Crazy Love

by Michelle Pace

  I cleared my throat as I gripped the podium with sweaty palms. “Hi. My name’s Trip, and I’m an alcoholic.”

  In my silver-gray Hugo Boss suit, I felt like Wall Street’s answer to a Cherokee warrior painted for battle. I sat back in the leather chair enviously watching as families enjoyed the emerald garden of Forsythe Park. Meanwhile, I was forced to endure the cloying air conditioning of Armstrong House, home of the law firm which employed the attorneys who served as trustees for both of my trust funds. My twenty-fifth birthday loomed a mere month away, the mythical date when I was suddenly considered mature and capable of managing my own affairs. My lawyers and I had scheduled a series of meetings over the next couple of weeks to hammer out the details of my inheritance. I needed to dig deep and channel my inner counselor. I may not buy into all the “polite society” schlock, but I was not about to be swindled, nor would I squander my portfolio simply because I wasn’t in the mood to be indoors.

  Hours later, I left Armstrong House confident in my team, but not in myself. They’d done a consummate job of managing my affairs, but they’d raised some tough questions about my future plans for the company and the family estate. All of it had to be sorted out. And soon. I needed a sounding board, needed to hash it all out, and the only person who could truly help in any real way was Trip.

  Since he lived so close by, I left the Mercedes where it was and strolled across Forsythe Park. I desperately needed to stretch my legs after all of those hours behind a desk. As I drew close to his front door, I heard music drifting out the open windows of his studio, so I bypassed the front door all together.

  “Come in!” I heard a female voice call, and felt all of the air escape my lungs. I was both excited and anxious when I realized Annabelle was on the other side of the door. I caught myself straightening my tie and rolled my eyes at my own behavior before entering his workroom. I was greeted by the sight of my shirtless, paint covered brother and his breathtaking subject.

  She lived up to the role of muse in every possible way, from her upswept honey hair to her red painted toes that peeked out from underneath her silky floor-length gown. I felt blood rushing away from my brain, and I tried to ignore the unwelcome pressure in my pants when she turned her azure eyes in my direction. As she scrutinized me, I nearly came unglued. “The south” was indeed rising again. I’d taken off my suit coat halfway across Forsythe Park, and was grateful that I had it to drape in front of my traitorous member.

  Trip grinned as he gave my attire an amused once-over and whistled a taunt at my expense. “Every girl’s crazy ‘bout a sharp dressed man.”

  “Ha ha,” I replied sardonically as I sauntered over to appraise his progress. He’d chosen to position Annabelle squarely in the foreground, and though her image was nowhere near finished, I saw by the outline of her he’d constructed, that in the finished product, she would be nearly three-feet tall.

  “What’s up?” Trip asked, returning his brush to the canvas. Annie stretched her neck and then resumed an uncomfortable-looking pose. She stared fixedly at a nearby mirror marked with tape, presumably to help her maintain her position and recreate it from day to day. She dropped the pose long enough to place an ear bud in one ear, and fiddle with her I-Pod. It was a relief to know she was preoccupied. It was bad enough to need help from Trip, let alone have my lack of self-sufficiency witnessed.

  I proceeded to launch into the broad stokes of my meeting. Trip nodded thoughtfully and then asked some surprisingly appropriate questions. I rattled off the answers regarding projected profits to the best of my recollection. As he continued to create a startlingly accurate visage of Annabelle, we exchanged some general thoughts on different companies in which I would soon be a major shareholder. Trip paused in his task and handed Annabelle a bottle of water out of a cooler, then asked about the current values of certain shares. I mentioned I was thinking of selling my shares in a particularly unimpressive company in order to pay cash for my own place.

  Trip stopped painting and turned to me, surprised.

  “Finally leaving Cosmo in ‘the big house’ all by her lonesome? Have you picked a house yet?”

  “No, but I found something near the waterfront that I’m considering. I have a couple of appointments with Marybeth next week.”

