by RJ Scott
Everything about Luke was fine. From his dark hair and eyes, to his hands with their neat nails, and then farther down to his ass and thighs.
What would he look like out of the suit? Naked and on my bed. Naked and on my bed and wanting me.
Me, Derek Henderson, who scared off prospective boyfriends with social awkwardness, and a history of being crap in relationships and of unrequited lust for someone who hadn’t really wanted me.
At least with Luke I was buying his affection, so he couldn’t leave me high and dry after six months like Arnold, or a year, like Jamie, or two dates, like Oscar.
Nope, Luke wouldn’t be going anywhere, and it made me feel as if I had some sort of control. It didn’t matter what shit I came out with, or what weird things I expected, like affection, or laughter, or good sex, Luke wasn’t going to leave me while I still had half of his money.
I couldn’t get Luke out of my mind. Not the details of how I’d hired him, or the fact he had gorgeous come-to-bed eyes, nor that he was my fantasy come to life. But most of all, what I was thinking about was how everything could so easily go wrong. Luke didn’t seem as if he actually wanted to play the part I needed him to and that scared me.
Tonight would be dinner with my parents, attending with my boyfriend, who wasn’t my boyfriend, and I was trying to work. I was petrified with a side order of denial. Then there was the whole concept of sex.
Of course none of that was included in the agreement, but maybe I could push the PDA into at least one or two kisses. Because Luke had firm pink lips that parted just a little when he was thinking, and I wanted to kiss those lips so bad.
And have him naked on my bed.
I snorted a laugh that sounded way too loud in my room, and then sat back at my desk and tilted the chair. I could do what I wanted in this office, it was my space. I could listen to whatever music I wanted, I could doodle, spend hours on the internet, call my friends, play some games on my phone, do some more doodling, and get paid for it. This was my company now.
I just wished I had something to focus on today, and maybe have some work friends to hang out at the cooler with. Last time I’d tried to get myself some water my PA, Jemima, got angry, and the staff who had been huddled around dissecting a Rangers game, vanished back to their own desks.
I doodled on the pad on my desk, the outline of a snowman forming in a few strokes. What if we had a snowman with legs, and he walked around? Wait—that had been done in The Snowman. I picked up the eraser and scrubbed at the legs.
There was a knock on my door. I had to stop feeling sorry for myself.
“Come in.”
I would’ve liked it better if my door had been open, but every time I tried, Jemima, the dragon in PA form and formerly my dad’s secretary, would shut it.
“We do not employ an open-door philosophy at Henderson McCormack,” she would say, frostily, in that tone which implied I wouldn’t understand.
That might have been the way things were done by my dad or my grandfather, but I often wondered how business got done through closed doors.
Moira walked in, her arms full of boards, followed by Jim, John and Julian, three of the old timers who were close to retiring, just like my dad. I called them the three Js and they each ran a section in other parts of the building. They had a lot of meetings.
Like all the freaking time.
Moira was closer to my age, one of the few new kids who talked to me even if I was management. But then, she ran the cutting-edge social media team, which Dad had created in the dot com bubble age. She’d worked her way up in that team since she’d joined the company five years ago, and I thought she was fantastic. Not so much the three Js who tended to categorize her in not so PC ways, like ‘woman’, or ‘newbie’.
“Sir,” Jim acknowledged.
“Derek,” I corrected.
Honestly, I am going to put a sign up in the break room with a picture of me and the word Derek in capitals underneath.
Moira set up the boards while the three men watched. I had noticed that before. Moira had scratched her way up the ladder to run her own small team, but was still treated as if she was there to do the work for the older guys.
So I helped her, held up the easel, and steadied it so she could place the artwork neatly. She tutted as she put out the last board, and I could tell by her posture she wasn’t impressed with something.
AbbaLister Confectionary was a huge account, one of Henderson McCormack’s oldest clients, and they liked steady, strong advertising, nothing quirky, no surprises. That was the problem with nearly all of Henderson McCormack’s accounts. Stuffy, as the company my grandfather had built, and my dad had continued. As I was supposed to be.
I took my time checking the boards, followed like a momma with her ducklings by the three Js.
I peered at the story board for the AbbaLister raisins account one more time, hoping that maybe this time when I looked its contents would change. Maybe instead of this badly executed concept I’d been presented with, there would actually be an idea there that would merit my time and more importantly, the funding of the Henderson McCormack Advertising Agency. As CEO I was the one in charge, and I had the instinct to make a judgment, but today I felt far from in charge.
All I could see was a blur of pink and none of it made sense. Was that because all I could think about was dinner? Or Luke? Or the lies I had perpetuated?
No wonder nothing I was listening to made sense at all. I’d heard the draft of the pitch we’d be giving the client and the graphics were on an easel in front of me looking like God knows what.
“It’s pink,” I offered, “a Pepto-Bismol pink snowman.” That summed up my feelings on the matter, but as soon as I offered the rather insipid summary of what I was being shown I could feel the stress level rise in the room. I wasn’t disliking the artwork for the sake of it. I wasn’t trying to stamp my newly achieved superiority on this ad campaign. Even if Dad had said I should.
