Page 8 of Jesse

I have to look away to hide my evil grin.

Because I have been dreaming about a night like this with Jesse Boston ever since he walked out on me.

It’s the reason why I pushed us so hard all these years.

Success is the best revenge.

But buying the man who scorned you when you were eighteen and making him regret treating you like trash comes in a close second.

CHAPTER FOUR - JESSE

New revelations about myself always come to me at the most inappropriate times. Like this one, for instance.

I hate being around people. How come I didn’t realize this about myself until this very moment? Maybe it was all those years on the ocean that changed me? Or maybe it was the exclusive circle of friends and family I grew up with?

I don’t know. But you’d think I’d have figured this out before I was thirty-three years old, standing in a crowd of people who want to buy me for a night.

What the hell was I thinking when I agreed to this?

“Tell me again why I’m doing this?” I lean over to whisper to Zach.

He leans into me and says, just as discreetly, “Because you got busted for drugs five years ago, were stripped of all your yachting titles, and now the only people who will hire you as a yacht racing consultant are criminals?”

I side-eye him and say, “You’re an asshole.”

“You asked,” he says. “I’m just here to tell you the truth, cousin. And that was it.”

He’s not lying. I did get busted for drugs right after my father died. And then tested for drugs. And then I failed that test, and the yachting association stripped me of every title race I ever won. And even though I didn’t have to pay back the winnings, I did.

Which, who cares? No one gets into yachting for the prize money. It’s a total waste of resources. And they couldn’t legally make me give that money back. I did it to… you know. Plump up my image. It was Zach’s idea, actually. I’m joking when I chide him about being dumb. He’s not dumb. He’s actually the smartest person I know. That’s why I hired him. Plus, he’s more of a brother to me than Joey or Johnny.

Zach was always hanging out with me when he was a kid. Always wanted to be like me. Except he never made my mistakes. Never got into drinking and drugs. Never got arrested or anything like that.

And it’s not like he wasn’t around during my racing days. He was on my crew from age fifteen to after he graduated high school. We went all over the world together.

But for me, yacht racing was a passion. An escape. It was the only thing that mattered for so long and then after I got busted for drugs the whole thing was over in an instant.

Until that drug bust, yachting was all I thought about. Every day was filled with sails, and wind, and speed. And after, well. I was reduced to teaching.

Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.

Isn’t that what they say?

It’s not fair. Lots of teachers can ‘do’ just fine. Some of them just get busted for drugs and get kicked out of the racing association.

This is not making me feel any better.

Anyway, I’m not a teacher. I’m a consultant. Big difference. I get paid better, for one. When I actually have clients. But Zach is right. My reputation is shit. The only people who trust my opinion these days are the cheaters.

I took on a few of those clients in the early days after I got busted. But I figured out pretty quick that the more I perpetuated the image, the more it stuck. So I stopped. That was four years ago and I haven’t had a single client since.

Four long years of drought.

I still sail. Alone.

And every once in a while I’ll meet up with some of my old friends in the yacht club and we’ll have an impromptu race.

But it’s not the same. One-hundred-and-eighty-degree difference, in fact.