  “Marybeth Dutton? She’s your realtor? Don’t forget to bring condoms.” Trip snickered and offered his hand which I mindlessly high fived. As I lowered my hand to its rightful position at my side, I had a moment to register surprise at how automatically I had fallen back into the rhythm of our pre-drinking-binge rapport. It was like I’d wanted so badly to go back to the way things used to be that my superego had lost the ability to catch up.

  “Yeah…she seems a bit…deprived,” I snorted, and I noticed Annie glance our way. She saw me watching her and quickly stuck in her second ear bud, adjusting the settings on her I-Pod.

  “Depraved, maybe…but I doubt that woman is deprived. She practically raped me when I toured this place,” Trip murmured in a hushed tone, as if to spare Annabelle the gory details of his past conquests. “Fortunately you can’t rape the willing, and well…you know me. But back to business. You really think selling that stock will pay for something on the river?”

  “Oh yeah. Current market value on that amount of shares should get me roughly 1.3 million.” I shrugged, and Annie spit out her water, narrowly missing both her dress and the canvas. She openly gaped at us both. From the look on her face, I surmised that, though she had her ear buds in her ears, she must have turned the I-Pod off.

  “You alright, Angel?”

  “So let me get this straight: this shitty stock that you need to unload is worth 1.3 million dollars?”

  Trip and I exchanged confused and somewhat petrified glances, and I nodded with no small amount of hesitation. She rolled her eyes, clearly exasperated and plopped rather ungracefully into a nearby chair, pulling her legs underneath her, Indian-style. That position seemed so unnatural in her formal gown and yet somehow her unpretentiousness endeared her to me. Her mouth, on the other hand…well, I guess looking at her mouth kind of endeared her to me as well. Too bad I couldn’t control it with a mute button.

  “And I thought I had first-world problems!” Her acrid remark was the last thing I needed after the eternal and pretentious day I’d had.

  “These are real issues I need to deal with, if you don’t mind. And Trip and I have some serious family business to discuss.”

  She squinted at me, then shrugged. “All that money is wasted on you.”

  “Is that so?” I folded my arms and glanced at Trip. “I can’t wait to hear this.”

  Annie scoffed. “If I had a quarter of the money and time to burn that the two of you do, I could change the world.”

  “Could you now? Just how would you do that?” I asked, unable to fight the urge to engage her, since her disdain was clearly aimed at me. As if preparing for a test of endurance, she took another long pull from her water bottle which allowed me a glorious view of her long golden brown throat. I traced her flesh downward with my eyes, briefly resting on the spot just above the plunging neckline. She blinked thoughtfully at me and then blew out a loud breath that disturbed the bangs draping her forehead.

  “Didn’t you ever have a dream? Back when you were a kid, maybe? Something that inspired you? Can’t you think of any way to spread some of that money around and be a part of the community instead of looking down at it from a penthouse view?”

  Again, her words cut me to the quick. Annabelle had an uncanny knack for seeing beneath my carefully crafted façade. However, my response to her today was different. Rather than feeling violated by this knack of hers, I felt…invigorated. Trip and I glanced at one another, and I saw that his face mirrored my epiphanic expression.

  “I have to go.” She sounded apologetic as she turned to Trip. “I have a shift at Black Keys tonight. Some of us wage slaves have to keep society going for y’all. Thanks for the idea about recording my lectures. It’s a way bett
er use of my time than listening to your freaky-ass music.”

  Trip chuckled good-naturedly at her scathing comment. She grinned fondly at him and turned, presenting her zipper to him. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to be my brother quite so ferociously in my life. He unzipped her, and I was blessed with the vision of a black tribal style rose on her gorgeous right shoulder blade. Feeling like a voyeur, I struggled to avert my eyes as she whipped around perched onto her tiptoes planting a loud kiss on his cheek.

  “See ya on Sunday?” Trip asked her. To my delight, Annie fumbled to hold her gown across her chest. Wow, her body was preternaturally perfect.

  “You know I have to be at the Marketplace. My crap isn’t going to sell itself. It’ll have to be Monday.”

  Trip groaned.

  “Paint something else,” she replied, bumping him with her hip playfully and heading toward the restroom. “Paint that realtor of yours.”

