by JA Huss
“I know what it means. How? How did she eat it?”
“Like this.” I put the Escalade on Super Cruise and let autopilot take over while I illustrate the dainty way Michelle would cut her meat, using only her thumb and index finger. And how, instead of transferring the fork into her dominant hand, like I do, she’d keep it in the same hand she braced it with to cut it and lift it carefully to her mouth. And then she’d bite it playfully free from the tines as if to let you know that the whole process was just a show.
Myrtle laughs at the sight of me emulating an eight-year-old girl eating her supper. I’ll choose to believe that she’s laughing because she can’t believe how goddamn good my impression is rather than because she thinks I look silly. Because—and there’s no way for her to know this, but it’s true—it is a goddamn good impression.
“What else do you remember?” she asks.
“Shit, I don’t know. My memories of her only span probably about six months. Before that I don’t remember anything. Because I was, you know, an infant.”
“Fair.”
“And then, as you’ve already been made aware by my mom, she died. So…” I pause for a moment. I haven’t thought about Michelle in a long time. “I wish I had gotten to know her better, but… ah, well. C’est la vie.”
I take the control of the car back into my hands and turn on the stereo. Que Sera Sera as recorded by Sly and the Family Stone begins playing from my phone through the speakers.
“Well, that’s a coincidence,” I say. And smile.
Feels like she’s relaxing now. I see her legs uncross and slide forward as her ankles hook over one another. She kicks off her shoes. Good. I want her to feel comfortable. I have no interest in torturing her. Got a real ‘been there, done that’ attitude as far as that goes.
“How can you remember all that about your sister?” she asks.
“Whattayou mean?”
“I mean you don’t remember anything. Like, ever.”
“What? That’s not true.”
“Pierce… you couldn’t remember Eden’s name for a month.”
“So?”
“So? She was dating your best friend.”
“Yeah, but he’s my best friend. She isn’t. And I remember his name.”
“So… so, are you saying you only bother to remember things that are important to you, personally?”
I nod. “Yeah. Pretty much. I try to devote as much of my brain power as possible to the things that matter to me, and that doesn’t leave a lot of room for things that don’t.”
“That seems kind of—”
“Hey, what do you care? You’re one of the things that matter to me.”
She gets a coy, sheepish grin. But then she says, “Things?”
“Oh, Jesus, it’s a figure of speech. You’re not a thing. Lighten up.”
“I’m just fucking with you.”
“I know. Me too.” I grin at her and bounce my eyebrows. She giggles. It’s a curious thing to hear her giggle. Giggly is not a quality I ever would’ve assigned to her before, but it seems to fit, somehow. I like it.
This is… surprising. Easy. Unexpectedly so. The little things. The casual conversation. The fact that I put my hand on her back as we left the office and then held her hand in the elevator. All these things seem just about as natural as anything I’ve done in a long time. On the one side, it shouldn’t be a shock. We’ve known each other a long time. But on the other side, we haven’t. And if we’ve learned anything in the last few months, it’s how little we really do know about each other. Hell, if we’ve learned anything in the last few days.
This weekend was just supposed to be… I don’t know what. When I demanded a renegotiation to the wacky contract she dropped on me, I had no idea if this would even come to fruition. I just felt overcome by a need not to lose. Not to give away the farm, as it were. I think maybe I was just swept up in the contract stuff with Derek about the Paris deal.
Ha. I should have let Derek look over the dom/sub paperwork. He’s such a straight shooter. He probably would have said something like, “This part here should put clear limitations on how much spanking she gets to do.”
But this Vail business was intended as a counterattack. A way of showing force. A ploy. A decoy. An empty threat, almost. And now, somehow, it’s turned into an actual date. A bona fide romantic weekend away.
Hell, Eden may have been right. Damn, Andrew may have been right.
I’ve always believed I know who I am.
But in this case, I may not have known what I actually felt. Maybe it took a couple of people who are already in love to see what was going on with me.
I may be falling in love with Myrtle. It’s possible I’ve been in love with her for a while. Why was it so hard for me to see it, I wonder?
I dunno. It may have something to do with the fact that dating all the way back to some of my first memories, what I learned early on was that when you come to care about something, and enjoy it, and attach to it, somehow it always seems to get taken away. My sister. My father. My innocence.
Oh, boo fucking hoo. Poor Pierce.
Hell, it doesn’t take a neuroscientist to figure out that my issues with control, and my issues with intimacy, and my issues with loss, are all pretty inexorably bound up together. Good thing it doesn’t, because I am definitely no neuroscientist. I’m just a guy who owns a men’s magazine and seems to have fallen in love with his former executive assistant without meaning to.
Jesus.
I sound like one of the dopes in Myrtle’s dirty books.
“Pierce?”
“Hm? Sorry? What?”
“I said… did you want to ask me some questions?”
Oh. Right. I did say I wanted to. And I do.
“Oh, yeah, uh, so… Myrtle?”
She waits for more. There isn’t any. That’s it. Finally, she says, “Yeah. That’s my name.”
