Her Billionaire Toy Boy

Sam walked to stand broodily in front of a window. If there was one good thing about this burgeoning relationship with Mira—and there were several good things but this was one of them—it was that it might be poking holes in another relationship of his. One that needed a little bit of light shed upon it, honestly.

Sam bit his lip. He might have to do something about Damien.

But what?

Damien was one of his best friends and he did not necessarily want to lose him over a girl. A girl–a woman–as wonderful as Mira seemed to be, he didn’t want to be the type of guy that terminated a relationship years in the making for another which had not yet matured past a first date. However, if Damien was not the sort of relationship which added positively to his life in any way and seemed likely to impede his happiness by its very existence–If he thought that there was a chance that Damien might stoop to blackmailing him to get the outcome which he alone wished to see…

Sam shuddered.

Life had gotten rather complicated rather quickly.

He shifted his brain around. He did not wish to think about that at the moment. He checked his watch. He had twenty minutes before he was due to leave to pick up Mira for their first date. At the thought, a surge of warmth stole through him.

He wasn’t sure what it was about Mira, but something about her made him feel safe and warm, while simultaneously being insanely curious about everything that she was. She seemed to be an especially intriguing sort of woman. He couldn’t imagine the stories she had to tell. He wanted nothing more than to spend a very large amount of time with her, and he wanted to start as soon as was possible.

But due decorum must be observed, he thought. The type of person who arrived too early for a first date–he also didn’t want to be that sort of a person. That would be annoying. He needed to give Mira the space she needed to get ready for their date on her own terms, in her own time. She was probably very busy. She’d probably had a day full of exciting events prior to what would be, doubtlessly, for her, a lackluster evening.

Sam shook his head. He really had to stop thinking thoughts like that.

Fifteen minutes. He decided to distract himself by planning. In just a few weeks, he and Damien were planning on going to one of their vineyards upstate–that would be a refuge for him; and for Damien, he hoped. Sam brightened. Perhaps they could use that time away to reconnect, in a way. Play some board games. Play some video games. Get drunk and talk about topics other than The Game. It would be a bonding opportunity. Sam smiled. He liked the sound of that. He knew that he would be very lonely if he lost Damien, no matter how threatened he was by the way Damien behaved sometimes… He waved away the troublesome nature of that thought and pulled up the Excel spreadsheet he’d been using to chart their itinerary. They were staying in his cabin for three nights. They would barbecue one night. They would probably spend one of the days canoeing over the lake nearby. Perhaps he’d rent a couple of kayaks, as well…

One of the full days would have to be spent doing a full wine tasting. This was something Sam was good at, something he enjoyed doing—something Damien enjoyed doing—aside from the usual amount of enjoyment one would derive from drinking alcohol. Sam liked that he had cultivated a discerning palate and that he could tell which wines were better than others with a sniff, a swirl, and a sip. He took pride in making sure that the varietals he offered from his wineries were legitimately the best he knew how to cultivate.

So a day would be spent doing that. The next day they’d probably spend lounging around the cabin…recovering. Young and sprightly as Sam and Damien still were, they were not so young that they could drink an entire day away and not feel the effects. He smiled wryly as he opened the shopping list and added some of their classic hangover remedies to the list.

It would be a phenomenal weekend—medicinal, in a way, Sam thought. He checked his watch again.

It was time to go pick up Mira. He smiled, grabbed his keys, and went to get his car.

*****

Mira had decided to wait for Sam by sitting on the stoop of her brick apartment building. It had a wrought-iron banister which she adored because it seemed like something right out of some sort of picture book. She had moved to New York for trappings such as these. She loved the romanticism of sitting on her stoop, waiting for a handsome young man to swing by. She loved it even more when the sky opened up and a faint mist began to rain down upon her. It was just enough to be slightly inconvenient but not nearly enough to get her sopping wet. Mira smiled and removed the scarf from her bag, which she had packed for just this occasion. She wrapped it over her head so that her hair wouldn’t get unwieldy and batted her eyelashes to disperse the micro rain drops which had spritzed onto them.

At this juncture, a white car with abnormally large headlights sped onto her street and stopped in front of her house. Mira raised her scarf and peered at the driver before smiling, hefting herself to her feet, and waving. It was Sam. She was surprised by the rush of adrenaline and happiness which welled up in her at the sight of him. She felt excited, and youthful, and exuberant—so much so that she had to remind herself not to catapult herself into his arms and envelop the man with whom she’d only been on one sort-of date in an affectionate bear hug. She did not know him well enough for that.

“Hey,” she called out in a glad voice.

“Hey, yourself,” she heard, in a muffled sort of way. Sam’s voice had to compete with the pitter-patter of the rain. She saw him get out of the car, holding a beige jacket over his head. She saw him blink in tempo with the raindrops spattering across his face. Anyway, as the wind was blowing nearly horizontally at this point, their makeshift shelters were poor shields against the rain.

She ran to him when she saw that he had opened the door. She placed a hand on his bicep region and squeezed, gently, to show her thanks. She also said the word ‘thanks’, but due to the rain, she could not be one thousand percent sure that he had heard this, so she smiled up at him as he closed the door. Mira leaned across the blessedly warm cabin of the car to the drivers’ side and unlatched the door for Sam, propping it open as best she could while leaning across the center console.

Sam slipped into the car and proceeded to shake his head off like a large wet dog. Droplets went flying around the interior of the cabin. Mira sprang back, laughing.

“Hey,” she said, still chuckling.

“Sorry about that,” said Sam bashfully. “Instinct. I didn’t think it’d be this rainy today.”

“Seems like the shower was a surprise to most of us,” said Mira, gazing from under her shaded lids at the sky. “It got much, much worse just over the last few minutes.”
“If more intense rain can be immediately equated to worse,” said Sam.

“True,” said Mira, thinking about it. “I suppose it depends on how much you like rain, to begin with.”

“On my part, very much,” said Sam. “I’ve always loved a good rain shower.”

“I used to specifically open windows as far as I could to let in the rain while I slept. Raindrops would actually fall on my face,” Mira remembered.