One Rule

by Ava Moreau

  “Come on, what happened at Jordan & Huntley wasn’t your fault. They’re a bunch of sexist pigs. We walked in there with a great idea, we were going to save them a ton of money on fines, but all they saw were girls, and to men like that, girls don’t know anything about business. That’s not our problem, that’s theirs.”

  “It’s going to be our problem if we can’t convince anyone that our business makes sense. What if they’re all like that? What if we just go broke? And…and that’s another part of why I’m so sad, Kaylee. I wanted the guys up here with me, but they were too proud to come and be supported by me for a while.”

  “Ugh, men.”

  “But…but it’s okay. I may not have my boyfriends, but at least I still have my five-year plan, right? Nose back to the grindstone. I just have to get back on track, and focus on what really matters.”

  It took a second to realize Kaylee hadn’t responded. When Becca looked up, Kaylee was shaking her head.

  “What?” she asked her friend.

  “Do you realize what you just did?” said Kaylee.

  “Comforted myself with practicality?”

  “No, you just hid from your own feelings. It was scary to see. One minute you were in tears, the next you were ducked down behind this five-year plan you’re always talking about.”

  “I’m not hiding,” said Becca, feeling a little defensive. “I had the plan way before I met the guys. Rule one—”

  “Yeah, I know rule one. Becca, I love you like you were my own sister, but you’ve got to drop that shit.”

  Becca gasped. Kaylee had never spoken about the five-year plan like that.

  “You are in the prime of your life,” said Kaylee, “and you’re avoiding it. You’re acting like a hermit. You don’t go out, you don’t have fun, you’re squandering all your opportunities, all in the name of a plan. And now here you are, trying to comfort yourself that you’ve lost not one but two guys—which I still can’t even wrap my head around!—by getting back to the plan!”

  “It’s my dream, Kaylee!”

  “It’s not a dream, it’s a trap! Every time you get close to feeling anything, you shut it down in favor of the plan. Take your hometown for instance. Lots of people move away from home. Tons of folks talk about how they didn’t like their town much. But you’re the only person I know that has no nostalgia whatsoever, like nothing good ever happened to you back in Myers Lake. Which doesn’t make sense, because it’s not like you have some dark traumatic past.”

  Becca shrugged. She really didn’t like where this was going…and yet she couldn’t exactly disagree with Kaylee. “What’s your point?”

  “My point is, I think you avoid emotion. I think it scares you. I think you are a deeply passionate individual, and that fact terrifies you. You’re scared you’re going to get swept away on a tidal wave of emotion, and so you try to shut it all down, you try to be practical and cold. But you’re not a cold person. You want to be, but you can’t be. You don’t know how. You spend all this time lying to yourself, and it breaks my heart, Becca. Why are you sitting there crying about these guys, when you could be with them? Did you seriously break up because they wouldn’t come up here? Or was it because you were afraid of how that much love would fit into your boring, constricted real life?”

  Becca picked up her glass again, and drained it. She gestured for Kaylee to fill it up again. She was going to need reinforcements, if this was the way the conversation was going to go.

  “You know what happens to people who feel things?” Becca asked her friend. “They get hurt. All the time, all over the world, you see people getting hurt. They open their hearts, they show up vulnerable, and pow! I mean, think about the business, thing about the way they turned us down, do you really want to sit there and feel that? The pain, the humiliation, the anger?”

  “Fuck yes I want to feel it! Bring it on! Anger lets me know I was in the right, that we slayed that presentation and there was no reason in the world for them to turn us down. Pain drives me forward, it motivates me to do even better on the next presentation. But I’m not fucking humiliated. I’m pissed and I’m angry, but it makes me sit here and wonder what we need to do next time. Like, if they’re only going to see us as a couple of helpless gals, maybe we should hire a guy to be our damn puppet, to sit around and glower manfully at everybody so these assholes will think all the good ideas came from him.”

