All the Frogs in Manhattan Read online

  Our apartment is basically one big great room with two doors off of one wall, another on the opposite wall, and the front door on the back wall. Five hundred or so of the feet are dedicated to the living room/kitchen/hallway/workout studio/drying rack/Netflix and chill all-encompassing great room. Our bedrooms are the size of a closet, and not Lisa Vanderpump's type, and the bathroom is basically a coffin with a toilet and a showerhead.

  It's the price we pay to live five floors above a street with noises that never stop and homeless people fighting at three a.m.

  But just when I think I'm through with this city, with the grind and keeping up appearances, some cute guy smiles at me across a rooftop bar and I'm hooked just like the most gullible fish. New York always finds a way to pull me back in.

  "Did you tell him you had your period?" Sam joins me on our couch, Real Housewives of wherever muted on the TV, and her boob about to fall out of the ratty tank top she has on.

  I slide my eyes to her and smirk. "You know I did."

  She holds up a hand for a high five, which I gladly smack. "You know I love that excuse. Makes them scatter like the cockroaches they are. I have some Halo Top in the freezer we can share."

  Low fat ice cream and taking off my bra? Yes please.

  I strip down before she can even dig out two spoons, throwing my clothes wherever they land and grabbing the first okay-smelling T-shirt off the pile on my floor.

  Sam and I have been best friends since sophomore year of high school, when I snorted milk onto the lunchroom table and everyone laughed at me. Yeah, I was THAT girl in high school. She told me I was hilarious and gave me a napkin to wipe my nose. We'd gone to school together in the city, vying to get out of our boring existences in New Jersey, although she'd gone to FIT and I'd gone the Ivy route. We'd discovered our twenties, fake IDs, jungle juice, and crop tops together. I held her hand the first time she'd had to buy Plan B, and she dried my tears when I found out my junior year boyfriend was fucking everything on two legs, including those who had dicks.

  She always knew what I needed, and right now, it was ice cream in my underwear.

  "So get this, I think Melinda and John are screwing at work." She points a spoon at me, her blond hair falling from the topknot and into her face.

  Sam works as a receptionist at a high-end art gallery. Believe me, I blanched when she told me about the job too, but apparently if you last a year, you can go anywhere in the fashion and art space. Which is right where she wants to be.

  "How do you know?" I try to tune into her gossip and forget my horrible night.

  "Her top was inside out after lunch, and I swear I saw red lipstick on his collar. Only that bitch would wear that shade of red." She nods her head solemnly, as if we are discussing America's overseas agenda instead of which of her coworkers are shtupping each other.

  I notice she's looking at me like I've missed a beat, and I spoon another mouthful of strawberry between my lips. I'm going to have to run an extra mile for this one.

  "Was it that bad?" Sam pouts her lip, her natural indigo eyes flashing.

  I hang my head, running my hands through my hair. "I'm just so tired of looking. Isn't there one guy in this whole goddamn city for me?"

  I'm being dramatic but the day was long, my calves feel like aching boulders, and the marks from where my bra was cutting in are really itchy.

  "Oh shut up. You're twenty-five, not dead. Look at me, I don't date and I'm happy as a clam. Be thrilled that you're single. Someday soon Mr. Right will come along, and you'll be happy for like two years, and as soon as he puts a ring on your left hand he'll get fat and start recording Sportscenter and Cops on your DVR to watch while he scratches his balls and yells about dinner."

  Sam was a total pessimist when it came to relationships. Her parents divorced nastily when she was ten, and she's sworn up and down since the day I met her that she's never getting married. She falls into the category of "hot girl who doesn't want a boyfriend but has the most gorgeous men sniffing around trying to attach her chain to their balls."

  "You're right," I say half-heartedly as I dig into the container for another scoop.

  Another Friday night of failed dates and eating ice cream with my roommate in my underwear.

  Chapter Four

  Oliver

  Movies always show a fit younger man running through the city in his Nike gear and Beats headphones, sweat barely glazing him as the skyscrapers rise up around him.

