The Boyfriend Experience

by JA Huss

  I look back and forth between them, trying to figure out the dynamic. And just as I’m about to decide they’re enemies, Hanna sees her and shouts, “Oaklee!” as she pushes her way through the crowd and hugs her hard. Almost spinning her around with her enthusiasm.

  “Frenemies,” I mumble under my breath.

  “Law!” Oaklee yells from her corner. Which has now been invaded by every female here because it’s obvious that Oaklee and Hanna are the ringleaders in this girl pack.

  Except—girl packs never have two leaders. Even I know that.

  “Where did you get this jacket?” the girl called Juniper exclaims, fingering the aged leather of Oaklee’s sleeve.

  This brightens Oaklee up as I cautiously approach them. “This masterpiece of fashion belongs to my new boyfriend Lawton Ayers.” She hooks her arm in mine and pulls me close. “He wore it as a teenager and kept it for the memories. But it doesn’t fit him anymore—as you can tell.” She laughs heartily at that. “Because he’s built like a lumberjack now.”

  I raise my eyebrows at her for that comparison. Lumberjack and Lawton Ayers have nothing in common. But it’s hipster speak for cool, right? So I go along. “I gave it to Oaklee because it’s a precious piece of my past and deserves a good home. I know she’ll love it as much as I used to.” It’s stupid, but it’s full of feelings and these chicks dig guys with feelings.

  The girls all go, “Aww,” and take sips of their beer as they bat their eyelashes at me.

  “So where did you two meet?” Hanna asks. Oddly, as suspicious of me as the men are.

  And I realize—I have no idea what to say. Luckily Oaklee starts talking and diverts all the expectant looks from me to her.

  “We were kayaking down Clear Creek—not together, mind you.” Oaklee laughs. “And I got stuck in a tangle of branches that must’ve gotten caught on some rocks after a thunderstorm.” She nuzzles her face into my chest and sighs. “He saved me.”

  “Aww,” they all say again.

  Except Hanna. She actually scowls. What is this chick’s deal?

  “And since then we’ve been inseparable.”

  “We’re probably in love,” I add. Because every face turns to me like I’m supposed to say something like that.

  This time they don’t say, “Aww.” They just look at me. Confused.

  “He means… we’re married to ourselves, of course. But we might shack up in the future.”

  “Ahhhh!” They all laugh. “Of course.”

  Of course? I’m so not cool anymore. Who the fuck marries themselves? Like… was that just an expression? Or do people really do that?

  “So what do you do, Law?” Hanna asks.

  Ah. Finally. I’m on task. “Real estate,” I say. “High-end real estate. That means I only deal with millionaires. I only sell in the trendiest neighborhoods and everyone has pre-approval for a jumbo loan before I take their calls.”

  Mansplaining and monetary self-righteousness in three succinct sentences. Exceptionally douchebag, if I do say so myself.

  Everyone makes a face. Even that guy named Jack, who has sidled over next to his girl, Beatrix.

  I just smile at him and say, “What’s your deal, Jack? You own a brewhouse like Oaklee here?”

  Beatrix, ever the supportive girlfriend, rubs his arm as he glares at me and says, “I homebrew, bro. Run a monthly club for insiders only.”

  “Ah,” I say, laughing. “I get it. Everyone has to start somewhere.”

  “Yeah,” Hanna says. “We all bootstrapped our way up to this level. Not like Oaklee, who was born into it.”

  I look at Oaklee, because that was a not-so-thinly veiled insult. Like she got her success handed to her.

  But she just smiles and says, “Cheers to bootstrappers! Now where’s my beer so we can toast each other properly?”

  Oh, good. Beer. I need one because the social and cultural expectations in this room are stressing me out.

  “Beer! Beer! Beer!” the guys all start chanting. And then the one called Bear—who kinda looks like one if you ask me—is standing on the bar, clapping his hands until they all quiet down.

  “We’re here today,” Bear yells, “to celebrate the best of Colorado brews. Congrats to this year’s winners. Jack and his Black Label Stout took first place in the Breckenridge Beer Festival. Congrats, Jack!”

