Mostly MyBoss

by Doyle, S.

  “I’m going to go,” I said.

  “You’re not. It’s late. I’m obviously in no shape to walk you back, so you can crash here.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, right. The point was for me to get you and take you home. I didn’t expect you to walk me back.”

  “Well, I do expect it but it’s not happening. Don’t be weird about this, Julia. We’re going to sleep for a few hours and then I’ll walk you home in the morning.”

  “Walk-of-shame style?” I asked, thinking there was no way that was going to happen.

  “No, it’s only a walk of shame when you do it alone. When the guy walks with you, it means he still respects you.”

  A hand on my back, he all but pushed me into his room. The bed was made, and the comforter and pillow set matched and looked more expensive than what I’d bought at Target for myself.

  His desk held a laptop, a lamp, and a pile of books arranged largest to smallest in a symmetrical pyramid. No clothes on the floor. No shoes out of order. It made me think of what a military barracks might look like.

  I wondered if his belt buckles were polished. I peeked around the door of the bathroom. Yep, marble bathtub. That was the rumor about Apley and apparently it was true.

  It was also spotless. On the vanity sat his toothbrush, toothpaste, and deodorant. In the glass mirrored cabinet his prescription bottles maybe? Out of view from anyone snooping.

  He brushed past me without a word and made his way to the sink. I noticed he’d already taken off his coat and hat. I watched as he turned the water on, splashed his toothbrush, coated it with toothpaste, then started to brush his teeth.

  It was shocking. The intimacy of it. The fact that he considered it okay for me to watch him as he brushed his teeth. He saw me looking at him in the mirror and I snapped my teeth together, realizing my mouth was probably open.

  “You shouldn’t run the water while you’re brushing. It’s wasteful,” I told him.

  Our eyes met again in the mirror. He turned the water off.

  Refocusing on the room, I noticed there was another Nordstrom bag sitting on his desk chair. He must have gone back for more clothes. Which was fine. Now that I’d given him a solid baseline, he could riff on style and colors.

  Overall, these days he looked less like a nerd with pants that were too short and more like the visionary genius he was striving for. I’d already told him, though, under no circumstances could he wear turtlenecks.

  I dropped the sleeping bag I’d borrowed on top of his. It made the room a little messy and I wondered if I should properly store both of them in the closet, otherwise he might have a hard time relaxing.

  He came back into the room, fell onto the queen bed, and kicked his boots off. Disorder, then, wasn’t going to be a problem.

  I glanced around and, other than the bed and desk chair, there was nowhere to sit.

  “I’m going to walk back,” I announced.

  “Afraid?”

  “Of you?” I laughed. Because, literally, the idea was funny.

  “Do you trust me?” he asked.

  Hard question to answer.

  “We’re sleeping, Julia. That’s all.”

  Yeah. I wasn’t going to sleep. Still, this seemed like one of those moments. A snippet from my life where I could, see the choice and where that path would lead:

  a) Julia left and walked home alone in the cold. Ethan and her slowly drifted apart as friends once the semester ended and he found someone else to take his notes.

  b) Julia stayed and their friendship grew even stronger based on mutual trust.

  I made my way to the end of the bed and sat. I pulled off my coat and took off my boots.

  I lay down on the bed next to him. He got up then, grabbed a sleeping bag off the floor, and stretched it over both of us. As if sensing I might be more comfortable with this arrangement than if we were under the bedcovers.

  “Night,” he said, rolling over with his back to me.

  “Night,” I said, thinking how strange it felt to be saying those words to someone in the same room with me.

  * * *

  I woke up thinking it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes since I’d put my head down. I must have drifted off. When I looked around the room, I saw Ethan was up and had showered and changed. Behind him I could see the morning light shining through the window.

  “What time is it?” I croaked as I sat up.

  “Just seven. Enough time for you to get back and ready for class.”

  I’d slept. The whole night. With Ethan?

