by Meg Watson
“We’re going to try a new thing, and this is going to become ‘Our Thing.’ As in, forever.”
Lyle rolled his eyes.
“Are you ready for it?” I needled. I could hear Owen suppressing a chuckle.
“Man, this isn’t funny,” Lyle shot at Owen.
“It’s not funny,” I agreed. “I’m not trying to be funny. I’m trying to be direct. I want us to agree, here and now, on a strict policy of absolute relationship honesty.”
“Agreed,” Owen said immediately. Lyle shrugged.
“No, seriously,” I insisted, backing away from both of them. Suddenly this seemed like a very important thing I needed to express and I wanted their undivided attention. I waited until they were both perched against the edge of the desk, ankles crossed in nearly identical poses, heads cocked and ready to listen.
“Honesty is more than just not lying when someone asks you a question,” I continued, parsing the thoughts as I formed the words. “It’s asking yourself whether your partner — because that’s what we’re talking about being, right? — needs to know. And if they need to know, then honesty means finding a way to tell them.”
Owen nodded immediately. I looked at Lyle. He glanced away.
“Lyle?”
“So you two didn’t think that I needed to know that you were in here having a moment without me?”
I took a deep breath.
“You know what,” I started again, “you’re right, Lyle. And I’m sorry.”
He nodded uncertainly. I fought the urge to hug him. This wasn’t the cocky rich kid who walked naked into a hallway to give me my thong. This was a real person.
And man, he is turning me right on.
“And Owen, I’m sorry that I haven’t been communicating with you, like at all. I assumed you were using your superpower to keep tabs on me, but… Well, really I was probably hiding,” I finished in a rush.
They looked at each other, their secret psychic connection almost visible like a spark in the air.
“Hiding?” Owen repeated with a quirked eyebrow.
I closed my eyes, hoping the words would come to me if I just started speaking.
Prepare to look like an idiot, Bree.
“I haven't been honest with you guys, like at all. This is not me. I'm not any kind of like… Bombshell, or anything like that. I've never been with two men at once. I've never just thrown myself into a situation like this. Hell, I've never had sex in public before. Something about you makes me just… Better than I am. But I feel like I'm faking all of it. I feel like a complete phony. Because you think I'm this… Thing. This sexy thing, and I'm not. I'm just Bree.”
I looked between them, blinking, my breath all ragged and fast in my chest. I knew there was an excellent chance… In fact, I absolutely expected them to simply throw up their hands and demand that I leave the building immediately. Sweat started to pour all hot under my arms and I held my elbows out, hoping that I didn't start to just reek with fear.
"Okay, this is the part where you guys are supposed to say something.”
Lyle just shrugged.
“This still sounds like Dunning-Kruger to me,” he said.
Owen nodded. "Yeah that's exactly what I was thinking too.”
“No, no... you guys don't get it. I'm not just worried that I am a fraud. I am telling you for sure: this is not me. I'm not sexy and self-confident and willing to do just anything. I'm shy and dorky and I recently found out that I didn't even know my boyfriend was cheating on me yet again and right under my nose. I'm probably the least sexy person that you know, to tell you the truth. I thought you should know that.”
They were both looking at me and nodding sympathetically as though I had just finished some kind of insane ramble instead of pouring my heart out.
Fine. Bring out the big guns.
“Also, I am homeless."
“Wait, what?” Owen said, shifting his weight up and away from the desk.
“What happened to Melita?” Lyle asked.
"No, nevermind that. I don’t want your sympathy or anything. I just wanted to tell you everything. Now you know everything.”
Now they know everything, but it doesn't really seem to be sinking in. I'm pretty sure Lyle is just looking at my tits.
"How are you homeless?” Owen persisted. “No, scratch that. You're not homeless — we have condos in the gallery building. I mean, consider that done. But how did you get to be what you are calling homeless?”
“Wait,” Lyle interrupted, “are you sure you don't want to live with us?"
I breathed in so fast I almost choked on my tongue.
“Okay, okay,” he said with his hands up, "maybe that's a little fast. But keep it in mind!”
“Okay,” I said slowly.
Owen punched him lightly on the shoulder.
“Complete honesty?” he said to me with his eyebrows raised. I nodded, for the first time realizing that honesty had to come from them too.
“Brienne, I've been watching you for a long time. I think I already know what kind of person you are. I think that this — bombshell, which is a great word by the way because wow — it's not new. Maybe you weren’t living like that, but this is always the kind of person that I knew you were. I — we have always been looking for someone like you. If you wanted to live together right now —”
“— right now?” I repeated.
He nodded sincerely. “Complete honesty again: we would welcome that. Being around you feels like the answer to a question that we asked each other for years. I don't know how else to explain it to you… And I'm not saying this to be evasive or anything. But you feel like the person that we were always missing. And that's about as honest as I can get with you.”
He glanced at Lyle who was nodding.
Well, I did ask for honesty. Could all of that really be true?
“Complete honesty: I feel the exact same way. Although I'm still wondering what happened to Melita," Lyle added with a shrug.