  Jack takes a bow and gloats at me. Like this just proves his worth and my comment was stupid, just like my designer Joe Jeans.

  “Second place,” Bear continues, “goes to Ace and his Gold Digger IPA! Took first place in the Fort Collins Fat Tire Fest!”

  Ace whoops for himself and does a fist pump.

  And then Bear is yelling again. “And first place, for the third year in a row, goes to Hanna and her Buffalo Brews Buffed Up brew, which took first place in the Brews of Colorado last week!”

  Everyone goes crazy for this. Whistling and shouting. Bear even jumps down from the bar to swing her around as he hugs her.

  I glance over at Oaklee, who is clapping politely, but her smile is forced.

  Yup. These two definitely have history.

  But is it jealousy? Because Hanna is the star now, not Oaklee?

  “And now for the beer!”

  Four of the girls appear with flight trays of glasses filled with what I presume to be this year’s winning brews. Each are set up on the bar, one for everyone, and Oaklee grabs my arm and drags me down to the end of the bar where we take up two barstools and look at the tray of glasses in front of us while everyone else finds their own place at the bar, or the tables, and gets down to business.

  “You OK?” I ask.

  “Yup,” she says, jutting her chin to the beer glasses. “Try them. I can’t wait to see what you think.”

  “OK,” I say, picking up the first one. It’s in a glass that says Black Label Stout, so I can only assume this is Jack’s. I sip it, make a face because it’s not what I like at all, then set it down. “It’s good, I guess. But I like your Mountain Mud better.”

  Oaklee smiles, then picks up the next beer and hands it to me. “Try this one.”

  It’s Ace’s Gold Digger IPA. Which I know I’m going to love before I even take a sip.

  “Yup,” I say. “That’s good.”

  “Yes, he deserves first place if you ask me. Now this one,” she says, handing me Hanna’s Buffed Up.

  I take a sip and nod. “Yeah, I love it. Tastes like…” But then I stop. Take another sip. Then another, just to make sure. I look at her. She’s frowning. In fact, her eyes are very sad all of a sudden. And not because she didn’t win this stupid contest either.

  She’s frowning because…

  “This is Bucked Up,” I say.

  She nods. Slowly. Silently.

  “She stole your beer recipe and has been passing it off as hers?”

  Another nod from Oaklee. Then she whispers, “She stole my recipe. And this isn’t the only one, Law. This is why I need you.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN - OAKLEE

  Everything after that becomes a blur. We stay for a while. A long while. And I get drunk. Because what else can I do at this point? What?

  Hanna Harlow was my freshman dorm roommate up at Colorado State. We were both seventeen because our birthdays are in October. We were both microbiology majors—me for the beer, of course. Her for the good of mankind. The CDC is in Fort Collins. On the western campus of CSU, in fact. And that’s where she wanted to work. Her dream, before she met me, was to eradicate malaria worldwide.

  At least that’s what she said.

  We were inseparable that first year of college. In fact, we were so tight, so engrained in each other’s lives, when we were allowed to move out of the dorm in sophomore year we got a house together.

  Of course together really meant my dad paid for it because Hanna said she had no family. Like none. She told me she was on scholarship. A social worker had helped her navigate her way through system while she was in foster care as a kid. Nurtured her. Hounded her w
hen necessary. But that social worker had died just a week before she started school and so poor, poor Hanna was all alone now. All she had was me.

  I want to gag just thinking back on it. How stupid I was. How trusting and naive I was. And all the ways she would fuck me over by the time we graduated.

  She started stealing my notes first. She struggled in school. In almost every class and especially calculus and microbiology.

  I caught her stealing my Calc III notes in senior year. And you might say, What’s the big deal? They’re just notes, right?

  But my notes aren’t just notes. I am meticulous. I am methodical. I am an expert notetaker. I had dozens of people in Calc II begging to buy a copy of my notes in junior year and I always said no.

  I gave them copies for free.