  Pushing the sleeping bag off me, I started toward his bathroom then stopped. “Can I?”

  He chuckled. “Unless you prefer peeing your panties.”

  I scowled at him and he laughed harder. I peed, washed my hands, then stole some toothpaste to rinse my mouth.

  When I came back into the room, he was holding up the Nordstrom bag.

  “You saw it last night so you can’t accuse me of using it as a bribe to gain your forgiveness. Here.”

  He pushed the bag at me, so I took it.

  “I don’t get it. What is it?”

  “For you. I didn’t like how you didn’t get anything when we shopped so I went back and tried again. If you don’t like it, I saved the receipt. We can return it and keep looking until we get it right.”

  I pulled the soft midnight-blue sweater out of the bag. It was simple with a straight cut along the front, but the back dipped in a gentle scoop. It looked like it would be loose on me, even though, when I checked the label, I saw it was a medium.

  Maybe not.

  “Try it on.”

  I thought of a thousand reasons to protest. I didn’t want him to see my expression if I didn’t like the way it looked. I didn’t want it to be too tight over my boobs so I’d have to feel self-conscious about them.

  “Jules, just do it.”

  Like he knew how far deep into my own head I’d gone. I stepped back into the bathroom, pulled off the long-sleeved T-shirt I’d worn last night, and slipped the sweater over my head.

  It was super soft. The color was rich and gorgeous. Nothing felt too tight anywhere and when I looked in the mirror, I noticed the color made my eyes appear to be a darker blue. Bolder.

  I opened the door to find Ethan standing, waiting on the other side. He smiled and nodded as if assured, somehow, he’d done something right.

  He had. It was perfect. Like, the most perfect thing I’d ever owned.

  “I…” …had no clue what to say. “Thank you.”

  “Yep. Now get your stuff and I’ll walk you back.”

  No more drama. No discussion of last night. His failed test, Nicki, the question of my virginity. Why he got trashed. We just walked.

  He stopped outside my dorm. “See you at lunch?”

  I agreed. And thought I’d been right about last night. About staying with him instead of leaving.

  It had brought us closer to together.

  I just wasn’t absolutely sure if that was a good thing.

  6

  Therapy

  Julia

  “So you didn’t think you were doing anything for him that was beyond friendship?” Carol asked me.

  “No. I mean, I knew he was on medication. I knew bad things happened when he drank. I also knew he had a tendency to let his mind drift sometimes. Someone had to have his back, but I wouldn’t say I protected him.”

  “What about now?”

  “Now?” I asked stupidly.

  “Surely a man of Ethan’s means doesn’t need someone protecting him. He could hire any number of people to do anything required. No reason for you to stay if you wanted to leave. Yet you’ve been in his employment this whole time. There must have been a reason you stayed.”

  I laughed. Was she kidding? “Uh, hello? Phoenix is one of the largest companies in America. I’m responsible for all of its branches. It’s my job to make sure growth is on target. That Ethan is allowed to spend his time creating without being bogged down
by the day-to-day details. Outside of being President of the United States, I can’t imagine a more challenging position. And to have accomplished what we’ve accomplished by the age of thirty, it’s remarkable. There isn’t a person graduating Harvard or Wharton Business School who wouldn’t give an arm to have my job.”

  “You’ve stayed all this time for the work, then?”

  I glanced at Ethan and he had an expectant look on his face. How was I supposed to answer that? Of course Id stayed for the work. It was an amazing job. It had been eight years of the most intense experiences of my life. We’d traveled. We’d met foreign dignitaries. We’d partied with celebrities and athletes. We’d run massive charitable events that made a difference in people’s lives.

  We were an incredible team.

  “We had dinner with LeBron James,” I said stupidly as I struggled to think about why I’d really stayed with Ethan for these past eight years.

  “Now that he’s done with basketball, I’m helping him produce a movie,” Ethan explained to Carol, as if that were important.

