Pierced (Tall, Dark, and Handsome Book 2)

by JA Huss

  His hand is still on my arm, I realize. I look at it again, then I look at him once more, take a breath, and say, “Fuck you.”

  And pulling away from his grasp, I go ahead and make my way down to coat-check.

  I glance up at the second-story lobby, hoping. Hoping that he will come flying down those stairs, trying to make me understand. Trying to make me see it from another perspective. Trying to say anything that offsets everything he just said.

  But he doesn’t.

  So I feel like I have no other choice.

  I walk out.

  He doesn’t call. Not on Saturday night. Not on Sunday.

  And on Monday morning I call in, leave a message for human resources that I’ve had a family emergency and I’m taking my two weeks’ vacation, then hang up and wait.

  I wait for that call.

  The one with Pierce’s voice on the other end, asking me to give him a chance to explain. Or asking to come over. But he doesn’t come over. I leave strict instructions at the guard house that no one be let in, but… I expect him to try.

  When Samantha gets to work on Monday evening I call up there and ask her if there’s anything in the logs about Pierce coming by, but she says no.

  Nothing. No call, no visit. Nothing but my own last impression.

  And then, on Tuesday night, while watching the election results, I see that Chad whatshisface won and realize… I blew off Pearl’s very real save-the-community-center plan a second time because I was too busy with my very fake save-the-magazine plan that week.

  I think that’s what does it for me.

  I’m pretty sure that’s what does it.

  The realization that I am:

  A) That weird woman who used to sit in front of Pierce’s office, but now has one of her own because he accused her of having a secret sex identity last summer, and oh, hey, turns out she does have a secret sex identity, because she only has one job at Le Man now. Throwing a Halloween party. Which, turns out, had a sex club theme.

  B) The kind of person who blows off a commitment, twice, ruining any hope some perfectly sweet do-gooder named Pearl had of saving the TDH community center.

  And C) a woman who waits around for a man to call and make her whole again, even though he lied to her and made her feel like a complete fool in front of two hundred people. Twice.

  It’s all three of those things. But C), in particular, bothers me the most.

  And there is only one way to fix that.

  Just one.

  I pack up all six pieces of my Tiffany luggage, call a car service, and go to the airport.

  Because I need a do-over. I need a reset.

  I am the tiger who woke up, realized I’ve been living content, fat, and happy in a cage, and decided… I’ve had enough.

  Because this is not me.

  This is not who I am.

  CHAPTER THIRTY - PIERCE

  “Saturday night!?” That’s Eden. I’m in the kitchen of her and Andrew’s apartment. Local election results are on in the background in the other room.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Dude!” That’s Andrew. “Why are you just telling us now? And why are you telling us? Why aren’t you at Myrtle’s right now?”

  “She said, very clearly, that it could never happen again. So, y’know, I figure that’s that.”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Andrew asks.

  “What the fuck is wrong with me?” I don’t feel super supported by my old pal right now.

  “Yeah, Pierce! What the fuck is wrong with you?” Eden pretty well shouts at me. I feel even less supported by his girlfriend.

  “Why are you both yelling at me?”

  “Because you need to be yelled at!” says Eden. “You tell a woman you love her and then you let her feel humiliated and embarrassed and just walk away?”

  “She’s right, man. That’s messed up,” Andrew says.

  “Um, no offense, but do I need to remind you two about what you went through with each other just a few months ago? Pot? Kettle?”

  “Don’t change the subject!” Eden squeals at me.

  “Let’s all just…” Andrew takes a breath and presses his palms toward the floor, encouraging us all to calm down, I guess.

  “Listen,” I say, “Has she, y’know, called you at all?” I ask it of Eden.

  “Me? No. No, she hasn’t. And even if she had, it’s not my job to play go-between for you. If you want to talk with her, talk with her yourself.”

  “How come you were never this assertive when you worked for me?” I ask her.

  “Rock climbing,” she says.