  That made Becca laugh. “Oh god, that would be so funny. Please meet our business partner, Manly Manderson.”

  “It’s so stupid,” said Kaylee, “but you know it would work. These CEOs are morons, they think of themselves as being so independent and dynamic, but seriously, all they want is a big man to pat them on the back and tell them they’re making the right decision.”

  “I know, it’s awful! Jack and Trent—my two guys—would’ve been so perfect for that, too, because one has this really brooding look, like he’s always thinking really deeply about what you just said, and the other is just this huge bundle of man-confidence. That would’ve been so funny, if they’d been there at the presentation…”

  The two friends stared at each other.

  “Um,” began Kaylee.

  “No, no,” said Becca. “It couldn’t possibly work.”

  “I mean, it could.”

  “They wouldn’t go for it. Remember? I broke up with them. Or they broke up with me. Or…something.”

  “But it was because they didn’t have jobs up here? But we could offer them a job.”

  Becca shook her head. “It wouldn’t be a real job, though, they’d just be figureheads, not even that, we’d basically hire them to sit around and look like big strong guys.”

  “Yeah,” said Kaylee, “the one skill you and I don’t have!”

  Becca thought about their fledgling’s company’s finances. “I don’t know…it’s so risky, and I’m not sure they would go for it, and…”

  Then Kaylee grabbed her by the shoulders. “Are you kidding me? It solves both our problems. We ought to at least give it a shot. It’s so crazy, I can’t even believe I’m thinking it, but we have to try.”

  Finally Becca nodded. “Maybe it’s the wine, or maybe your insanity is rubbing off on me, but…it might work.”

  That’s when she felt it. When she allowed herself to feel it: Hope.

  Could she let that feeling in? Could she let all the feelings in, everything that scared her, everything that threatened to capsize her? Could she let herself be overwhelmed by her emotions, and find herself on the other side, surviving?

  Excitement, hope, a deep, hungry desire to see the boys again. She could feel all these things. She could stop hiding behind the five-year plan.

  What had the plan gotten her, anyway? A tiny apartment devoid of personality? A life of solitude, cut off from friends and love?

  Ever since she was a teenager, she’d thought she had to choose between the narrow life Myers Lake had offered, and her picture of herself as a successful businesswoman in Corinth…which in some ways, was an even narrower life. That dream had been so important to her, that she’d cut off all those threads of emotion that connected her to the world of her past…and to her own heart.

  But she couldn’t cut them off any longer. Her time with Jack and Trent had woven those threads together, had connected her back to her own life.

  What would the five-year plan look like, if you included passion, and love, and living life to its fullest now, instead of waiting until later for all the good things in life?

  She had to find out.

  “This is either the worst idea we’ve ever had,” she told Kaylee…

  “Or the best,” finished her friend.

  27

  Sometimes no matter how hard you try to push your body, your body just says no. It makes for a damn disappointing early-morning workout. Trent set the dumbbells down and looked over at Jack, who shrugged.

  “You’re not into it either?” asked Jack.

  Trent sighed. “I can’t focus.”


  “I thought we could work through some shit in here,” said Jack, rubbing his bicep, “but yeah, it’s just not happening today. She weakened us when she left.”

  Trent grabbed his towel and headed to the locker room. “I don’t even want to think about it. I’ve never felt so damn broken by a woman before.”

  “You’re not the only one.” In the locker room, Jack pulled off his shirt, and slung it into his bag.

  It was so strange. When Becca had been around, everything seemed to sparkle with potential. Jack’s body had a whole different meaning for Trent, when she was here. But now? Suddenly that broad chest and thick arms, that trail of muscle leading down into his shorts…it was just Jack, just his friend. Not someone he wanted to sleep with. It was like she’d taken the magic away.

  He knew Jack felt the same way. There had been this physical distance between them, since Becca left. Not just physical. It was hard to talk to one another. Which sucked, because they were best friends and always had been. They should be able to talk about anything together. But the loss of Becca was just too deep.

