by Julia Kent
“Your mom?”
“Sometimes.”
“You see her? In ghost form?”
“No. Nothing like that. I do not embrace the woo. You know that.”
“Then what?”
“It’s more that this place is a time capsule.”
“A time capsule? Are you regretting buying it?”
“No. Not one bit.” I kiss her temple. Nothing destabilizing about her.
“You know, when I was out with Carol and Josh for tapas and sangria tonight, they brought up our honeymoon.”
“What honeymoon?”
“Exactly.”
“You want a honeymoon? Now? We’ve been married for two and a half years.”
“Honeymoons don’t have expiration dates, Andrew.”
“Why not just ask for a vacation?”
“You have a problem with the term ‘honeymoon’?”
“Fine. A honeymoon. What would we do?”
She reaches between my legs. “More of what we just did.”
“I could get behind that initiative. Where? How long?”
“I don’t know where, but I know how long.” She strokes me.
“Hah. I mean how long do you want the honeymoon to be? Three days? I might be able to swing four or five.”
“Two weeks.”
“Two weeks!” I laugh. I realize I am not supposed to laugh when Amanda abruptly stands up, pulling the warm down comforter with her, and plants that beautiful ass of hers on the sofa.
Uh oh.
“I mean, honey,” I say, smoothing this over. “Two weeks for a CEO of a Fortune 500 company is like a year.”
“Am I not worth it?”
I have stepped on a landmine, complete with trip wires, but I am wearing a blindfold and earplugs.
“Of course you’re worth it! But finding two weeks without business trips or meetings in the time frame is impossible.”
“Impossible?” She goes silent. It’s not a sad kind of silence. It’s the kind where the temperature rises. It’s a low-pressure system converging with a wind movement in which warm, moist air below runs into cool, dry air above, building an F5 tornado or a category 5 hurricane.
Amanda is a great name for a hurricane.
I wait her out. That’s what you do when you’re in a landmine field and essentially blind, deaf, and... male.
“If I had a life-threatening illness, would you do it?” she challenges.
“What?”
“If I had limited time on Earth, would you take two weeks out of your life to spend only with me?”
Her long silence and her strange calmness set off every alarm in me. What have I missed?
“Did you have a doctor’s appointment this week? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong,” she says. “Hypothetically, is there anything that could happen in our life to make you clear two weeks to spend only with me?”
Oh, shit.
She’s got me.
“When you put it that way...”
“Then it’s not impossible. It’s just that you aren’t making me a priority.”
A flood of business books flip inside my mind, like butterflies made of hardcover print stock. Essentialism. Rocket Fuel. Purple Cow. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. The basic premise of all of them distills down to one singular concept:
Your life is what you make it. Priorities are a reflection of your inner state.
Arguing with her could be so easy right now, as her eyes reflect the blaze of the fire, potentiating what is already aglow. Debating the merits of her point could take the sick feeling inside me and make it feel more righteous, less intense. I could easily pivot away from the truth of her words and do what most people do: find a way to stay on the same path I’ve been on for years, without disrupting the world for her request.
I’m not most people.
“What would a two-week honeymoon look like?” I ask her, opening the conversation without making a promise.
Surprise trickles into her face, a quick blink, a nanosecond of tight confusion, the twitch of one corner of her mouth. “What do you mean?”
“Pitch me.”
“Pitch you?”
“You know how to pitch. Pitch your proposal to me.”
“That’s not how this works! I’m not bidding for your honeymoon contract.”
I lean back, plumping a pillow under my head, giving her a full, unfettered view of all of me. “Maybe you are.”
A pillow whaps my junk with a surprising thump that makes my ass clench.
“I am your wife! I don’t bid for your time. Or, at least, I shouldn’t have to.” Those last three words come out like Amanda turned into a demon. “You should pitch me!”
“I already proposed to you.” I look at her engagement ring, now paired with a wedding ring. “Remember?”
“How could I forget? You proposed in a garden shed at a rooftop restaurant while we hid from people. Of course I remember.”
“You taste better when I kiss you in closets.”
“Maybe I should propose we honeymoon in a closet for two weeks, then.”
“As long as there’s water, food, and chafing cream, I’m all for it.” Before she can hit my crotch with another pillow, I turn, reaching for the nearly empty bottle of wine, and pour myself some more. Amanda might pelt me with cushions out of anger, but she’d never dare to tip over a glass of good wine.
That would be a waste.
The look on her face when we make eye contact is disarming. “What about two weeks like that?”
“I was joking. Obviously.”
“Not in a closet. But... here.”
“Here? In the house?”
“Yes. A staycation.”
“What the hell is a ‘staycation’?”
“It’s where you don’t go to work and just stay home.”
“Why would anyone do that?”
“It’s for people who don’t have the money or don’t want to spend the money going away on vacation.”
“Who needs to do..? Oh. Right. People without money.”
“But not just people without money. People like us! Andrew, what if we take two weeks and stay at home remodeling?”
“Remodeling? I don’t have those kinds of skills. I hire people for that!”
“We have to make decisions. Clear out whatever we don’t want. Renovate. Make this house ours.”