I looked up at the ceiling. Admitting that Melita wasn't talking to me was almost harder than it meeting admitting that Carl had been cheating on me.
Oh my god, honesty is going to be hard.
I took a deep breath and tried to think of how to begin. In a couple seconds I was explaining that Melita had met Jay, fallen for Jay, and didn't particularly care to hear my suspicions that he was actually married. She didn't want to hear them to the extent that she didn’t want to hear a damn thing about me either way.
“Wait,” Owen said, “are you telling me that Melita has not been helping with the gallery? Like at all?”
The question caught me by surprise, though I had to acknowledge the gallery was incredibly hard because she wasn't helping me. I couldn't even count the number of times that I had wished for her.
“Well, don't you need an assistant? I can have somebody over there by the end of the day…”
“But I don't want anyone else!” I blurted out. "I want Melita! She’s like you guys: I'm not anybody without her. I just… Well, I guess she needs time."
“No, you need to get her back," Lyle said.
“I can't get her back. I tried,” I explained. “She wants to be away from me right now, and if I push it and try to prove to her that I'm right, I think that I risk losing her forever—"
“I have an idea,” Owen said.
Lyle shot him a look. “Are you thinking what I'm thinking?”
Owen nodded and wiggled his eyebrows.
“Wait," I said cautiously, "what are you guys talking about?”
“It might be better if you don't know,” Lyle said.
“Didn't we just talk about honesty?” I shot back.
“Yes, we did,” Owen nodded. “But I'd like to talk about trust too. Do you trust me? Do you trust us?"
Do I trust them?
“Wow, I think that I really do,” I said, surprising myself with the answer.
“Then let me help you with this. I can — no, let me make it a surprise. A g
ood surprise,” he reassured me. He looked at at Lyle. “Right, back me up on this. I'm really good at surprises. Right?”
“He really is. I gotta hand it to him. I'm also good at a few things too,” Lyle added.
“Oh you really are,” I breathed, relief seeping through me as I realized that these men really were going to help me. I felt like I'd been holding my breath, convinced that there was a good chance I would have lost both of them before I left the building. But here we still were, and I felt like we were stronger than ever.
I walked toward them with my arms out, somehow holding myself back from running across the space that separated us. I let my fingers drag along the outside of each of their arms, thrilling to finally be able to touch them again in safety, knowing that we were solidly together.
I tugged on Lyle's elbow and pulled him toward me. He slipped his hand around my waist and aligned the front of his body to mine as I raised my chin. He nuzzled my cheeks and hummed against my hairline before dipping to kiss my lips lightly.
Then I turned toward Owen and pulled him against me as well. He brushed my hair back from my cheek and squeezed the back of my neck firmly as I tipped my face up and accepted his kiss eagerly, gratefully. His tongue slid along the inside of my upper lip and sent a cascade of wanting sparks through the center of me.
“I'm very glad we had this talk,” Lyle whispered against the lobe of my ear as his fingers trailed down my hip and into the heat between my legs, finding me ready and wanting. “Just one thing: what's Melita's favorite color?”
CHAPTER 6
As the day of the gallery opening fast approached, I couldn't really tell if I was getting better or worse at my job. Sometimes I felt positively brilliant: organizing press releases and answering questions from the NPR interviewer as though it was second nature to me.
Other times I felt utterly helpless in the face of small decisions like what kind of plates that I need to buy for my new condo? Was I going to use the same laundry detergent I had always used, or was I suddenly the sort of person who felt tropically fresh? Or April fresh? Maybe linen fresh? Mundane decisions like that could just stop me in my tracks.
Several people responded almost immediately to the ad about the Jeep, and I met the second email in the parking lot of the rock 'n roll McDonald's. It was a young couple. I watched them walk across the parking lot: her in a salvaged broom skirt, him in a natty bowtie and carefully sculpted beard.
They looked like the sort of people who might go on a road trip, maybe to see the Replacements or Willie Nelson or something like that. They would probably stop off in a cornfield just for fun. Maybe they would use the Jeep to cart new home brewing equipment.
It seemed like a decent decision and I needed the cash anyway. Well… If I was being completely honest, I really didn't need the cash. I wasn't sure what I was doing for cash but it just no longer seemed to be an issue since Owen and Jack had each given me a corporate card emblazoned with my name.
I gave the hippie hipsters the keys to the Jeep and hugged them each awkwardly before flagging another taxicab and heading toward the bank. I felt like I was going through some kind of procession of goodbyes: I had a new apartment, I no longer had the Jeep, and now I needed to head back to the bank.
But that turned out to be a remarkably simple operation. I showed the guy behind the desk my drivers license and asked simply to open a new account starting with half the balance of my old savings account. He agreed and in less than half an hour I had a new account, new login, new ATM card on its way.
Was half fair? I didn't even know anymore. I suppose I could have figured it out to the penny if I had really tried. In fact, I probably could've taken it all. After everything he had done to me, that seemed sort of righteous. But I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of doing anything that could be retold in a way that made me look like a thief. I was really enjoying the moral high ground. It had a nice view.
