by Alina Jacobs
Apparently, we are having this conversation.
Bettina nodded. “Art had that problem. He would get the extra large, and that thing would be on there like a raggedy sweater.”
Meg sneakily took a sip of something from her purse.
Fuck, I should have brought alcohol.
“We just need fifty thousand dollars to put together our men’s sexual health program,” Ida said.
“Absolutely not,” Meg replied.
“When I’m mayor,” Ida declared, “I’ll sign that check.”
“Yes,” Meg said dryly. “I’m sure citizens of Harrogate will be more than happy to have their tax dollars go to overpriced—”
“I’ll pay it!” I interjected.
“You will?” Edith asked, eyes shining.
I took out my checkbook. “Who do I make it out to?” Because I will literally pay any price not to have to listen to these women talk about their sex lives.
“You can make it out to our new nonprofit—The Intimate Pickle. Don’t worry, we’ll have your logo on all our posters and our website!”
“That’s a memorable name,” Meg said as she snuck another drink.
I scrawled out the check and handed it to Ida.
“That was very nice of you, Hunter,” Meg said, running her finger down the itemized budget Ida had printed out. “And I’m sure your campaign logo is going to look great on the ten-foot-tall inflatable penis that is going out in front of Girl Meets Fig.”
“I’m never going to hear the end of it,” I complained after the meeting was over.
Meg snorted as she packed up her bag. “Serves you right for trying to treat this town as your personal fiefdom.”
“You’re mad because I’m going to win.” I leaned back in my chair and grinned at her.
“This meeting”—she gestured around the table—“was not an anomaly. In fact, this is pretty standard. So, you know, if you want to spend your days listening to whatever harebrained, extremely overpriced scheme the town characters concoct, be my guest. Once they figure out that you’re willing to throw money at them, they’ll be lined up like horny squirrels at a nut factory.” She turned and marched out of the door.
I jumped up and followed her into the hallway. This past week I had spent more time with Meg than I had since we broke up. I liked it—loved it, in fact. Something about being around her made the world brighter, gave me more energy, caused me to stay focused.
“Stop following me,” she snapped over her shoulder.
“We could combine forces,” I suggested, placing a hand on her lower back and spinning her toward me. “You know, run on the same ticket.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “You just want to be mayor and have me do the work while you take all the credit. No thanks.”
“You can’t deny that I’m a shoo-in to win,” I said, striding to catch up with her as she walked out of the double doors of the city hall building.
She turned to face me, strands of hair that had escaped from her bun blowing around her face. “If you want to pay fifty thousand dollars for every vote in this city, be my guest. If you’re that thirsty for the job, then you can have it.”
11
Meghan
I was done with Hunter. All he ever did was lie and manipulate people.
He was handsome, though, and he smelled really good. Because I had been sitting right next to him in the committee room, every time I inhaled, I got a breath of that clean, slightly woodsy, masculine scent that was so uniquely Hunter. There had been a time when all I had wanted to do was just lie next to him and breathe that in, feeling safe and cared for.
Unfortunately, that was not how the world worked.
People like my best friend Kate Holbrook and my sister Hazel married billionaires who worshiped them. I, however, had Hunter, who was a self-absorbed sociopath who reduced relationships to transactions. That was why when he had promised earlier that he was going to give me information on Uncle Barry’s finances, i.e., my sisters’ finances and mine, I knew he wasn’t actually going to come clean. I was done relying on Hunter and done allowing him to jerk me around.
Frank, the manager of the Harrogate Community Bank, was waiting for me when I walked into his office in the historic classical building. He stood up nervously from behind his desk. “Deputy Mayor.” He stuck out his soft and doughy hand to shake.
“Were you able to find the information about Barry’s accounts?”
Frank picked up a paper clip and twisted it in his hands. “Now, Meg.”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Do not,” I warned him, “tell me that I am not allowed to view my uncle’s financial situation that includes debt he took out in my name and my sisters’ names.”
Frank gulped then said in a rush, “He signed over power of attorney to Hunter Svensson.”
I blew out a breath through my nose.
“But…” Frank lowered his voice conspiratorially. “If you and I were, you know, dating, and I just happen to casually leave this information out, then, well, you know, sometimes these things happen.” He smiled up at me nervously.
I’ve been on worse dates. And it was clear Hunter was never going to hand over the complete package of financial information.
I cleared my throat. “Fine. Where are we going?”
Frank appeared in front of my apartment to pick me up at six that evening.
“I have coupons for Girl Meets Fig,” he said happily as he jogged around the front of the car to open the passenger-side door for me. “They’re running a big men’s health initiative sponsored by the Svenssons.”
“You don’t say,” I remarked as I sat in the car. At least his car is clean. It’s not like the guy with all the cats in the back seat. But it wasn’t Hunter’s fancy black sports car.
Maybe this will be nice. Frank isn’t the greatest, but he has a job at the bank. We could go out for early dinners then go home, where I could watch him fall asleep in front of Netflix. That future sounded dreadfully boring.
Hunter’s ruined you, I chastised myself as we pulled up in front of the Girl Meets Fig restaurant.
