The Platinum Reunion

by T V Hartwell

  Finally Kirby started to chuckle and grinned broadly.

  “What?” Jake asked, smiling back at him.

  “That was fun.”

  “Yeah it was. I could get used to this.”

  “Okay, I’m officially putting you on notice,” Kirby said. “Now I’m crazy in love with you and will never let you go. Ever!”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Sixteen months later, Jake and Kirby were still kissing and making love, settling into their new life together as an openly gay couple. Shortly after they’d consummated their relationship and committed themselves to being a real couple, they began living together again at the bungalow in the Hollywood Hills they’d previously shared. Kirby, of course, was delighted to have Jake back, this time not as his housemate and best friend with occasional benefits but as his boyfriend and partner.

  They had kept the nature of their relationship under wraps and close to the vest the first six months. Kirby had told Myla but nobody else. Jake assumed Amanda knew, but they did not see or speak to each other again after their rendezvous in New York. Jake and Kirby allowed the rest of their family and friends to think that they were still simply best friends who’d decided to live together again after patching up their differences. They were both initially apprehensive about letting people in on their little secret right away. Kirby’s career in television was just starting to take off, and he feared that if it came to light that he was gay, it would’ve been a distraction, taking attention away from his talent as a screenwriter. Jake, on the other hand, wanted to be sure that he wouldn’t vacillate or grow weary of being with another man before coming out as gay. Reimagining his life in a nontraditional, nonconformist way, without a wife and kids and all that represented, took some mental retooling. However, with the passage of time, their fears and apprehension subsided.

  Kirby’s pilot had gotten picked up by the GTV network, and with the first season premiering to critical and audience acclaim, he was well on his way to realizing his dream as an acclaimed Hollywood writer and producer. He loved Jake beyond measure and began to care less about what others might think with his career now more secure. Likewise, Jake’s love for Kirby and level of comfort being with him in a committed relationship grew stronger too. He even began to contemplate the prospect of marrying Kirby and having biracial kids with him some day. Kirby was not only keen about the idea but enthusiastic about it. The guy who’d once felt a sense of shame about his gayness and thought that he would’ve needed to remain in the closet somewhat, even if he and Jake had ended up together, no longer had that point of view. Kirby was a changed man, and by the time their six-month anniversary had rolled around, he was the one to suggest that he and Jake start coming out to their families and friends. When they did so, they were most surprised at how unsurprised others were to learn of their romance. There were a few metaphorical gasps, but most of their friends expressed support and love. Two friends they’d grown up and attended prep school with even claimed to have known all along.

  In the sixteen months since she’d last seen Jake, Amanda too was eventually able to move on with her life, but the road had been rocky. While she had assumed that Jake and Kirby were together, Amanda initially didn’t inquire or seek to know anything about their status. There was enough happening for her to worry about in her own life. Namely, her mother, Camilla, decided to leave Rick after learning of his grotesque deception and false claim about his own daughter. It was the final straw that broke the camel’s back on their marriage. In the months that followed, their split was fodder for the tabloids. However, the Climents and Doyles were unified in fierce determination to keep the whole scandal a closely guarded secret. Neither side wanted the story to leak out. As a result, the most common and bandied-about claim about the cause of the Climents’ breakup was that Rick had long been a serial adulterer and had kept mistresses for years. In fact, the tabloids had been successful in tracking down two of his former mistresses and had exposed their lavish lifestyle, compliments of the Climent fortune. The whole episode had thrown the Climent family into crisis mode, and there were many dark days.

  Nonetheless, in the midst of the tumult, Amanda was able to successfully launch the Novel handbag line with her best pal and partner, Lucy, at her side. They’d received the support of celebrities and high-powered industry insiders alike thanks to their many connections. And their high-profile boyfriends played no small part in driving press coverage of their launch event. The heartthrob producer Adam and heartthrob actor Cass were both more than happy to leverage their notoriety and fame on their girlfriends’ behalf.

  After the product launch, Amanda’s work became the therapy she desperately needed to help combat the stress and drama swirling around in her personal life. In addition to her parents’ messy, well-publicized breakup, she still had the loss of her relationship with Jake to deal with in the months following their ill-fated meeting. Although she was happy to have helped Jake embrace his true self and desire, it stung nevertheless to have the man to whom she’d once been engaged admit to being more in love with and attracted to someone else. She needed time to heal and recover from that. So she’d decided to live mostly in New York to focus her energy on building her business. Getting married and having a family became less of a priority. She’d even broken off communication with any remaining mutual friends she and Jake shared to avoid hearing any tidbits of information about his life. However, now that more than a year had passed and a degree of normalcy had returned to her life, Amanda had grown less emotionally attached and instead more curious about Jake. She decided to email him out of the blue one day. Their exchange was brief, but they agreed to see each other in LA during one of her upcoming visits. At her suggestion, the three of them—she, Jake, and Kirby—would all meet for lunch. A date was set.

  Jake and Kirby had arrived at the restaurant first. They both looked as handsome and dapper as ever and like the happy couple they now were. Although not exactly matching, they each had on Ralph Lauren shorts and shirts. Jake had completed his ensemble with a pair of Sperrys sans socks and Kirby a casual pair of leather loafers sans socks. They had a reservation, so they decided to be seated as they waited for Amanda to arrive.