  Trent stripped down. All he’d managed to do was get himself sweaty, without the endorphin rush of a really good workout. “I mean, it’ll feel better eventually, right? Things will get back to normal someday?”

  Jack tugged off his shoes, then slipped his shorts off, exposing his heavy, hanging cock. “Hell if I know. I’m going right back to my fucking celibacy, man. If I can’t have Becca, I’ll just turn into a goddamn hermit, I guess.”

  “Yeah, that’s healthy.”

  Jack shrugged. “I guess I don’t care about being healthy right now. I really loved her, man.”

  “I did too. I do, too. Still do. Damn. I can’t sleep, can’t eat, can’t work out.”

  “We’re in bad shape.”

  They stepped into the shower stalls.

  Even blazing hot water couldn’t wash the tension out of Trent’s shoulders. Damn it man, pull yourself together. He’d been trying to give himself pep talks, trying to push himself to feel less about what had happened between the three of them. Hell, it’d make a good story someday, wouldn’t it, that time he’d gotten into a threesome with a hot girl he never saw again?

  If that’s all it was, then it wouldn’t hurt this bad.

  Suddenly his shower curtain was opened, and there stood Jack, dripping wet and still completely bare. “You know what the fucking problem is?”

  “You’re letting all the damn heat out, close that up.”

  He expected Jack to go back to his own shower…but no, Jack came into Trent’s stall and closed the curtain behind him. For a horrified split-second, Trent thought Jack wanted to fuck. Not that I would turn him down, not at all, except I’m too heart-achey to do it…and besides, I don’t think the gym would like us turning their shower into a fuck-stall.

  But no, Jack just wanted to talk, awkward as it was right this second. “The problem is, we’re sitting here doing nothing.”

  “Well, I’m doing something. I’m taking a shower.”

  “You know what I mean. We let Becca walk out of our lives…and that was stupid.”

  “Of course it was, I just don’t know what else we could do.”

  “We could have figured something out. We should never have let her get away without working through it. We should—”

  “Dude, I agree with you,” said Trent, working some shampoo into his hair. “But after all, you were the one—”

  “I know, I know. I started all the trouble. I get that. But I’m saying I was wrong. I miss her, Trent. She was everything to me, and I can’t stand it. I want to fucking punch things all the time now.”

  Trent rinsed out his hair, his eyes closed, letting the water fall over his face. “I feel the same way. Not punching things. For me it’s worse, I just want to crawl in bed and never come out. Then I end up hating myself for reacting that way, for not storming the barricades or something.”

  “So you agree.”

  “Wait…I agree with what?”

  “We gotta storm the damn barricades!”

  He blinked back water to focus on his soaking-wet friend. “How?”

  “Fuck, if I knew how, I would’ve said that part already. I just need to know you’re in on it. We gotta win her back, man. Are you in?”

  Trent nodded. “I feel like I’m gonna die without her, of course I’m in.”

  “Damn right you are.” Jack reached out and squeezed Trent’s cock. He gave it a long, slow stroke. Trent shuddered, but realized it was just a gesture from Jack…his friend wasn’t starting anything with him right this second. His cock didn’t know that though, and immediately started firming up.

  “So get out here, dry off, put that thing away,” said Jack, “and let’s figure out how we win Becca back.”

  Sometimes all you needed was someone to remind you of what you really wanted. Why sit around moping, when you could strategize on winning back the woman you loved? Trent had zero idea how they could possibly make it work, moving up to Corinth with no jobs and no prospects, but hell, people did move there, didn’t they? Businesses did exist, didn’t they? And who the hell was more motivated than the two of them to make it work?

  So he was excited when he left the shower and grabbed his towel off the hook. He looked over at his friend, who was vigorously drying off. Jack was paying particular attention to getting his cock and balls dry…perhaps more attention than they actually needed, if his growing hard-on was any indication. But Trent understood that it was a signal to him. We can get back to toying with each other’s cocks, if Becca comes back. She brings us together in a way nothing else in the world does. He suddenly flashed back to when Jack had fucked him at the same time he’d fucked Becca, and he nearly came on the spot.