There was a line. Apparently, word had gotten around. The whole place was festooned in green penis balloons.
Zoe looked frazzled when she came by to take our names and hand Frank his free smoothie.
“Are you sure that’s drinkable? Isn’t there, like, a health department code or something?” he asked me desperately.
“You want the free meal?” Zoe said. “You drink the smoothie.”
“Okay, okay,” Frank replied.
Zoe didn’t move.
“Right now?” Frank squeaked.
“They probably don’t want you to throw it in the bushes,” I offered.
“My friend Amy planted those roses, and she’ll kill me if you drown them with slop—excuse me, colon-cleansing health drink,” Zoe said.
Frank gulped.
Zoe crossed her arms.
I sniffed. The drink smelled like dirt.
“Guess you’re not going to want to make out after this,” he joked.
“She’s not going to be making out with you at all.”
It was all I could do not to tear my hair out. “Seriously, Hunter. Can’t you leave me alone?” I demanded.
He snorted. “Get over yourself, Meg. I’m here to support the…” He waved a hand.
“Intimate Pickle?” Zoe prompted.
“Right.”
“That you paid fifty thousand dollars for,” I reminded him. “And caused a traffic jam and probably some sort of public health crisis.”
Frank had taken a generous swallow of the brown drink and was now making wet, gagging noises.
“Not on my roses,” Zoe warned.
“The cleansing is in progress!” her grandmother, Edith, sang, sailing out of the restaurant in a colorful kaftan. “Look at all these people! Let’s all thank Hunter for his generous donation.”
“Wait,” one college-aged girl said, “you’re
, like, giving out money, Mr. Svensson? Because I have this nonprofit? I, like, knit hats for the feral cats in the area?”
“In his campaign for mayor,” I told the crowd, “Hunter has generously set aside a large amount of cash to dole out to nonprofits. Isn’t that right, Hunter?”
He glared at me.
“In fact,” I drawled to the crowd, “the wackier and zanier ideas, the better! Don’t forget to stop by his campaign office with your presentations. They should be at minimum an hour and include lots of visuals and prototypes.”
“I’ll, like, bring the feral cat colony that lives behind Ida’s General Store?” the girl said. “They would, like, go great in your, like, campaign ads.”
I huffed out a laugh
“Oh totally. Hunter loves feral cats, don’t you?” I elbowed him. “In fact, he already told me how excited he is for the annual shelter day at the city pound.”
“I just want to say,” Frank slurred at Hunter, tree bark drink in hand, “you’re handling this all super classily.”
I peered at him. His eyes looked a little glassy. They had also dilated to the size of quarters.
“What’s in that drink?” I asked Zoe.
She threw up her hands. “My grandmother boiled handfuls of something she found in the woods.”
“It’s fiber!” Edith trilled, floating by with a tray of what looked like tofu and berries on a dried leaf.
Frank blinked at me. “Meg, I didn’t know you were a triplet. And why are you all purple and…” He blinked. “Green and blue?”
“I can’t believe you had the city shut us down!” Edith complained to me after the ambulances had taken Frank and several other customers to have their stomachs pumped. “I am certainly not voting for you after this.”
“That’s perfectly fine,” I said firmly. “But until the election, I am acting mayor, and I will not allow you to sell people the equivalent of LSD-laced smoothies.”
“Hunter,” Edith demanded. “You would let me serve these smoothies, right? You understand the importance of male health.”
I raised an eyebrow at him and handed him the smoothie Frank had half finished. “You want to down that?”
Hunter scowled slightly. “No, Edith, you cannot serve this to people.”
“Well,” she said with a huff. “You are not receiving my vote either!”
“If you want to have a mayor who is for freedom of food and sexuality,” Ida said into the megaphone that had materialized out of her enormous purse, “vote for me!”
“Freedom of food!” Edith and her fellow seniors chanted.
“Down with corporate overlords!”
Hunter muttered a curse.
“Welcome to my world,” I told him then left before the protests turned ugly. I was starving. Frank hadn’t drunk enough of the dirt smoothie to earn a free meal.
“You have an apartment now,” I chastised myself, “and you have no money. You need to cook at home.” But I didn’t feel like it. I felt like a hamburger and onion rings and a chocolate shake and maybe some french fries because you couldn’t have a shake without french fries. It was like having—
Sex without Hunter. Urg. Over the last few years, Hunter had been the only man I’d slept with. Yes, I was that pathetic. I liked to blame my lack of orgasms on Hunter. It seemed that any time I went out on a date, Hunter somehow appeared and proceeded to intimidate the men I was with. But in the fried-food haze of the fast casual restaurant as I waited on my order, a part of me had to admit I was secretly a little thrilled whenever he showed up.
You’re addicted to the drama. You need a nice normal man, I lectured myself. You’re addicted to the highs and lows of being with Hunter. You’re almost thirty-five—middle-aged. Stop acting like a teenager. But Hunter always seemed to turn me back into a starstruck girl, drooling over all the celebrities in magazines, daydreaming about them whisking me off to an exciting life.