  “What?”

  “Rock climbing. I’ve gotten really good at rock climbing. And you have to be definite and resolute. I think it’s maybe spilled over into my everyday me.”

  Fucking rock climbers. Bunch of assholes.

  I take a breath. “Jesus. Look… I’m not just being stubborn—”

  “You so are,” she says.

  “You really kind of are, dude,” Andrew chimes in.

  My fists clench. I try my hardest to stay calm. “I. So. Am. Not!” Whatever. I tried.

  And at that, Eden shakes her head at me and storms out of the kitchen. We watch her go and then Andrew turns to me.

  “You know that somehow this is now going to become about some shit I did wrong, right?”

  “Sorry, man,” I say, taking a swig of my Perrier.

  He blows out a breath. Shit, I still have to set up that pulmonologist appointment for him. “On the bright side—”

  “There’s a bright side?”

  “Well, Eden said that the buzz she and Zoey have generated about the event was huge. I guess photos on Le Man’s Instagram have been viewed more than the Met Gala?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. You didn’t know that?”

  “No. Didn’t ask.”

  “Oh… oh. Well. Yeah. Apparently, the whole event was a huge success.”

  “Guess it depends on how you measure success.”

  “Um… I suppose I thought you measure success the same way you’ve always measured success. Money and… attention. And… money.”

  I gulp down the rest of my water and toss the bottle in recycling. “I suppose.”

  “Man,” Andrew says, slowly. “Why haven’t you called Myrtle?”

  I rub at my jaw for a moment and then say, “You know what my dad said to me in New York?”

  “No.”

  “He said that the reason he feels like he can trust me now is that he sees me having come into my power. He said that he thought what happened this past summer was me not reacting, but seizing control of a situation. He said that even though the whole thing was a shit-show—”

  “He called it a shit-show?”

  “A ‘spectacle de merde,’ yeah. That he thought the way I maneuvered around it and used it all to my advantage was capable and forward-thinking and all that shit.”

  Andrew stares at me for a moment. I oblige his silence by going on.

  “Remember when you first got to town and I told you that if I didn’t do something to turn the magazine around that he and I would be done?”

  “Of course, I do.”

  “I’ve waited my whole life for him to believe in me the way he is now.”

  “What does that have to do with—?”

  “My father is the man he is because he doesn’t bow to anyone. He doesn’t prostrate himself. Ever. Ever. To anyone. Ever.”

  I open the fridge and grab another Perrier. I pop the cap and drink. After another few long moments, Andrew says, “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Since when have you wanted to be your dad?”

  “Don’t—”

  “I dunno, man. Just seems to me that part of being in your own power is being in your own power. Not the shadow of someone else’s.”

  I nod, taking this in.

  “Can I ask you something else?”

  “You realize that as
king if you can ask something is asking something?”

  He ignores me and says, “When you came into my office and got all excited about what happened with Myrtle that first time you were in her, uh…”

  “Dungeon.”

  “I know, it just weirds me out. But that next day, you came into my office all excited. Why?”

  I think back to just a couple of weeks ago. How it felt when Myrtle came into my office and demanded a Fifty Shades of Chevalier type contract. And how it felt when I showed up at her place and submitted to her.

  “I guess because, for the first time in my life, I let someone else have some power over me. And it felt really amazing to be able to give over to someone and trust them and shit. I guess.”

  “Someone? Or Myrtle?”

  I rub both hands down my face and my palms land, pressed together, in front of my lips in what might look like a tiny prayer. “Yeah,” I say.

  “Shit!” That’s Eden from the other room.

  “What?” asks Andrew. “What’s wrong?”

  “Chad Walter is gonna be the new mayor!” she shouts to us.

  “I didn’t know you were so invested in local politics,” Andrew says.

  “I’m not. I just hate seeing dickheads get what they want.” It’s possible that I’m being overly sensitive, but I could swear that’s a veiled swipe at me.

