by Doyle, S.
“We need to rethink Tokyo,” I told her. “I know you wanted to wait until we had a firmer footing in Europe, but I think waiting could cost us. Now is the time to start negotiations.”
I glanced up and could see she also didn’t look like she’d had a restful night. Her eyes were all puffy.
Maybe a fight between her and CJ? Something I could use to push a wedge between them? Something beyond what I was already planning, which would be to separate the two lovebirds for the next three months while she came to Japan with me.
“We can start to talk to them now, but if we wait, we’ll have a stronger presence in the industry overall. It will help make our case. You know this.”
I frowned. “I hate it when you use logic against me.”
She took a bite of the heavily filled bagel and moaned a little. Then she eyed me skeptically. “Is this really low fat?”
“Scout’s honor,” I said, holding up the peace sign.
“Obviously, you weren’t a Boy Scout.”
“Busted.”
She put the bagel down, then crossed her arms over her chest as if she had to stop her hands from reaching for it again. My eyes went to her left hand, which they’d done every day since she’d announced her engagement.
Hers and CJ’s. It didn’t even sound right in my head.
I searched for that annoying sparkle of bling that had been blinding me for the past two weeks.
But today there was nothing. The ring was gone.
My eyes went to her face and she lifted her chin, knowing I saw that it was missing.
“Are we going to have a problem?” she asked me.
I didn’t smile. Forced myself to refrain from even the smallest of smirks.
“No.”
“Now can I have my desk back?”
I stood slowly, thinking if I moved too fast, it might not be real. This seemed almost too easy. I hadn’t even gotten to the really evil part where I did dirt-digging on the guy to see if I could find any dick pics he’d ever sent to another woman on the planet.
“Sure. But think about Tokyo,” I said, as if truly that had been my purpose in being here all along.
“I’ll think about Tokyo when it’s time to think about Tokyo and not before.”
“You know I pay you to obey me.”
“Yep, a ridiculous amount of money, too. Now leave so I can do my job.”
I left and didn’t say a word about what had obviously happened. I didn’t need to. CJ wasn’t right for her. I knew that, because I knew her. He wasn’t nearly tough enough to make his way through the barbed-wire walls surrounding her heart. She’d only been pretending to let him in beyond the gate.
Why?
It didn’t matter. It only mattered that it was over, and I didn’t have to play the part of Machiavelli to make it happen.
Later that day, CJ offered me his resignation and I accepted it with graciousness. All things considered it was a practically perfect ending.
* * *
Therapy
Ethan
“I knew it! I knew you weren’t happy about me getting engaged. Congratulations.” Jules said, mimicking my voice. Badly.
“And you knew I wasn’t going to be happy! It’s why you looked like you were facing a firing squad when you told me. Be honest. You only said yes to a proposal after three months of dating because of Paris!”
She folded her arms over her breasts.
“How long were you engaged, Julia?”
“Ten minutes,” I snorted.
“Two weeks,” she answered.
“In the end, I didn’t even have to do anything,” I told Carol. “I just had to wait him out and it worked. Jules wouldn’t tell me what happened between them. So tell me now. What ended it?”
“I’m not telling you,” she insisted.
“Come on,” I urged her. “It was years ago, and we’re here to air all the dirt, remember? So let’s have it. Did you realize you only said yes to his proposal to spite me?”
“It wasn’t to spite you! I really wanted things to work with CJ.”
“Then what happened?”
“Fine. If you must know, I called out your name…in bed. There, are you happy?”
Was she kidding? I was ecstatic.
“It was awful,” Jules said, closing her eyes. “He kept trying to justify it for me. We worked so closely together, we’d known each other for so long. It was only natural you might be on my mind. I knew then he would have spent our entire marriage qualifying my horrible behavior when it came to you and I couldn’t let him do it.”
“I feel bad for the guy,” I said.
“You do not,” she accused me.
I didn’t. I really didn’t.
“Okay,” Carol announced with a soft clap of the hands. “So Ethan you’re not dating anyone. Julia, after your engagement ended, was there anyone…”
She shook her head tightly.
“The two of you are continuing to work closely together. And then Ethan, you lose your father suddenly. Can you talk about that? About what happened?”
I looked at her and Julia looked at me. We both knew what happened.
My world suddenly exploded.
* * *
Three months ago
Ethan
“We did it!” I stood on top of Jules’s desk and popped the cork from the bottle of champagne. We were in the Nebraska plant and I’d shut down production so that everyone could hear the news.
People squeezed close to the far side of the building and Jules was swatting my legs to get me to move off her stuff, but this was too big. Too important.
“Everyone! We have just finalized our deal with Tokyo. Phoenix Airlines is now in the U.S., Continental Europe, and officially Asia!”
The team erupted and I soaked it in. Months of negotiations and hard work by so many involved and now it was finally done. My vision was starting to come into focus. Faster, more efficient jets. Comfortable and more affordable travel. There were times it ha felt like I had to drag the world kicking and screaming into the future, but now it was finally here.