  A sly smile spread across Trip’s face, and he glanced at me. I couldn’t help but grin in return and shake my head.

  “You filthy little eavesdropper,” Trip called after her with a mix of admiration and amusement.

  “Said the skanky man-whore,” she replied in a sing-song tone over her perfect tattooed shoulder.

  “Mmmm mmm. That girl’s the real deal.” Trip shook his head as we both admired the view. I thought I noticed a note of regret in his voice, but when I turned his way, he’d ditched his painting gear and was wiping his hands off.

  “So…I take it things are going well on that front.” I nodded to the door she’d just exited. I didn’t want details on the Annie situation, but at the same time, I needed to hear his answer.

  Trip wore a cautious smile and paused like he had a secret he very badly wanted to share. “We have an understanding.”

  What the hell does that mean? Is she a booty call, a friend with benefits? A ball-gag wearing submissive? What the hell?

  I had the overwhelming urge to choke him.

  “I just wish she had more time, so we could get this painting finished. That girl is way over-scheduled.”

  “You still have those rubbings of hers?”

  “Yep,” Trip replied, cocking an eyebrow at me.

  As he continued to dab his brush onto the canvas, I laid an idea on him. He seemed pleased at my plan to help Annabelle, thereby helping himself. We worked out the logistics, I made a phone call, and that was that.

  Later, my brother tossed his supplies around carelessly, evidently done painting for the day. “So…I suppose you’re really here about the Mama and the mansion?”

  I nodded and took Annabelle’s recently vacated chair, spinning it around backwards and taking a seat. “Yep. Sharing ownership is…awkward. And pointless as far as I’m concerned. Let me start out by saying that I don’t want it.”

  “Neither do I.” He responded, turning down the music. His previously lively attitude vanished. He looked positively gloomy as he always did when we even skirted the subject of Daddy. I pressed on.

  “We just need to settle it. I say we just sign it over to Cosmo and be done with it. Thoughts?”

  I didn’t expect an argument. I expected the same distant disinterest he usually displayed when it came to the family business. He’d never had any intention of actively participating in Beaumont affairs, even before Daddy’s death. To my astonishment, I watched a dizzying array of emotions battle their way through my brother’s features. This went on longer than I was comfortable with, and I felt my stomach sinking slowly toward my knees. He shook his head slowly as if trying to clear it and actually slapped himself on the temple at one point.

  Well, this is a whole new flavor of crazy. What fresh hell have I stumbled upon now?

  “Trip?” I asked slowly, my voice surprisingly solid considering how much he was creeping me out.

  His eyes shot to mine as if I’d snapped my fingers and broken his trance.

  “Maybe we should just sell it.” He retorted icily. He turned on the faucet and began rinsing out his brushes.

  “That’s certainly an option, I suppose…but I thought if Mama wanted to stay—”

  “I’ll think it over.” He flipped off the sink with an authoritative voice that stopped me from pressing him. I hadn’t heard him sound so commanding since before…Daddy. It was refreshing, but also more than a little confusing. I held my hands up in concession.

  “Fine. But don’t take too long.”

  I turned my face skyward, basking in the glorious sunshine as Jayse and I walked arm in arm down Broughton Street. Nervous energy had me practically crawling out of my skin. Trip had called me with the news that his mother was hosting a charity event and Violet would be there. We finally had an opportunity to put our surreptitious plan into action. I was sure if we pretended to be dating, she’d become outrageously jealous, and I could help him to get her back.

  So for the second time in less than two weeks, I was dress shopping. Trying on clothes really wasn’t my thing, but thankfully I had Jayse on my side. When I asked him for fashion advice, he insisted we make a day long extravaganza of it. Or, in his words, “day of complete and total happiness”. We began with a decadent brunch at The Firefly Café and had booked pedicures and chair massages for the late afternoon. In the meantime, I needed a dress that, in Trip’s words, was “both classy and hot at the same time”.

  Fuck.