  Because I am generous, and trusting, and stupid.

  So again. What’s the big deal if Hanna took them? I would’ve given them to her anyway, right?

  But isn’t that the point? Isn’t it? That she felt the need to go behind my back? She went into my room, rifled through my backpack, and took them like they belonged to her.

  And they didn’t. They were mine.

  It was a red flag I should’ve heeded. A big, fat, flashing neon sign telling me to take a second look at this Hanna girl. And her stupid story of having no family. Which, by the way, wasn’t true. But I didn’t find that out until senior year when her family—all six of them—showed up for graduation.

  I found out later that her parents were farmers out near Sterling. Not huge ones, mind you. Not the kind who make several million dollars a season. But still. They were well off enough to pay her tuition because, yes, that’s right. She lied about the scholarship too.

  She was no rags-to-riches story. She was no bootstrapper. She came from an upper-middle-class farm family that looked very proud, and very nice, when I finally met them and realized she was a sociopath.

  By that time I’d been done with her for a while. We had separate apartments before junior year was over. She was rooming with four other girls in a house on the west side of Shields Street and I was in a condo over the downtown tattoo shop. And boy, did she rub that condo in my face every chance she got.

  “Must be nice to have your daddy pay for everything,” she sneered when I threw a party and she invited herself over with the new group of friends I’d made since our falling out.

  As if.

  But I didn’t know it then. I didn’t realize how much she had lied until school was over. And by that time who could I tell? Everyone was on their way out of town. Back to their homes or striking out on their own.

  I went home to Denver that same night. My dad showed up with a bunch of guys from the brewery. They packed me up while I was receiving my diploma, and moved me back to Bronco Brews.

  I wrote her off as an unfortunate associate that I’d probably never see again, started working on my masters degree at the CU Health Science Center, and for three blissful years she was nothing but a bad memory.

  Then my dad died and she came back.

  While I was dealing with the business of his death and generally picking up all the pieces and putting them back together in a new way as I tried to figure out how to move forward—truly alone for the first time in my life—she was making friends with all the other craft brewmasters. And that year—the year my father died—was the first year in eight decades that Bronco Brews didn’t enter a single beer festival.

  Well… we did. I know that now. It just wasn’t under our name. It was under hers.

  She started stealing our recipes before my dad’s body was even cold.

  She started with an old brew we had discontinued. So even though I knew that was our recipe, there was nothing I could do. There wasn’t even a way to prove it.

  But this year she bucked up. Big time.

  “I don’t get it,” Law says. We’re driving down the Sixth Avenue freeway towards downtown. I’m good and buzzed too. I drank way too many Gold Diggers this afternoon.

  “What don’t you get?” I ask, getting a little dizzy as I look out the window and watch the scenery whiz by. He’s been quiet this whole time I’ve been telling him the story.

  “Like her audacity, for one. How could she think that no one would notice?”

  I huff out a laugh. “Did anyone notice today?”

  “But why didn’t they notice? How could they not notice? I noticed, for fuck’s sake, and I’m not even in the business.”

  “You noticed because you were drinking it last night.”

  “But they’re professionals. It’s their job to notice.”

  “Bucked Up was new thirty years ago. It’s the first big beer we ever made. It won all kinds of awards back then, but we don’t enter it in festival contests anymore. Why would we? We develop new brews every year. It’s already had its day.”

  He just shakes his head. “Well, I don’t think she likes me. This whole plan of yours isn’t going to work. She didn’t even look at me this afternoon. In fact, she went out of her way to avoid me. I tried to mansplain my workout at the gym and she scoffed.”

  “Yeah, because I was there. She saw you. You practically declared your love for me. I’m wearing your fucking jacket. It’s a junior-high love story as far as I’m concerned and she’s going to react appropriately. Believe me, you’re going to bump into her in a few days. She’ll appear out of nowhere and be all friendly and probably hands-y too. She didn’t just steal my notes, she stole at least three of my boyfriends back in college. And she totally copied my senior thesis.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like stole it, Law. She found out what my topic was and did hers on the same thing. Then she asked to present first in class so it looked like I stole it from her.”

