SUMMER SWAP // PROLOGUE

Just adding this prologue to the book version and thought you all should get a look at it!

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Penny slid her roller chair close to Cheyenne’s workstation so she could whisper a confidential question. “How rich is Cody, anyway?”

Cheyenne rolled her head toward Penny, a chewed up pen sticking in one side of her mouth. She regarded Penny, one eyebrow raised. Yes, Cody was rich, but the question seemed to have come out of nowhere and needed more context. When Penny stared and offered no more, Cheyenne said, “I don’t know. Pretty rich, I guess. Why?”

“How much does it cost to rent a yacht for two weeks?”

“Oh,” Cheyenne said, removed the pen from her mouth and tossed it underneath her iMac. She stretched, and then checked her watch. Two hours until go-time. She said, “We all pay our own way. The yacht belongs to a friend of Cody’s, but we all chip in.” Though the truth was, Cody and Carla might be paying more. They were getting the suite with the attached bathroom, after all. No one called Cody and Carla on it because it was suspected that Cody might be floating more of the bill than the rest of them. Byron loved to do math in his head, and laying in bed a few nights ago, he told her he thought Cody probably paid half, and the other seven of them split the other half. Byron suspected Cody paid almost eighty-grand for the charter.

Penny said to herself, “I bet it’s like two-hundred thousand.”

“I don’t think it’s that much,” Cheyenne said. “And we’re paying our own way.”

“Cody is so hot,” Penny said, again muttering it to herself, chair still butted up against Cheyenne’s, her eyes staring off dreamily out the tall factory window. “I listen to his podcast. He’s hilarious.”

Cheyenne said to Penny: “What could you find interesting about a bunch of ex-soldiers talking about politics and guns?” Penny wore baggy grandfather cardigans, wool skirts, and vintage chambray work-shirts she buttoned right up to the collar. Her nose was pierced, her arms and hands completely tattooed with a dark-fantasy nautical theme, long hair but with a fringe of bangs cut only about an inch long. This made room for the enormous librarian glasses she wore.

Penny shrugged. “It’s not my style, but I feel like I know the guy.”

“He’s come by here a handful of times.”

“I know. But we talk.”

Cheyenne regarded Penny—her star employee—and waited for her to come out of her reverie. When Penny finally looked her way, Cheyenne said, “Thank you for your service.”

Penny rolled her eyes and looked offended. “They talk about more than just war and politics.”

“Cody’s married, Penny. You know I know him through his wife, right?”

“Yeah-yeah, you went to school with her. Sorority sisters.”

“No. Well, kind of. We weren’t the same sorority, just the same campus. Cody’s in love with Carla,” she said, intending it to be the end of the conversation about the attractiveness of her friend’s husband, rolling back to her workstation to get some work done before it was time to leave for the airport. But she wheeled the chair back toward Penny to add: “And Carla’s the kind of girl you wouldn’t want to cross.”

Penny said, “Cody’s hot, but so are his friends.”

Carla’s husband, Cody Weber, invested in a watch company after he got out of the army and the company took off. All their friends watched this guy they used to know as a soldier, who was married to one of the girls, become a millionaire. Carla did well on her own, selling Manhattan real estate, but when Cody’s dad passed away, the Weber brothers divvied up their modest inheritance and Cody took his whole stash and gambled it on a business startup with some special forces guys he knew. The startup was a military watch company. Now the company did more than watches, had a big social media presence, and Cody had become a sort of underground celebrity.

Cheyenne said, “I’ll put in a good word for you. But they don’t seem your type, Penny.”

Penny stared at her screen, a swooping black velvet swatch over a royal purple background, and said, “I think I’m tired of my type. I wouldn’t mind a guy who hates New York and has his shit together.”

* * *

The flight left in three hours and they were still an hour from LaGuardia. And Chey wasn’t even in the car yet. Outside the Uber’s windows, Tribeca foot-traffic bustled along past the grafitti-scrawled walls and down the fire-escape alley that divided Chey’s building from her neighbor. Byron sat in the back sending emails from his phone, dealing with last minute stuff from the office and working with the general contractor building their new place in Westchester. Last thing he wanted, going away on a yacht vacation in the Virgin Islands, was dealing with general contractor headaches. He’d set up a schedule of minor milestones for the GC to accomplish over the next two weeks, things that wouldn’t need consultation. The next two weeks were about very few things. Eating, drinking, swimming, sleeping, drinking, sunning, and drinking. It’d been a while since the whole crew got together. Times changed fast. Four years ago, they all lived in the same neighborhood, saw each other down at the Blue Bottle or The Knitting Club, three nights a week at least. It sucked getting older. Despite how many great things were going on in all their lives, those early post-college days were pretty golden.

He set his phone down, smiling, then looking out the window. Still no Key. He groaned and rubbed his forehead.

The Uber driver said, “Plenty of time still.”

“She can be a little late or a lot of late. You never can tell with her.”

Cheyenne and two of her friends from their former Park Avenue design firm, branched out on their own, doing designs for garment companies, specializing in sneakers and sneaker collaborations. They’d got themselves a second floor office in a Franklin Street five-story, and a handful of decent clients, and put out the word Bergamôt was in town. He didn’t get the accent circonflexe, but Chey assured him it was cool and had powerful symbolic meaning.

The Uber driver said, “That her?”

Byron scooted between the front seats to look out the window. A young woman with long chestnut hair had bounded out of the building on the north side of Franklin, arms splayed out in the pose of apology. Cheyenne saw him in the Uber and mouthed a theatrical Sorry as she waited for a car to pass on the one-way so she could cross to the Uber.

“That’s her,” he said, chuckling. His cute and design-savvy—but also somehow tomboyish—wife trotted across Franklin to the driver-side rear door. Byron shoved it open for her. Chey jumped in, all long and skinny legs in black denim, sporting all-white Japanese sneakers. She darted him a kiss and pulled the door closed. “You bring all my stuff?”

“In the trunk, Chey,” he said as the Uber driver pulled the Tesla into traffic and got them heading out of lower Manhattan. Fuck, he hoped it wasn’t going to be tight—he hated getting stressed about shit like that.

“Oh my God, I’m so excited,” she said, breathy, settling into the seats and looking out at the pedestrians as they right-turned onto Lafayette. Byron took her hand and held it between them. Chey leaned forward and said to the driver, “Be honest, did he trash talk me while he was waiting? Saying how I was going to be late.”

The Uber driver said, “He said only kind things,” but gave Cheyenne a wink like they both knew he was lying.

“I’ll bet,” she said, settling in next to him again, smiling to herself. “I need this vacation so bad.”

“Me too,” he said to her, leaning in to kiss her temple.

“Did you get the thing straightened out about the garage floor foundation or whatever?”

“I did—”

“You know they called me, right?”

I know.”

“Said he couldn’t get an answer from you, and they needed to—”

“It’s all taken care of now, Chey,” he said soothingly, stroking his thumb on her palm. “I put them on autopilot for the next two weeks so we can just relax.”

“Oh man, I’m so stressed, babe,” she said, running her hair back with her free hand. “I need to relax.”

“We’ve got two weeks with our friends in the Caribbean. Two weeks of nothing but fun and sun.”

Chey purred a low sound and snuggled to his side. Then she looked up to him. “Not too much fun.”

“There’s a limit?”

“Not like the old days, babe,” she said and smiled.

“Chey,” he reassured her, “we’re adults now. All of us are grown-ups. We’re not twenty-two. We’re practically middle-aged—”

“Hey,” she said, aggravated.

He chuckled. “Thirty’s around the corner, babe. Get used to it. All I’m saying is all of us have matured through the years.”