All of these things gave me an excellent way to winnow down the minutes and hours before Friday's opening. I had a laundry list of things to do that stretched into the dozens, and I was checking them off, one by one.
Each thing that I struck from the list was another moral victory for me. After a few more days, my subconscious seem to finally embrace the notion that this was my real life. Everything started to feel natural. That Dunning-Kruger effect, or whatever Lyle kept calling it, faded away. Every time they kissed me or brushed their hands lightly against the backs of my arms as we were discussing the invitations and marketing campaigns, I got one step more accustomed to my new, very real life.
From the window of my condo I could look down and see all the traffic on Michigan Avenue. Pedestrians wove meandering lines down the sidewalk, and it filled me with pleasure to see them pause in front of the windows of the gallery, just eight floors below me.
I like to watch them slow down as they hit the first window and then turn their bodies fully to face the posters I'd hung there. Hopefully, their subconscious minds registered that the posters were the same as the billboards on top of all the cabs, and the same as the huge bus-wrapped billboards that I had commissioned. They were also the same as the even more huge, three-story high billboards that I had placed in strategic locations in the financial district.
It was truly a ridiculous amount of money that I had been able to spend, at least from my perspective. Owen and Lyle never seem to bat an eye about it when I showed them the budgets. In fact, they seemed impressed by my extravagance.
As long as I didn't fall flat on my face on the first night, I figured I was off to a really good start.
On the day of the gallery opening, I leaned forward against the window with my hands on either side of the frame and my forehead pressed to the glass, watching people gather on the red carpet below. The sun was going down and the entire front of the building was cast in shadow, but the photographers had already arrived. There was as much press and paparazzi here as for the opening night of any new play straight from Broadway, or any high-end gala event. My chest was tight with excitement and anticipation, and I was almost overwhelmed with emotion every time I realized that these people were all here to see me and what I had done.
This is my moment. Oh my god, it's really happening.
A soft knock on the door startled me in my daydream. I turned around and saw the condo as though seeing it for the first time again. It still hadn't quite sunk in that this was my space now. It looked like something out of an Architectural Digest issue or some other high-end magazine like Dwell.
Lyle hadn't been entirely thorough when he described his superpower. As it turned out, he was magnificent with space planning and had the simple, open-minded taste of a real artist. He seemed to know exactly what I needed in my space before I did. There had been about a thousand times when I wished I had known that about him so I could have asked him to help me with the gallery.
I padded across the walnut floors in my bare feet and an outrageously fuchsia kimono. Through the peephole I couldn't see anyone in the hallway so I opened the door cautiously. Lying on the floor was a large black box and I bit back a wide, excited grin.
It smelled like money, that was for sure. It was a scent I was beginning to understand very well.
On the top of the box was a small, black envelope. I plucked it off with trembling fingers and pulled out the handwritten card from inside. It read, “We can't wait to see you in this, please hurry. With love, Owen and Lyle Jack.”
With love?
“I don't believe in love anymore,” I muttered to myself, smiling. Over the last few days I kept finding myself saying those words inside my head, only they got funnier every time I said them.
I knew the feelings that were beginning to bubble up inside me. The way that they overshadowed all my doubt and bitterness, it just made me chuckle at the absurdity of being the sort of person who says they don't believe in love. How could I have thought such a thing?
I picked the box up off the floor and brought it back i
nside the condo, listening to the solid click of the door closing with a satisfied shudder. Giving myself one more moment’s indulgence I walked to the window again and looked down at the sidewalk. A line had formed that snaked out toward Michigan Avenue and then about a hundred feet down the block. People were actually waiting in line to see what I had done.
What we all had done, come to think of it. Together.
CHAPTER 7
I could have gone down my private elevator that stopped conveniently in the warehouse, but I really wanted to surf through the crowd. I took my elevator down to the parking garage and then walked back up a quick flight of stairs to street level.
Gliding along the outside of the line, I found myself holding my breath. I could hear little snatches of conversation as I wandered, completely unobserved and unacknowledged, through the dozens and dozens of people that Owen and Lyle had invited to the gallery for its premiere night. I could hear them murmuring to themselves as they looked over the posters and billboards.
A couple times I thought maybe I was recognized but I just kept walking until I got to the edge of the carpet on the sidewalk, to where the photographers were gathered. I stood at the back of the carpet for just a moment and breathed.
Everything settled into the moment like it was coming into resolution, like it was a photograph being developed. I could hear everything almost as if I was underwater: the sound of the photographers, the members of the crowd that became progressively more hushed as people realized I was about to open the doors, even the sound of the traffic behind me. I wanted to remember everything because I felt like my entire life had been leading me right here this entire time. A swell of emotion and gratitude bloomed in my chest as I realized yet again that I was not alone.
Almost as if I had wished them into existence, Lyle and Owen seemed to magically appear at the front door, on the other end of the red carpet. Dressed nearly alike in impeccably tailored tuxedos, they stood tall and elegant like magazine models. They stared at me for a moment with matching expressions of what looked like admiration and maybe more than a little bit of lust.