“He wasn’t, we were both in New York on business. I’m sure he’d let you know if he were in town. He seems quite fond of you.”
There’s no smirk or irony in his voice. He genuinely thinks I need to be told by him that my overprotective older brother is quite fond of me. What a weirdo. Or is it sweet? I can’t tell with him. I’m going with weird.
“So did Nathan tell you I work here?”
I know he heard me, but answering other people’s questions when they ask them has never been a high priority for him. “Question: Do you have a valid passport?”
Question: have your lips always been so full? I blink, trying to stop staring at his well-formed mouth. All my life, that mouth has merely been a hole that annoying words came out of. Now I have to will myself not to imagine what it would feel like to be kissed all over with it. I need to get laid. I need to go to the gym and work out hard. This is a ridiculous reaction to be having to the biggest nerd I’ve ever known. My whole body shivers. I snap out of it. He’s still grinning at me. His nostrils are flaring. “Yes. Of course. I always have a valid passport handy in case I get asked to dance with the Bolshoi Ballet.”
“Has that happened?”
“Not yet,” I say, fingers crossed. He still takes words at face value. It’s comforting. “Why on earth would you ask?”
“You’ll see. I’ll have a Caesar Salad with as little garlic powder as possible, an iced tea with no sugar or fruit flavors, and a hot black coffee.”
“Okay. That’s it?” You’re not going to ask me how I am, you freak?
“For now. When do you get off? Three o’clock?”
“Or so.”
“I’ll wait for you. If you don’t have plans right afterwards, there’s something I’d like to discuss with you.”
“Is everything alright?”
He has already disappeared into his phone and back up his own asshole. “What? Yes. Everything’s fine. I just wanted to talk to you about things.”
“Things. Well, I look forward to that then. Be right back with your order.”
He nods and stares at his phone, pulls an iPad out of his leather messenger bag.
I retreat to the kitchen in a daze. Franklin follows me.
“I hate you,” says Franklin. “Even the back of his head is sexy, look at that. What did he say? Tell me everything. He wasn’t mean, was he? His smile is gorgeous. Fuck me silly and call me Daddy, who is he?”
How can I explain what it’s like to see John Brandt and then to experience having an actual conversation with him?
It’s like getting into a beautiful brand new top of the line shiny black BMW and then as soon as you’re strapped in you realize that it will only play Rock Me Amadeus over and over again and you can’t turn it off or turn down the volume.
It’s like going up to the cutest Labrador puppy in the park and suddenly it barks, humps and pees all over your leg.
It’s like diving into the most beautiful crystal clear Caribbean-blue pool and being assaulted with ice-cold water and the sting of chlorine.
It’s like being served a gourmet meal on the house at a Michelin 3-star restaurant and then finding out you’re allergic to every single ingredient.
He is quite possibly a high-functioning sociopath trapped in the body of a male model. Or he may be an extremely low-functioning ladies’ man trapped in the brain of a nerd. Either way, he has driven me crazy for as long as I can remember, and it seems I can’t get enough.
Remember that list of attributes I possess that are necessary to surviving the life of a ballet dancer? I firmly believe that they’re also the reason I’ve managed to put up with Johnny Brandt without punching him in the face or setting my own hair on fire. So far.
2
Olivia
I live in a vibrant, relatively quiet residential neighborhood of San Francisco called NoPa/Western Addition/North of the Panhandle, depending on who you’re talking to. The two bedroom that I rent with my roommate is ten blocks from my restaurant. I don’t own a car, because I can either walk around my neighborhood, take Muni to the theatre, or a Lyft. Also, I never got a driver’s license.
Johnny gave me a twenty-dollar tip, waited for me until the end of my shift, and asked if he could walk me back to my place. He is clearly more comfortable in his body now than as a teenager, but I get the sense that he doesn’t walk around neighborhoods much. He had mentioned having a driver who’ll pick him up whenever he texts him.
