Pause. A woman’s voice. “Maybe she was livin’ the dream?”
Derisive DJ: “The dream?”
Woman DJ: “You know. Two guys.”
First DJ: “That’s our dream!”
Derisive DJ: “Your dream is two guys?” The radio spilled over with giggles and full-throated guffaws.
First DJ: “Haha, no—two women! Two chicks for one dick, man. For a billion bucks, though, I might do two guys. (Laughter). Girls don’t fantasize about threesomes with two guys— ”
Woman DJ: “In what universe? Of course we—”
Mike cut the radio off with a sharp flick of the wrist. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Laura was about to be completely devastated. She had openly asked them to tell her their secrets, and Dylan had told him they should wait. Dylan. God damn it! He’d listened to Dylan and this—this was the end result.
How had anyone found out about the trust? And of course the news station would use the whole firefighter bachelor angle. What a great lead. He knew the brouhaha would die down within days, and soon people wouldn’t talk about it, but that didn’t help him to get through this minute, the next hour, the next day— and he couldn’t predict Laura’s reaction here. She may already be lost. But he had to try.
The highway was packed with the tail end of the morning commute, the pike thick but moving at about forty mph. Better than nothing. What had they been thinking, keeping the whole billionaire thing from her? That night in their apartment, dinner and a movie, everyone coming clean and her open, honest request that they not keep secrets—why had they, then? Her openness had been so damn appealing and they’d flung it in her face (behind her back), still hiding like creeps with a secret that, now that it was out, really wasn’t that bad. How many women wouldn’t like to date someone who could buy their hometown? Who could make it so they never had to work again? What was so shameful about the money that he and Dylan had pretended to be working class saps while cashing trust fund checks?
Their stupid fear. That’s what it all boiled down to. Dylan would never in a million years call it fear, but that was the word for it. He could posture and preen and flex and be Mr. Macho all he wanted and claim he was waiting for the right moment, wanted Laura to get comfortable, wanted the three to bond more before dumping such big news on her, but in the end he was just a big old pussy who didn’t want to confront the emotional landmine the money created.
And it exploded in their faces.
Construction held up traffic near downtown, making him change the channel to AM radio to hear the news report about alternate routes. Ten more minutes of inching through a mile of traffic and he was free. He hadn’t been downtown that often and was unsure; Boston wasn’t exactly laid out in a grid like his hometown in Indiana, but he was able eventually, with two different circlings of Laura’s financial-district building, to find a parking garage and park.
$35 for a few hours? Doesn’t matter, stupid, his conscience hissed. Oh. Yeah. All his old ideas about life and money didn’t apply any more. Ski Instructor Mike had pinched pennies to buy time and freedom. Billionaire Mike needed to pinch himself and wake up from his stupor of denial. He and Dylan had fucked up so badly by not telling her the truth. And she wasn’t going to handle this well. It’s the lying. Not the actual truth itself.
And Jill never bothered to tell you guys, either.
Taking the stairs two at a time, he raced to the skyscraper’s main lobby, then searched for the right set of elevators to take him to the thirty-second floor. If Dylan had beaten him, he was upstairs already, hopefully with Laura.
Time was their biggest enemy right now.
No, he thought. We are our biggest enemy.
The murmurs coming from down the hallway were loud enough for Laura to come out of her office and poke around. She only shut her door when she needed to make calls or just had to tune out the drone of corporate life to get some actual work done on reports or code. Her half-open beige door allowed sound to travel easily from the reception area, and she heard Debbie, the receptionist, gasp and say, “Oh, that’s Laura’s delivery guy!”
Huh? She fast-walked down the hall to see what on earth the ruckus was about. Her delivery guy? What delivery guy? Then her face flushed hot. Dylan? Did Debbie mean Dylan? He’d posed as a flower delivery dude that day when he’d come to her office and they’d—
She flushed even more. Then her nether regions swelled with heat. Oh, my. Just thinking about hot monkey office sex was getting her—
Laura came to a screeching halt at the sight before her in the reception area, where ten or so coworkers were crowded around the lobby television. Normally set to news, this time was no different, the morning chat show that masqueraded as “news” barking out into the open area.