by JA Huss
Wald glances to the sunroom and says, “No. There are no windows open.”
“But hold on,” Huck says. “Who shut the front door?”
“What are you talking about? I ask.
“I was the last one through,” Huck says. “I left it open because I was gonna get more boxes from the truck, but then…” He looks at Brooke and smiles. “I got sidetracked on Memory Lane.”
“Shit,” I say, looking at Wald. “He’s right. When I came upstairs it was open. I was gonna close it, but… I got sidetracked too.”
Wald grins a little, probably remembering how sidetracked I was, but then frowns. “So…”
“He was listening,” I say. “He heard everything.”
“Shit. He came to the door. Probably heard us,” Huck says.
“He waited,” I say. “Heard us fucking. Hell, maybe he watched? Then he closed the door and pretended to knock.”
“Maybe not,” Brooke says. “I was looking out the window as the sun went down. I didn’t see anyone in the front yard.”
“I mean… look,” Wald says. “There’s no way he didn’t figure out we just fucked, OK? So whatever. We go up to the estate, we act like gentlemen, and we pass their little parental exam. How hard can it be? We can do this.”
“Yeah,” Huck agrees. “So what, anyway? They can’t tell us what we mean to each other. Fuck them.”
“I don’t disagree, Huck. It’s just… this might be my only chance to get to have my daughter in my life without some long, bitter court battle. And all I did today was think about me. And us. And… fuck.” I take a breath. Because I need one. “I really didn’t think about her at all.”
“Everything you did today was about her,” Wald says.
“Uh, no,” I say. “That fucking foursome we just had had absolutely nothing to do with Maisy.”
“It has everything to do with her,” Wald argues.
“How do you figure?” I ask him.
“Because whatever,” Huck says. “Maybe that Parker asshole is right? Maybe we do all need to be there? Maybe this is how it should’ve been from the start.”
“If you and I were gay, Huck, that would probably fly. Or Wald and I. But no one thinks that us with her is normal.”
“I do.” Huck shrugs. “It’s just… whatever.”
“People don’t think that way. You’re not that clueless that you can’t see that.”
“Who cares what they think?” Huck asks.
“They hired psychologists! What the fuck do you think is gonna happen when they start asking us about our living arrangements?”
“So you want us to move out?” Wald says.
“No,” I say. “No.”
“Then what is your point?” Wald asks.
“I… don’t know. Just… I don’t know.” This whole time Brooke has said nothing. So I say, “What do you think? Do you think we should lie?”
“Lie?” she asks, eyebrows raised. “Lie about what? That we like each other?”
“It’s more than that,” I say.
She walks over to the light switch on the wall and flicks it off.
We stand there in the dark, unmoving.
“Of course it’s more than that,” she says. There’s a ruffling of clothing in the darkness and I just barely see her pulling her dress over her head.
She stands there. In almost no light. In just her bra and panties. “We are what we are,” she says. “And we don’t even know what that is yet. But this is our first night in this house. And I want more. I don’t know what more is, but…”
She sighs.
Wald moves towards her. He takes her face in his hands and kisses her quiet. “Come with me,” he says. “I’ll show you what more is.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - BROOKE
Wald takes my hand and leads me towards the basement stairs. I still have my shoes on, and the wedge heels are high, but Wald steadies me as we descend.
“What are we doing?” I ask as we approach the bottom.
“Taking some time.”
“Time to do what?”
“To be with each other.”
“Because we’re all going to be together?” I ask.
“One can hope.”
“Have you guys always—”
“No,” he says, cutting me off. “We have done things before. But Joey was always the holdout.”
We reach the bottom and it’s dark down here too. I don’t know where the lights are, and obviously Wald doesn’t either. But there are lights out in the back yard that must be on an automatic timer that give us just enough to see by.
He leads me over to a couch and sits, pulling me down with him.
“Am I overdressed or underdressed?” I ask.
He laughs. He has a nice laugh. It’s deep and I get the impression he doesn’t do it a lot. So it’s special too. “Doesn’t matter. I’m just gonna tell you a story.”
“Are we making a memory?”
“No,” he says. “Well,” he amends. “Sure. It will be by the time we’re done.”
“OK.”
“Joey and Huck and I met one night in freshman year when we were all rushing the same frat house. You know what rush week is?”
“Sure. I mean, I’ve never been to college but I have an idea.”
“It’s mostly hazing. You have to do things you don’t want to do. And everyone makes fun of you while you’re doing it. But after it’s over, it’s no big deal. ‘You’re in. We’re the same now.’ That kind of thing. So they point to us three, for the simple fact that we are standing next to each other in this line, and they tell us to kiss. All three of us.”
“Fuck,” I say.
“And before that night—and to be honest, a long time after too—this was not something I was into. But I did it. Because I wanted in. And I knew that as long as I did what they told me to, these guys would be my friends.”
“Shared secrets,” I say.
