Dr. Stud

by Jess Bentley

  When I return to the hotel, I hold my head up high with my fancy paper bag in my hand. My heart stops when Spencer raises a hand from the bar, motioning me over.

  I feel like I’ve been caught stealing cookies. I feel just terrible and bow my head, trudging over guiltily.

  Dropping the bag on a chair, I just sigh and shrug at it.

  “I’m sorry,” I explain quickly. “I didn’t really know what my limits were. And I really didn’t know what it was all going to cost…”

  “What?” he asks, looking somewhat hurt.

  I gesture at the bag. “I could take it all back, I’m sure. It’s not too late. I just bought it!”

  I fish in my handbag and pull the Black Card out, holding it out to him.

  “No… that’s for you to keep,” he explains. “You don’t have to return the card. Unless you want to, I mean.”

  He shifts from foot to foot, gesturing to a chair for me to sit in. When I do, I notice the stack of papers in front of me.

  “This isn’t about the underwear? I mean… did you get a notice from your bank or something about the charges?”

  “Charges…” he repeats vaguely then waves his hand in the air when he figures it out. “No, of course not. I trust you to make your own decisions. Absolutely. I’m sure whatever you bought is… completely correct.”

  My cheeks burn with embarrassment. “Actually, I can’t wait to show you.”

  He clears his throat, looking down. His fingers drum against the pen on the table.

  “It’s standard procedure for us to have a contract, I’m sure you understand. We’ve prepared this for you. I prepared this for you. If you’d like to have a lawyer of your own look it over, I completely understand. Or of course I could find someone for you at no charge, of course.”

  “Oh! A contract?” I chirp, too excited to contain myself. “Is this it? Gosh, it’s a lot of pages. Did you guys each have to write your own section or something?”

  I start to giggle, but then stop when I see his expression.

  “Spencer? Is everything all right?”

  He clears his throat again. “To summarize, this is a standard employment contract for your services as nanny. We’ll provide you monthly compensation that I hope you think is generous. In addition, you’ll be granted the apartment to share with Sophia. Days off are negotiable, but you will be assumed to be her primary caregiver, of course.”

  “Of course,” I agree. Thinking about that chubby little darling makes me smile all over again.

  “The Black Card, as I mentioned, is yours to use for expenses related to you or Sophia, at your discretion. We will audit it on a yearly basis, but please don’t feel like that’s intended to be punitive in any way.”

  “Punitive?”

  He glances up at me apologetically. “Er, it’s not meant to be a punishment. It’s just for accounting.”

  “Ah, I understand.”

  I reach out to tap his hand in a friendly way, and he withdraws it, almost wincing. I try to catch his eye again, but he won’t look up.

  “Much of the rest of this has to do with general instructions on Sophia’s care. Guarantees for your expenses for travel. Outlines of possible international travel… Wait, do you have a passport by any chance?”

  “Spencer, what’s wrong?”

  “Actually, it doesn’t matter. I can get the passport expedited for you. We don’t have any international travel planned for—”

  “Spencer? What’s going on?”

  He flips open the stack of papers to the end, where there is a little plastic flag stuck to the page I am supposed to sign.

  He’s acting so strange, I really don’t know what to make of it. I’m excited to get the job, but something’s missing. Something is off. Something is…

  “Nanny?” I finally ask. “Are there more sections in here for… the rest of it? The rest of us?”

  He finally meets my eyes, pressing his lips together into a thin line. He breathes through his nose for several seconds while some silent communication passes between us that I don’t understand.

  “Sully asked that I extend to you an offer of employment… for nanny.”

  I’m confused, looking around for an explanation.

  “Well, are there more papers? I mean, you guys made it sound like Sophia’s mother had to go through a background check with the FBI. Is this it?”

  “This is… it.”

  My mouth falls open. It suddenly starts to come together.

  “Are you telling me nanny and nothing else? No other relationship with you?”