  Meanwhile, I thought about what mattered. What really mattered. I considered what had really driven me since leaving school and deciding to work for him. The reason I’d stayed when he could so casually hurt me.

  “Ethan needs me,” I admitted. “I stay because Ethan needs me.”

  “So you are protecting him?”

  Was I? Was that what we were to each other? It felt demeaning to Ethan to think he needed a guardian, but I couldn’t stop looking at our past and seeing how that had played out over and over through the years.

  “I guess.”

  “I don’t need it anymore, Jules. Your protection. But I think that’s one of the things I was scared of after we...after it happened. I thought it would change everything and if that happened, I would lose you, and losing you meant losing everything.”

  It. He was talking about when his father died because he treated that night as if it was different for us.

  He didn’t know the whole story. He didn’t know what I’d done to protect us years before that. Before Daniel’s wedding, which we’d both managed to pretend had never happened.

  Because I’d believed the same thing. That if we changed us, we would lose us.

  “I understand that,” I acknowledged. “I do.”

  “But can you forgive me?”

  “For what, Ethan?” I asked, feeling the emotions overwhelm me. “For fucking me or for leaving me? What crime do you think you’re guilty of?”

  His lips tightened but he said nothing.

  “Okay,” Carol interjected. “Let’s put a pin in that for now. I’m still interested in this dynamic between you two and why you felt you needed to protect Ethan, Julia.”

  That was easy to explain. “The thing you have to understand about Ethan is how he was with his parents. Take the holidays, for example…”

  * * *

  Harvard

  Julia

  “Are you going home for Thanksgiving?”

  I looked away from the kitchen where Ethan was laying his charm on extra thick with one of Dara’s friends. This was our first off-campus house party, and both Nicki and Ethan had insisted attendance was mandatory.

  I didn’t know the guy who’d asked me the question. He was drinking something out of a red Solo cup that made his face flush a little. Other than the red cheeks, he was kind of cute.

  I was wearing my new sweater and jeans, and Nicki had blown out my naturally wavy hair straight so that it touched my shoulders. It was probably the best I’d ever looked.

  Like, ever.

  And now some strange guy wanted to know my Thanksgiving plans.

  “Nope,” I answered. “You?” Because it seemed this was the part where I should interact with the person trying to make conversation with me. I believed it was called flirting.

  “Absolutely. I love Thanksgiving. I mean, like, it’s the best holiday because you don’t have to worry about the bullshit of capitalist corruption. Am I right?”

  “I’m an economics major. I’m basically studying to be a capitalist corrupter.”

  He left after that.

  “Okay, you might be less smooth than my boy.”

  I glanced over my shoulder, pleased and probably relieved to see Daniel. He’d become a regular at lunch with me and Ethan, and offered a perspective on our conversations that was always refreshing.

  Because he excelled at giving Ethan shit.

  This, however, was the first time he’d ever given me shit.

  “I told him the truth! Newsflash, poor girl from Iowa wants to make money.”

  “Girl, guys don’t want to hear the truth,” Daniel said, looking at me like I was crazy. “They want you to tell them you’re going to be the next woman of their dreams.”

  I snorted and took a sip from my own red cup.

  Water. Because.

  “What are we talking about?” Ethan asked as he joined our group. He seemed more ramped up than usual. I took that as a sign he’d made progress with the girl from the kitchen. I wasn’t sure how he did it. I only knew he seemed to be a magnet for girls on campus, and I didn’t think it had anything to do with the money he’d made from mining Bitcoin.

  “How unsmooth Julia is,” Daniel said. “Like, worse than you, bro.”

  “Really? Even in your nice sweater?”

  “I’ve told you guys, I’m not interested in dating,” I said petulantly.

  “We’re not talking about dating,” Daniel said. “We’re talking about hooking up. You know, sex. Orgasms. Things that make you go hmmm.”

  “Daniel, chill on that,” Ethan said with a tight shake of his head. “Jules is a virgin.”