  “Hey,” Andrew says, pulling my attention back.

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s Myrtle’s middle name?”

  “What?”

  “What’s her middle name, man?”

  “Astrid. Why?”

  “What’s my middle name?”

  “Dude—”

  “Pierce, what’s my middle name?”

  I stare at him and he raises his eyebrows and smiles.

  After a moment, I nod. “Yeah…” I say.

  “Go,” he says, putting his hand on my shoulder.

  “It’s been three whole days. I don’t know if I can walk this one back.”

  “I hear there’s a seventy-two-hour grace period. You’ve got”—he bends my wrist and looks at my watch—“about an hour. Just go.”

  I twist my neck because… fuck me. Then I nod, pat him on the arm and head for the exit that leads straight from the kitchen to the back hallway. I’ll have to take the service elevator down, but I really don’t feel like getting more abuse from Eden on my way out.

  Just as the door is about to close behind me, I turn back to Andrew. “Hey…”

  “Yeah?” he says.

  “What is your middle name?”

  He smiles. “It was a trick question. I don’t have one. But I’m thinking of having something added, legally. The frontrunner at the moment is Cransfandimmelberg.”

  While I am aware there is no seventy-two-hour grace period, I keep looking at the clock on my dashboard anyway. It’s now in my head that I have to make it to Myrtle’s within the hour as if she’s Cinderella and if I don’t get the shoe on her pumpkin in time, she turns into a broom. Or whatever. Nobody really read me that stuff as a kid.

  When I pull up to the edge of the long driveway that leads down to the wrought iron gates, I pause and let the car idle for a moment. I think about the first time I came here and how I didn’t know what to expect. I have a similar set of feelings now. Just for very different reasons.

  I roll down to the guard gate and find my old friend Samantha reading the same novel I’ve seen in her hand every time I’ve been here.

  “Hey, Sam. Still reading the same book?”

  “No. This is a different one.”

  “Really?” She nods. I twist my neck to see it better. “It looks the same. Shirtless dude on the cover.”

  “It’s a Scarlett Savannah erotic novel. They all have shirtless dudes on the cover. Can I help you?”

  “Yeah. I need to see Myrtle. Can you let me in?”

  She looks down at her clipboard. “I’m sorry. Your name is not on the list.”

  Are you fucking…? “Samantha? Don’t do this, okay? Please. Just call inside and tell her that Pierce is here.”

  “I’m sorry. There is no Pierce on the list.”

  “Goddam—!” I take a breath. Then, slowly, “OK… Anastasia—”

  “There is no Anastasia Steele on this list either. There are no names on the list. Nor do I imagine there will be for the foreseeable future.”

  “Fuck does that mean?”

  “I’ll welcome you not to swear.”

  I slam my head back into the headrest. Samantha places her hand on her night stick.

  “OK. OK. Fine.” I grab up my cell and ring Myrtle’s number. Or I try to ring her number. It goes straight to voicemail. I try again. Same thing.

  “Where’s Myrtle, Samantha?”

  “I have instructions—”

  “Can I tell you something?”

  She pauses, looks at me, then says, “OK.”

  “I’m in love with Myrtle Rothschild. Hear what I’m saying? I’m in love with her. I’ve been in love with her for a long, long time and I just didn’t know it. Or I did, but I wouldn’t let myself admit it. Because, because—I dunno. Because I have weird daddy issues and because I’m super selfish and self-involved, and quite honestly, I’m not particularly good at dealing with actual emotions. It may have something to do with my sister dying when I was a kid, I have no idea, but I’m not. So I peacock and deflect using bombast and artifice, and when shit gets too real, I push it away. I did that to Myrtle this past summer. I think I could tell that something was brewing up between us and it scared me a little bit, I think, and that happened to dovetail with this stuff I had going on at work—you may have seen it on local news, whatever, doesn’t matter—and I wound up kind of pushing Myrtle away by accident. And, frankly, I just kind of did it again, and look, as somebody who reads those”—I point at her paperback—“you must see how ridiculously romantic everything I’m saying is. Or, at least, has the potential to be. And you have a chance right now to play a major, important role in a real-life love story. So, please, please, don’t be that character in the story who acts as an obstacle to true love. Be that character who shows up out the blue, when everyone is least expecting it, and becomes the accidental Cupid. Because I know we don’t know each other that well, but the way I am right now? It isn’t me. And if I’m willing to lay myself on the line in front of a virtual stranger… well, if you did know me, you’d know what a big deal that is, so please… will you help me?”