  I can read it in his eyes. I can see it now, as plain as day.

  “Sully feels this is the safest route. For all of us. We were really impressed… touched… by your instant rapport with Sophia.”

  I know it’s crazy, but this hurts my feelings. I realize I’m being offered a dream job, a job anybody else would kill for, and somehow my heart is still aching. Somehow, I feel like I’m losing more than I understand.

  “Yeah… no.”

  His eyebrows go up again. “Excuse me?”

  I push the papers toward him. “I’m not signing that. That’s not the job I’ve been interviewing for. I mean, it is… but no. It’s not enough.”

  “Bunny, this is a six-figure salary with innumerable fringe benefits. Are you saying you’re going to turn this down?”

  I lean forward, making sure he can’t look away.

  “I’m saying that I want the job I interviewed for. I want the whole thing.”

  Spencer chews the inside of his cheek. “Okay. I didn’t see that coming. I’ll have to see if I can get everyone together for discussion.”

  “With me?”

  He looks confused.

  “You know what,” I continue, a little bit angrily, a little bit frightened, “I think we definitely need to all get together for discussion. All of us. And I think we need to get all of you in the room at the same time. Don’t you ever do that? Can we please just look each other in the eye at the same time?”

  “I can… propose it.”

  “In Nantucket,” I add.

  He actually gasps, sitting back. “What did you say?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I want,” I huff, picking up steam as I stand and snatch my bag full of fancy underwear off the other chair. “We’re going on a family trip, Spencer. To Nantucket. Make it happen!”

  Chapter 11

  Trey

  The house on Nantucket is exactly like I remember it. Windswept beach, white picket fence. The wide low porch and sage-green shutters. It sprawls from side to side, with the main door facing the sea, stubborn and proud.

  While everyone gets unpacked, I walk around alone. It’s almost too much all at once. I haven’t been here in fifteen years or so. But everything is still the same. Sometimes our friends might use the estate, and we have a staff here to keep it up. But it looks the same as the last day we left it.

  That day must’ve been Independence Day. Cousins were here and we played on the beach, waiting for fireworks to start. We had a barbecue—of course it was a gourmet barbecue with seven chefs—and we ate and talked and laughed and swam until it was dark.

  My mother used to call Brock and me her “golden boys.” It was a sweet nickname, but based mostly on the fact that we look like her. She had long, thick blonde hair. Green eyes. A kind smile. My father was a handsome, dark-haired man and my other brothers favored him. But since Brock and I got the blond hair, which was practically white when we were young, that’s what she called us.

  There is a painting of her over the fireplace that I can’t take my eyes away from. I’d like to move. I’d like to leave this room so I can stop staring at her and missing her and being completely helpless in the face of her loss. But somehow I can’t.

  It’s like all the years between then and now just collapsed into a single blink. I blinked, and here I am.

  Though we’re all adults, it still feels like we lost our parents too young. I wouldn’t mind being a
ble to ask Dad for advice. I probably wouldn’t even mind him overseeing our activities the way Royce does. I might even dislike it less.

  But, unfortunately, the small plane that they had hired to take them across the Maldives had a functional problem. They crashed in the ocean. No survivors.

  That was thirteen years ago. A very long time, and yet, apparently just one blink away.

  “She always liked you best,” I hear Sully say behind me. “Or Brock. Maybe Brock. It was sort of hard to tell you apart for a while there.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” I sigh, knowing that he expected me to deny it. Even if it’s not true, I always sort of wished it were.

  He chucks me on the arm, hard. It’s not his fault, he’s just a really big guy. If Sully chucks you on the arm, he’s going to leave you with a bruise.

  “Everybody is all set up. The place looks pretty good, doesn’t it?”

  “Looks like we just left,” I admit, choking back a wave of emotion when I actually say it out loud.

  He slips his arm behind me, folding me into a big, uncomfortable bearhug. That’s another thing: Sully hugs you like he’s trying to kill you. But who’s going to complain to the guy?