“I know.” I get a little smirk that I can’t conceal. “What’s that about?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - MYRTLE
It’s a fairly safe question so I’m not nervous about answering it. “My mother,” I say, then stop.
“Yes?” Pierce takes his eyes off the road to look at me, then puts them back where they belong. We’re on I-70 now, climbing that first hill up into the foothills. I always feel like my car doesn’t handle it very well. Like I have to really press my foot down to feel like I’m making progress. And it’s a really steep hill too, so you’re always like… leaning back, like you’re taking off in a plane, wondering if you’re gonna make it up the mountain. Or if you’re me, imagining what happens when a car stalls out and everyone else around you has their foot on the gas too… which never ends well in my imagination.
But he’s got the Escalade on cruise and the engine is taking it all in stride—kinda like Pierce and this whole game I started with him—so that whole Am I gonna make it up this mountain? worry doesn’t seem to be there.
“Her name is Ethel,” I finally say, focusing on the gray clouds ahead. Because we’re almost at the top now.
“So she’s what? Old-fashioned?” And he kinda chuckles.
“I guess. She’s a librarian so—”
“She is not!” He laughs.
“She is.” Then I sigh. “She one hundred percent is.”
“Like… stereotypical?”
“Yup.”
“How did that happen? I mean, your father is… well, not stereotypical.”
“You know. The old I-went-to-the-circus-once-and-came-home-pregnant-by-a-lion-tamer thing.”
“Oh, that.” He laughs again. “Happens all the time.” He’s in a pretty good mood. I am too, if I’m being honest. “Did they like… date? Or was it a one-time thing?’
“One-time thing that ended in marriage. That’s how things are done in her family. And my father is a stand-up guy so they gave it a try.”
“How old were you when they separated?”
“Five,” I say.
“So not long after that picture of you sitting on the lion?”
“Yes, that was the last time she ever went on location with him for work.”
“Maybe I’m just not seeing the whole picture here, but… doesn’t sound very romantic.”
“Romance?” I chuckle. “My mother doesn’t even know the meaning of the word. She’s not a Wuthering Heights kind of woman. More of a Scarlet Letter kinda woman.”
“Hmmm. And you?”
I think about this for a moment. “I’m more of a… Tell-Tale Heart kinda woman.”
“I can see that.”
“Maybe a little Frankenstein too.”
“Oh.”
“With some Dracula thrown in.”
He laughs. “Come on.”
“For real. I like horror. My mother was appalled when I was young because I’d sneak books from the library.”
“Like what?”
“You know. Pet Sematary. Carrie. Shit like that.”
“She thinks Stephen King is a hack?”
“Pretty much. But in her defense, she’s just one of those… serious people. Ya know? Not very experimental.”
“Except for that time she banged a lion-tamer on a whim at the circus?”
I guffaw. “Yup. I guess she learned her lesson, right?”
Pierce doesn’t laugh. Just kinda mulls that last outburst over for several seconds. Then he looks at me and says, “Is that what she learned? That you were punishment for behavior outside the norm?”
“I… she… no,” I stammer.
Silence. Then, a few moments later he says, “OK. So then what? You left her house and—”
“No, I grew up in a school.”
He furrows his brow. “Boarding school?”
“Yeah, but she was there. She was the librarian. We lived in an apartment above the library.”
“Huh,” he says. “And then you left for college. I know you went to the University of Colorado. I remember that from your résumé.”
“You… remember my résumé?”
“Of course,” he says. “You were applying to be my number one. I memorized that thing. And I thought it was weird that you left your high school off, but I just assumed it was a regular high school, not worth mentioning. But that’s not true, is it?”
I shake my head. Say, “No,” very quietly.
“What was it called?”
“Philadelphia Friends School,” I whisper.
“Jesus Christ. And you left that off your resume? Why?”
I shrug. I don’t know which answer to give. Because it was for kids like you, not me? And I didn’t go on to Princeton or Yale. Which is true. People see that school on a kid’s résumé and they expect big things out of them. Or I could say, I was only there as the librarian’s weird daughter, my education was part of her benefits package. Also true.
Or I could just tell him the truth.
“I think I get it now,” he says.
“Get what?”
“You left that behind, right? You left her behind and you came to Colorado to be close to your father.”
For a second I don’t understand the pronoun her. Because I mistake it for me, but then quickly realize he’s talking about my mother. “Yes. I… guess you could say that.”
“I did say that, but I want to hear it from you.”
“Fine,” I say, suddenly feeling agitated. I look out the window. We’re at that part of the drive up to Vail where the scenery takes your breath away. Most of the aspens are bare this late in October. The time to really come see them change color was two weeks ago. But there are still some patches of gold on the side of the mountain. And anyway, you don’t need to see the aspens to see the beauty. “I left her behind. I didn’t fit in there. I was the lion-tamer’s daughter. They made fun of me, OK? I was…”
I deflate a little.
“I get it,” he says. And then his hand is on my knee, squeezing. “I totally get it.”
“I don’t want to talk about that part of my life.”
“OK.” He pauses. “So then what happened?”
Jesus Christ. I should’ve seen that coming.