When I’d spoken to Dad about missing the camaraderie from when I’d interned there, and about feeling as if I was one of the guys, he was quick to say, show your authority, son, let them be under no illusions that you run the place now, and everything will be fine. Okay, so he wouldn’t quite meet my eyes as he said it, but still, that was what he thought and what I’d subscribed to when I’d agreed to move up and take his place.
It was difficult. The people around me, ad execs and managers in their own right, all outranked me in age and experience, but it was my family’s name on the door of the agency.
I was a third generation ad-man, despite the fact that what I really wanted was to be a cowboy, or a spaceman, or president. Anything but someone stuck in an office staring at pink snowmen.
“Advertising is in your blood,” my dad told me on a regular basis. But he always added the proviso, “but you were given the chance to own, to manage, you don’t need to get your hands dirty if you don’t want to.”
I knew all of that, God, I knew that because it had been rammed down my throat since I could understand the words big responsibility and no hope for escape.
Wasn’t that the reason that I had a Harvard degree in business and advertising? And that I had cultivated connections across the globe? Hell, wasn’t that the reason I was now the main man steering the Henderson McCormack ship toward new horizons? It was in my blood.
Meant to be.
“Our key demographic is children,” Moira said, when no one else was ready to say anything. She was the vocal woman in this small team. The Js had literally and metaphorically taken a step back away from the board and more importantly me, as soon as I showed any kind of disapproval or confusion, leaving Moira as the one to argue the case. Cowards.
Moira on the other hand was standing right next to me, so close I could smell her perfume and see the hints of laughter lines around her eyes. I liked Moira; she talked straight, no deferential stupidity where these experienced people thought my name meant I knew better.
“Childre
n.” I murmured, and tilted my head. Maybe if I looked at it from another angle then the whole concept, the fat, round, very pink, snowman, sitting on a field of white would work. The tagline was ‘Snow Time to Waste’. But, would the average ten-year old find that funny? I didn’t find it funny at twenty-nine, but at ten, would I have looked at this and thought, yay, I must try the AbbaLister white chocolate coated raisins because the snowman told me to?
I had no freaking idea. I didn’t like chocolate, particularly white chocolate. Come to think of it, raisins weren’t on my favorites list either.
Fraud. Shouldn’t be here making decisions, you don’t know advertising yet.
“Couldn’t the snowman be cuter?” I asked. “I mean, the poor bastard is stuck in a field in a blizzard, any self-respecting ten-year old would look at this and see cold. Couldn’t he be next to a fire or something?”
“That’s what I thought,” Jim said. He was one of the quiet ones in the office, the type who would listen and then jump in at opportune moments once he’d decided who was on the winning side. Obviously he expected that to be me.
“Clearly you haven’t thought through the repercussions of a melting snowman,” Julian said. Jim and Julian were interchangeable sycophants who were very much old-school. They didn’t seem to care that there were two gatekeeper PAs and a long, winding dark-paneled corridor to my office, nor that they called me Sir. Nope, they were all about the old ways.
Just as they had done with Dad.
Moira muttered a curse. I felt kinship with her. Jim and Julian didn’t fit the kind of company I wanted Henderson McCormack to be. Still, they’d been here for thirty years, so I had to give them some credit for knowing the business.
“Back to the blizzard concept,” Moira interjected. “The snow is covering him, as the white chocolate covers the raisins.”
“I get that,” I said. “I respect the concept. I just don’t have a good feel for it; makes me feel cold.”
As if to underscore that I shivered, but that could have been because the offices were freaking freezing. As soon as I could get my head around things there were moves I would make. Add staff bonuses, heating that was actually turned up during cold weather, maybe even a new office space that didn’t have long, winding corridors, and please, some kind of decent coffee machine.
Jim and Moira were talking between themselves and Moira placed another concept over the pink one. Clearly, this was the concept that Jim’s team had come up with.
Please God, let this be a good one.
It wasn’t. It was the same snowman but this time it was yellow and boy, did Moira go straight for the jugular on that one.
“For fuck’s sake,” she cursed and stabbed at the photo, causing the easel to wobble. “You can’t make the snowman yellow.”
“I wasn’t sure Mr. Henderson would like pink,” John defended, “So I drew up a couple of alternatives.”
“Why can’t it just be white?” I asked, because wasn’t that what snowmen were? White? With carrots, and coal and a scarf?
“You tell him boss,” Moira snapped. “A yellow snowman is complete crap, it just looks as if someone pissed in the snow.” All three Js winced at her candor. I wish I could’ve disagreed, just to keep the peace, but she was right. Check the image from a certain angle and the yellow snowman did look as if someone had pissed in the snow.
“Let’s leave this for now. Work on the pitch and come back with some new graphics.”
I had other things I needed to worry about. Not least Mom, Dad, and Mr. Fake at dinner.
Everything will be fine, I told myself, what can possibly go wrong?
Luke
This is just acting. Like the firefighter’s charity bachelor auction of twenty-twelve. I acted then, I can do it now.
It didn’t matter how many times I repeated that, I didn’t believe myself.
“When is my birthday?” Derek asked. He was driving, and the car was certainly out of my price range; it smelled of new, a mix of leather and dollars, and the Daimler badge was a giveaway; this guy had some money if he had enough to waste on such a car.