  “I hear you, brother,” he sighs.

  Carefully I extricate myself, not wanting to seem like a wimp but also not wanting to spend a week at the chiropractor. I walk over to the windows and look out past the grasses toward the ocean. To my surprise, I can see Bunny and Sophia, stomping toward the surf. Bunny cradles her protectively, holding the ties of her sun hat under her chin though it is probably unnecessary. Sophia reaches out her chubby arms toward the waves. Though I can’t see her, I could see her wide-open laughter. She just learned how to do that. To laugh like that. It’s the most beautiful sound I ever heard.

  “What are we doing here, Sully?”

  Sully shrugs and trudges over to the leather sofa, dropping into it and scrubbing his face with the palm of his giant hand. He stares up at Mom for a long time, blinking.

  “Bunny said we had to come. She demanded an extra phase of the interviews, I guess.”

  “And so… you agreed? You negotiated with her?”

  He shrugs. “Spencer negotiated.”

  “Well, that is strangely softhearted of him,” I observe. “Almost like he didn’t really agree with your job offer, don’t you think?”

  Sully leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He mashes his palms together like he’s trying to crush something between them.

  “I think that is safe to say,” he admits. “But I mean, he did draw up the papers the way I asked him to.”

  “So she just refused?”

  He closes his eyes. “She said she wanted to continue interviewing for the job as described. Not what I had offered her… which was only a part.”

  “Ha!” I bark out, making Sully startle and glare at me menacingly. “That must be an unusual feeling for you, isn’t it? Not accustomed to having people renegotiate, I’ll bet.”

  “Quit it.”

  “I will not quit it,” I smirk, dropping into an armchair and crossing my legs to get a really good view of him. “I’d like to have this scene memorialized in a painting. Do you think we could get an artist out here to get started right away?”

  “Seriously, shut it, Trey.”

  “We could call it… Sully’s Sullen Scene. Do you like that? Or... No. Sully and the Battle of Bunny.”

  “You’re a laugh riot,” he sneers.

  “What are you, sixty? Nobody says that. Laugh riot. Come on, man.”

  “I feel sixty,” he sighs.

  That kind of takes me aback. It’s weird that Sully would admit to being tired. It’s weird if Sully admits being hungry, even. He always says, “I could eat.” Like he is also saying, “I am not dependent on food for survival.” He likes to keep up this image of being carved out of stone. Impenetrable.

  “Are you okay?” I venture to ask.

  He breathes for a long time, periodically shaking his head as though holding a conversation with himself.

  “I’m fine,” he finally says.

  But now that I have seen a chink in his armor, I’m really curious. I can’t just let it go.

  “You don’t seem fine, Sully. What’s on your mind? You want to see Sophia? She’s out there heading for the ocean. First time! Why don’t we go down there and see what she’s up to. That’ll help you feel better.”

  “Nope,” he says with an air of finality.

  “What? Are you serious? Why not?”

  “I’ll see her later, okay? We’re going to be here all weekend. I’ll get to hang out with her.”

  “Just take a look, man. I mean…” I get up and walk back to the window to make sure they’re still both out there. “Oh, hey, Bunny has her in the shade of the old gazebo! Remember that? Grandpa used to always want to play dominoes. I wonder if Bunny knows how to play dominoes?”

  “Okay, quit it!” he snarls, standing up. He’s so large, he practically pushes the air out of the room.

  “Quit what? Dominoes? What is your problem, man?”

  He begins to pace back and forth, making little figurines jump on the mantelpiece. Tiny shells that we collected bang together.

  “It’s just… don’t try to throw us together, okay? Don’t try to engineer more alone time. Don’t try to manage my feelings. Can you do that for me, Trey?”

  “Your feelings? What are you talking about, Sully?”

  He paces back and forth a few more times, then turns to me with his hands out.