  “You motherfucker.” I glared at Ethan and willed him to burst into a ball of flames.

  “Come on, there’s no use pretending it’s not true. What’s the point of hiding it?”

  “I’m not hiding anything, asshole. I’m simply choosing not to share my business with people.”

  “Daniel’s not people,” Ethan said, pointing at him. “He’s on our team now. Speaking of which, what are you doing for Thanksgiving?”

  “Wait, I’m on what team?” Daniel asked.

  I rolled my eyes because I knew what was coming.

  “Team Ethan. See, Jules and I have a plan.”

  “Ethan has a plan,” I corrected. “And don’t you have to get back to the girl in the kitchen so you can seal that deal?”

  “Already done. We have plans to hook up later. Anyway, the plan is I come up with a genius idea and we all make money from it. Jules will run the business and you’re prelaw, so that takes care of my corporate attorney.”

  “And what do you do in this company?” Daniel asked obviously skeptical.

  Ethan tapped his temple. “I’m the idea man, obviously. Eventually it will come, and it when it does, we’ll need to move fast.”

  “You’re buying this?” Daniel asked me.

  “Of course she is. She wants to be rich and I’m going to make sure that happens. What will you spend your money on, Jules? More clothes, shoes, jewelry?”

  “Sure, that.” Or paying off my parents’ debts. The second mortgage on the farm. Having cash on hand to bail out John the next time he was arrested. Ah, the little things. Not that any of this wasn’t the delusion of a potentially insane Harvard freshman.

  “So,” Ethan pressed. “Thanksgiving. What are you doing?”

  “He’s probably going home,” I told Ethan. He was a little overexcited about our plans for Thanksgiving. I said things like mashed potatoes and gravy and his eyes got wide like a kid on Christmas morning.

  “Why? We’re not. My parents are going to be traveling in Europe, and with my schedule, I can’t go with them. Score! Jules can’t make it all the way home, so she is cooking. She can do the whole thing. Including stuffing the turkey.”

  “Really?” Daniel asked, looking at me with surprise.

  I shrugged. “It’s not a big thing. His dorm has a com
mon kitchen I can use. Since neither of us are going home, I said I’d cook.”

  “Real food. Which she can do. Because she’s from a farm.”

  I looked at Ethan, wondering if he was putting me on, but I could see he wasn’t. He thought being from a farm was this exotic thing and that introducing him to my mother’s cornbread recipe was somehow going to change his life.

  I suppose it’s why I liked him, almost against my common sense. Like, there were all these normal people at Harvard I could have made friends with, but no, I had to pick the extreme guy, the self-proclaimed visionary who got off on cornbread.

  “Can’t,” Daniel said, although he appeared to be regretful. “I need to go home. My girlfriend has been all kinds of clingy lately. I need to put in an appearance as the dedicated boyfriend.”

  “I guess that can happen with a long-distance relationship,” I pointed out.

  Daniel shook his head. “She’s all, you’re going to cheat on me, I know it. I told her, just because I was away from her, didn’t necessarily mean I was going to cheat. But oh no. She’s convinced.”

  “Yes, but is that what you said to her? That you weren’t necessarily going to cheat?”

  “Yeah. So what?”

  “That’s horrible,” I told him. “No wonder she has doubts.”

  Daniel looked horrified. “What are you talking about? I just said, me being away didn’t mean I was necessarily going to cheat. Also known as being faithful.”

  “Let me interpret for you how women hear things. I’m not going to cheat means you’re promising her not to cheat. I’m not necessarily going to cheat means you may or may not cheat. You’re leaving the window open, which is all she heard. Totally different.”

  “Women are fucked up,” Daniel said, obviously annoyed.

  “No, I’m pretty sure we’re an entirely logical sex who also has a strong grasp of the English language.”

  “You might be better off staying with us and eating turkey,” Ethan said.

  “Nah, man, I’ve definitely got to go home now. In fact, I’m going to call her just to set the record straight.”