“Exactly. So we kissed. And you know, it wasn’t bad. Fucking Huck. Who the hell wouldn’t want to kiss that dude? And Joey Boston. I knew who he was. But they didn’t just make us kiss. We sucked each other’s dicks too. And we had to make each other come.”
“Shit, I’m sorry.”
“Whatever. Like I said. It’s Huck and Joey. If it was anyone else, I’d probably have had more feelings about it. Maybe even objected. For sure, I would’ve never done it again. But it was them, and it was hot, and we did do it again. And no one forced us to.”
“OK,” I say. “So you’re all bi, then.”
“Sure. We can be bi. We can be gay. Who gives a fuck what they call us? I don’t. We only did it together as a threesome once and then we got a girl to join us. Then Huck dated a cheerleader for a while, and I found a nerdy little math major to play with on a regular basis, and Joey… Joey never did anything with anyone more than once. He was Mr. One-Night Stand.”
He pauses here.
“Except with us. We shared a house by this time and every once in a while he’d bring a girl home and we’d fuck her. It was never a college girl. It was never a friend. It was always some rando he picked up at a bar or wherever. So you, Brooke, are special.”
“How do you figure?”
“Because you’re not random. And he’s still in.”
“He needs me to—”
“He doesn’t need you. We don’t need you. He could get anything he wants, any time he wants. We all know this.”
“Well, he can’t get Maisy, obviously. That’s why we’re doing this.”
“Is that really why we’re doing this, Brooke?”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s Joey motherfucking Boston. When I say he can get anything he wants, any time he wants, that’s not an exaggeration.”
“So why is he playing along? Why not just take her back?”
“Why do you think?”
“Because he doesn’t want a court battle?”
“Do you really think he gives two fucks about court? Or legal fe
es?”
“Then what is he doing?”
“He’s finally getting used to the idea.”
“What idea?”
“That he loves us.”
I let that revelation sit for a while. I’m not sure how many seconds pass. It might even be minutes before I find the right words. “You want him, don’t you?”
“Always have. Always will.”
“So tell him. You don’t need me.”
“Maybe not.”
Which makes me huff. Because this whole plot was starting to grow on me. Having them is nice. And if this is the more he was referring to—that I am just some device to… make Joey go along—then…
“But you’re here. And I like you.”
“Good to know, I guess.”
“And Huck likes you, and Joey likes you too, and we already know that we like each other. But Joey refuses to let anyone inside that Boston Brother wall they’ve built around each other.”
“I don’t really understand what your point is, Wald.”
He turns his body towards mine. His fingertips land on my shoulders and drag the straps of my bra down my arms. Then his hands brush the cups down my breasts until they’re exposed.
He squeezes them with both hands as he leans in to kiss my mouth. And in that kiss he tells me his point.
“My point is,” he whispers, “he’s angry. He’s sad. He’s lost. He’s always been these things. Ever since the first day we met. And I don’t like it. I want to fix it. I want him to be happy. No,” he pauses. “No, that’s not it. It’s so much more than that. I want him to realize he’s already happy.”
I close my eyes. Our lips are fluttering against each other as our kiss turns into these words, and these words turn into an admission.
“Help me, Brooke.”
“Help you do what?” I ask.
“Help me make him see that he’s right where he needs to be.”
“What about me?” I ask.
“What do you want?” he asks. He’s unclasped my bra now. And he’s sliding it down my arms. “Tell me what you want.”
“I don’t think it works that way.”
“I think it does. You should listen to me. I’m kinda smart.”
A small laugh slips past my lips.
“No,” I say. Because I know I’m right about this. Doesn’t matter how smart he is. “That’s not how friends work.”
“Friends,” he says, lowering his mouth to my nipple. He bites it. Not hard, but enough to make me hiss. “We’re way past friends, Brooke. We’re partners. So tell me… what do you need? How can I help you?”
“Love doesn’t work that way,” I say, my fingers threading into his hair, my heart beating hard and my breath coming out in ragged fits.
“You want me to love you?” he asks.
“I want you to feel whatever it is you feel.”
“But you want that to be love?”
I hold my breath as I nod. And then I whisper, “I need it.” And suddenly my eyes are filling up with tears. “I need someone to tell me to love them. I need to take someone’s place again. I need… I need…”
“You need to love me,” he says.
“No,” I say. “Yes. I don’t know what I need.”
“You want me to tell you what you need?” he asks.
And I can’t answer that. There is no way to answer that. Because no answer makes sense. It’s not logical.
“You want me to tell you who you are?” he adds.
I just look at him.
“OK,” he says. “OK. I’ll tell you who you are. You, and me, and Huck, and Joey… we met yesterday at Bright Berry Beach Cosmetics. We were looking to hire an actress to pretend to be Joey’s long-time girlfriend and you mistakenly got swept up in our scheme. But funny how fate happens when you least expect it. Because we’re together now and it’s not even fake. And if you only need to know one thing, Brooke, know this. We are one hundred percent on your side. And you’re one hundred percent on our side. And… and we’re going to get this little girl back and be a family.”
He whispers that last part.
