It’s my birthday, I need all the alcohol.
Pen
Esp if you wear a collar and lead.
Me
Please just wear clothes, Jas. Last year we got kicked out when you insisted on taking them off.
Jas
My birthday, my birthday suit. My turn to tell you to chill, pet. Dog emoji. Woof.
My phone vibrateswith the shrill ringtone that came as a factory default, and I never changed it, hoping it would be temporary. It was not. NowI don’t know whether it annoys me almost to the point of wanting to change it, or I’ve grown to like it enough to put up with it as some kind of crutch.
“Hey Pen, do you want to debrief the thoughts of a naked Jaspar in a collar and lead?”
Her girlish giggles float through the earpieces like childish whimsy. She’s all stolen cookies off a cooling sheet pan and a hide and seek game gone on too long. God, I miss her laughter. “Just checking in on you, Bubble, I can’t imagine how hard itwas. You are one of the strongest people I know, so for you to be so broken, that shit was monumental.”
My humiliation hadn’t been solo or silent, but loud and public. He couldn’t have used an ill-fated teachable moment with more cruelty. Not even the bound references at the spill-all family presser cut like that blade. Yet each day dawned bright and new, and the pain slipped just a little further down and away from my gut. Every night when I lay in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar studio apartment, I focus on a square drain at the base of a pool filled not with water, but with all the tears I’d shed after Charlotte. The level of the liquid was diminishing, more of the tears slipping through the grate whether by gravity or sheer will. Soon, I’d have a head above the water line and drag in a welcome breath. Then it would be hip-high, allowing me a chance to walk rather than float or tread water. Then I’d be able to stand on two feet, like I should have all along.
“I’m okay, Pen. Every day is a better one. And I was thinking of asking Trystan to come for Jaspar’s drinks.
“That is a great idea.”
Only when I text the broody man with the grown-out blonde hair and sexy as hell glasses, he’s not even in the country.
Trystan and I sit across from each other in the little coffee shop we went to after Cait’s first appointment. I can’t stomach grilled cheese and whipped cream today. I’m not hungry for food.
“Bri, honey, if women were my thing, I’d hold on to you as tight as I dare because I never want to let you go. You are special, so damn special, and he’s an idiot for missing that. The damn fool let both of us go. We know he’s got some fucked up DNA, but he might’ve been dropped on his head in the hospital too. I mean, it’s not outside the realm of possibility.” He smirks while blotting his lips with a napkin. I was surprised to hear that Trystan had quit Mercer Media too. He was almost part of the furniture there, and that may have been part of a wider issue. “Do you still love him?”
He sighs. “I do. I always will. Same goes for you.”
“I miss him, Trys. I miss him so damn much it hurts. He warned me not to fall in love. I thought it was because he didn’t want some obsessive woman by his side. But I was wrong…” My voice falters.
His brow quirks. “How so?”
“He warned me not to fall in love because he knew how fucking impossible it would be to live without him.”
“Yeah. He’s correct. It’s hard to fill an aching void when the sand just runs through your fingers. No matter how much you scoop up, those grains justfall away.”
“That’s it. That’s it. You’re exactly right!”
“Oh, Bri. I think it’s time.”
“Time for what?” I ask, confused.
“You and I are going on vacation. Time to scoop some sand. And I won’t take no for an answer.”
Trystan leansagainst a blue Jeep with the roof off the vehicle, and the top clinging to his lean frame, a gift from God himself. Every line and dip of his abdomen, every furl and bulge where the fabric kisses his biceps in supplication. He taps his Armani watch. “You are late, Bubble.”
“Sorry, Trys, the plane took off late and didn’t make up time. I’m worth the wait, though.”
“Absolutely you are,” he says to my hair, now full of ick and flyaways from the flight and airports. “I’m so happy to see you, Bub.”
“Not half as happy as I am to see you, Mr. Hynd.”
He removes his sunglasses and tucks them into the neck of his shirt in that effortlessly sexy way that makes saliva pool while you check for your feminist card. Trystan is a good-looking man. Trystan does sexy things, and Trystan and I are closer now than we’ve ever been. The bond of working for a complex, broken individual wearing a mask of perfection was a challenging and rewarding one. If we learned anything from the baggage of Mason’s identity discovery or the way Michael and Mitchel brushed him away like a crumb off a suit, it’s that labels are dangerous; masks are dangerous. If you have to wear a mask and project an altered reality, that’s not life, that’s a fictional prison. In the months AM, Trystan came out to people he once feared would destroy his career and reputation. His own father, and Mason’s. The thought of crossing paths withHynd senior when we were in Houston made sweat break out and his spine stiffen. He was terrified of his father. Then he came out to Magnus Mercer, hooked up to machines in a hospital bed. “If that old cunt has another heart attack at my news, then he’s got help at hand, hey.”