I scooted aside for a brown-haired woman in heels to step up to order and started to dig around in my purse for my phone.
“I’ll have whatever she ordered,” said a familiar voice.
I looked up, shocked. “Kate?” My mouth hung open.
“Hey, girl!” My bestie friend and former roommate while I had lived in Manhattan turned and smiled broadly at me.
“What? Why? I’m so glad to see you!” I hugged my friend. She was taller than me and had married Grant Holbrook and now lived the jet-set life I had always wanted.
“So, you want a cheeseburger with the works, a large onion ring, a large fry, and a large chocolate shake?” the bored teenage Svensson brother at the cash register asked.
I turned red. “It’s been a terrible week,” I muttered.
“I’m not judging,” Kate assured me. “I haven’t eaten all day. I’m starving. I’ll have all that,” she told the kid then winked at me. “And I have wine in my purse.”
“Oh, and she had an order of mozzarella sticks,” the Svensson brother added.
“Hunter is literally driving me into a fried-food addiction,” I wailed.
Kate patted me on the head. “And I’m here to support you in your time of fried food and billionaire crisis.”
12
Hunter
“So, Meg is dating Frank now?” Mace asked me when I stormed back into the estate house.
“Not if he doesn’t make it through the night,” I grumbled.
“See?” Blade told Weston. “That’s why I didn’t let you drink any of that smoothie.”
“Nasty stuff. Men were falling out on the sidewalk, seeing visions,” I relayed as I shrugged off my suit jacket.
“I don’t know,” Weston mused. “A lot of CEOs pay good money for out-of-body experiences. It helps them be creative and come up with cutting-edge ideas.”
“I don’t need hallucinogenic dirty water to have a good idea,” I said smugly, unfastening my cuff links.
“Svensson brothers!” I bellowed. “Meet out on the back terrace in twenty. Wear black and face masks.” I shooed several of my younger brothers, who were making a Minecraft world at the dining room table, toward the stairs.
“You all need to help too,” I told my adult brothers as I herded the younger ones upstairs to change.
“This is illegal,” Mace complained, “and there are snakes out there.”
“It’s not illegal, only if I get caught, which I won’t.”
“All for what?” Garrett snorted. “How much land have you won? Like a five-inch-wide patch?”
“No,” I said. “I have six and a half feet now. If no one contests, then it’s our land.”
In Harrogate, the law on the books was that if you claimed land adjacent to your property and maintained it, then after three years, you could keep it. So every two weeks, I marched all my brothers out to the western edge of our property and moved the fence out one inch. I had been doing that for the past three years. I had increased our estate property holdings by a percentage of a percent, sure, but in the next ten years, we would be at the driveway on the old farmstead neighboring our property. I mentally calculated the acreage as I changed.
“The brilliance of it,” I crowed to Weston, once we had all assembled on the terrace, “is that no one notices if a fence line moves an inch. Shoot, they don’t even notice if it moves a couple feet every year. And technically, that first five-inch strip now officially belongs to us. The rest is soon to follow.”
“Why can’t we just buy the land?” Nate complained as I adjusted his face mask. My brothers and I were fairly pale with blond hair. We needed to blend in with the night.
“Because,” I said, “this way is better. And I don’t have to deal with Meg not letting me purchase that property. Gentlemen, let’s march!”
This was the first night that the toddlers were out with us for the great fence move. My younger brothers all carried straps, wrenches, and drills to pick up the fence posts then move them.
“Why did we have to bring them?” Parker complained as one of the t
oddlers sat down on a tree stump and wailed.
Archer picked him up.
“Don’t you want to do a fun illegal family activity?”
Johnny wailed harder. “Hungry!”
“Use a complete sentence,” I reminded him.
“I want some crackers.”
“Dinner happens after the fence is moved,” I barked at my brothers as we made our way through the woods. I hoisted one of the toddlers on my shoulders. He hiccupped and seemed more amenable now that he had a better view.
We had the fence-moving process down to thirty minutes.
“Places!” I ordered, and my brothers ran to the fence posts.
“What do I do?” Justin asked me. He and the other two triplets stood at my feet, gray eyes big under their masks.
“Keep a lookout,” I told them. “Not that anyone is ever going to find out about this.”
The drills were loud, but my little brothers were like a well-trained Formula 500 racing team. The stakes came out of the ground. The older brothers and I lifted out the posts then moved them exactly one inch west. I had Davy and Henry run a laser.
“Clear!” Henry piped through the dark. We all set our posts down, then we repeated the process for the next few sections until I had another one-inch-wide strip of land on the Svensson estate.
“We didn’t see anyone!” the toddlers said in excitement.
I fist-bumped each of them. “Great work.”
“And fish sticks for dinner!” Davy said excitedly.
“You can’t feed them fried food,” Mace said to Parker.
“It’s my night, and I can feed them whatever I want,” he countered. “Besides, they use a cauliflower breading. The Intimate Pickle website has a whole bunch of man-friendly healthy recipes online. Sadie’s been working with them to come up with new dishes.”