Man in Love

by Laurelin Paige

  He scowled at me, and I stepped away instinctively, afraid he was about to attack me again with the stick.

  Instead, he just attacked me with words. “I didn’t know dick about this sponsorship thing you’re talking about. I was talking about you, Scottie. Your life. What you want from your life versus the life your father thinks you should have. Stop letting him boss you around. You don’t have to be what he wants you to be just because he decrees it.”

  “He is my boss. I kind of can’t get around that.”

  “He doesn’t have to stay your boss.”

  I blinked, partly because the room still felt awfully bright without my sunglasses, but also because his words were taking a minute to register, which might have been because I was more than a little inebriated. “So what are you saying?” I asked after a beat. “I should quit SIC?”

  He shrugged in that, yeah, obviously way.

  “You want me to leave the family company? The place you built? The place I’ve spent all my life preparing to work at?”

  “Ding, ding, ding,” he said, holding the cue stick up like he was ringing a bell. “It wouldn’t be a sacrifice if it didn’t feel a little impossible to even imagine.”

  More than a little impossible to imagine. The idea of not working for Sebastian Industrial was like being told that gravity didn’t exist. It turned my world upside down just to think of it.

  I leaned my ass against the billiard table, vaguely aware that Brett was witnessing all of this, and fuck it, I’d probably said too much in front of him already. I didn’t have the bandwidth to be concerned because every bit of my brain power was trying to wrap around Grandpa’s outlandish suggestion. “But. What would I even do?”

  “Anything! You’re smart. A hundred companies would give you a job. Hell, I bet a dozen would give you a spot on their board in a heartbeat in the mere hopes of ferreting out at least one useful Sebastian secret from you.”

  More blinking. More stretching my mind. “But that’s. I just.” And then suddenly, I could see it, and since he’d given me the permission to see, I felt free to imagine it bigger. Like a hundred doors that had been closed to me all my life had sprung open all at once, and behind them was possibility after possibility after possibility. “Huh.”

  “Now you’re thinking,” Grandpa said, nodding, a gleam in his eye. “Not even that big of a sacrifice when you give yourself freedom to really dream it. You have your trust fund. You’ll get your inheritance from me when I die, whether you’re working for Henry or not. Think of all you could do.”

  “All I could do?” I asked, still a bit dazed by the prospect.

  “Anything,” he said. “You could do anything.”

  Anything.

  Something that didn’t involve spending all my time covering my father’s ass. Something that didn’t have me always worrying about his approval. Something that I enjoyed and was good at. Something that had nothing to do with Henry Sebastian and had everything to do with me.

  I ran my hand over my beard, feeling like an unkempt man just released from prison. As amazing as it was to be set free, it was also fucking terrifying. Walking back into my cell would be a thousand times easier.

  I looked intently at my grandfather. “This is really what you want? You want me to leave your empire? Don’t you want your legacy to continue?”

  Didn’t he consider me to be a part of that legacy?

  He extended his free hand out and rested it on my upper arm. “It’s not my empire, Scottie. Not anymore. And my legacy is you. All of you. Every single one of you that wears my name. You’re what I care about. Your happiness is what I want.”

  My throat felt tight. “Thank you, Grandpa. I appreciate you saying that.”

  “I mean it.”

  “I know you do. I know you do.” I put my hand over his and let it linger for several seconds.

  Then I dropped it and straightened to my full height, letting his hand fall off my shoulder as I did. “Like I said, I appreciate it. I know you want the best for me. And I want to take your advice—I should have taken it years ago, probably—but now it wouldn’t help me if I did. If I left SIC, Dad would definitely pull the sponsorship, and Tessa would be devastated.”

  The door of my cell was already closing, the freedom I’d felt moments before drifting away like a fleeting dream.

  Grandpa wrinkled his brow. “You really think she cares more about a foundation than you?”

  “Not more, but it’s important to her. And it’s bigger than us. Neither of us could live with ourselves if we chose to turn our backs on the opportunity.”

  But Grandpa Irving was the kind of man who didn’t understand words like can’t or impossible. A man who’d never spent a day of his life living chained or fettered. “Then don’t. Find another option. Get another business to back her foundation. You have connections.”

  “None as big as I need them to be. Nothing competes with Sebastian money.” It was a truth that I’d always known, but it had never felt like a bad thing before.

  “I can’t feel guilty about that,” Grandpa said with a sad smile.

  “Nor should you. You expected big, and you got it.”

  We stood silently, both of us accepting the reality of who we were and what he’d accomplished.

  Then, from behind us, Brett said, “There’s more than one corporation run by Sebastians.”

  There was more than one. Because what Grandpa had built had been so big that it had long ago been split in two.

  Both Grandpa and I looked at Brett. Then we looked at each other. Could Brett be on to something?

  Grandpa’s sly smile said he thought Brett might. “I like this kid,” he said, pointing to my cousin. “He’s a smart one.”

  “Yeah, he is,” I agreed, the idea he’d sparked growing and expanding like wildfire. This might actually be possible. And with Grandpa on my side, this could be better than I’d even thought to imagine.

  Brett took the compliments in stride. “But do I still get to kick your ass?”