“You left Philadelphia and came to Colorado. And I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say you weren’t the Myrtle I know now when you arrived. So things got better?”
“They… did,” I say, hesitantly.
“So how did you become this woman? The one with the dungeon in her basement?”
I turn in my seat to face him. Because I need to make this very clear. “I’m not her,” I say. “I put the dungeon away years ago. It was all packed up in boxes before you came over. I left her behind too.”
“How many years ago did you put it away?”
“Seven,” I say.
“So… when you came to work for me?”
I sigh and turn my whole body to the window. I feel like I’ve led him down this path and now I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere, defenseless.
“Myrtle?” he asks. Quietly. “What happened when you got to Colorado?”
I glance at him. He’s looking at me. So I avert my gaze and stare at my feet. I suck in a deep breath of air. Slowly, so he can’t hear it. Then on the exhale I say, “Wallflower.”
There is a long silence after that. Both of us pretend to admire the view as we make our way up the last mountain before the tunnel and then the darkness inside feels like it deserves silence. When we come out the other side, heading down into Silverthorne, the sun is shining brightly, reflecting off the snow on the ground, so we both go fishing for our sunglasses. The weather difference from one side of the mountain to the other never ceases to amaze me, but I’m relieved to put the sunglasses on.
“So…” I say, once we’re past the small towns and back in the wilderness, desperate to break our standstill. “Where are we staying this weekend? You have a house here?”
“No. I mean, yes. Le Man does have a house here. But we’re not staying there. It’s for corporate retreats and it feels like it’s for corporate retreats, so… Four Seasons.”
“Nice.”
“Yes. Much better than a corporate cabin. At least we’ll have room service. And they have a nice restaurant. And we can walk into the Village and… do stuff.” He glances at me for the first time since I used my stupid safe word. “Better than being stuck on the side of a mountain, don’t you think?”
I’m trying to figure out if he’d be nervous stuck with me in the corporate cabin or if he just put a lot of thought into this weekend, when the first sign for Vail whips by on the side of the freeway.
It’s an odd town, Vail. Because if you’ve never been here you picture one thing and that’s so not what you get. Oh, it has the view, and the ski slopes, and the golf courses. But it’s a small valley with a lot of high-priced real estate packed between the mountains, which are always towering over you in a pressing way, so the whole place feels claustrophobic in a car. You don’t ever get that mountain feeling until you get out and walk around. And if you don’t know your way around Vail, it’s hopeless. Because there are many narrow, winding streets and no large, gaudy signs announcing entrances to anything, and all the buildings seem to run together. But Pierce has obviously been up here many times because he knows where the Four Seasons is, even though you can’t see the small, unobtrusive sign until you’re turning in to the valet.
We walk into the lobby together. We approach the desk together. We are led up to the suite together. We do everything together. But I can’t shake the feeling that I’m not in charge anymore.
After he tips the bellman and closes the door, he turns to face me. “So…”
“So,” I say, turning away and walking through the cozy living room and over to the window. There’s a nice view of Vail Mountain.
“So,” he says. And somehow he’s right behind me.
“What do you think you’re going to get out of this, Pierce?” I ask. My tone is slightly defensive. Maybe even a little accusatory. I turn to face him. Because I’m not a coward and
I feel like my vulnerable moment back in the car is giving him the wrong impression of me. “Because there’s only one bed in here.”
He winces a little. No playful eyebrow lift for this question, that’s for sure. He looks very nice today, I decide. This is a suit he wears, but not all the time. It’s not in the normal rotation. He’s worn it maybe three times, and all of those times have been for evening functions. So why today? Why this suit on this day?
“What do you want?” I ask.
“Just… you.”
“Me? How? Me as… your girlfriend? Your assistant? Your VP? Your friend? Which of these versions of me are you after?”
“All of them?” he asks, doubtfully.
“You can’t have all of them,” I say, crossing my arms as I quickly run that list back in my head. Because I said girlfriend and he didn’t deny it.
“Why not?”
“Well, that’s a typical reply, I suppose. From you. Because getting what you want is typical too.”
“Too rich,” he says.
“What?”
“That’s another one of my toos. Too rich.”
“Can a person be too rich?” I ask.
He shrugs, walks over to the bar on the far side of the living room, and says, “Would you like a drink?”
“I would, actually.”
He holds up a bottle of Scharzhofberger Trockenbeerenauslese from an ice bucket. “Will this do?”
I walk toward him, almost against my will. “Where the hell did you get that? And don’t tell me that the Four Seasons keeps that in stock, it’s just not possible.”
He smiles a little. Like this is a good story. But it’s not a proud smile. It might even be a sad smile. “Remember that weekend trip to Germany I took last month? I went to the Trier wine auction.”
“Why? You don’t drink.”
“No, but you do. This is your favorite sweet wine, correct?”
I place my hand over my heart. “I mean, yes. I’ve tasted it a few times and I love it. But it’s not like I buy it regularly.”
“You wouldn’t. Unless you’re in Trier, Germany, the third week of September for the auction, you can’t get it.”
