attention that her headache of a sister might be late to the rehearsal dinner next Saturday because she’s trying to save a few bucks taking two connecting flights to make it to Todos Santos.

She is Em’s maid of honor, hence her attendance is not fucking optional. It is mandatory, and if I have to drag her by the hair, I will, but I’d rather not. You know how I feel about this place. New York is hard on the body. Los Angeles is hard on the soul.

I have no soul.

I’m asking you as a friend to knock on Rosie’s door and shove a new ticket into her hand. Have Sue book her a first-class ticket next to you and make sure she gets on that plane with you on Friday. Chain her to the goddamn seat if you must.

This is the part where you’re probably asking yourself why the fuck would you do me any favors. Consider this a favor to Millie, not me.

She’s stressed.

She’s worried.

And she doesn’t deserve this type of shit.

If Em’s baby sister thinks she can do whatever the fuck she wants, she’s wrong.

Make her realize how wrong she is, because every day she plays the dutiful, frugal saint, my future wife is getting hurt.

And we all know how I react when something of mine is being damaged.

Peace, motherfucker.

-V.

Not exactly purple prose, but that was Baron Spencer for you.

I stretched, feeling a hot body climbing on top of me, fighting the lake of navy blue, seamless, silk sheets between us. There were heaps of rich fabric, hot flesh, and soft curves all around me. The sun poured in from my floor-to-ceiling window, shining over my one-thousand-square-foot balcony, a sea of freshly cut grass bleeding into the Manhattan skyline. Rays of warmth licked at my skin. A wet bar called for me to fix myself a Bloody Mary. And plush, gray and navy loveseats begged me to take the girls on a ride against them for all of New fucking York to see and hear.

In short: this morning was awesome.

Vicious, however, was not awesome.

Therefore, I allowed myself to bathe in the comfort of these women—Natasha and Kennedy—and do what God, or nature, or both, wanted me to do—fuck them hard. Because civilization and seed spreading and shit.

As Kennedy—the lovely redhead, my memory reminded me—peppered kisses down my neck, making her way to my morning wood, and Natasha—the racy, fun-sized yoga instructor—kissed my mouth ravenously, I processed the new information through the pounding hammers of a well-deserved hangover.

So, Millie LeBlanc was stressed about her dinner rehearsal. No surprises there. She was always this goody-two-shoes girl who wanted everything to be perfect and worked hard to make it that way. A stark contrast to the man she was marrying, who took it upon himself to tarnish as many lives as he could using his dry wit and appalling behavior.

She was the sweetest person I knew—not necessarily a good thing, by the way—and he was by far the nastiest.

I guess I was supposed to think about the ‘what if?’ because Millie used to be my girlfriend. Because the human brain is designed to fill in the gaps, and I was twenty-nine, and Millie was my only serious girlfriend, so people might assume it was some big, lost love.

The truth, as always, was both disappointing and unflattering.

Millie was never a big love. I liked her, but it wasn’t fierce or deprived or insane. I cared for her and wanted to protect her, but never in a way that drove me out of my fucking mind, like it did to Vicious.

The fact that I still liked her after she bailed out on me and fucked off leaving a half-assed breakup letter just goes to show we weren’t really meant to be. Because the truth was, I was enamored with Emilia LeBlanc…until I wasn’t.

Sometimes I think I just loved the idea of her, or never loved her at all. Either way, one thing couldn’t be disputed—when I was with her, I was good to her. Loyal. Respectful. She, in return, fucked me over.

To this day, I don’t feel like I truly knew my only ex-girlfriend. I knew her traits, sure. The crap that would make it onto your dating website profile. Dry facts. She was artistic, shy, and well-mannered. But I had no idea what her fears and secrets were. What kept her up at night, what made her blood simmer and her body sizzle.

The other part of my ugly truth was I never felt like I wanted to know these things about anyone other than Rosie LeBlanc. But Rosie fucking hated me. So, I stayed single. She was going to change her mind. She had to.

Speaking of Rosie, she didn’t take money from Vicious and Millie unless it was out of necessity. That was common knowledge, and she made that point a year ago by furnishing my two-point-three-million-dollar New York condo she had been living in with Craigslist discards that cost less than two hundred bucks in total. I doubted I could change her mind, but when it came to her, I was always up for trying to.

So, anyway. Back to the important stuff—fucking.

It was when Kennedy took me in her mouth, exhibiting some serious deep-throat talent, that I heard a knock on my door. No one was allowed into the building without a code, and no one had asked me for one recently, which brought me to the simple conclusion it must be Miss LeBlanc herself.