“Do you hear me? That’s who you are. That’s what I want. And if you don’t know what you want, then I’m telling you, this is what you want.”
I know this is wrong. I know this isn’t real. I know that I’m just falling back into the pattern I was taught when I was sixteen. When I was told by a complete stranger that I was his now. That I was his daughter, and we were a team, and we would travel places, and live places, and do things in these places. And I would love it.
And I did. I loved it. I loved him. And I miss him so fucking much it feels like I’m cracked in half. And that’s fine, I guess. Because when I think too hard about my life it makes sense.
We had this secret between us. Miklos and I. And that secret was our bond and even though I told Joey Boston this morning that secret bonds are the best and that’s what I wanted from him… they’re not.
Real bonds are the best. And real bonds can’t be bought, or stolen, or lied about.
I don’t know how to do real bonds. That first night I was kidnapped and Miklos was explaining his offer—which, looking back, makes no sense at all. Because what did he want from me? What? What could I have possibly have given him?
Doesn’t matter I guess. When he told me to keep the secret I knew I would. I knew I’d never tell. I knew I’d be loyal till the end.
I know I’m sick. I’ve always known. And I didn’t care then and I don’t care now.
I know these three men who hired me to lie and be their fake lover just so Joey could get his daughter back are feeding into that sickness inside me.
And Wald knows this too. That’s why he brought me down here.
It wasn’t to kiss me. Or take off my bra. Or squeeze my breasts or whatever comes next.
He wanted me alone so he could twist up my head and make me admit that I will do anything—that I will be anything they want.
As long as they are loyal to me, I will be loyal to them.
“Now lie back and open your legs,” Wald says. “Because I want more too.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - JOEY
I watch Wald take Brooke downstairs. Then I sit on the other set of stairs that lead up and hold my head in my hands. “It’s not gonna work,” I say. “It’s never going to work.”
“It’ll work,” Huck says, taking a seat next to me. The two of us barely fit on these steps, we’re so wide.
“No,” I say, rubbing my face. “They’re gonna see right through me.”
“So? What will they see?”
I look up. Find his face in the darkness. Wonder why everything always happens in the darkness. “They’re gonna see me,” I say. “That’s what they’ll see.”
“And?”
“It’s… kinda ugly.”
“Dude.” He laughs.
“I’m not talking about that and you know it. I’m not talking about how I look on the outside. Or on paper. I’m taking about who I am.”
“You don’t even know who you are,” Huck says.
A huff of a laugh escapes past my lips. “True. But I have a pretty good idea.”
I lean back against the staircase and Huck props his elbows on his knees and rests his chin on his fists.
Because he knows.
This man right here knows me better than anyone. Better than my brothers. Better than myself.
He runs his fingers through his hair so it’s sticking up and making shadows on the wall from some unknown light source. Probably from outside.
But I like the way he looks right now.
No shirt. All skin. Still smelling like sex.
“Remember that time we took Brooke to the Grand Canyon?”
“What?”
“She was wearing that white dress. And she was so tan, remember? Because we were playing a lot of golf that summer.”
“What?” And this time it’s a laugh.
“You know, for being such a rich asshole, you
really suck at golf. Not much better at tennis, either.”
“Huck,” I say.
“But Brooke is real good at it. Remember how surprised we were?”
“I don’t have room in my brain for this shit right now, OK? I get it. I appreciate what you’re doing. But—”
“Remember that time we bought you in the charity auction?”
“Huck—”
“I never really understood why you did that. But I kinda get it now. You wanted to stay connected to your brothers. To this city. To those people you used to know. And that lake house. I think you miss them. I think… I think you want them. And you use Wald and me as replacements.”
“That’s not true and you fuckin’ know it.”
“I don’t mean it that way. I just mean… somewhere along the way you three lost each other and maybe you know how that happened and maybe you don’t. But you’ve been trying to fix it for a long time now, Joey. And I’m not telling you that what I think is true, OK? I’m just gonna say this and let you think about it. Some things are worth saving and some things aren’t. And maybe, if you’ve spent the past sixteen years trying to put it all back together and failed, then maybe it’s just time to move on, you know?”
He pauses to see if I’ll say anything. But I don’t.
“How much did you cost us?”
“Dude—”
“That night at the auction. How much did we pay for you?”
I’m about to tell him to stop. This isn’t helping.
But he says, “I remember your face when you first noticed Brooke in the audience.”
I shake my head and suck in a deep breath.
“You were confused. Then you smiled. Then you settled into the idea and we made it a game. So how much was it? Because I can’t remember.”
I’m still thinking about what he said. About whether or not it’s true. Have I been compensating for losing Jesse and Johnny?
“Focus,” Huck says. “How. Much.”
“Two million.”
“That’s right,” he says. “Two million fucking dollars to take home what was already ours. But you know what?”
“What?” I ask. Dropping my head a little as I side-eye him.
He leans in. His hand wraps around the back of my neck. His lips come up to mine and I kiss him before he can kiss me. He says, “You were worth it.”