  I suspected I’d look a bit like Leo Dicaprio at dinner in Titanic during this event, but making Violet jealous had been my idea, so I had no one to blame but myself. Jayse, in typical Jayse fashion, seemed oblivious to my internal nervous breakdown. He prattled on, discussing simple accessories and insisting I have a clutch purse and shoes that match. He had “a vision of the look” I needed, and since his a capella group had coincidentally been asked to perform at the same fundraiser, he felt it was his duty to make sure I reflected well on him. Thriving in his natural “retail therapy” habitat, he practically floated down the sidewalk, chattering about the amazing set list his group had assembled for the event.

  As I half-listened, I thought about Sam. Trip had also invited me to Sam’s birthday weekend. I had a little time to decide. It wasn’t until the weekend before Christmas. He was having it at Trip’s beach house on Tybee Island. I argued that I wouldn’t know anyone but Sam and that Sam and I were not exactly friendly, Trip encouraged me to bring Jayse along. I reluctantly agreed, though this would just complicate matters. Jayse still believed – like everyone else did – that Trip and I were an item. Jayse was sure to balk at the sleeping arrangements if I stayed with him, and I could not share a room with Trip and guarantee I wouldn’t misbehave. Though I knew it was highly unlikely, I hoped we’d have Trip and Violet reunited by that time, and then the whole charade could be over.

  Jayse had been teasing me all day about having “a sugar daddy with oceanfront property.” I really wanted to spill my guts and tell him that I was still pathetically single, but for all of this to work, he had to believe the ruse. Jayse was physically incapable of keeping a secret, and no one could know Trip and I weren’t together. It was all an essential part of our scheme.

  I knew I should pick up a gift for Sam while we were out and about, since I never get time to shop. I couldn’t help but feel very apprehensive about the idea. What do you get the man who literally has, or at least has the money to have, everything? But how awkward would it be to go to a birthday bash for him and be the only one who didn’t have a gift?

  What the hell do you get a guy who has millions of dollars to toss around on any little thing he likes?

  I thought about the cuff links that Trip bought him and decided to give the gift a little bit more thought before lamely resorting to an impulse buy. Besides, today I was carrying around Trip’s cash and was on a specific mission. We’d had a wicked fight about his giving me money, but he’d insisted on paying for my outfit for the event. It was probably for the best; I may have ended up in a gown borrowed from a drag queen or a vintage dress from the Salv
ation Army.

  “This one.” Jayse yanked a lavender gown off the rack and held it up in front of me critically. It had a halter top and a straight skirt with a side slit. I had to say, color-wise, Jayse knew his stuff.

  “I don’t know, it looks awfully clingy.”

  “The skirt and color are conservative. Balance, my dear girl. Try it on. I’ll look for shoes.”

  After paying for Jayse’s selection, we decided to take a much-needed food break. In the spirit of our “perfect day” theme, we went to B&D’s for lunch. We sat in the same side of the booth, as we always did, so that we could watch people come in the door and dissect them in our typical snarky manner. Blissful bitchiness over double cheese burgers. I had just ripped on a yuppie couple and had Jayse laughing appreciatively when the door chimed again and Sam Beaumont walked through it.

  Sam looked incredible, as always. His bright eyes seemed to match his aubergine sweater, which stretched across his sinewy shoulders and arms as if tailored specifically for him. Based on Trip’s comment about his “tailor,” maybe it was. I felt the smile vanish from my face. Those bedroom eyes of his scanned the room and met mine. He slowed his stride for a moment and shifted his gaze to Jayse, whose approval for Sam’s appearance was expressed in a wordless vocalization that sounded as if he’d just bit into a salted caramel.

  “Mmmm…” He murmured narrowing his eyes at Sam and turning to me with a sexy grin. The grin faltered when he saw my face, which suddenly felt all tingly and splotchy. “You know him?”

  “Sam. Beaumont,” I managed, with the talent of a ventriloquist. Jayse whipped his head back in Sam’s direction, his blonde curls bouncing chaotically. Sam wore his frosty politician’s face now as he proceeded past us to the bar where he was greeted by an attractive black man whose grin lit up the restaurant. Sam took the seat next to him, and the man slapped him on the back in a familiar manner.

  “Oooo. Yummy! Tell me you know him, too!” Jayse drooled.