  In reality, it's pure fucking chaos. If you continuously run in the city, you'll get hit by a goddamned car or truck. You have to stop at each crosswalk, jogging in place like a moron until the swarm of people around you surges forward when the white little walk sign blinks across the street. In the winter you're freezing, in the summer my balls stick to my leg so bad that I have a heat rash by the time I peel off my shorts. I have to dodge strollers and suitcases, street grates and homeless men.

  But on that one day, the one perfect day where everything comes together and traffic at six a.m. isn't as bad as it usually is, and the donut shop on the way home has a fresh pot of coffee brewing, and your playlist perfectly syncs up a Drake song after a fucking great Eminem pump-up jam … running five miles before work feels like a high you couldn't achieve anywhere else.

  "Thanks, Ernie!" I yell as I step back out onto the street.

  Unlike every other person on this island, I've spurned Starbucks and go for the locally owned places. I've been going to Java, Ernie's shop, for the last year. It's conveniently located in the storefront below my thirty-story residential building in TriBeCa. The beauty of Manhattan; being able to get any thing at any time.

  My doorman, Johnny, pulls open the toned glass and gold door of my building and nods hello as I take my first sip of coffee. I've lived here for three years and the service never waivers, the people generously paid for the jobs they do. I make sure of that.

  "Good morning, Mr. Anders!" Darla, the woman who mans the marble front desk until noon, waves at me.

  "Darla, I told you, it's Oliver. Mr. Anders makes me feel like my father."

  "Well you sure don't look a day older than twenty-five." She winks at me, her eyes glued to my ass.

  So she won't use my first name, but she'll make sexual advances at a tenant. The world we live in. I shake my head and smile as I ascend on the elevator up to my floor.

  And she's wrong anyway … I'm thirty. A fact I like to both pride myself on and try to hide. True, I'm one of the youngest millionaires in the New York tech space. But on the other hand, new entrepreneurs are coming in and trying to push out an older guy like me everyday. I don't let up for a second, and that's not boasting. It's just fact. I can't let myself take the easy way out even for a second.

  A woman cloaked in heavy perfume gets into the elevator on the fifth floor and presses the button for the lobby, even though this elevator is going up to the twenty-eighth floor. She looks older, maybe in her forties, because whatever plastic surgery she’s had is obvious to a man who scientifically categorizes every person he meets. But the work works, because I find myself checking out her tight work pants, the way her ass lifts in those spiky heels, how her blouse hugs the firm swells of her breasts. I hold back my chuckle, because I really need to get laid soon. It’s been awhile.

  And then she drops the contents of her entire bag, and I have to bend down to help her because it's the right thing to do.

  "I'm such a klutz." She smiles at me and I feel bad.

  I reach for her things, handing what I can back to her as she embarrassingly shoves it back in her bag the size of a small nation.

  "The things you women carry in these, you could cure the fatally ill." I try to make a joke.

  And that's when my hand grabs what I know is a tampon. Sure, I've never used one or had a girlfriend who let me see one. But I've seen the sporty girl commercials with beautiful women running or doing gymnastics.

  I swear my face turns red as I hand it to her. And if mine is red, hers is eggplant purp
le.

  “Uh, you don’t … you don’t have to be embarrassed. It’s totally … uh, fine. I get that women have menstrual cycles, it’s smart to carry supplies.”

  And then I want to smack myself in the forehead for alluding to her bleeding for one week of the month.

  “It’s just to say … I know it’s a natural part of womanhood. Scientifically, its brilliant the way your bodies were designed.” I swipe a hand through the air to motion to her body as we rise to stand straight again.

  Jesus, I might as well conk her out with my bludgeon and throw her over my shoulder I sound like such a caveman. Sometimes, my scientific brain gets in the way of my logical sense and social manners, and I let it take over. I make situations awkward, so much so that I have had to train my mind to tick a second behind my mouth whenever I’m in front of a woman.

  Not that I have any chance with this woman now, if I even wanted one.