At least I knew the answers to this knowing-Derek pop quiz.
“April, and you’re twenty-nine, it’s the big thirty next year and we’ll probably do something romantic like Paris.” I embellished my part, feeling proud of the added boyfriend detail. The silence in the car was deafening, and I glanced at Derek whose jawline was tight. Was he grinding his teeth?
“You will not mention Paris, or plans for my thirtieth, in fact it would be better if you say you don’t have anything planned, then my parents won’t be surprised when we finish.”
“Okay, so no romance.”
“Or promises of romance.”
“So what am I then? You say I’m your boyfriend, but what does that mean to you? Am I just a warm body in your bed?”
“Goodness, no,” Derek exclaimed. “There is no sex, nor hint of sex; we’re a couple that does not have sex.”
I couldn’t help it, I laughed, and he looked at me briefly.
“What?” he asked.
“Have you seen yourself? Any self-respecting boyfriend would be all over you.”
I wished I could have taken back the words as soon as I’d spoken them, because he stiffened again, and the stress lines were back in his face.
“I don’t pay you to compliment me,” he said. But he wasn’t angry; he sounded sad and I wasn’t sure what to say. This man was a mess of contradictions, but I guessed it wasn’t my job to really understand him. Still, I had to say something; otherwise I wouldn’t even start to get my head around him.
“I wasn’t doing it because you’re paying me.”
“Well whatever, you’re making me feel uncomfortable, so stop.”
“Okay then.”
I subsided into silence, and then leaned over to the stereo and pressed some buttons; I flipped through country, to rock, to pop, and settled on classical. As soon as I moved back in my seat he turned off the stereo.
I’m guessing he wasn’t paying me to listen to music either. Somehow, with no talking, and no music, I could hear my own breathing, and caught the hitch every so often. No one else knew it was there, but I did, and the professionals who had pieced me back together knew all about it. Fuckers.
“What are the kitten’s names?” Derek sprung on me.
I wanted to sigh in the confines of this silent car, but I didn’t. “Buttons, Socks, Miffy, Petal and Spider.”
“Good.”
I could have left it there, but I didn’t. “Hey, you wanna know why I called one of them Spider?”
He shot me a look of surprise. “What? Why?”
“Because when I was a kid we had a kitten that looked exactly like this one I rescued, and one Halloween we dressed it in this spider costume and sent it running in the kitchen, and it scared my mom half to death. I just connected the two.”
“That is a horrible story,” Derek said. “I already told Mom that there were spiders in the house where you found the kittens.”
“Spiders in a burned-out house?”
He scowled at me, so I decided not to point out that spiders would be the first ones to scuttle for their lives.
Anyway, my spider story was actually true, we did have this Halloween costume for a pet and Sara and I did scare Mom, who then took away our candy. I was seven. I really wanted that candy.
“Can you think of anything better?” I asked him, because sue me if me calling on one of my real memories isn’t enough.
“No,” he replied, “Just don’t go into detail with Mom, who will be sure to ask you. She loves cats so much she’s on the board of the local cat rescue center.”
Shit. Which one? I volunteered at a cat rescue center, and also at a kids’ youth club on a Friday evening. I didn’t spend a lot of time at Whiskers Cat Rescue, but I’d been there quite a bit since leaving the service. Had I met someone there who could’ve been Derek’s mom? And how did that play out post-breakup? The odds th
at it was the same rescue center were slim; mine was in the city, on the edges of a run-down kind of neighborhood, right next to where I used to work. Anyone related to Derek would volunteer at a sanctuary in a rich area, where the cats ate from diamond-encrusted bowls.
Should I tell Derek? He wasn’t looking so good, gripping the steering wheel and staring steely-eyed at the road.
He’d cancel the contract, take the money back, and he’d deliberately chosen an agency in the middle of the city, right? So there was no chance of anyone knowing me. It wasn’t as if my story had made the papers; other than the words hero firefighter, which I would be wearing like a chain around my neck for the rest of my life.
I decided not to say anything. If I’d actually met his mom, which was highly unlikely, I’d come up with a story on the spot, say that even though my real name was Luke my middle name was Marcus, or something like that.
I can do this.
This restaurant had valet service, and I swore I’d never leave one of my cars with those guys; my Ford might’ve been old, but it was mine and no one else drove it. Derek, on the other hand, didn’t have the same issues, tossing the keys and not even patting the car goodbye. It was as if he didn’t value his car at all.
“You have no soul,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Don’t you worry what they’ll do with your car?” I’d heard stories of cars being taken for joyrides, ridden hard and put away wet, what if that happened to his beautiful Daimler?
“Do with it? I’m hoping they park it,” he said with a shrug, as if it didn’t matter. He genuinely didn’t care. “Ready?” he asked, and straightened my jacket and tie, scuffing at the material to remove any non-existent marks. I let him do it, because that way I got to have a closer look at his blue eyes, and also inhale the soft scent of him that made my chest tighten. He gave me a half smile, rueful even, and then shoulders back, he walked into the restaurant. I held the door open for him and he sent me a warning look.