  “Nope. But I think you’ll be happy with what you’re going to get instead. Are you in?”

  He pretended to deliberate, or maybe he really did need to consider it before giving up the idea of beating me up, which was understandable. “I’m in. But if you fuck it up—”

  “I’ll hire two guys to kick my ass,” I promised. But I expected it wouldn’t be necessary.

  Seventeen

  Tess

  I looked up at the sound of the knock on my bedroom door. In typical we’re-too-close-for-formalities fashion, Teyana walked in before I invited her and found me sitting on my bed, my back against the headboard.

  “Came to check on you. Feeling better after your shower?”

  I waffled with my response, trying to find a happy medium between not too morose and honest. Eventually, I settled on, “I don’t know.”

  The fact that I’d finished my shower almost half an hour ago and was still wrapped in my towel probably told her as much as she needed to know.

  She chuckled. “Sounds about right. Can I get you anything? Tea? Vodka? The ice cream carton?”

  “Nah, I’m good.” It suddenly occurred to me that I was on the wrong side of the support system. I was the one who was supposed to be inquiring about her. I hadn’t even asked when I’d arrived home earlier in the evening after my week away, excusing myself to my bedroom as soon as I’d walked in.

  “Do you need anything?” I asked, an attempt to step into my usual role. “How are you feeling?”

  “I feel fine. The new meds the specialist has me on are already helping, I think.”

  “Really? So no nausea? No pain? Any fainting spells?”

  “Tess, stop. I’m fine. Let me take care of you for once.”

  Normally, I would have protested, but I didn’t have the strength. Funny how exhausting heartbreak was. “Okay. Take care of me.”

  “What do you need, baby? Can I get you something to wear?”

  “That would be a nic
e start.” I watched while she got my white terrycloth robe out of my closet, then after she handed it to me, I awkwardly maneuvered from wearing the towel to wearing the robe without showing too many lady bits.

  Like a saint, she took my towel from the floor where I’d dropped it and put it in my hamper across the room. “What else do you need?”

  That was a loaded question because what I needed, I couldn’t have.

  And not having him was physically painful. I imagined this was what it felt like to be a recovering addict, jonesing for another hit of Scott. I’d made it six days sober, ignoring his phone calls and texts, and it didn’t feel like he was any more out of my system now than he’d been when I’d walked out his door Monday night.

  “Will you come cuddle with me?” Even to my own ears, I sounded pathetic.

  But Teyana didn’t flinch in the slightest. “You bet.”

  Less than a handful of seconds later, she was sitting on the bed at my side, her arms wrapped around me, and while I’d gone home to my mother seeking this sort of comfort, this was the first time since breaking up with Scott that I’d felt closer to fine.

  She held me like that for a while, letting me weep without trying to make things better with hollow platitudes, which I very much appreciated. In fact, she didn’t talk at all. She just rocked me, and despite my state of despair, I made myself file away the moment for future reference when I wanted to find the perfect way to be a good friend.

  I could have stayed like that all night. Definitely could have fallen asleep in that position. But after a while, I really needed a tissue, and particularly after this act of kindness, it didn’t seem polite to drip snot all over her shoulder, so I forced myself to sit up.

  Tey reached over and grabbed a Kleenex from the box on my nightstand before I could even ask and handed it to me.

  “Thank you.” I dabbed at my eyes and then my nose, then took a deep breath, trying to gain some semblance of humanity.

  “Feel better now?”

  I did. A little. But it felt like a betrayal to my heartache to admit. So instead, I asked, “Does it ever get better?”

  It occurred to me after I’d asked that she legitimately might not have a good frame of reference to be able to give a satisfying answer. I’d known Teyana since college, and in all that time, she’d never had a serious relationship. Flings, yes. Many, many flings. But never anything that she had to recover from when it ended.

  “I suppose that wasn’t a fair question,” I said when several silent seconds had passed.

  “No, it’s fair. I hope it does. I hope it gets better. But I can’t say that I know for sure.” She sounded as sad as I felt.

  God, she was a good friend. Completely on my side. Feeling my feelings with me.

  “There’s something to look forward to, though,” she said in afterthought. “Scott’s not going to be engaged to Kendra forever. If you are still feeling this way about him when they finally break up—and believe me, I know it feels like it’s an eternity away, but time will pass. I do know that for certain—that means there is an ending. Eventually. You’ll have him back, and that’s something to look forward to. Isn’t it?”

  “I guess.” It really did feel an eternity away. And while part of me knew I’d never stop loving Scott, another part of me hoped I would because I couldn’t imagine surviving like this for more than a few weeks, let alone a year or more.

  But even if I did survive that long, I wasn’t sure that everything would be better.

  “It’s more than the engagement, Tey. I wish it were just that, because like you said, there’s an end in sight. Well, not necessarily in sight, but there’s an end. Just, that’s not really the problem, not really.”

  She gave me her I-have-no-idea-what-you’re-talking-about-please-explain look.

  “I mean, yes, him being engaged is a major problem. It doesn’t help that he’s engaged to Kendra, of all people, but it’s the reason why he’s engaged to her.”

  “Because of the DRF.”

