The World's Worst Boyfriend

by Erika Kelly

  Sex got her riled up, so she had no idea how he could fall asleep immediately after. Easing out from under him, her body hummed and vibrated like a tuning fork. Swiping his T-shirt off the coffee table, she threw it on. She hadn’t eaten tonight, too busy leading tours around the exhibition and explaining the concept to reporters, donors, and patrons. So she headed into the kitchen.

  Frustration edged under her skin. All this time she’d imagined Fin going wild, having sex with random women on his travels around the world. But he hadn’t. He hadn’t wanted to. He only wanted her.

  And that killed her because she’d lived with the devastating pain of a betrayal that just hadn’t happened. She’d moved on with Julian—a relationship so watered down, so…bland—all while Fin had been holding out for the real thing. For her.

  His love is so pure. And she’d kicked it—him—to the curb.

  All those lost years, all that heartache.

  Except…had anything really changed? They still lived in two separate worlds. And this time she’d learned her lesson—she would never ask him to give up his life and live in New York City with her. And she couldn’t move home—not yet. She needed the fellowship and a few years as a curator to have any kind of legitimacy in the art world.

  Why would I settle for anyone else when I know what it’s like with you?

  A shiver of delight ran through her at the memory of his words. She didn’t have a lot of answers, but one thing she knew down to her bones. She loved him. Deeply, purely, and with everything she had.

  She couldn’t walk away.

  Which meant, what? They’d carry on a long distance relationship for five, maybe even ten years?

  Opening the refrigerator, she smiled at the contents. The main house had organic meat and vegetables, some fruit—not much—nuts and sweet potatoes. Fin and Marcella could do things with sweet potatoes that boggled the mind.

  But in the bunkhouse, where they came to party with their friends, they had all the good stuff. She grabbed some cheese—a Bowie would never soil his body with cheese—and found crackers in a cabinet. Hoisting herself onto the counter, she turned on the TV mounted under a cabinet.

  When audience laughter blasted from the speaker, she found the remote and lowered the volume. It was The Jimmy Dunlap Hour, the top-rated late-night TV talk show.

  “I mean, I want to be this guy, right? I can’t see her face, but did you get a look at his latest girlfriend?” An image of Fin kissing her filled the screen.

  A shot of adrenaline enervated her. She’d hooked her ankles just over Fin’s ass, one hand fisting his hair, the other clutching his back. He gripped her bare thigh, the folds of her white silk dress draping off the table. They looked hot. Passionate. He kissed like he was drowning in her.

  “Like, I’m straight,” Jimmy said. “But if making out with the World’s Worst Boyfriend is wrong, I don’t want to be right.” The audience burst out laughing.

  Bare feet shuffled into the gleaming kitchen. “So, it’s out.” Wearing only black boxer briefs, Fin’s sculpted chest, round biceps, and thickly muscled thighs were on display.

  Callie pointed the remote at the screen and turned it off. “Yeah, it is.” She read defeat on his features. “What does this mean for you?”

  He grabbed a glass from the cabinet and filled it with cold tap water. “Got a text from Aaron. It’s over. No cover.”

  “I’m so sorry, Fin.” There was nothing she could say to make it better.

  He drank half the glass and then wiped his mouth. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  By his troubled expression, she suspected he did want to talk, but she let him take the lead.

  He leaned back against the counter, crossing his powerful arms over his taut, tan belly. “I don’t give a shit about being on the cover of a magazine.”

  “I know.”

  His facial muscles relaxed. “I just want one damn thing of mine in that trophy room. Just one thing.”

  Kicking out her legs, she wrapped them around his hips and drew him over to her. She scraped her hands through his long hair, pushing it off his face. “Do you remember what you used to say? We used to stand in that stupid room and you’d look at all those ribbons and trophies and tell me a trained monkey could earn those.”

  “I still think that. I don’t want to do what they do.”

  “You don’t want the cover, and you don’t want a trophy. So what do you want?”