  “Are you nervous?” Kirby asked.

  “No,” Jake answered quickly and then amended his statement after a brief pause. “Maybe a little.”

  “I can’t believe how long it’s been since we’ve seen her…in person, that is. Obviously we’ve seen and read about her and her family over the last year. Man, she’s been through a lot. Her parents, her breakup with Adam—”

  “I know but let’s not bring any of that stuff up. I don’t want the conversation to turn sour.”

  “Oh no, of course not. I don’t want things to get uncomfortable either. This already feels awkward enough. It’s amazing that she even wants to see us.”

  “I know. I was a little surprised too when she emailed me. We’ve had absolutely no contact with one another whatsoever since we met in New York. And that was what…a year…year and half ago? I mean…the meeting ended on somewhat of a positive note, but you know, I’d just dropped a bomb on her about her father’s evil-doing and then another bomb by admitting that I wanted to be with you more than her. So to be honest, I really didn’t expect to hear from her again.”

  “Well, now you will because here she comes,” Kirby said, noticing Amanda walking over toward them.

  “Hey fellas,” Amanda said with a broad smile across her face. It was summertime and Amanda looked tan, svelte, and relaxed with very light makeup and her dark hair straight and long with a part down the middle.

  Kirby and Jake immediately stood to greet her. “Heyyy,” they both sang in unison, returning her smile.

  “Ohhh, it’s so nice to see you guys,” Amanda said as she reached to hug Jake and then Kirby. Each embrace was lingering and tight, the affection, familiarity, and history between them apparent.

  “You two look great, and, oh my God, so happy too,” she said. />
  Both men beamed and looked at each other with wide grins on their faces.

  “You look amazing too,” Jake said to her.

  “I am so happy that you two are still together.”

  Jake smiled and said, “So are we.”

  “When Jake said in his email that you two were now officially boyfriends, I nearly cried. Well…I actually did cry…a little. I was so happy and insisted that he bring you along. I wanted to see you,” she said, looking at Kirby.

  “Thanks. I wanted to see you too, and I must say, I agree with Jake. You look stunning.”

  “You really do,” Jake underscored.

  “Aww, thanks. So guys are sweet.”

  They continued to engage in initial pleasantries for a while—swapping gossip about old friends, talking about Kirby’s new TV show, which Amanda had steadfastly watched and loved, and hearing about Jake’s new job. No longer comfortable working with Mike Wallace, Jake had left his law firm job and had become an in-house attorney at the tech startup company his fraternity brother, Lyle Spiegelman, had founded. Likewise, Amanda shared about the progress of her Novel bag line.

  After settling into each other’s company with ease, they eventually ordered wine. With a few sips of chardonnay, they all let their guard down, and the mood became even more relaxed, which allowed for a more open and revealing conversation.

  “So are you living in New York now?” Jake asked.

  “Yes, I am. I still have my condo here at Sierra Towers, but after we launched Novel, I decided to live and work mostly in New York. It’s been good for me. I needed to get out of LA and have a little change of scenery, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I understand,” Jake said demurely, indeed knowing what she meant.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard that my parents are getting divorced.”

  “Yeah, I did hear,” Jake said. “I thought it already happened, actually.”

  “Well, you know how these things can get dragged out. They’re still in the midst of settlement negotiations. There was no prenuptial agreement, and my mother can be pretty demanding—” at which point Jake chuckled “—but I think they’re close to reaching an agreement.”

  “Since California is a no-fault divorce state, wouldn’t she automatically just get fifty percent?” Kirby asked.

  “Well, that’s been a big point of contention. They’ve had to figure out what that fifty percent is exactly. My family’s finances are pretty convoluted and complex with money tied up in various trusts, and then there are inheritance issues too, so it’s not so cut-and-dry. Needless to say, regardless, my mother will come out of the situation sitting pretty. Nobody will be crying for her. Trust me.”

  “I’m sure the lawyers will be sitting pretty too,” Jake nearly said but bit his tongue. “So how is Camilla?”

  “She’s fine. She lives in New York too, now. This whole experience has humbled her. It’s amazing what public humiliation can do for a person. She’s much more relaxed and compassionate now. She’s even more fun to be around. We’ve become pretty good friends. We’ve never been closer, actually.”

  “That’s great,” Jake said with a smile.

  “You might also know that I am newly single.”

  “Yeah, I heard a little bit,” Jake said sheepishly, not wanting to admit that he’d read the tabloid headlines about her recent breakup with Adam.

  “I’m so surprised. I was convinced that you and Adam would get married,” Kirby blurted.

  Amanda took it in stride and spoke frankly. “I just couldn’t see myself having kids with Adam. He’s a very neurotic person who places a lot of pressure on himself to be successful, to be the best. It’s an admirable quality, but it causes a lot of stress and anxiety, which leads to a lot self-medicating and other unhealthy behavior. I couldn’t deal with it anymore. I felt like I was becoming his babysitter. And plus, he became really demanding about getting married. He was like, ‘If you don’t marry me now I’m gonna walk,’ and I said, ‘Have a nice walk,’ and that was the end of that.”