“You are a mind reader. I was just thinking that, earlier.”
“Bullshitter. You’re shining me on.”
“I don’t bullshit you, Amanda. When you offered me a bitcoin for my thoughts, I was thinking about how we need to make this place ours. Put our own stamp on it.” The stem of the wineglass feels heavy in my hand.
“You said you were thinking about ghosts.”
“They’re related.”
“So you’ll really do it? Give me two weeks of one hundred percent of your time? And we can make design decisions and invest our attention in making this estate ours?” Radiant with excitement, she gives me a look that fills me with heat.
Huh.
There comes a time in every marriage when you realize the Right Path is actually the Compromise Path.
“Make you a deal,” I tell her, staring her down with narrowed eyes that are intended to challenge. “You go to Gina and get her to sign off on me being gone for two weeks. If you can get that, it’s a deal.”
“You expect me to get permission from your assistant for you to have two weeks off? What kind of CEO are you? You own the company.”
“I own much of the company, but the company owns most of my time. Gina is the manager of all that. You get her onboard and we’ll do it.”
“If that’s the case, you’re not really the boss. Gina is.”
“You’re starting to understand.”
“You’re serious!”
“Gina is as good at managing my work life as Grace ever was for Dad and Declan.”
She gasps, the sound so abrupt that she starts co
ughing, hard. “She’s that good now?”
“Yes.”
Determined eyes meet mine. Challenge accepted. I reach for her hand and shake it. “I hope you succeed.”
“You assume I won’t, though.”
“I assume nothing other than this truth: we’re about to go for round two.”
“You sure you’ve got the time for that, Mr. McCormick? Your life is tightly scheduled.”
“I’ll squeeze in you.”
“Don’t you mean ‘squeeze you in’?”
“No.”
And I show her exactly what I mean.
Chapter 2
Amanda
“Thanks so much, Gina, for meeting me for lunch,” I say, glad there’s no wind on this fine August day. Consuela–Connie to Andrew and me–has been kind enough to offer lunch once a week for those of us who are addicted to her inspiring food, and I dangle a big, flame-roasted and perfectly seasoned carrot in my husband’s executive assistant’s face: Lunch at one of the most exclusive restaurants in town.
No. Not one of them.
The most exclusive.
“Thank you for bringing me here? This place is great?” Gina talks as if every sentence out of her mouth is a question. It leaves me with my eyebrows perpetually jacked up, like my eyes are getting the brake pads replaced. Nerve endings in my ears connect to my brain, forming expectations that my skin and muscles have to manage. We are primed to hear questions and to respond. Not to hear statements phrased as questions and absorb.
Connie comes over to our table with a sampling tray of marinated olives, mushrooms, cheese, and almonds, with a little fig cake that makes me want to move to Spain. “Amanda! And you are Gina, yes?” She gives Gina her hand, the gesture proper and pleasant. “I believe I have spoken with you on the phone regarding Andrew, but we have never met in person.”
“Nice to meet you?” Gina’s grin is spectacular.
Connie blinks exactly once, touches my shoulder, and retreats. “Ladies, I leave you to your talk. If I have learned anything in my years of business, it is this: the combined energy of a man’s assistant and his wife is greater than the sum of his board of directors. All power to you.” She winks. “But you will not need it.”
The expression on Gina’s face makes it clear she doesn’t quite get Connie’s joke/not joke.
“This wine is amazing? It’s really okay to drink during lunch? We’re working?”
“It’s a working lunch,” I say. “Drink up. It’s on Anterdec, too.”
“But that’s a violation of human resources policy,” she says, deadpan. It takes me a couple of second to realize she’s joking. It’s the inflection. As she sips more wine, she laughs.
I pick up an olive and start eating, pairing it with an almond at the last second. “Gina, you know why I’ve brought you here, right?”
“To fire me?” Her laugh makes it clear she knows Andrew couldn’t function without her.
“God, no!” I gush, going along with it. “He really can’t function without you.”
“Isn’t that great?” she says, swigging more wine, eyeing an olive like it’s a tiny incendiary device.
“You’ve got all the job security you could ever want,” I say, buttering her up.
She bursts into tears.
Um... that wasn’t part of the plan.
“I–I’m sorry?” Great. Now I’m saying my sentences as questions.
“You’re sorry? I’m the one who’s sorry?” She is red faced, her nose flaring, her teeth gnashing together. “I don’t want job security!”
Uh oh. A declaration. She is mad.
“You don’t?”
“I want a commitment!”
“From... Andrew?” A beat passes. My dread skyrockets.
“From Louis!”
“Who is Louis?” Dread pours out of me via a huge, relieved sigh.
“My boyfriend? The one I bring to all the company parties?”
I am drawing a total blank.
“He’s an accountant? Wears a blue suit?”
“Two hundred men who work at Anterdec wear blue suits every day, Gina. You need to be more specific.”
“He has a service parrot.”
Oh. My. God. I know who she means. Josh, Carol, and I spent an entire visit to the tapas bar doing alcohol-infused imitations of him.
“What is a service parrot?”
