“It’s not as bad as you’re making it out to be,” Cora said, trying to sound upbeat and swallow past the bitterness the memories dredged up. “I have prospects. The other day, I had a lady offer me two grand to hack into her ex-boyfriend’s Instagram. I think there’s a business opportunity there. Cora Benning—Avenging Hacker for Victims of Cheating Assholes.” She spread her hands like she was seeing the words on a sign. “Though we may have to play with the company title. That may be too much to put on a business card.”
Grace snorted. “Yeah, let’s try to focus on things that won’t land you in handcuffs. You don’t need to go to the dark side to make money.”
“But it wouldn’t really be the dark side. I mean, technically yes, but it’d be for a good reason. Only shitty people would be harmed. It’d be like Dexter or that show Cheaters, hacker style.” She gave Grace a bright grin, knowing it’d only piss her off.
“Okay, Robin Hood of Hackerville. Let’s not give your mother a reason to throw you in jail, all right? You just need to get out there and rub elbows with people who actually have cash and could use your services—the legal ones. You’re a badass, motherfucking, white-hat hacker. They need you.”
“Now that’s what should be on the business card. Badass motherfucking hacker. I’d get loads of business.”
“Not if you don’t speak to anyone ever.”
Cora deflated at that, her mood souring further. “Come on, Grace. I’m a start-up. The people here are big deals. We’re at some hoity-toity winery for God’s sake. That big-ass cowboy who was welcoming everybody when we came in? Yeah, that’s Grant Waters, the owner. He’s got so much money that he’s lost count. These people walking around? They own corporations and yachts and shit. They’ve already got a team of IT security on their payroll. They’re here to drink expensive wine and network with other CEOs, not people like me. I appreciate you getting Jonah to snag us an invite to this, and I love you for thinking I’m at this level, but I need to start smaller. Like way smaller.”
Cora’s phone vibrated in her lap again, and she forced herself not to check it. Grace knew she was always online but assumed Cora was just a workaholic. She’d die of shock if she found out her best friend was a regular player in a kinky online game. And then Cora would promptly die of embarrassment. Yes, my sex life is now one hundred percent online. No, that’s not pathetic at all.
“You don’t know that these people don’t need you,” Grace insisted.
“But I do.” Cora glanced out at the milling crowd. There were no tuxes or sparkly cocktail dresses. From the outside looking in, these people didn’t look important with a capital I, but she knew better. In the dot-com world, the more casual someone looked, the more money they probably had. The thought of pitching to any of them made her stomach knot, especially after the trauma of the job interviews she’d had right after leaving Braecom. You could only hear “not the right fit” so many times before you started to wonder if you’d accidentally been assigned to the wrong planet. She looked back to her best friend. “Plus, let’s not pretend you finagled an invitation to this party for my benefit. You’re here to meet hot Internet moguls.”
Grace put a who-me? hand to her chest. “Is it so wrong to have a two-pronged reason for being here? That’s called being efficient. And I don’t see how that would be bad for either of us. Your on-the-rebound dry spell has gone on for way longer than is healthy.”
Cora stabbed a toothpick through the Gouda tower she’d built on her plate. Was it really being on the rebound if the relationship hadn’t actually been a relationship? “I’m not in a dry spell. I’m on hiatus by choice.”
Truth. Sort of.
“No. You’re avoiding.” Grace lifted a hand when Cora tried to protest. “Since the Kevin incident and quitting Braecom, you’ve used starting up your business as an excuse to shut down your social life. That worked for the first few months, but I’m not buying that excuse anymore.”
Cora sniffed. “Exactly when did I have this booming social life?”
“You used to at least go out after work sometimes. And you’d let me drag you to bars. And before Kevin, there was that guy you saw for a while—Nick, Nelson.”
“Neil? You’re going back that far? We went on three dates in college. He liked to talk about dorm room beer-making. And smelled like old bread.”
She flicked a hand. “Details. Now you shut me down anytime I ask for anything that involves you going out after seven. I bet if this hadn’t been work-related tonight, you would’ve canceled on me. You would’ve turned down free wine and fancy cheese.”
True. She almost had. And really, turning down free fancy cheese was probably on her personal checklist of The-Girl-Ain’t-Right signs. But she’d agreed to go because she’d wanted to see Grace, and she knew Grace wouldn’t let her get away with inviting her over just to hang out and watch movies again. “I have a lot going on.”
“I know you do. But you can’t let all that stuff shut down your whole life.” Grace gave her a pointed look. “It’s my duty as your best friend to not let you become a crazy, sexless cat lady because some asshole wronged you. It’s in the handbook.”
Cora smirked. “I’m allergic to cats. And I’ve had sex. You’re cleared of liability.”
She cocked her head in that take-no-bullshit way she’d perfected. “Had being the operative word there. Had, Cora. I get that you needed some time. But don’t let what happened with Kevin turn you into a hermit. You thought you had something with him and you didn’t. He was a jerk about it.”
“He called me a bro with a vagina, Grace.”
“Okay. Fine. More than a jerk. A complete asshole. But I don’t think this is even about him. That night we had too many margaritas at Rosa’s, you told me the sex was sufficient. Who the hell wants to have sufficient sex? You never got stars in your eyes when you talked about him. He was cute and convenient. And safe. And he saved you the trouble of being out in the dating world. That’s what you’re mourning. Not him.”
A bitter taste crossed Cora’s tongue, and she had to take another sip of wine to clear it. She wished there was some magical app where you could just wipe a certain time in your life out of your head. One click and it went into some unrecoverable trash bin. But that trash bin would be overflowing by now. Reading too much into her hookups with Kevin had just been the final dating mistake in a long list of them.
In the end, it’d been a good thing. She’d finally accepted her place in the dating pecking order. She was and had always been a tomboy and a geek, never quite comfortable in the skin she’d been given until she’d accepted that “proper girl” trappings and behaviors were not for her. But that had set her up to be the girl to hang out with, the buddy. She was the one they’d sleep with if they had no one else better lined up. Sufficient. Nothing more. Not the woman anyone lusted over. Not the girl anyone fantasized about.
And really, after accepting that, the loss of her dating life hadn’t been all that tragic. Dating had always been painful and awkward for her. The sex . . . uninspiring. These last few months, taking that off the table completely, had been a weird kind of relief. She had friends to hang out with. She had Dmitry and Hayven. She knew how to take care of her sexual needs. Not everyone needed to pair off like little plastic pegs riding in the car in The Game of Life.
“I’m not in mourning or unhappy, Gracie,” Cora said, hoping her friend could hear sincerity in her voice. “Truly. You don’t have to fix anything. I’m fine. I don’t need a guy right now. I’m a busy girl and a wizard with a vibrator. Who needs more than that?”
Grace’s lip curled, her silver nose ring catching the light. “A wizard? Does that mean your vibrator is magical?”
“Hey,