  We ride the rest of the elevator journey in awkward silence, until I get off at twenty-eight and she continues to the ground floor. And just as I'm unlocking the front door to 28K, the tampon incident pops into my mind.

  And directly after that, the girl I gave my cab to last Friday night. The pretty one with the sky-high heels who told her meat-stick date that she had her period so he'd cower away. Now she was funny. Refreshing compared to the desperate women I meet and am seduced by. But alas, I have no time for dates or that personal crap. Sure, I have sex. Casual sex. Great sex. But the women I bed know what they're in for. My woman is my business, and I don't have time to worry about expectations, rings or babies.

  I don't get three steps into my half-a-floor luxury apartment before my phone rings. Just a regular Tuesday morning, I think, as I connect to a conference call taking place somewhere halfway across the world.

  My morning consists of showering, dressing, and taking an Uber to the office ... all while on phone call after phone call. That's what it took to run Graphite, my multi-million dollar technology company.

  I'd started the business in my junior year at Bowling Green, and the ideas had spiraled out from there. My initial, and most successful product, was an underwater smart watch with headphones that played cordlessly in any body of water. I'd designed them myself, done the calculations, worked up a prototype, and pitched it on an investor reality show. The clip of my pitch makes the rounds at least once a year, a small town Midwestern boy turned golden tech mogul. I'm so green and stuttered that I blush every time I see the video. Nearly ten years and twenty successfully patented products and I still feel like that nerd in his dorm room while everyone had wild drunken sex around me.

  Sure, I've gotten more skilled when it comes to schmoozing and things concerning my dick and a woman’s pussy…but deep down, I’m still the geek dreaming up creations while the social world spins too fast around me.

  These fingers have no time for swiping. Or anything more sexual than that.

  Chapter Five

  Gemma

  The only thing twenty somethings in the city love more than happy hour or free drinks is brunch.

  Brunch. Every single person I know traipses out of bed on Sunday, chasing a hangover while schlapping makeup on and recurling the oily hair of last night.

  And then we gather at the hottest new cafe that offers some new variation on eggs Benedict, all while slurping down mimosas as fast as the waiters will bring them.

  In reality, it's a gathering, a family affair of all the friends you gossip with about what happened the nights before, and what guy you're chasing this week.

  On this Sunday, I sit around a crowded lunchroom-style table with Sam across from me, our friend Jillian next to me, and Myra, Sam's hilarious coworker, next to her.

  Piled high family-style on plates in front of us sit chicken teriyaki eggs, miso breakfast soup complete with bacon, lo mein with breakfast sausage and hollandaise, and bagel cups with pork fried rice. This week's trendy brunch spot was called Staysian Bed. It was a stretch on a food concept, but it had been written up in the New Yorker so of course everyone and their hungover roommate were swarming the place.

  "I let him put a finger in my ass, and I have to say, it just felt like I had to poop." Myra flips her hip-length blond hair over an anorexic shoulder and downs another glass of straight champagne.

  "Whoever said anal was ah-mazing for women was probably a male ad exec with a secret red room in his apartment." Sam rolled her eyes.

  "I actually liked it with my ex. It felt … illicit. Maybe you're just doing it wrong." Jillian shrugs and picks up a bagel cup as she scopes out the available dudes in the place.

  Myra isn't buying it. "My friend actually shit on her boyfriend's dick. Actual poop, on his penis. I would be fucking mortified."

  "Not me," I chime in. "He asked to stick it up there, that's what he gets. Although I agree with Jill. I did it a few times in high school, and it was hot."

  Sam eyes me, raising her eyebrows about this new discovery. "You slut! Was this before I knew you? Letting some douche pump your booty in high school? Were you one of those girls who said if it wasn't in the vagina, you were still a virgin?"

  I popped a teriyaki egg in my mouth. Smiling, because she knew me too well. "You know it. I was intact, and therefore plundering the back door still left me white and pure."

  Sam shakes her head at my ridiculous explanation, and I admit I've done some really idiotic things when it came to men. Or ... boys, really. I hadn't found a man yet, someone who took responsibility but also knew how to be vulnerable and loyal in a relationship. At this point, I thought he, whoever he was, might be a unicorn with a sparkly pink horn and all.

