Resist

by Blanche Hardin

  “About what, exactly? How you got here or why you feel so shocked my brother and I would talk about you like you were an object instead of a person?”

  Blaine set his plate down, cater corner to hers and sat down in the corresponding chair. Their silverware, previously set out, consisted of a knife and fork, but no matter how bristled Vie became, he could honestly say he didn’t think she would use the object against him. She wasn’t a violent person by nature and there was nothing to suggest she would become one now.

  “We need to discuss everything.” Vie sliced into the omelet and took a tentative bite before her eyes closed and she moaned with pleasure. “This is so good. What the hell—I mean, how did you learn to cook like this? I can’t even boil water.”

  He smiled. “My mother always wanted a daughter but alas, she was blessed with three sons. She loved to cook. It’s her . . . passion besides psychiatry. She taught me. I was the only one who wanted to learn how to cook and I loved the extra attention. The perfect French omelet was one of the first dishes she taught me how to make. I was five at the time.”

  Vie glanced at him with wide gray eyes. “As in five years of age she trusted you near a stovetop? Good grief, what can’t you make?”

  “My pretzels aren’t that great but I make a mean bratwurst. Bread isn’t my strong suit because I don’t really consume an overabundance of carbs but I’m good when it comes to cakes and pastries. I love making my own sauerkraut but the fermenting time is a pain in the ass. I also have fresh blackberry and strawberry jam I made a couple of weeks ago,” he replied before he sliced into his own omelet and savored a bite.

  “You make your own jam and sauerkraut? I just go to Whole Foods and get the organic kind.”

  Blaine shook his head. “Nothing in grocery stores is completely organic, especially not here in the States. In Europe, it’s different. I love food shopping when I am visiting Germany, Denmark or France but here, it’s just easier to make what I love and store it in the freezer until I am ready to consume it.”

  “Would you do that to me?” Vie questioned in a joking manner.

  He failed to see the humor in her comment. “No, I wouldn’t.” He set his fork and knife down before he pushed his plate away. “Listen, I’m not sure how much of the conversation between Zed and I you heard but it’s a complicated situation and one where you’re not allowed to be privy to all the facts.”

  “Even if they directly concern me?” she wondered after she drank from her coffee. “Somehow that doesn’t seem fair. Has women’s rights been overturned by the Supreme Court and I missed the shocking headlines online at The Huffington Post? I certainly didn’t see any such story trending on Facebook. Forgive me if I seem a tad confused about how you’re treating me. Like I’m an object, not a human being with rights.”

  “Listen, I am offering you a wonderful opportunity—one, I didn’t plan to do until we got to know one another. I would never force you to sleep with my brother or me. Where’s the fun in that?”

  “Don’t take me for another square, Blaine. After all, there are such occurrences known to happen such as dubious consent and Stockholm syndrome,” Vie replied without missing a beat.

  “Sure but you’re no ordinary woman,” Blaine responded in a soft voice. “It would take more than a few sweet talking words to get you into bed. Besides, everything has changed and you will be given a choice as to whom you want to share your body with. Zed is fine with that and realizes he might not be your first choice—”

  “Christ, Blaine, it’s not even about that! It’s the lack of consideration for my condition. You know I’m not normal and I have a hang-up about sex so why even go there with me at all? Why even put me in the running?” She ate another piece of her omelet and deliberately took her time to chew and swallow. “What I really want to know is why me? Is this some kind of swinging dick contest? God knows you have the world at your feet and a pick of women that must be a mile-long list. You don’t need me like that so why bother?”

  He shook his head as his crystal blue eyes centered onto her steel-gray orbs. “You’re not asking the right questions. What you should be asking is why not you? Do I look like a man who enjoys a sure thing? Every part of my life has always been a challenge for me or I become bored and lose interest. I need to be with someone like you, if only to prove there are certain psychological conditions that can be overcome. Don’t you want to get over your condition?”

  “Of course I do but not like this. Not as someone’s bet or challenge.”

  “Well, what other way would you have it, Vie? Siblings are, by their very nature, extremely competitive. At least my brothers and I have always been. Yes, we’re close but at the same time, we resent each other. I’m sure Xavier and Zed don’t feel the same about one another as they feel about me because they’re twins but I have a definite dislike—bordering on hatred—for them both despite the fact they are my brothers,” Blaine explained in a rational tone although the words themselves probably sounded completely irrational to Vie.

  “I wouldn’t know,” she began caustically. “I’m an only child.”

  “Then you’re lucky. You never had to share your parents’ love and affection with another. You were able to relish in it selfishly and without worry another would take it from you.”

  Vie glared at him like he was a stranger with those big gray eyes before she shook her head. “Surely you can’t possibly believe that. You graduated from Stanford for Christ’s sake yet you sound like some . . . uneducated trailer park trash on Jerry Springer. Your parents didn’t love one sibling more than the other—if anything, they attempted the impossible, and tried to love you all equally.”