  I better get my damn clothes on before someone walks in, he thought.

  But before either of them could pull on a stitch of clothing, their phones rang. Both phones, simultaneously. They looked at each other. It was too perfectly timed to be a coincidence.

  Sure enough, when Trent pulled his phone out of his gym bag, the number on the screen was Becca’s.

  “Holy shit,” whispered Jack.

  They answered at the same time.

  “Listen,” said Becca, “I’m at the airport. Come get me. Now.”

  “Wait, how are you calling us both at the same time?” asked Jack.

  “Seriously, I come back to town and the first question you have is about how conference calls work?” Her laughter was like birdsong on the other end of the line. “Trent, do I need to explain modern telephony to you, or can you just hop in a car and get me?”

  “I don’t understand,” began Trent.

  “Tell you what,” she said. “I’m going to give you ten minutes to get here. If you’re not here by then, I’m boarding the next flight to Corinth. Consider this a test of your organizational and improvisational skills.”

  “Like a job interview,” Jack said, a big grin on his face.

  “That’s exactly what this is. Do not ask me another question. Just get here.”

  The lines went dead, and Jack and Trent stared at each other. Both of them were sporting hard cocks by this point, both entirely naked, both stunned into silence.

  “Shit, get your clothes on, we gotta go!” said Jack.

  When they spotted her at the airport, she was sitting near the coffee counter, sipping a drink. Trent stopped short, stunned at her beauty. Before, she’d dressed like a hometown girl in her big shirts and jeans, but this Becca was another creature entirely. Her hair was pulled back into a professional style, with only one strand coiling over her brow. Her lips were colored a sensuous red, her big eyes accentuated and smoky. She wore a business suit that should have been super-formal and yet emphasized her curves, with her crossed leg tapering down to a beautiful foot, with her shoe dangling casually off her toe.

  For a second, he couldn’t even move. Jack was in the same boat. She hadn’t seen them yet, and it was like spotting a b
eautiful wild bird in the forest, one you could only watch as long as you didn’t move, and didn’t make a sound.

  But when she looked down at her phone, they remembered the time-limit, and it was almost up. Jack had raced the truck faster than the old machine was meant to go, slamming into the short-term parking so they could rush in here.

  Finally, when they could wait no longer, they approached her.

  She cocked an eyebrow and looked at them with an appraising glance. “This is how you dress for a job interview?” she asked. “I don’t suppose either of you owns a suit.”

  “Uh…I’ve got the one I wore to my sister’s wedding,” said Jack. He swallowed nervously. She had really caught him off-guard.

  “So what is this?” Trent said, pulling a chair at her table. “Surprise calls, talk about job interviews…?”

  She gave him a stern look, but then couldn’t help but break out into a smile. “How would you like to be the public face of BK Consultants Inc.?”

  “What, me?”

  “Both of you,” she said.

  The guys sat down. “I don’t understand,” said Trent.

  “Simple. I want to hire you. It’ll solve everything. My business will do great, because the mean old bastards I’m trying to land as customers only believe business-talk if it’s spoken by a man. You’ll have those stupid jobs that were such a hold-up in you coming with me. And…and damn it, guys, I love you. Why should we let anything stand in the way of that?”

  Trent looked at Jack, who was nodding eagerly. “We were literally just talking about that,” Trent said. “Trying to figure out how to get you back.”

  “You never lost me…though honestly, it seemed like you weren’t trying very hard to keep me.”

  “I fucking promise you’re never going to hear the end of us,” said Jack. “You’re going to see how hard we try to keep you.”

  Under the table, she ran her toe up his calf. “Are you going to try really hard?”

  But Trent was puzzled. “Look, don’t get me wrong, I love you too, and I want you back. Desperately. But what about your five-year plan? What about you being the face of your own company?”