  I’m spent after my unexpected soliloquy. I huff out a massive breath. Samantha stares at me for a long, long time. Finally, after what feels like a minute, she says, “Cool. Probably should tell her all that, though.”

  Jesus.

  “Look, just tell me—”

  “I dunno where she went. Can’t help you. Sorry.”

  And then she slams shut the door of the guard house and goes back to reading her book.

  The next several weeks are exceedingly strange.

  Actually, the weeks themselves are kind of cool. It’s just that I feel strange inside of them. The combination of the press we got from the Halloween thing coupled with our new ad partnership with Perrier has done something most unexpected. It has made me, not the magazine, but me, the “New Face of the Modern Man.”

  In truth, a lot of things that have done that.

  It really started with the whole Sexpert debacle, ironically. That definitely began attention flowing in the direction of Le Man. And all the work that Eden and Zoey have done since then has been fantastic. Even in the wake of this blow-up with Myrtle, Eden has been on top of things. She still kind of hates me, but she’s a pro.

  Also, I pay her an exorbitant consulting fee.

  The fact that my father (and therefore, I) owns twenty-five of the most major publications in the world doesn’t hurt. One hand washes the other. Press begets press, and so on and so forth. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s gross. But it’s also business.

  All of that stuff is somewhat unexp
ected and surreal, but the thing that makes it the most odd is that Myrtle isn’t here to be part of it. And not just because of our recent history. But because of our ancient history.

  She has been by my side, one way or another, for every success, failure, and everything in between that I’ve had for the last seven years. And now… she’s gone. And I have no idea where.

  Her phone continues to stay off. Her only email is her Le Man email and it comes back with a message saying that she’s away on holiday and will respond when she returns. She’s not on social media, so I can’t find her there.

  In this day and age, it is awfully, awfully hard to just up and disappear. But she’s done it. It’s not that shocking, I suppose. She is a woman who changed who she was at least twice and is better at keeping her secrets secret than anyone I’ve known.

  I sit in my office, spinning a pen around the base of my thumb and catching it with my forefinger, when a voice comes over my intercom.

  “Mr. Chevalier?”

  “Yeah, Bryce?”

  Bryce is my new assistant. Turns out that Valerie did such a great job helping Myrtle while I was gone that week before Halloween that I decided to give her a promotion. She’s now Josh Washington’s… shit, Washburn’s (trying to get better about that) AVP of ad sales. They’re a couple of weirdos, so they seem to complement each other. But that left me with an assistant spot to fill.

  As it started to become clear that Myrtle doesn’t plan on coming back…

  Which is something that dawned on me with painful clarity when I remembered that first night I was in Myrtle’s house and thought: This is it. I’m here. I’m doing this crazy shit. And I have to make a choice right this second. Stay and go through with this insanity. Or risk pissing off Myrtle again, fully endowed with the understanding that if I do, she is gone. In the wind. Vapor. I will never see her again. In my gut, I know that it’s either go through with this or face the wrath of a Myrtle scorned.

  … I pulled Bryce off Myrtle’s desk and put him on mine. He’s actually not bad. And more importantly, I just didn’t think I could look outside my wall and see anyone who might even smack of being a replica of Myrtle, and Bryce is about as far from that as you can get. So. I’m trying to keep moving ahead.