  He clamped his big hands on her thighs and squeezed. “You know what I want. I want their acceptance. Their respect.”

  “Perfect, because you’ve got it.”

  He started to pull away, when she tightened her hold. “Listen to me. Why did you bail on our prom?”

  “Will needed me.”

  “You were seven years old when your dad hired a coach to live on the property with you guys. Will has a coach. He’s always had a coach.”

  “Yeah, one coach for the four of us. And he was with Gray that week. You know that.”

  She cupped his chin so he’d hear her. “Your dad could have hired ten coaches, but Will needed you to help him. That guy who keeps texting you, Nolan? He’s got a coach, too, but he’s begging you to look at his film. Coaches send you clips of their athletes all the time so you can help them figure out what they’re doing wrong. Fin, you have their respect. You have the respect of everyone in your business.”

  “Yeah, okay, but I don’t want to just be the pit crew guy with a wrench. I want one thing I can hold up that says, See? I’m as good as you guys.”

  Pulling away from her, he dug into the box of crackers and shoved one in his mouth. His features screwed up and he spit it out in the sink. “How can you eat that shit? It tastes like a salt lick.”

  She draped her arms around his neck. “Can I tell you a secret?”

  “You can tell me anything.”

  She leaned in until her mouth was at his ear. His silky hair brushed across her cheek, and she breathed in his masculine scent. “I can’t believe you’ve only been with me.”

  His hand came up to her side, just under her breast. “I don’t want to be with anyone else, Callie. I just don’t.”

  She leaned back a little. “And that’s the thing about you. You know your own mind. Your brothers want the shiny thing. They don’t care how they get there; they just want the result. But you want the journey. You want to figure out what you’re doing wrong so you can correct it—that’s more important to you than winning an award. Do you see? You want different things, so you get different results. They follow your training schedule and eat what you tell them to eat because you’ve proven to them it will result in a trophy. You do all that because you’re interested in seeing how it will impact your performance. Your brothers get respect for training their bodies to perform. You get respect for your knowledge, your insights, and your instincts. So let the trained monkeys get their trophies. You get something else.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  She pulled off his T-shirt and let it drop to the floor.

  Color flooded his cheeks, and his nostrils flared. “I win.”

  ******

  Fin thumbed the button, killing the call. He stood immobile, staring out the window over the kitchen sink. But he barely saw the Tetons. Barely registered the blue sky and tufts of fat white clouds. “Holy shit.”

  Bottles rattled, as the refrigerator door opened. “That bear back in our yard?”

  Fin waited for Will to close it and pop the top of his unsweetened ice tea. “Braverman just called.” Two weeks after losing the cover the brass ring had dropped into his lap.

  Bottle aimed at his mouth, Will’s chin lowered as he swung a look at Fin. “What?”

  He couldn’t believe it. Holy shit. This is happening. “Braverman. He offered me a contract.”

  And that was it—right there. The look of pride he’d waited a lifetime to see bloomed across his brother’s features. “You’re shitting me.”

  Fin’s brows lifted, an
d his expression said, Did this just happen?

  “Bells and whistles?

  “Offroad RV, his best crew of photographers, videographer. All expenses paid.”

  “Total control in planning the trips?”

  Fin nodded. “He’s been following my page for a while and says he’s never seen a better, more intuitive rider.”

  “He’s damn right about that.”

  “What’re we talking about?” Brodie tramped in, sweaty and muddy.

  Before Fin could answer, Will said, “Braverman offered Fin a contract.”

  The pride in his brother’s voice touched a nerve deep inside him.

  “For real?” Brodie stood stock still.

  “For fucking real.”

  Brodie threw himself at him, his hands clapping Fin’s back. “That’s amazing, man.”

  “Thanks.”

  His brother pulled away. “What’s the commitment?”

  “Two-year contract, four movies a year.”

  “Damn, man. That’s…” Brodie shook his head.