  Jake and Kirby both snickered.

  “Please don’t repeat any of this,” Amanda said, leery of having anything she said leaked to the press.

  “Oh, of course,” Jake said.

  “Anyway, enough about me. I want to hear about you two. Are you guys out? Do people know?”

  “Yeah. Everybody knows. It’s been almost a year now since we told everybody,” Jake answered.

  “Who’s everybody?”

  “All of our friends we grew up with from Harvard-Westlake. Our Stanford friends. I’m surprised you haven’t heard anything.”

  “Oh, I’ve sort of been out of the loop,” Amanda said with a dismissive chuckle at herself. “What about your parents? And speaking of parents, how are they? Are they still together?”

  “They’re fine, and still hanging in there,” Jake said, not wanting to seem boastful about his parents sticking together in light of the demise of the Climents’ marriage.

  “Good for them. Tom and Jamie always seemed to have stronger, more old-school values about marriage. I’m not surprised to see them sticking it out.”

  “Yeah. They’re troopers,” Jake said.

  “And how did they react to you coming out?”

  Jake shrugged his shoulders, nonchalant. “They’re fine with it. At least, that’s how they’ve been to my face. But to be honest, if I told my parents I was dating an orangutan, they’d probably go along with it.” Amanda and Kirby both chuckled at this. “They’ve bent over backward to show Kirby and me love. They’ve been nothing but supportive the whole time.”

  “Guilt will do that every time,” Kirby chimed in with a wicked grin.

  “They just want me to be happy,” Jake added to clarify what he believed their true intention to be.

  “How about your parents, Kirby?” Amanda asked.

  “You know, it’s funny. Dad took the news better than Mom did. He was like, okay, whatever, as long as you’re happy and live responsibly, yada yada, but Mom cried. She was pretty much in shock and disbelief. You know, I think she always imagined me with a wife and kids, and I think she’d been hoping against hope that Laren and me would get back together. That’s because she didn’t know anything about me dating guys. It was big news to her. But now that it’s been almost a year since we told them, she’s come around. She’s already asking me about when Jake and I plan on having kids.” Kirby looked over at Jake. “She loves the surrogacy idea, by the way.”

  “You told her?” Jake asked.

  “Yeah, and she’s down with it.”

  Amanda’s face lit up. “Surrogate?”

  “Yeah,” Jake answered. “We want to eventually have kids and are thinking about working with an agency to find an anonymous donor for the eggs in addition to a surrogate to carry the fertilized eggs to term. We want at least two, one fertilized with Kirby’s sperm and one with mine. We’re aiming for just one egg donor so that the kids can actually be linked biologically as siblings.”

  Amanda was overwhelmed by this news and her eyes welled with tears. “Oh my God…that’s so amazing. I’m so happy for you. When do you plan on making this happen?” she asked as she dotted her eyes with her napkin.

  Jake and Kirby looked over at each other. Then Jake turned back to her and answered. “We don’t know yet, but in the near future. We’re pretty excited about it.”

  “I’m excited too. This is so amazing. I want to help you make this happen.”

  When Amanda said that, Jake and Kirby looked at each other again with curiosity in their eyes. They were both thinking the same thing, but Jake verbalized it. He looked back at Amanda. “Would you be interested in donating the eggs?” he asked flippantly with a grin, but deep down he was serious.

  Amanda stared at him, stumped for a moment. “Me?”

  “Yeah, why not?”

  “That’s a great idea,” Kirby chimed in enthusiastically. “You’d be awesome! This would be even better than finding an anonymous do
nor. You could even be involved in helping us raise the little munchkins if you wanted to.”

  “Oh my God,” Amanda said, covering her mouth and contemplating the thought as she stared at them in silence. She was completely caught off guard at the suggestion that she could be the egg donor. “I don’t know. I’d need to think about it,” she finally said.

  “Do it, do it,” Kirby said, feeling excited at the prospect.

  Jake was more calm and diplomatic, however. “Take all the time you need. It’s not as if we plan on making this happen tomorrow, but we’d love to discuss it in more detail with you and work something out if you’re seriously interested.”

  Amanda nodded. “Okay, I’ll think about it.” Then she smirked to herself. “You know, Jake, we always dreamed of having a family together. This would be a rather unusual if not extreme way to make that happen.”

  Jake chuckled. “I know, huh? But I think it would be kind of cool too.”

  “And you know these kids would be the most good-looking kids on the planet,” Kirby chimed in to laugher all around.

  “Oh my God, I can’t believe we’re discussing this right now. But I must admit, I am a little intrigued,” Amanda said.

  “Well, the media likes to call you the Platinum Princess,” Kirby said. “But if we decide to create a family together, they’ll have to come up with a name for three of us. What do you think it would be?” he asked them playfully.

  “I don’t know,” Jake said, trying to think of something good.

  Amanda was picking her brain but nothing came to mind right away.

  “Oh…I’ve got it,” Kirby said. “The Platinum Triangle. You know, in keeping with the Platinum Princess theme.”