“Champagne for everyone!”
I’d bought cases of the stuff and had it on ice all morning, and I’d hired a catering crew to distribute the flutes among the team. I gave the nod to the headwaiter, and within minutes there were men in white shirts and ties walking through the factory lines with trays of champagne.
“And for God’s sake don’t spill any on the equipment!” I shouted. I glanced behind me to see Jules, who was still sitting at her desk looking at her computer as if her life depended on it. She was finalizing the cost of our venture into Japan and the grim look on her face said what it always said.
“We’re growing too fast,” she muttered.
“There is no such thing!” I laughed. I wasn’t getting off her desk, either. I was king up here. Looking out over the vista of all I surveyed. I’d done this. Built this. It was mine, and Jules was exactly where she needed to be.
Propping me up so I could continue to make this happen.
“It’s not sustainable.”
“It doesn’t have to be. I have a board of advisors, not investors. I don’t owe them steady growth year after year. I only report to me and I like what we’re doing, Jules.”
I hopped off the desk and pulled her to her feet. “Dance with me.”
“There’s no music,” she said even as I pulled her into my arms.
“There is the sound of people being happy and drinking champagne. Let that be our music.”
“You’re such a goof,” she said, but still she danced with me.
My phone buzzed in my back pocket and I ignored it, unwilling to let Jules go and ruin my high with whatever disaster needed my attention.
There were only a few people who had my cell number. Jules, who was dancing with me, and Daniel. If he was calling, then it was a definitely something he perceived to be a disaster.
Jules and I were staying in Nebraska for just the night then hea
ding back to headquarters tomorrow. Whatever Daniel needed from me could wait until then.
Now was the time for celebration.
“You know what we need?” I said as the idea occurred to me. “A vacation. When was the last time we did something fun?”
I thought of Paris, but in the end, that hadn’t been fun. In the end, I’d driven her directly into the arms of CJ. Thank God that had ended. Although to this day, she wouldn’t tell me why.
“We should go to Fiji,” I said before she could answer.
“Why?”
There were times that Jules could be too practical for own good. “Why does anyone go to Fiji? It’s exotic. I’ll charter a yacht—fuck, I’ll buy a yacht! We’ll bake in the sun, swim with the sharks, all the cool, rich stuff. Come on, it will be fun.”
“A vacation.” She chewed her bottom lip like I’d just suggested she should have elective surgery instead. “Who would go on this vacation?”
Who would go on it? “Uh, duh. You. Me. Did you want to invite your family? My family? Oh please say no. Can you imagine Fiji with my parents? We could invite Daniel and Kaylee. Lord knows he needs a vacation.”
“They’re not going to want to take the baby all the way to Fiji,” Jules pointed out.
“Why not? Little Jasmine would love Fiji. We’ll just make sure we keep her away from the sharks, so she doesn’t try to snack on them.” I’d met Jas several times and I’d quickly come to the conclusion she was both fearless and a little frightening.
“Ethan, you’re just excited because of Japan.”
“I am, but that doesn’t mean I can’t want a vacation, too. I mean, what’s the point of all this work if we don’t take time to relax and enjoy everything we’ve earned?”
“You’ve earned. It’s your company. Your dream. You just pay me to make sure you’re actually making money.”
“And I am, right? I’ve got, like, almost all of it in the world, so let’s go to Fiji!”
She smiled then and I knew I had her. “Okay, fine. I’ll go to Fiji with you, but I’m not swimming with sharks. That’s not even a thing.”
“I’ll buy you a string bikini, but if you want, we can both go topless on the yacht.” I wiggled my eyebrows, which probably needed a trim, in her point of view, then she was pulling out of my arms.
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen.”
Because Jules was self-conscious about her breasts, which was ridiculous because they were beautiful. Soft, full, round. Immediately, memories of our lone night together stirred in my brain and I had to squash them:
a) because they would make me hard and it would remind me how long it’d been since I’d fucked someone,
b) it would remind me that I really liked fucking Jules.
Too much. I liked it too much. And like anything that was too rich, or too sweet, or too bad for you, it could only be savored in very careful measures. Small bites. Tiny tastes.
I’d tried to take another one of those bites in Paris, but she’d shot me down. It made sense. She’d been with CJ at the time and if I knew anything about Jules, I knew how incredibly loyal she was.
But Fiji would be as far away from Nebraska or Seattle as we could get. She wasn’t seeing anyone now. I knew that because I knew the number of hours she’d been putting in to make the Tokyo airport deal happen. There’d been no time for a social life for either of us.
A vacation. Where, maybe, we could have one of our vacations from us again.
If not, I was going to have do something about the whole abstinence thing. I had no plans to live my life as a monk but, somehow, it had just happened. Surely there was someone out there I could drum up enough interest in to get my dick wet. Just because it hadn’t happened for me lately didn’t mean I was dead.
Quite the opposite, judging by the amount of action my hand was getting. It had gotten so bad I’d whacked off the other day with my left hand just for a change of pace.