  Will reached into the refrigerator for another bottle of unsweetened tea and tossed it to Brodie. “Proud of you, man. Real proud.”

  Now that it had fully registered, he had only one place he needed to be. He blew past his brothers.

  “Hey,” Brodie called.

  “Where you going?” Will shouted.

  “Gotta tell my girl.”

  “Well, wait up.”

  A woman faced the far left wall, a hand over her heart as she read the mounted label under the PopTart display.

  “Those her PopTarts?” Will watched with a confused expression.

  Fin smacked his brother’s arm. “What don’t you get about a museum?”

  “You said it’s an exhibition,” Brodie said.

  “Yeah, not like our exhibitions.” Top snowboarders held exhibitions to drum up interest in their sport. They performed tricks amidst live music and entertainment. “I thought your boss said you had to get back to the office or he was going to have to let you go?”

  “I’m the best he’s got,” Brodie said. “So he doesn’t really mean it.”

  “You really want to test it when you’re this close to getting on the dream design team?” Will said.

  “I’ve got to get a few more things in motion with my project, and then I’ll go.” Brodie smiled. “Gonna do it in phases.”

  “Yeah?” Will seemed much more interested in Brodie’s development plan than the Exhibition of Broken Hearts. “After you renovate the buildings what else is there to do?”

  Brodie grinned. “We’re gonna have a train that’ll take people all around our property and drop them off in the ghost town. Already had engineers out. This thing is on.”

  “Excuse me.” Strong perfume hit his nostrils as a woman in a pale blue blazer and white pants approached them. “I’m Amanda Baker from Entertainment Update. You’re the Bowie brothers, right?”

  Will nodded warily. He didn’t care for the attention while competing, but in his off-season? In his hometown? Forget about making nice for the press.

  “I’d love to interview you guys.” She smiled broadly, her gaze fixed on Brodie.

  “That’s not possible right now,” Will said.

  “Uh, okay.” The woman laughed. “I wasn’t expecting that.” She turned to Fin. “Well, how about just you? It’ll be quick. I’d like a shot of you standing in front of the table.” She gestured to the central installation where #WorldsWorstBoyfriend scrolled across the LDC screen.

  Right at that moment, Callie joined them. “Hello, I’m Callie Bell. Welcome to the Exhibition of Broken Hearts.”

  “Amanda Baker, from Entertainment Update.” They shook hands, but Amanda’s focus was on her colleague who immediately hefted his video-camera onto his shoulder. “What you’re doing here is incredible. When you think of the Bowies, you think of testosterone. You think of champions. You don’t think of a man evolved enough to set up a museum as penance for wronging his girlfriend.”

  Oh, hell, no. But before he could defend himself, Callie smiled at the woman in all her polished grace. “Actually, Amanda, that’s one of the things we’re exploring in this exhibition. The genesis of the meme. If you’ll come with me, you’ll see we’re working on a display showing exactly how it started.”

  Amanda and her film crew didn’t budge from him and his brothers, but Callie remained unfazed, pointing to a corner of the room where Mr. Martin and his crew were working. “Mr. Martin, can you turn that on for me?”

  “Sure thing.” With a flick of his wrist, a television screen lit up. The exhibition had only been open for two weeks, and Callie was already expanding it.

  “That’s the original Instagram message. You’ll notice Traci’s handle only appears once in the comments, and that’s just to say she’s in the hospital and that Fin Bowie sent a text message. Nothing else.” Comments scrolled across the screen. “The highlighted comments show how her followers made up the entire story.”

  Fin shot his brothers a smile. They looked impressed with her.

  “Traci confirmed the story on our show,” Amanda said.

  “Did she?” Callie’s head tipped, as though she was giving it some thought. “Mr. Martin?”

  The teacher bit back a smile as he turned on the next screen. Traci appeared in an interview.

