Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn by Sarah Miller Read Free Book Online

going to be doing anyway. Or trying to do."
    "You gave him Nicholas's car?" Gideon and I are on the same page. Shocked about the car, also shocked that Liam Wu was so handsomely rewarded for pussy hounding.
    "Yep," Cullen says. "He wouldn't do it otherwise."
    "Well," Gideon says, "I won't do this. Not even for a car."
    Though we are both wondering what kind of car it is.
    Nicholas sidles up to Cullen and whispers to him. Cullen scowls, shakes his head, and whispers back. "Excuse us, won't you, for just a minute?" Cullen hides the bourbon under his bed. As he's doing so, his cell phone rings. "Answer that," he says to Gideon, then adds, "please." He and Nicholas leave.
    Cullen has a silver flip phone. The caller ID says Madison. Before Gid can even say hello, a young female voice asks, "How's the new kid?"
    God, this girl sounds pretty. Her voice is teasing, with a little layer of gravel in it. Gid bets she smokes, and even though he's watched a lot of filmstrips and ads that tell him to think otherwise, he finds this sexy. "I am the new kid," he says.
    "Well, I guess he must not hate you, 'cause he let you answer his phone," the girl says.
    "Yes," Gid says, "I guess."
    "Are you guys going to come over tonight?" the girl asks. "Oh shit, I gotta go."
    Cullen comes back into the room first. Nicholas follows. "That was someone called Madison," he tells Cullen. "She wants us to come over."
    Cullen nods and starts to pack himself another bowl.
    "We've decided that if you get laid by October, we're going to give you the car," Nicholas says. Cullen does a little dance, a sidestep, snapping his fingers, swinging his arms in little loops.
    "What car?" Gid says. "Is there another car?"
    "The car is the car is the car," Cullen says, twirling around. "A 1991 seven-series BMW. Sunroof. Five-speed, of course."
    Holy shit. The car that honked at him today.
    "You can drive a standard?"
    "Of course," Gideon says.
    Thank God. That whole both-hands-on-the-steering-wheel thing is so Rust Belt.
    "But you guys gave Liam the car, right?" Gid says. "You can't just take it away from him."
    "Sure we can," Cullen says breezily. "By the way, this is a cool car, but it's also white. So it's not like, wow, totally bad ass. But you definitely should win it."
    Gideon imagines a world where he has proved to his roommates he can get laid, actually gotten laid, and won the prior instrument of his humiliation. This is a world he wants to live in. It seems too good to be true. And of course, well, none of it has happened, but it could, right?
    "You guys are going to give me the car? That's great," he says.
    "Well, I wouldn't go out and buy your BMW racing jacket yet," Nicholas says darkly.
    "Ha! Yeah!" Cullen says. "Better get some condoms first, and see if you use one of them."
    Gid thinks about the girls on the quad. There were so many pretty ones. One of them is going to have to like him, right?
    "I think this calls for a celebration," Cullen declares, pulling out the camera from this afternoon. Nicholas looks unenthusiastic but dutifully lines up for a pose, with Gideon in the middle.
    Cullen holds out the camera with his impossibly long arm. Gid feels good here, flanked by his roommates. Then the flash goes off, and it occurs to him he's in the middle not as a gesture of support or affection, but because of symmetry. He's the shortest.
    "Wait a minute," he says. "What do you guys get? Your bet is about me, but you're betting each other, right?"
    Uneasy glances pass between Cullen and Nicholas.
    "Uh," Nicholas stammers, "if I win, then I get the car back."
    "Wait a minute," Gid says. "Doesn't your mother know the car's missing?"
    I had the same question.
    "She never leaves New York," Nicholas says. "She never leaves our neighborhood."
    Gid looks at Cullen, who nods.
    "Anyway," Nicholas says, "Liam knows that he might have to give it back. He just won't ever know why. It's our secret. He knows we're going to do something like this, but he just doesn't know