  “And people fell for that?”

  “Well, she got an A and I got a B+. So I guess they did.”

  “Maybe she just did better work?”

  “The fuck?”

  “I’m playing devil’s advocate, Oaklee. Don’t get mad at me. I’m on your side.”

  “She’s going to make a move on you, just watch.”

  But he’s shaking his head. “I don’t think so. I’m not her type.”

  “You are her type. Her type is my type, OK? So you are her type.”

  He looks at me and smiles. “I’m not your type either.”

  I huff out a long breath of air because he’s right. I don’t date real-estate guys. I don’t really date, but when I do, I date… bad boys. “Tomorrow we’re going down to that Shrike Bikes showroom and dressing you up like a biker so when she finally does make her move, she’ll see what she’s missing out on.”

  “So that’s your type, huh? Biker?”

  “Don’t judge me.”

  “I’m not judging you. I’m just asking.”

  “Why do you think I don’t date? It’s because no matter who I go out with, she finds out and steals him away.”

  “She didn’t come on to me today.”

  “No, of course not. But she will. And even if you think you like her, and it’s your job to seduce her—don’t fall for it. She just wants what I have. She doesn’t want you.”

  “You realize that’s a little bit—”

  “Paranoid?” I laugh. “Just wait.” I turn my back to him and cross my legs, swinging my foot in irritation. “I’m not paranoid. This has been going on since freshman year. I know her better than anyone. She’s fixated on me. On my success, or my luck, or my family, or whatever. She takes what I have, not because she wants it, but because she doesn’t want me to have it. It’s that simple.”

  “So that’s your end game? Get her to fall for me. Then what?”

  “The Capitol Hill Beer Fest is next Sunday. You can enter a beer for consideration up until the night before because the tasting is all done live in front of a crowd. So I’m going to enter Bucked Up and see what happens when the tasters all have to sample two of the very same beer. Because I already know she’s entered Buffed Up as well.
”

  He scratches his neck, like he’s thinking about this. “Is that the only entry you have?”

  “No.” I sigh. “Assassin Sour Saison is my grand reserve special edition beer this year. That’s my main entry. But there’s no way she’s brewed a saison. She doesn’t have the talent to come up with a sour recipe, number one. And she’s her only brewmaster. Buffalo Brews is small. She has a very small bar up in Boulder and doesn’t employ an entire department for research and development like I do. Oh, and did I mention the name of her label? Buffalo Brews.” I huff again. “Do you see how she stole my name too?”

  “No,” he says, getting off Sixth and heading north on I-25. “You’re called Bronco. She’s called Buffalo.”

  “Yeah, but it’s similar.”

  “Not really,” he says.

  Which just pisses me off. How does she do that? Get people to trust her? Give her the benefit of the doubt? Play devil’s advocate?

  “Well.” I laugh. “There’s no denying that Buffed Up is shamelessly copying Bucked Up. And do you know she tried to file a trademark for Buffed Up?”

  “So?”

  “So? It’s blatant brand confusion! She knows people won’t know the difference!”

  He sighs. And it pisses me off because I’m right, goddammit! I’m not crazy!

  “Anyway,” I say, brushing off my anger and irritation. “There’s no way she’s gonna enter a sour saison this year. Even if she knew I was brewing one, she can’t replicate it. It’s a long, long process. And I’ve had that recipe hidden in my apartment since I came up with it. I brewed it up myself. I’ve had those tanks and yeast under lock and key for the past three years as it aged. I have personally overseen the entire process—from yeast incubation to bottling. You’re the only one who has even seen the label. She didn’t steal that one.”

  “Which is why I only did the blind taste test on three beers last night, not four.”

  “Exactly. She doesn’t have it. And she doesn’t know I have it either.”

  At least I tell myself that. I need to believe it. Because if Hanna Harlow got her hands on my sour saison recipe I might fucking kill her. Like for real blow her fucking brains out.