“Dean!” Her raspy voice crawled from the outside hall into every tissue in my body and I immediately grew harder. Kennedy noticed, I’m sure, because her grasp on my dick loosened, then I felt her breathing hard against my thigh. Natasha stopped the tongue-action. They both froze. Three more knocks. “Open up.”

“Is that the weird girl again?” the latter inquired with a hybrid of a scowl and a pout.

“Sure fucking is.”

“She’s freaking me out.”

“Such a weirdo,” Natasha agreed. Like their opinion mattered. To me. To Rosie.

I rose to a sitting position and tucked myself into my black sweatpants. I didn’t mourn the unfulfilled fuck. I was more eager to catch a glimpse of that tiny thing, wondering what she came here for. I got up and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, my hands sliding up to purposely mess my hair. “This was fun.” I kissed both the backs of their hands before I started stalking to the entrance door with purpose. “We should do it again sometime.”

We weren’t going to do it sometime. Or anytime. This was goodbye, and they both knew it. I was clear when I picked them up the night before at some Manhattan bar I went to. They were inhaling cocaine like it was powdered sugar, maybe a grand’s worth of it, on a table in a glitzy place I went to whenever I needed to make use of those custom-made condoms. I sat at the bar, exchanged some flirty looks with them, then signaled the bartender to send the girls some drinks. They invited me to come over and do some shots with them. I invited them to sit on my face. One drink turned into seven. This script was getting old.

“Whoa, you’re such a piece-of-work.” Kennedy was the first to get up from the bed. I twisted my head to watch her collect her dress from the floor, yanking it up like it wronged her somehow.

Really? I thought. Before I hailed a taxi to take us to my place, I laid it out for them, clear as the fucking August sky: this was a random hookup. Christ, what part of picking them up from a bar and using Two Girls, One Cup as a small-talk topic made them think there would be more?

I offered the girls a consolation wink before swaggering my way into the vast, champagne-lit hallway, cream marble flooring, and black and white family portraits glaring at me from every corner with huge, white-toothed smiles.

“Uh, excuse me, Mr. Asshole? We were kind of in the middle of something!” Natasha added in a high-pitched voice. I was already in the foyer, swinging the door open, drawn like a magnet to the source of my entire fucking libido. Baby LeBlanc. That little, beautiful, crazy, pixie.

Rosie wore a pair of untorn jeans and a basic white button-down shirt, her version of a tailored suit. A high, messy bun sat on top of her head, and her huge eyes told me she was not impressed. I leaned my shoulder against the door, grinning.

“Changed your mind about brunch?”

“Well, you blackmailed me into it with your reevaluation threat.” Her eyes strayed from my face to my abs for a second before lifting back up to narrow at me.

Shit, I did. My memory of last night was fogged by alcohol, weed, and pussy.

“Come in.” I stepped sideways. She turned her head in my direction as she stepped in.

“Thought you’d at least make some coffee before you tear me another asshole with the rent. So much for being neighborly,” she muttered, drinking in my apartment through wide eyes.

I folded my arms over my chest, aware of my cut figure, and swiped my tongue over my bottom lip.

“You want neighborly? I can buy you breakfast at the bakery downstairs and give you a few orgasms for dessert,” I said, adding, “And I can tear you another asshole in bed if you prefer.”

“You need to stop hitting on me.” Her voice was painfully flat as she walked past the massive white and gray island in the middle of my kitchen, stainless steel winking at us with a sparkle from every corner of the room. She plopped onto a stool and glared at my empty coffeepot by the sink as if it committed a hate crime.

“Why?” I taunted, turning the coffee machine on. Why did I have to stop hitting on Rosie LeBlanc? She was single now, after she dumped her boring, doctor boyfriend. She was fair game, and I was going to try to play with her until she had third-degree carpet burns all over her back.

In fact, that was the first thing I thought about when I saw the sorry-ass motherfucker moving his shit from her apartment. From my apartment.

I’m going to fuck your ex-girlfriend before the tears on her pillow dry, I thought. And she is going to love it so much she’ll be crawling back for more.

Meanwhile, in real life, Rosie greedily accepted the mug of steamy coffee I silently offered her, taking a sip. She closed her eyes and moaned. Yes, moaned. Fuck, I wanted this sound to be my new ringtone. Then she opened her eyes and poured ice-cold water all over my fantasy.

“Because you’ve already dipped your sausage in my family gravy, and even though I know it’s a secret recipe everyone wants more of, I’m afraid you’re all out of luck.”