“You live in Palo Alto, right?”
“I do, yes. Since I left MIT. I bought a house there. You’ll see it, it’s very nice.”
“That’s wonderful. Do you come into the city much?”
“This city?”
“San Francisco, yes, the city we’re currently in.”
“I have meetings and events here occasionally, sure, but mostly just driving through. I travel a lot.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“I wouldn’t call it fun, as it’s never been my life’s ambition to have fun, but it’s certainly not unpleasant. Do I smell urine?”
“I don’t know, it’s probably dog pee. This is not the kind of neighborhood that vagrants piss all over. I think.”
“And you’re happy here?”
“Very. I mean, yes, most of the time.”
“Do you miss Cleveland?”
“I mean. I miss my parents. I miss my house. I don’t know if I’d say that I miss Cleveland, exactly. Do you?”
He stares ahead. “I suppose I’d call it nostalgia for that period when we were growing up, rather than missing Cleveland.”
I nod. “I know what you mean.”
“Do you?” He looks at me, with an arched eyebrow. His eyebrows are spectacular, and impressive, his eyes so beautiful.
“Yes, of course.”
There’s a moment, when we’re walking down the sidewalk, when neither of us speaks, and I have a chance to feel two more things I haven’t felt with Johnny before—an appreciation of how tall he is, and nostalgia. Other than my parents and Nathan, who have come for one brief visit, I’ve never walked the streets of San Francisco with someone from back home before. I feel so comfortable for a second that I almost reach out to put my arm around him. But I don’t.
I keep noticing people staring at him, and assume it’s because he’s Hot Guy, but then a grown man in a hoodie jacket, black jeans and high tops, approaches him. “John Brandt, wow, sorry, I just wanted to say ‘hey.’”
“Hey, how are you.”
John stops to talk to the guy, so I wait a few feet away.
“Good, I’m Tim, I just wanted to shake your hand dude, and say ‘thanks.’”
They shake hands. “Oh cool, great.”
“Yeah, thanks to you and Brainy Biz I’m got an awesome job and I just moved out of my Mom’s basement, so…Hey, I’ve got an idea for a startup, can I pitch it to you?”
John pulls a business card out of his front pocket, he had it ready, and hands it to Tim. “I’d love to hear about it but I have to get my friend home, so you can email me, look forward to it.”
“Okay cool, thanks.” Tim doesn’t even look at me, he’s too excited to be holding John Brandt’s business card.
Johnny touches my elbow as he catches up with me. “Sorry about that.”
“Must be tough being a celebrity.”
“You tell me.”
“Hah. I mean, little girls ask me for my autograph after the shows, but they just hold up their notebooks to anyone who comes out from backstage.”
“That’ll change soon, I’m sure.”
I look over at him to check his facial expression, because he sounds completely genuine.
“Brainy Biz, huh?”
“Unfortunately, ‘Nerdballs, Inc’ was already taken.”
“Really?!”
“No.”
“Wow. Did you just make a joke? Who are you?”
He smiles. What a smile. He so rarely smiled growing up, it makes me sad for little Johnny Brandt. Alth
ough, it probably didn’t help that a small sassy ballerina was always belittling him.
“So tell me about Brainy Biz. My brother was talking about it once, but I wasn’t really paying attention. Sorry.”
“It’s LinkedIn meets Match dot com for people in the computer and applied science fields. Matches tech nerds and geeks with employing companies and investors, and vice versa, and also offers services to help techies optimize their job seeking and marketing skills.”
“Sounds like a highly necessary service.”
“Actually, I’m very grateful to you.”
“Grateful? To me? Why?”
“In a way, you inspired me to come up with the idea for Brainy Biz. Because you were always telling me how bad I am at connecting with people and so are all brainy nerds. I decided to help guys like me out.”
“Oh. Wow. So in a way you owe me, what, half of your massive fortune?”
He grins and says nothing.
“So you’re…a tech guy? What do you do, exactly?”
