Page 25 of Sparks Fly
Although he seemed to already have a pretty good handle on that.
Stella wanted to do it all, and Max was the perfect person to do it with. He was kind, gentle, respectful, and very, very hot. If he wasn’t the owner of AIX and Miles’ brother, he’d be the perfect man, which is why she didn’t want to think about that part.
Stella didn’t want to lie to her friends, though, and the truth was, now that she was finally getting some actual experience, she was dying to talk to them about it.
“It’s that guy Max from work,” Stella said more to Effie than anyone else.
“Max?”
Effie’s face scrunched up in confusion as she attempted to place the name, and Stella decided it’d be quicker to just tell her.
“The guy with the AI company,” she said.
Effie’s eyes widened. “Excuse me?”
Kira waved a hand between them.
“Who the fuck is Max?”
Naturally, that was when their food arrived. All four of them sat back in their chairs as the servers put down their plates, but as soon as they were gone, Kira was leaning in so far Stella was worried her boobs would end up in her food.
“¿Quién es?” Kira asked again.
“He’s the owner of that company I told you about,” Effie said.
Stella wasn’t surprised that Effie had already told Kira about the situation at work. She had been nervous about introducing them at first. Stella loved Kira, but she didn’t always jibe with people, and if she didn’t like someone, she did not try to hide it. Meanwhile, Stella quickly realized that Effie was a very straightforward, levelheaded kind of person. She dealt mainly in facts and refused to argue with people she deemed unworthy of her effort.
Thankfully, when Stella finally brought the two of them together at her birthday party a couple years ago, they surprisingly hit it off. So much so that they went home together and, as Kira put it, “Banged it out of our systems so we can be friends.”
And now they were thick as thieves.
“Okay, well, can someone catch me up?” Chelsea asked from across the table. “Because clearly my roommate has been holding out on me.”
Stella rolled her eyes. “We haven’t had a chance to catch up this week! When was I supposed to tell you?”
“Oh, does your phone no longer work?” Chelsea said. “You were able to text me to get toilet paper yesterday.”
“Because that was an emergency,” Stella said. “If I was going to explain the whole Max situation to you over text, it’d be a long-form essay.”
“Max, is it?” Effie asked, her brow raised once again. “You’re on a first-name basis with him already?”
“He literally introduced himself like that when we were inthe office,” Stella said at the same time Kira said, “She better be if she’s letting him hit it.”
“Can you all please keep your voices down?” Stella hissed. She began rubbing her temples and wished she hadn’t forgone the bottomless brunch option and had just taken the risk of being hungover later when she met up with Max.
“Girl, no one is paying attention to us,” Kira said. “Now talk. Tell us everything, from beginning to end, and in explicit detail. Especially the juicy bits.”
With a heavy sigh, Stella started talking and caught them up from the moment she spilled her drink all over Max to his hand down her pants last night. By the time she was done, her food had gone from hot to lukewarm.
“Well, well, well,” Chelsea said, sitting up in her chair and looking smug. “It would appear my idea to go to Red as Sin and get laid actually worked.”
Stella glared at her. “Do not think me meeting Max absolves you of ditching me.”
Chelsea held up her hands in defense.
“I didn’t say it did,” she said. “I’m just saying that as I predicted, getting up and going out is the only way to actually meet people. The apps were never going to work for you.”
On either side of Stella, Kira inhaled sharply and Effie was shaking her head.