  “That is simply impossible for a human being to do, don’t you understand that? Surely you don’t believe the bullshit you’re trying to feed to me when you just graduated with a Masters in abnormal psychology from Stanford University.”

  For the first time since they’d met, he could see the vulnerability in Vie he absolutely adored and thus, he hated himself just a little bit more. She truly was as naïve as she looked and had spent too much time in the academic world, surrounded by their hackneyed theories about life and the human mind. What she hadn’t done was actually live life and see it was very different from a classroom setting or even the academic world itself.

  Blaine knew real evil existed—not only in life but people as well. He dealt with the depraved, the clinically insane who were able to adorn a mask of complete and utter normality while rotting away from the inside out in their own moral corruption and filth. Not physical waste but that of the mind; diseases they’d never been diagnosed with and obviously suffered from but so many people were simply able to discard because if it wasn’t present in the body and couldn’t be seen on an X-ray then it must not exist.

  He knew better. The American conditions that Western Europeans liked to laugh about just to think they were better than people across the ocean were real but not in the way they thought.

  Munchausen’s, hypochondria, multiple personality disorder, manic depression, kleptomania—these were all real conditions though not necessarily American conditions though Americans seemed to suffer from them more than others.

  Not that there weren’t European conditions that were just as bad—if not worse—than American conditions.

  Blaine had lived on both sides of the Atlantic and dealt with both group of people equally. He knew Western Europeans suffered from their own set of psychological issues that made the Americans seem like a walk in the park.

  For all of the faults of this nation’s people, at least they were able to deal with their shortcomings if not completely and irreparably. At the very least, they acknowledged their very existence. They didn’t believe they were without flaws and there was no perfection to aspire to because it didn’t exist.

  Europeans, for all the greatness in their countries—the utter history and the fact that their nations were hundreds upon hundreds years older—had grown ornery and despondent
. There was a depression that spanned the continent and no matter how happy people seemed to be, deep down, the people were . . . restless, on guard, uneasy and most of all, hopeless.

  They didn’t believe in anything—not God, not man and certainly not the future. People didn’t acknowledge any real faith in relationships and they were something to shallowly invest in but only to seek solace until the love ran out. Then they were something to shed and flee from as quickly as possible. It was out with the old, in with the new and onto the next . . . and then, the next one after that one failed too. Being free with one’s body didn’t necessarily equate with being easy to access one’s heart.

  Blaine recognized in Vie a combination of both continents’ ills rolled into one person. She’d been born and raised in the United States and yet, she suffered from both the American and the European conditions in her life. Not able and unwilling to put her heart on the line, she’d made her body inaccessible through a phobia that was so severe, it made intimacy—physical, psychological and emotional—with anyone damn near difficult if not impossible.

  She was a closed book and it would take a special person to break through to her and make her realize she not only hurt herself but the people around her thorough her morbid and incommunicable actions.

  “What are you thinking about?” Vie wondered as she grasped her fork again and began to eat the rest of her omelet. “You’re looking at me as if I am . . . I don’t know, evil incarnate or something.”

  Blaine smiled though it was wary and without mirth. “No, you could never be any of those things, darling. You’re perfect just the way you are . . . for now but your imperfections will kill you if you let them. You’ll suffer physically the way you do mentally and it will hit you like a fucking tumor. Is that what you want? Do you never want to feel close to anyone in any capacity what so ever? Granted what my brother and I had planned might not be the best way to intimacy but at least we were trying. There is something inside you begging to be set free and you’re determined to not let it go.”

  “That’s not true at all. I will be the first to say I am far from perfect. I know I have issues but . . . I’m not sure what the best way it is to go about changing what I need and want out of . . . shit, I don’t know what I’m trying to articulate anymore.”

  Blaine reached out and grabbed her hand not holding her fork. “I think you know exactly what you’re trying to say. I will help you . . . in this sexual exploration but at the same time, you’ve got to want my help.”

  Vie dropped her fork on her finished plate and squeezed her hand inside his. “No more games? I mean . . . I don’t want to be part of a pissing contest between you and Zed.”

  He nodded his head. “No more games. You don’t do anything unless you want to do it. I swear.”

  She glared at him dubiously. “Why is it I want to so badly believe you but I don’t? How can I be sure?”

  “Because I say so. Zed wouldn’t dare harm you. That’s not his M.O. at all. If anything, he wants you to be attracted to him and come to him in your own free will. He’s not dangerous. Xavier on the other hand . . .”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “You’re not stupid, Vie. Figure it out. I can honestly say I am much more dangerous than my brother. Xavier is dangerous too. But not Zed. He would rather harm himself before he’d dare hurt a pretty hair on your head. That’s not him.”

  Blaine continued to study her as their hands slipped apart and she walked towards one of the glass walls facing the beach. “I’ve already told my parents I’m determined to go through with this and if I go back to them . . . back to your dad defeated like I am now, they’ve won and I’ve lost everything. My pride, my sense of self, and the ability to act like a fully functioning adult. I can’t do that and live with myself. They can’t be right about everything and at some point, I have to put on my big girl pants and simply accept consequences, which aren’t entirely under my control.”