  “It’s not going to work, okay? I know she seems different. But she’s not different. No woman could do what we need a woman to do. And it’s sort of cruel to ask, don’t you think? It’s cruel to ask it of her, and it’s cruel to ask it of us.”

  He resumes pacing while I stand here, dumbfounded. I wish I had something perfect to say to him. He seems to be the farthest one away, but maybe, out of all of us, he’s the one closest to falling for her.

  “She asked us to give her a chance.”

  “I don’t want to give her a chance,” he growls.

  “Well, I do,” I answer, surprising myself. But, actually, I really do. “I know it sounds crazy, and I know we have a lot to risk, there’s just… I want to. I think it’s worth the chance.”

  He shakes his head stubbornly, closing his eyes.

  “Come over here and look out the window, Sully,” I tell him in a soft voice. “Come on. Look.”

  It takes forever, but he finally shuffles over to the window. I watch his profile as his eyes scan the water line, then find Bunny and Sophia in the gazebo. He takes a deep, shuddering breath that echoes in his chest.

  “Don’t be afraid to be happy with what you want,” I suggest.

  “Fuck you, Trey,” he groans.

  But I can see him mellow. I see him soften. Maybe that’s the problem: being soft is very hard when you’re made out of rock.

  Chapter 12

  Royce

  The fire crackles, blazing out to the side when the wind hits it like some kind of banner. Looks like we’ve gone through about a case of wine, and now a few staff dart around, clearing the plates from a truly delicious meal.

  Though I wasn’t sure at first that I wanted to come out here, this has been a really nice day. We haven’t had a lot of time to unwind together recently. The weather has been perfect, and we’ve been exploring old pastimes like actual books and simple conversations.

  I think I even saw Brock and Trey playing Frisbee on the beach today. I hope Spencer got a picture of that.

  Bunny sits across the table from me, cradling Sophia in her lap. Bunny drinks her wine, smiling and chatting as she rocks unconsciously back and forth. The way that she handles Sophia, it is like she’s her own daughter. Completely natural, utterly charming. Sophia stares up into Bunny’s face, blinking slowly, gradually putting herself to sleep.

  Sully and Trey start joking with each other, and Bunny glances down. A slow smile creeps across
her face, and she gently raises her hand to cup Sophia’s cheek as she falls, finally, to sleep.

  “Shhhhhhhhh,” Bunny hisses, grinning. “Quiet! The little princess is finally asleep.”

  Sully and Trey fall obediently silent, then start pantomiming trying to beat each other up. Honestly, it’s like everybody reverted back to teenage years here.

  Carefully Bunny stands, then tips forward to lean Sophia toward us.

  “Say good night to your daddies, Sophia,” Bunny stage whispers.

  “Good night! Good night!”

  Cradling her gently, Bunny leaves the patio to put Sophia to bed. Everyone turns around and stares at me expectantly.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I think you know what,” Sully smirks.

  Spencer gives me an expectant look. Brock and Trey both hold their hands out like they’re waiting for something.

  “This isn’t up to me, Sully. You’re the one who told Spencer to offer her a nanny-only contract, aren’t you?”

  Everybody turns toward Sully, glaring at him accusingly.

  “I suppose so,” he admits uncomfortably. “But you’re still in charge, Royce, right? Isn’t that what you’re always telling us?”

  I cross my arms over my chest. This feels good. This is like beating Sully at handball or something. Like that kind of good.

  “So… should we vote?” I suggest.

  Spencer drags out his cell phone then flinches and places it facedown when Sully kicks him under the table.

  “What… I just thought maybe I should take notes or something.”

  I think for a second, trying to figure out exactly what I want to say. But I know that Bunny won’t be gone for very long, so it’s gotta be quick.

  “All right,” I finally announce, leaning toward the table. “The issue to vote on is: do you want to bring Bunny into our lives as our sole object of affection, the approved female vessel of all our spunk, the woman we plan on boning until she won’t let us bone her anymore, all in good faith, and for as long as possible? Please answer yes or no.”