“I’m primarily an investor and entrepreneur, now that I have the financial resources. That was always the goal.”
“So why did you go to MIT and not Harvard Business?”
“It’s my understanding of the tech world that gives me an edge. I’m an idea guy too. A facilitator. I’m not just a guy who looks at the numbers, that’s why certain—tech guys, or girls—trust me more than other VCs. I speak both languages.”
You just don’t speak mine. “VCs? Virgin Computernerds?” He smiles. I don’t even get a laugh for that, just a smile.
“Computer Nerds is two words. And no. Venture capital. Private equity. The people or firms who fund startups. And you may be pleased to know, Olivia, that I haven’t been a virgin for quite some time.”
“Why, Johnny, I am terribly pleased to know this.”
Also I may be blushing.
Am I blushing?
Holy shit, I’m blushing.
“Um. I didn’t know you could be an investor and an entrepreneur and a startup founder at the same time.”
“Well. I can be whatever I want to be, depending on how I choose to allot my time and resources.”
“Well. Good for you.”
We’ve reached the non-descript front of the small condo that my apartment unit is in, on Fulton Street. The front door has a black metal security door in front of it. It’s not a pretty façade, but I really lucked out when my roommate Callie asked me if I wanted to live with her. She works at the restaurant part-time when she needs to supplement her graphic design business.
“This is me,” I say, as I unlock the security door.
Johnny looks around, as if I’ve brought him to some dark alley in Chinatown. It’s actually a great street. There are two trees on the sidewalk in front of our building! It’s not Pacific Heights, but it’s an up and coming neighborhood.
“It’s really nice inside,” I say, defensively. “And we have access to the backyard, it’s really sweet.”
“Good,” he says, as he keeps an eye out for muggers.
I roll my eyes. “You don’t have to come up if you don’t want to.”
“I do. I promised Monty I’d check up on you.”
He calls my brother Monty. “Really? He asked you to check up on me?”
“He was concerned about a recent incident. With a photographer.”
I drop my keys. “He told you about that?”
Johnny picks up my keys and hands them to me. “He didn’t go into any detail, he just said that your Mom mentioned you had an uncomfortable experience with a photographer.”
“I can’t believe she told Nathan.” I unlock the inner door and lead him up the narrow stairwell to the main living area. “It wasn’t that bad, he just tried to touch me and I left, end of story. I guess I was just lucky that it never happened before.”
“It’s not okay that it happened to you at all, Olivia,” he says. “I’m sorry that it did.”
I kind of love that he’s being protective of me. My brother always has been, but I guess Johnny never felt he could show it when Nathan was around. Hmm. Whaddyaknow.
We reach the living room area. “Sorry it’s a little messy.” I open the curtains to let more light in. I pick up various items of clothing and footwear, dishes that are on the hardwood floor.
We have quite nice furniture, it’s just covered with Callie’s design magazines and notebooks and our discarded apparel.
“Callie and I—that’s my roommate—we’re both pretty busy, so you know, not a lot of time to tidy up unfortunately. Can I get you something to drink?”
“No thank you,” he says, scanning the room. “Two bedroom?”
“Yes. We share a bathroom, but it’s big. Laundry downstairs. Backyard access. Patio. It’s a great location.”
He nods. “How can you live like this?”
“Excuse me? This is an amazing apartment. It’s $3695 a month, that’s less than most two bedrooms in the area and there are only two units in the building. This is an amazing apartment, you just don’t know because you’ve never lived on your own in a big city. Have you?”
He shakes his head. “It is a sweet unit, I don’t mean to insult your home. It’s just that you’re a beautiful intelligent talented woman—why have you deliberately chosen to live as mediocre a life as possible?”
“What? My life is not mediocre.”
“You’re resisting greatness.”
“You’re about to be ejected from my not at all mediocre apartment.”
“I want you to have the life that you deserve why does that bother you?”