  “That’s a non-answer, Vie.”

  She turned toward him, her auburn hair hung in loose waves down her back and against the sides of her face. “You didn’t ask me a question, Blaine.”

  He crossed his arms against his chest and silenced her with brooding crystal blue eyes. “Will you stay? Yes or no?”

  “Yes, I’ll stay. As long as you hold up your end of the bargain. I want to know more about the way you work and how you tick. I won’t be anyone’s bargaining chip and if I decide to sleep with you or your brother, it’ll be on my terms, not yours and certainly not Zed’s. Am I making myself clear now?”

  “Indeed you are,” he replied in a calm tone.

  “Shake on it?” Vie inquired as she walked over and held out her left hand.

  He responded by reaching over with his right and shaking her hand in a delicate manner.

  She looked almost relieved as the tension left her shoulders and she noticeably calmed down.

  Meanwhile, his eyes searched hers while he thought, Silly girl, don’t you understand rules are made to be broken?

  Her naivety still completely astounded him but it would be so much more fun when she learned the rule to their game was there simply weren’t any rules at all.

  Chapter 6

  Vie

  After a disastrous introduction into the world according to Blaine, the tension between us disappeared completely around the first month of us being together. It was decided—by me—I would rather stay at his loft rather than traveling between the Hollywood Hills’ estate and Pacific Palisades.

  I quickly fell into a familiar pattern of many newbies to L.A. The days were filled with interesting activities that involved everything from being left on my own to explore the new area I lived to accompanying Blaine to various places.

  I also acquired transportation of my own—a late model, top of the line black Volkswagen Golf with all the trimmings.

  Though he did have a space in his loft to shoot scenes—usually the intimate ones in his films—the vast majority of his films were shot on different locations throughout the city.

  His movies had a very esoteric look to them as far as I knew from the few scenes he’d bothered to show me. There was a whole vibe to them that was almost predatory from the start.

  There were two worlds he preferred to work in when filming: the nightlife and the aftermath of such events when his characters—usually female—suffered the consequences of their actions.

  Although it seemed too good to be true, a sense of real intimacy began to foster between Blaine and me along with Zed and me but just in different ways. If someone had told me several months previously, I would soon be intimately connected with two different men, I would have burst out laughing before proclaiming there was nothing wrong with it but it wasn’t me or the type of person I was.

  I wasn’t sleeping with either men except for Blaine and when I say sleeping, I meant we shared a bed at night. He’d never touched me other than a quick peck on the lips at night before we both settled into our personal space on his California King-sized bed. As far as he was concerned, this was a huge breakthrough for me since I’d never been this close with a former boyfriend, let alone a man who was a complete and utter stranger to me less than eight weeks previously.

  I thought about our relationship one Saturday morning as I nursed a cup of coffee and gazed upon the Pacific waves crashing against the beach. Blaine had slept in after a late night and I didn’t bother to wake him. He had a Keurig machine and about thirty different flavors of coffee and tea. What more could a girl ask for?

  If he and I were growing closer yet I also maintained a relationship with his brother then what did that mean? I knew he still had an active sex life though no names were exchanged about his post-coital partners and where exactly they fucked. I had taken over his bed so maybe he went to their homes or the Hollywood Hills estate where he had a bedroom? It was a strange situation, knowing he wanted me and yet, he continued to sleep with other women.

  I picked up my Samsung Note 3 an
d realized I had several text messages from Zed.

  Zed: What R U up 2?

  Zed: I know Blaine isn’t home cuz he’s over here fuckin’ some chick he met at a club. Viper Room I think.

  Zed: Don’t tell me you’re in bed already on a Friday night???

  I laughed out loud and decided to put him out of his misery. Truth was I hadn’t gone to bed early the night before, I’d been binging on episodes of American Horror Story: Murder House. The fourth season started in less than six weeks and I was looking forward to it with fevered anticipation.

  Me: Wasn’t in bed, you dope. Watching AHS: Murder House on my own.

  Zed: Why didn’t you call me? We could have watched it together. You better call me when you start Asylum.

  Me: I def will. Probably start it Monday night. How’s that for you?

  Zed: Not doing anything Monday. We’ll see each other before then.

  Me: Why’s that?

  Zed: I’m on my way up right now. Let me in or I’ll be forced to use my key.

  I stood and made my way to the front door with my phone still in my hand. Sure enough, he stood there with Brigitte, the beautiful and poised underground starlet.

  She was cherished for her innocent Scandinavian looks even if there was absolutely nothing sweet about her in the least. In fact, I would rather get a bad case of diarrhea than to be within her presence for more than five minutes.

  Brigitte was Xavier’s girlfriend—the blonde who wouldn’t take the hint. She clung to him like vine to a pillar and unfortunately, she wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. Besides her sheer popularity with film connoisseurs, she also happened to be a very determined young woman. She would snag one of the Pascal-Baasch brothers if it killed her in the process.