  “Because of his father.” I’d been thinking about this a lot over the last week, trying to figure out whether this was a real problem or one I’d made up, and while I didn’t know if I could fully articulate it, I was pretty sure I’d come to an answer. “Think about it. What it would be like being with him, when his father—who has made it clear he doesn’t like me—has that much power over him? What kind of a life could we ever have together? And okay, I’m not saying we’re going to be together forever, but if that’s not at least a possibility, then there’s no reason to be waiting for him at all, so I have to consider what that would be like. Because Scott’s proven who will win whenever an altercation comes up. He’s proven whose opinion matters most, and it’s not mine. It’s not even his own. So who would I be dating? Scott or the person Scott’s father wants him to be? Is that something I could live with? It probably doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Oh, no. It makes perfect sense. And while I can’t say whether or not it’s something you can live with, I can tell you that I couldn’t. I...can’t.”

  It was my turn to be confused. “You can’t live with me in that kind of relationship?”

  “I can’t live in that kind of relationship. I know that from experience.”

  I shifted so I could better stare at her profile without craning my neck. “Teyana, are you holding out on me? Do you have some similar past relationship story that you haven’t shared?”

  “Not past. But yeah. Real similar.” She bit her lip and looked up at me, her eyes filled with guilt.

  “Hold up. What? You’re currently dating someone that I don’t know about? For how long?” Unless it was someone she’d started dating in the last six days, I was going to be pretty hurt about her withholding.

  “Off and on about…” She paused, and I couldn’t decide if she was counting or getting the nerve to say. “Three years.”

  Definitely getting the nerve to say.

  “Oh my God, what? You’ve had an off-and-on relationship for, uh, basically the whole time you’ve had POTS—”

  “A little after my diagnosis, actually.”

  “And you’re only just now telling me?” She certainly knew how to distract me from my misery. “Do I know him?”

  “You do. Know her.”

  I sat stunned for a beat. Then another. “Okay, uh, what? You’re into women too? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. You know I’ve always been supportive of whomever Kendra was dating, and she’s always gone back and forth, and oh my fucking God.” I knew it without her confirmation. A woman that we both knew, a woman she’d known for at least three years, a woman she would have had a hard time admitting to being with. “You’re in an on-again, off-again relationship with Kendra?!”

  “I know, I know. I should have told you.” She repositioned herself so she was facing me.

  “Why the fuck didn’t you?”

  “We were afraid of how you’d react. Or that it would complicate your working relationship. Or I don’t know. Our reasons changed all the time, and every time I was about to tell you, we’d end up breaking up, and then there was nothing to tell.”

  I was speechless. Not because I didn’t have anything to say, but because I had so much to say and had no idea where to start, and on top of that I had no idea what to feel, and I had a shitload of feelings going on, not the least of which was feeling utterly betrayed.

  As always, Teyana seemed to sense my primary emotion. “Tess, I swear, keeping it secret wasn’t about you. Not really.”

  “You literally just said it was.” But my mind was racing too fast to stay focused on that detail. “She abandoned you when you got sick, Tey.”

  “No, she didn’t. It just seemed like it to you.”

  “But you hate her!”

  “I don’t.”

  “You act like you hate her! You encourage me all the time to hate on her.”

  “Because I love her!”

  That didn’t make any kind of sense.

 
Except.

  When I gave myself a beat, it did. It made perfect sense. Especially when I remembered that she’d just hinted to being in a relationship where a parent’s opinion mattered too much and what Kendra had said when she’d disappeared the last time, that she was trying to decide between two lovers.

  Oh fuck.

  And now my heart hurt for Teyana as much as it hurt for Scott because I understood the situation perfectly. “She chose Scott. Over you. Because of her parents?” Her religiously active parents who’d never known about her affairs with women. “Because they’d freak out if she came out with a woman.”

  “A black woman with a debilitating disease, no less.”

  “Oh, Tey. I’m sorry.”

  She waved away my concern, though her eyes were as watery as mine. “You’d think I’d be used to it by now. Every time I’d think we were making progress or that she’d finally say fuck all to her parents and just be with me, they’d come sweeping in with some new...thing. An event they wanted her to host. Or a charity they wanted her to find sponsorship for, and she’d end up saying it wasn’t the right time. So we’d break up. Then I’d miss her, and I’d go running back. Or she would. Wash, rinse, repeat.”

  I shook my head, not able to bear the discrimination and manipulation on behalf of my friend. “You’re too good for her. She’s selfish and self-centered.”

  “She’s really not. If you knew all the things she’s done for me behind your back—”

  I cut her off, not wanting to hear her defend someone who’d hurt her so deeply. “She’s a coward, at least. Not able to stand up to her parents? She’s a grown woman.”

  “Scott’s a coward,” she countered.

  “He is,” I admitted. “And I love him anyway. And you love her anyway.”

  “Yep.”

  It was a lot.

  A lot to absorb, a lot to take in. A lot to feel. I was still extremely hurt about being kept in the dark. And mad about, well, a lot of shit. But mostly I was just sad. Sad for all of us. For me and Tey, definitely, but also for Scott and Kendra and the stupid bind their parents had around them.