“Because I have ears and I can hear what you’re saying to me. You do realize you said all that out loud right?”
“Olivia, I’d like to have my housekeeper come to clean this place up—at no cost to you, of course.”
“No!”
“Why not?”
“We can’t wait around for a housekeeper to come by.”
“I’ll give her a copy of my key.”
“You don’t have a key to my apartment.”
“Well, obviously I’ll need one. Here, this is the key to my house in Palo Alto.” He removes a fancy key from a classy key ring and holds it out to me. I don’t take it.
“Why are you giving me your house key?”
“So I don’t have to wait around for you whenever you want to come over. Your personalized six digit guest code for the house security system is your birth date, it has already been programmed in.”
“You remember my birth date?”
His eyes widen and he grins. “Well, we’ll see if I got it right if and when you enter your code into my security system keypad, won’t we?”
“I’ve lived here for over a year. Why am I seeing you now?”
“I told you. Your brother asked me to check in on you.”
“It never occurred to you to check in on me before?”
“I apologize. It’s not that I haven’t thought about you, believe me. I’m very busy. When you see my schedule you’ll understand. Let me now explain to you why I’m here.” He takes my hand and presses the house key into my palm, closes my fingers around it. I look up into his eyes and remember hearing him calling me “beautiful intelligent and talented” a minute ago, but I was so defensive it didn’t sink in until now. He’s never complimented me before. That was as close to a compliment as Johnny B. Nerdballs is capable of giving.
I clear off the magazines from the armchair and gesture for him to sit in it, while I take a seat on the sofa. “So? Explain to me why you’re here.”
He lifts the shoulder strap of the leather messenger bag over his head, and I can see that his armpits are sweating. It is warm, but I hope he’s nervous too, because he should be. Whatever his intentions for this unannounced visit, I think it’s safe to say that he’s blowing it. He places the bag on the ground by his feet, and places the shoulder strap in such a way that he won’t trip on it, in case I throw something at him or lunge at him and he has to mak
e a run for it.
I lean back, rest my elbows on the back of the sofa, and place my ankle on my knee, spreading out. Body language. I’m taking up as much space as possible, to show him I’m in charge.
He puts his elbows on his knees, which are spread apart, clasps his hands together and leans forward. I try not to notice the dark swirls of exposed sexy chest hair. Jesus, you grew up good, JB.
He begins: “As I said, I maintain a busy schedule and travel much of the time, but I have some significant events coming up in the coming weeks—an important business trip to Shanghai, then a gala event in New York, a fundraiser for my new charity in Cleveland…I usually travel alone because it’s easier, but my market research consultant has informed me, time and again, that the most successful men in my industry are married…”
“Really? My market research consultant has informed me that most unmarried men are unmarried because nobody wants to marry them.”
“Is that true?”
“No. But it was witty.”
“It would have been witty if there were any truth to it. Anyway. Due to the nature of my new initiative, which aims to encourage more women to get involved in the tech industry…”
I involuntarily guffaw. “Sorry.”
“My PR consultant has recommended that I attend these upcoming events with a girlfriend, to convey myself and my industry as more ‘woman-friendly,’ as she put it. I'll be very busy, as always, so I'll need someone who requires a minimal amount of attention, someone I don't have to make an effort to get to know or impress.”
I see where we’re headed with this. “Whoah, easy, a girl can only take so much sweet talk, mister.”
He leans down to wipe an imperceptible scuff mark from his thousand dollar shoes. “About two weeks after returning from Cleveland I’m going to a wedding in Santa Barbara and I’ll definitely need a date for that so don’t have to deal with…what I usually deal with when I go to weddings solo.”
“Being laughed at?”
He is so smug.
“Oh just say it—women throw themselves at you.”
“I would never put it like that. But yes. If you aren't interested, there's a matchmaking service for high net worth gentlemen based in Sausalito that's been hounding me to sign up with them as a client. I can just call them. But I came to you first.”
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