Mama’s Boy by Avery Flynn

Chapter Three

Dixon

Sometimes a plan just came together like magic. One moment it wasn’t there and the next there it was, fully formed and fucking brilliant. The second Dixon had woken up that morning, nursing the mother of all hangovers, he knew exactly how he was going to word his Bramble ad.

Fuck fighting fair, as his dad had always said. This was about coming out on top.

Griff grabbed the blueberry muffin with the crumbly top as he slid Dixon’s phone back to him across their table at The Grounds coffee shop.

“What the fuck, man?” Griff said before taking a bite of the muffin. “Hating dogs? Are you searching for a psychopath?”

Dixon picked up his phone and glanced down at his bio on the Bramble dating app. Pure genius.

Must Hate Dogs

Do you hate dogs? Only want to talk about yourself? Is having a sense of humor something you’ve never been accused of? Think eating for pleasure is a complete waste of time? Agree that tipping is for suckers? Then you’re the date for me.

The only kind of person who’d respond would be awful. Who in the hell hated dogs? Cats, sure, even their owners admitted they were assholes. But dogs? Nah, there was something going on there. Even he wouldn’t be able to find the good side of someone who hated Fido.

Nash may have insisted Dixon go out with the first woman who responded, but his pretty-boy cousin should have thought it out more and told him what kind of bio to write. And that’s why Dixon was in the CEO’s office and Nash was…okay, he was right next door, but still, Dixon could out-strategize his cousin even with a hangover.

Dixon flipped his phone so it was facedown on the table and picked up his coffee. “Sometimes I amaze myself.”

Griff shoved the rest of the muffin in his mouth and grunted. “You are such an ass. How many times have I—”

Whatever his cousin was about to say next became a mystery, because a hot blonde with a perfect ass laid the ripped-off corner of a napkin on the table next to his cousin as she walked by.

Griff grabbed the napkin and stood up. “You dropped this,” he called out.

The woman turned, a flirty little smile curling her lips. “No, I didn’t.”

“I saw it—you were walking by and dropped this,” he responded, holding out the napkin.

And there it was—the reason why Griff was Dixon’s only competition for the bet. Why? Because when it came to women, he had some sort of mental block that had him acting exactly like the nerd stuffed in a locker he’d been as a teen instead of the muscled-up, fully tatted Tom Hardy look-alike people saw when they looked at him now.

“Yeah,” the woman said. “But I did it on purpose.”

Griff looked down. Then up at the ceiling. And finally, he glanced back down—avoiding looking at the woman completely—becoming very interested in the tattoo of a gnarled tree on his forearm.

“It’s my number,” she said, talking a little slower than before. “You should give me a call sometime.”

His cousin, the man who had called him a total ass only seconds before, just grunted in response. Griff might be the smartest man Dixon had ever known, but he was absolute shit at talking to women.

The woman’s expression went from hey-there to fuck-you in less than two seconds. “Well, fine,” she said. “You don’t have to be that way about it.” She snatched the napkin out of his still-upheld hand and crumpled it into a ball before stalking off. “Jerk.”

Dixon just drank his coffee and counted it down.

Three.

Two.

One.

Griff let out a grumbled curse and swiped the last muffin before glaring down at him. “Has your mom seen that dating bio?”

Damn.Even knowing the misdirected frustration snarl was coming, that shot hurt like an elbow to the nose during a bar brawl.

“I don’t tell my mom everything,” Dixon shot back.

Growing up, he’d been called it all—Mama’s Boy, Norman Bates, and worse. A daughter having a close relationship with her dad was totally socially acceptable. A guy with a similar relationship with his mom? According to conventional wisdom, he was obviously fucked up in the head.

Griff snorted. “So this is your plan? To find the world’s worst date so you won’t fall for her?”

Hey, Dixon had a track record when it came to women—and not a good one. Nicole made up the beginning, middle, and end as far as he was concerned. And when he’d lost her and then found out the truth? There wasn’t even a word to describe it. All he knew was that he wasn’t going through that again. Ever.

“It’s called a strategy,” Dixon said.

“It’s called you know you’re a sucker who can’t help himself,” Griff said. “You try to sell that BS of Nicole being your one and only—and she was great; she was—but the truth is it’s been two years and she’d hate seeing you alone just because you’re scared.”

This was the problem with being best friends with people who not only had known him since birth but had absolutely no problem telling him exactly what they thought. They had free reign to be total assholes. Good thing he was above that.

Yeah, right.

“As opposed to being the guy who spends as much time in the gym as he does at the research lab and only slightly less than when he’s getting tatted up so that no one looks at him and thinks science nerd.”

Bing. Bam. Boom. Direct hit.

Griff flipped him off. “Fuck you.”

“Right back at you,” Dixon said with a shrug.

They sat there in companionable silence for a few minutes, watching the people walking by outside the plate-glass window. Harbor City never slowed down, not even on a Saturday morning in late September with the first crisp fall breeze in the air. It was the greatest city in the world.

“What in the hell was Nash thinking with this bet?” Griff asked, rubbing the back of his neck—no doubt the idea of having to find a date and spend six nights talking to her had him all pissy.

“Who knows,” Dixon said. “But he’s definitely up to something—especially with his rule about being able to plan our dates.”

“He always is.”

It was true. Every dare, every ridiculous plan, and every midnight adventure when they’d snuck out of their grandmother’s house to row out to the island in the middle of the lake and share a bottle plucked from the unlocked liquor cabinet had been dreamed up by Nash. The man had always known how to maneuver a situation. That hadn’t changed at all since they’d grown up.

“So you’re really gonna do this?” Griff asked.

Dixon’s phone buzzed with a Bramble notification. Someone had matched with him.

He didn’t even bother to glance at her photos. Whoever she was, she was perfect if she answered that awful ad. He clicked Accept, idly wondering how long it would take to suffer through six dates and get this over with.

But he didn’t have long to wait on date one, as a message appeared on the screen from his match almost immediately:

Natural History Museum Ant Room at 2:16. Be exactly on time. I’ll find you. —F.

Dixon grinned at his cousin. “I already am.” And now he had ten minutes to get down six city blocks. “Get ready to lose.”

Then he was out the door and on his way to victory lane.