  "Well, the whole no condom thing is going well though. Except the part where it leaks into my underwear when I sleep. I wake up with a fucking pool of leftover sex juice in my boy shorts. It's ruined like, three pairs of good lace underwear."

  Myra was steadily seeing a guy named Jase, and had been for the past four months. I didn't dare drop the boyfriend word because she would freak, but the fact that Myra could make a relationship work and I couldn't was depressing as shit. But Jase was actually a really nice guy. Not for me, I really wouldn't vibe with his hipster, polka band, tattoo artist style, but for Myra he was more than perfect. The fact that she'd let him stop wearing condoms was a good sign.

  "Ah, the condom drop, love it. It means you're committed, and they are too. If he puts a bun in the oven, he's semi-okay with it because he took the love glove off." Sam nods solemnly.

  "Oh my God, no one is trying to father a child here! It's just a plus that I can have an orgasm in under three minutes flat when my guy doesn't wear a raincoat." Myra manages to look horrified and pleased at the same time.

  "Ew and then you have to like catch it before it falls out of you onto the sheets? Men have it so easy! Like here, let your baby juice just slide down my leg. The worst part is, they think it's sexy to see it drip out. Fine, you can sleep in the wet spot and buy me new underwear then!" Sam has an outburst as the other tables stare at her in amusement.

  I don't say a thing, just sip my mimosa and ponder why the hell I'm still single and can't manage to have an orgasm with any man I've ever slept with.

  "This is really inappropriate brunch talk." Jillian side-eyes us and I can't help but laugh.

  I may be on the more conservative side compared to Sam and Myra, if anyone in their right mind would even call me conservative, but Jillian was a saint compared to us foul mouths. I don't even know why she put up with us, besides the fact that we were literally each other's family on this island. We brought each other soup when we were sick, threatened to slash the tires of any guy who broke your heart, encouraged you to do that extra tequila shot, but also sat on your couch watching endless episodes of Law & Order SVU. It was all love and support, even if we threw in a few cunts and dicks into our vocabulary and made her blush.

  "Can we just get out of here? Stabler and Benson are literally calling our names and this place is crawling with guys young enough to
be my son. When did we get so old?" I lament as I polish off the last of my drink.

  "Um, no we can not. Not until you go up and talk to gorgeous over there. He's basically eye-fucking you." Sam discreetly shakes her head in the direction over my shoulder where this supposed guy stands.

  "Oh he is hot, in a kind of nerdy, sexy way." Myra flutters her lashes in mystery man's direction.

  I sit up straighter, consciously feeling a pair of eyes on my profile. "I can't just turn around!" I whisper shout.

  The liquor has begun to do its job, fading my hangover away and making my head buzz with happy tipsiness. The girls poking at me is more fun than annoying, and the thought of a sexy man ogling me has my insides doing backflips.

  It's been too long since I had a proper, hair-mussing, sweaty sex session. The last guy I let into my panties couldn't even find my clit, rubbing incessantly at my right pussy lip while I tried to steer him in the right direction. He'd come in four minutes, I was actually counting in my head, and grunted as he stuck his tongue in my mouth and called an Uber in good-bye.

  My vibrating purple egg was the only thing that could get me off these days, that and a steamy clip of this guy pretending to be this porn star's boss.

  "You should turn around, he hasn't stopped looking at you." Sam plucks a chicken teriyaki covered egg off my plate.

  I decide I'll do the tuck-the-hair move and then subtly turn. Except when I do, it's so un-subtle that the guy who had clearly been looking at me raises an eyebrow at my horribly planned tactic. I feel my cheeks redden even as I keep my cool, making sure I smize and lift my nose a little higher in the air.

  Cool blue eyes, longer curled chestnut hair, tall lean limbs encased in what I know have to be designer jeans and a short-sleeved button down. I catalogue his features, handsome in a nerdy way but still refined somehow … and realize I know this guy.

  "Wait a minute …"