LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER FIVE

      Dev

      JACK LEVELS A look at me, an impressive feat since we’re bobbing up and down on our boards a quarter mile off the Santa Cruz shore.

      “I’m not sure if I should congratulate you on your new internship or knock you off your board,” he says.

      Jack is a big guy with the size to follow through on his threat, although we both know he won’t. This is partly due to us having been best friends since our freshman year of college, where we shared an apartment and a major in computer science at the University of California at Santa Cruz. We spent most of our time hacking or surfing. Before I met Jack, however, I was the youngest brother in a family of four boys. I’m competitive about everything and Jack knows it.

      Long-term friendship has pluses and minuses. On the plus side, Jack makes an amazing wingman and he really gets me. On the con side, he often knows what I’m thinking and acts as a self-appointed conscience and guardian angel whenever he decides I’m headed for the moral deep end without a life jacket.

      His superpower is that, despite being the size of a professional hockey player (which is why I at least pretend to listen to him) and having the killer instincts of a shark, people like him. Unlike me, he’s the amiable, happily married prince among men that ladies love to borrow as a loaner husband and confidant. Today, the shaggy hair that usually falls around his face is pulled back in a ponytail and his wet suit outlines his muscles. I squint. He looks sort of like the Hulk, but less green and way more smiley.

      “You shouldn’t have let that girl think you were her intern.” But I have been, for a couple of weeks now. Jack eyeballs the ocean.

      Today is the kind of day that comes to mind when you think of California. Bright blue sky, supernova-heated sand on the beach thanks to the sun, and ocean everywhere. Plus, the waves are perfect.

      “She assumed. I capitalized on it.” Jack plays by a very black-and-white set of rules, so in the Jack Rulebook, I’ve been a very, very bad boy. And while I know my new internship is questionable, I still feel I have a winning proposition.

      “Why?”

      “Because I need to find out who stole my software, Jack Ass.”

      Jack ignores his college nickname, stroking his fingers over the surface of his board as he tests the wax job. I’ve pointed out that the whole stroking thing makes it look as if he’s jerking off an enormous dick. “You always build in a Trojan because you’re paranoid.”

      True.

      “So it’s not like she can go live with it,” he continues. “Plus, you have an awesome legal team, a big bank account for bankrolling a lawsuit and the social capital to burn her. Either pick the right fight or let it go and move on.”

      I grin. “The day after she launches, I’ll pull the trigger on the Trojan and all her product will turn into rainbow-colored dildos and rubber duckies. Then I’ll hit her e-commerce server with a million requests a minute.”

      “She’ll be down within the hour, so why go out of your way now to infiltrate her office and give her any kind of leg to stand on?” Jack’s familiarity with my game plan may have something to do with the number of times we pulled this stunt in our younger, more lawless days. Now that he’s married, and owns a very successful VC firm with his best friend Hazel, he claims to be reformed.

      “Who’s Dev getting horizontal with now?” Max pops up behind me. Max O’Reilly is the third in our triumvirate and I blame him for the worst hacking offenses of our college careers. I may hate secrets, but Max has a vendetta against ignorance in any form. You know that stupid line about curiosity killing the cat but satisfaction brought him back? Just substitute Max for cat.

      “He’s upgraded his skill set to super ninja infiltration.” Jack makes big eyes in my direction.

      Max frowns. Literal at the best of times, Max takes a sledgehammer approach to most social situations—which makes the fact that he’s the billionaire owner/creator of a successful dating app hilarious. Only Max would reduce human interaction to neat lines of code and end up with a fat bank account rather than an actual date.

      Like us, Max wears a black wet suit. Even in June, the water off the California coast is cold enough to turn your balls into blue Popsicles.

      “Remember the rule,” Jack says.

      “Which one?” Jack has too many. I bought him a copy of Robert’s Rules of Order the same Christmas he gave me a label maker. Like the British royal family, we have a gag gifts–only rule for present-giving.

      “The rule. No sex at work.”

      There’s silence for a beat as we bob up and down on our boards. And while all three of us have flirted with the rule, none of us has ever broken it. The most we do is flirt, especially if the woman in question is a client. If she’s an employee, we don’t even look in her direction. It’s asking for trouble. But...

      “Does Lola’s office count as work? Because technically I’m her employee. She’s paying me.”

      “You need to keep your hands to yourself. Don’t look at her, don’t touch her.”

      Max nods solemnly. “Personal space bubbles are important.” Max has learned this in his capacity as uncle to his sister’s twin demon spawn.

      “What if she looks at me? And invites me into said bubble?”

      Jack shakes his head. “Don’t. I can have it tattooed on your dick if that helps.”

      Jack reaches over and slaps me on the back. “Does this mean your new boss is hot?”

      “You bet.”

      “So what’s it like having your first internship?”

      Jack laughs so hard he almost falls off his board. None of us interned in college—we’d been too busy launching our first companies. We’d found the magic, winning chute in the Game of Life.

      “Taking orders sucks. She wants coffee runs, photocopies, meeting minutes and code reviews. I’m not allowed to check in any code changes without written permission—it’s like getting a field trip note from my parents. Then she points out every place I’ve done something different from how she would have done it—which is everywhere—and tells me to redo

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