“Blackbeard is his emotional support bird. Louis has anxiety and–”
She continues speaking, but I don’t hear her. My brain short circuited somewhere in that explanation.
“–and then he said that monogamy is a social construct designed by the rich to control the poor and middle classes, and I started to realize he’s just avoiding the proposal?” Gina finishes, sniffing.
Connie walks out with two tiramisu cupcakes, putting the plate between us. She pats Gina’s shoulder and says, “Eat dessert first. And Louis sounds like a cheater. Cheaters don’t change.”
“But then I wasted all this time trying to make myself fit into his world?” she wails.
The look Connie and I share could cut a diamond with exquisite precision.
“Don’t waste another second of your precious time, my dear,” Connie says, pulling a chair from another table over to ours, inserting herself between Gina and me with a resigned, worldly sigh that I could live three hundred years and never possess. “He is beneath you.”
“How did you know he prefers the woman on top?”
Connie’s blink speaks a thousand words in six languages.
“Gina,” I say, pausing to drink half my glass of Artadi Rioja. “You know the best way to get over a jerk?”
Connie hands her a full glass of wine.
“You throw yourself into your job,” I tell her, working this angle so hard, I’m basically a human protractor. “Spend all your time really working on your career. Show guys like Louis they’re not the center of the universe.”
“Yeah?” she sniffs in between hearty mouthfuls of wine.
“Yeah!” My overly enthusiastic reply gets me a gimlet eye from Connie, who delicately sips her red wine without leaving even one tiny smear of red lipstick on the rim of her glass.
How does she do that? Is this something they teach teenage girls in Spain? Or is it handed down coven to coven?
“Gina,” Connie interjects. Her eyebrows are perfect, hair pulled back in a simple ponytail held with a strip of red silk fabric. “Amanda is correct.”
“I am?”
“She is?”
A sage nod seals the deal. “You need, in fact, to get rid of as many men in your life as possible.”
“I do?”
“She does?”
“Yes.” Connie’s eyes twinkle. She looks like a gemstone, a witchy crystal infused with energy more powerful than words. A warm, creepy feeling takes over my limbs. It’s not the wine.
It’s the wise woman before me.
“Andrew is an impediment to your perfect self,” Connie says, slowly, hypnotically swirling the wine left in her glass.
“Andrew? What does Andrew have to do with me and Louis?”
“He is a man, is he not?”
“Yes? But he’s my boss?”
“And my husband,” I add, clearing my throat for reasons I don’t quite understand, but that feel like a perverted form of jealousy.
Connie silences me with a look that reminds me of harvest moons in dreams where they chase me and swallow me whole.
“Surround yourself with feminine energy. The divinity of womanhood. You need cooperation. Support. Patience. Joy. Men are nothing but competition.”
“You really do know Andrew well, don’t you?” I marvel.
Gina is nodding, her tears slowing. “You’re right? But–how? How do I get rid of all this masculinity in my life?”
“Does Andrew have a vacation planned soon?” Connie asks innocently. I narrow my eyes.
Wait a minute.
“No?” Gina says, pulling out her phone. “Let me
look at his calendar?”
“Andrew never takes vacations. We didn’t even get a honeymoon,” I point out.
Her eyes widening, Connie stares me down, the message clear: Don’t blow this.
How did she know?
“That’s right?” Gina murmurs, eyes glued to her screen. “You didn’t? I asked him about it and he seemed to blow me off?”
“He did?” Connie’s indignant voice is formidable. Why do people with European accents always sound so authoritative? “How rude of him to dismiss your concern for his welfare!”
“Yeah!” Gina’s gone declarative again.
Victory will soon be mine.
“That’s right!” Gina shouts, setting down her phone. “He–he did dismiss me. Like Louis! Like Louis and his crazy threesome argument.”
“Threesome?” I lean in. “That’s what the anti-monogamy speech was about?”
“Yes! Can you believe it?”
“Well,” Connie demurs. “A good threesome is to be treasured.”
My turn to glare at her, my message loud and clear: Don’t blow this!
“I am not a prude?” Gina’s voice goes uncertain. “But he insists Blackbeard needs to be there, and that he isn’t cheating if the woman he’s been sleeping with comes into our relationship?”
“About Andrew and that honeymoon,” I say. Not only have the wheels come off the bus, they’re rolling into traffic and turning logging trucks over.
“His schedule’s fine? Nothing he can’t dump off on other people? Why?”
“Can you clear two weeks of his schedule?”
“Hell, yeah! I’ll get rid of him for two weeks and ask for mentoring from more women in the company. Like you!” She reaches for my hand.
“Um, I would be gone for those two weeks, too, Gina.”
“Oh. Right. Why would you want to spend time around so much masculine energy?” she asks.
Visions of my morning lovemaking session with Andrew flash instantly into my mind. “Oh, um–”
“Because Amanda has a grand estate in Weston that she is now in charge of managing, and it is woefully out of date. Remodeling is a large undertaking, and the effort is so great that she will need time with Andrew to bring the property to a standard befitting a Fortune 500 CEO’s private home.”
I point to Connie. “Yeah. That. That’s why.”