Jules had to be in the same boat. Didn’t she? Twelve-hour days, little sleep. She looked as tightly wound as she ever had, which on her best day was like a nautical knot.
Except after Daniel’s wedding. After the wedding she’d looked well fucked. God, that night had been hot. Not that I let myself think about it too much. But she’d been naked to me in so many different ways.
I watched Jules walk back around her desk. How sophisticated she looked in her black pencil skirt and white blouse. Her hair was shorter these days, cropped almost to her chin. So buttoned-up, so professional it made me want to run my hands through her hair just to mess it up.
Yes. Some sun, a bikini, lots of vodka…
Her phone was buzzing along her desk and she picked it up and frowned.
Definitely Daniel. I took a deep pull from the bottle I’d opened and let the bubbles fill my mouth. I would deal with whatever disaster Daniel was calling about, then I was getting on the phone with my travel broker.
They had those thatched-roof cabins with the glass floors in Fiji. We would have to do that, too. Maybe hire a diving instructor who could take us out to look for shipwrecks and shit.
Jules turned her back to me. That meant it was probably really bad news. Whenever she had to tell me anything remotely upsetting, she would always get her own expression under control first.
Whatever it was, it couldn’t spoil my mood. We had real estate in the Tokyo airport, and Jules and I were going to go on a real vacation.
I took another swallow of champagne and sat on her desk, waiting for her to deliver the blow.
She put down the phone and looked at me. This time she hadn’t done a very good job of shielding her expression from me. She looked like...
I was immediately on my feet. “Jesus, Jules, what the fuck happened?”
“That was your mom…your father. Oh my God, Ethan.” She put her hands over her mouth like it was too horrible to say.
“What?!”
“He…he died.”
9
Three months ago
New York
Julia
“Honey, is there anything we can do? Do you want me to come to New York? I’ve only been on a plane that one time to Boston for your graduation, but I could do it again. To be there for you and Ethan, I would do it again.”
I pressed the phone to my ear and felt a wave of love for my mother so strong it almost stole my breath. And to think sometimes I thought she wasn’t brave, when really, she was the bravest person I knew.
“No, Mom,” I told her as I took in the view from Ethan’s Upper East Side apartment. Such an expansive perspective of the city, and yet here, he’d always felt trapped.
But they’d been working on that. Him and his father. They’d been building something that wasn’t based on the past. I swallowed the tears, thinking about how that was over now.
“It’s okay. The memorial service is tomorrow at the hospital. Then after that…Ethan will probably stay here a few weeks with his mom, but I’ll need to head back to Seattle.”
“Julia, don’t you leave him a minute before he’s ready.”
I flinched at the sternness in my mother’s voice.
“Now is not the time to think about work,” she went on in a tone I hadn’t heard from her since I was twelve and had rolled my eyes at her for the first time. “You need to be there for him. You know how jarring the sudden loss of a parent is. You know. For Ethan, who tries to control everything all the time, it will be even more so.”
“I’m not leaving him,” I said quietly. “Not if he needs me.”
“No, Julia. That isn’t good enough. You have to know what he needs. You have to anticipate it. You can’t sit around waiting for him to tell you. That isn’t how this works. This man has been a major part of your life for twelve years—now is the time for you to come through for him. Because now is when he needs you the most.”
I blinked and swallowed again. Suddenly there was this huge weight on my chest, and I struggled to breathe through it. My mom was right. Ethan wasn�
��t going to know up from down. I knew that. I’d been in this place. I also knew he would struggle to accept any kind of sympathy. In fact, I was pretty sure he was going to reject all of it.
The plan was to keep the memorial service as private as possible, but the world knew, or would soon know, that Ethan Moss’s father had died and many people would want to express their condolences. It would be like eating nails for him.
“I’ll be what he needs, Mom. I promise.”
I could hear her heavy sigh through the phone. “You two would make things much easier on yourselves if you just got married.”
The muscle in my jaw clenched involuntarily.
“You know we’re just friends, Mom.”
“Maybe someday you’ll explain to me why you both keep telling yourselves that.”
I heard the door to the study open behind me. I could see his reflection in the window as Ethan walked in. “I’ve got to go, Mom.”
I ended the call and put the phone down on the desk. His father’s desk.
Turning around I saw Ethan closing the door behind him. “How is your mom?” He was here now only if she’d allowed him to leave her side.
“Sleeping. Finally. I got her to take the pills.”
Rachel had been a mess when we first arrived. Ethan’s uncle, the drummer who used to take Ethan away for summers, had come but he seemed at a loss as to how to deal with his sister-in-law and had quickly left.
It was only when Ethan had arrived that Rachel finally had someone to cling to. The way she held on to him I didn’t think she was ever going to let him go. It was only after Ethan was with her that she could eat something and take in some fluids.
And finally, after a full forty-eight hours, she could sleep.
“She needs it. Especially for tomorrow,” I said. “She looks so fragile. Like a small breeze would knock her over.”