  “We’ve printed out the transcripts, so you can follow the conversations. There isn’t a single interview where Traci comes out and says she and Fin were romantically involved.” She smiled at Amanda. “We’ve also got interviews from the other members of Fin’s team where they stated that five men and a woman sharing two tents on a camping trip meant zero privacy, and no one saw any signs of a romantic or sexual relationship between the two.”

  Amanda turned toward Fin. “Is this true?”

  “What’s true…” Callie said, swinging the attention back to her. “Is that fans made assumptions about what the text meant until they’d built a narrative, which then snowballed into an international meme. And what developed out of that is this community of broken-hearted people healing themselves through sharing their personal stories. It’s fascinating, isn’t it?” She gestured around the room. “The donations you see here are only a fifth of what’s come in. The whole second floor of this building is filled with them.”

  Will leaned in. “She’s got this. Let’s go.”

  Fin agreed, and the three of them quickly headed for the exit.

  Just before he left, he turned back to watch Callie in action. Damn that woman, her fierce spirit and endless loyalty. He’d worried about her reaction to the Braverman contract. Worried she’d use it as an excuse to keep them apart, but in that moment he knew the solution to their problem.

  And she was going to love it.

  ******

  Callie’s blood chilled. The words on the screen drifted like bubbles, so she’d only skimmed the surface of the message. She just couldn’t concentrate.

  “Look.” Theo said.

  Read it again. Maybe she’d misunderstood.

  Dear Ms. Bell,

  Thank you for your interest in the Hilda Morrison Curatorial Fellowship. We’ve received an unprecedented number of applications this year and are sorry to say that yours did not pass our initial screening.

  We wish you the very best in future pursuits.

  “Look, Aunt Callie. Look.”

  Through the shock, Theo’s voice registered. Setting aside her laptop, she slid off the couch and crouched beside him on the floor. With a hole-punch and squares of felt, she’d made thousands of dots in different colors. Using glue and framed canvases, they’d created pointillism designs.

  “Look.” Theo pointed to his canvas, filled with colorful dots and globs of wet glue.

  Greens, blues, and a big yellow circle. She couldn’t quite figure out what he’d made. “It’s beautiful, sweetheart. It’s really, really beautiful.” The longer she looked at it, the more she started to see an actual design. “Is this the r
iver?”

  He nodded, and she could see his pride—that his fingers had been able to translate the image in his mind to the canvas.

  “I love it.” She started to get up. “We should hang this.”

  Like a little bird, he cocked his head, looking like he wasn’t sure he understood what she meant.

  “If we hang it on the wall in your room, you can see it all the time. Or maybe in here? That way everyone can see it. Uncle Fin, Gramma and Grampa, Mommy and Daddy?”

  He got up, moved around the coffee table, and pointed to the space behind his dad’s desk. “You put my picture here?”

  “I think your dad would love that. He’d get to see it every day.”

  His beautiful smile plumped his cheeks and made his eyes glitter. Rooting through the box of supplies she kept in the coat closet, she found a big, fat push pin. She showed it to him. “Come on. Let’s put it in the wall.”

  Together they crossed the room. Lifting him easily off the floor, she breathed in the mix of his scents—baby shampoo, laundry detergent, and apple juice—and handed him the push pin.

  Twisting his body toward the wall, he tried to press it in, but it wobbled. So she closed her hand over his, and together they drove it into the wallboard.

  With his tongue sticking out, he hung the frame—a little crookedly—off the knob.

  She stepped back to take it in. “I love it.”

  He gave her a proud grin.

  “Looks good, right?”

  Just as she started to put him down, his legs tightened at her sides. For a moment he held her gaze, and then he put his arms around her shoulders. He held her tentatively at first, but then he cuddled up to her.

  Tears burned as she held him to her chest. She’d loved every minute she’d spent with her nephew this summer, loved how close they’d become.

  Right in time for her to leave.

  But wait. She cast a glance to the glowing screen of her laptop. She wasn’t leaving, was she? Fear ripped through her.

  She wasn’t getting the fellowship.