Page 188 of The Friends and Rivals Collection

A little later

Here’s something I want to know. Why the hell is sleeping with the enemy such a bad idea?

It’s the best thing that ever happened to me.

I used to think aged Scotch, expensive pool tables, and one-night stands were the height of pleasure. Then, my greatest guilty pleasure ever—screwing Henley—turned into the greatest bliss of my entire life.

She’s what floats my boat. Life is short, so I do my best to savor every second of it with her.

Sometimes that means doing it on the pool table, and sometimes that means lounging with her in the claw-foot tub.

Other times, it means we engage in our favorite hobby.

Our other favorite hobby. Tinkering on cars.

I helped her with the paint job on her new Mustang.

Big surprise—she went with a bubble-gum pink, and she named the car Belinda.

She loves that beast something fierce, but not as much as she loves me.

I know this because she not only tells me—she shows me all the time.

She treats me like a king, making sandwiches for the guys when my buddies come over, hanging up the towels in the bathroom, and never nagging, just like she promised on the ferry.

But that’s surface shit. What she does for me most is the simplest thing of all—she makes me happy.

Every day, she makes me realize there’s more to life than work, work, work. Like magic shows. When Penn and Teller came to town the other week, I took her to the show, and we spent the rest of the evening developing a blueprint for how they pulled off the phone in the fish trick.

Newsflash—we still don’t know.

We tried the ferry again, too, and thanks to the orange non-drowsy Dramamine, Henley made it on and off the vessel without conking out or turning dizzy.

We also like to go salsa dancing. I never thought I’d say that, but then again, I never thought a woman like Henley would become my wife.

I suppose she’s all my guilty pleasures now, but I never feel an ounce of remorse for spending so much time with her.

Some nights, I can’t believe we used to hate each other.

But other nights, I think we both know it was another four-letter word that was brewing between us all along, and it just took time to turn from a glow to a blazing heat.

It also took a pet monkey, a mangled roadster, and a Sharpie tattoo for me to realize that I felt the opposite of hate.

We like to remind each other of this as we play a little game. At night when I slide into bed, she’ll often turn to me and say my name.

“Max?”

“Yes, Henley?”

“I don’t want to kiss you.”

“Good. I don’t want to kiss you either.”

“And then I don’t want you to strip me naked.”

“Thank God, because I’m not going to do that at all.”

“And after that, I hope you don’t make me feel like I’m seeing stars.”

“Planets, Tiger. Maybe even galaxies.”

Then, when we’re through, she’ll snuggle up next to me, and tell me she loves me.

And I’ll whisper in her ear. “Same. It’s the same for me.”