Authors: Scarlett Avery
Relax. Stop making things complicated for yourself and just go with the flow.
I’m sure I’m overthinking this, but I like being with Bryce and as stupid as it may sound I hope there’s more to us than this arrangement.
“Are you lost in your thoughts again?” he asks.
“Yeah, I guess I am,” I confess.
“What’s wrong, Sofia? Didn’t you enjoy our weekend together?”
“I did, Bryce. It was a perfect getaway.”
“Good. I’m happy to hear you enjoyed yourself. When we get back to my hotel, I’ll pay you before heading back to the airport later today,” he casually announces.
“What? You’re coming back to the airport later tonight?”
“I didn’t want to ruin our weekend together, but yesterday my assistant emailed me to let me know we have a new crisis on our hands. Apparently, a reporter had published another sordid tale about Derek’s hidden sex life. It seems another one of his boy toys is talking to the press. I have to fly back to Silicon Valley to assess the damage to my company’s reputation. No one knows what’s true and what’s not yet, but by the time I fly back we should have a strategy to gag this new lover.”
“This story is so unpredictable.”
“If someone had told me ten years ago that I’d be dealing with this, I would have lost good money betting against it. I’ve known Derek for years. He comes from a fortunate family. He used to be a highly ranked officer in the army before going back to school to get a couple MBA degrees. He’s always been the kind of guy you can count on. I’ve seen how women react around him and we’ve had our share of conversations where he’d proudly boast of his conquests. It never entered my mind for one second that some of these conquests were young men.”
Bryce looks so troubled and there isn’t much I can do to help him.
“Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have anything against gays. I mean everyone is entitled to live out his or her sexual preferences, but Derek gay? It doesn’t make sense to me because he’s been so good at hiding his true identity from me—from everybody. I thought we were friends. I never expected this level of deception.”
“I know this might sound weird, but maybe that’s what my last client was trying to explain to me. He was in the closet his entire life because he didn’t understand that his feelings towards men weren’t perverted, he was sexually attracted to men, like some straight guys only sleep with blondes or skinny models.”
“I guess. I don’t understand why Derek had to ruin his poor wife’s life by remaining in the closet for so long.”
“Bryce, it’s a different generation. Let’s be honest, being gay is still not very popular in many parts of America.”
He shakes his head to express how confused he is about this entire mess.
“How long will you be gone for?” I ask, worried about his answer.
“I plan to only be away one week this time. I have a good team in place and we’ve made a corporate decision that we need to move forward with the New York office. I won’t be gone too long this time.”
“There might be unpredictable events preventing you from leaving Silicon Valley,” I suggest hesitantly. “Who knows what more you’ll discover about Derek’s secret life.”
“You’re worrying for no good reason. You won’t even have time to miss me. I’ll be back here in no time, setting up my offices and settling down in a new home so I can get out of this hotel I’ve been living in for the past eight months.”
I attempt to smile, but I’m not buying it. I think Derek’s story is more explosive than Bryce is willing to admit and I’m sure he’ll be gone for much longer than one week.
“I don’t want to be away from you for too long, Sofia. I’ll be back very soon. Trust me.”
He kisses me, hands me another bulging black pouch and informs me that a car is waiting to drive me home while he gets ready to fly out west.
“This should hold you until I get back and you shouldn’t feel the need to accept any of the new clients Todd might send your way.”
* * *
We speak and text every day while Bryce is out west and I’m counting the days until his return with excitement. On the day of his return, I get up early to prepare a sexy reunion at my place.
My cooking skills aren’t nearly as polished as Ciara’s, but she has a hard time saying no to my requests, so I enlist her to help me cook a superb meal for Bryce’s return. Of course, I haven’t told her who Bryce really is—I simply allude to the fact that I’m seeing a pretty incredible guy.
We spend most of the morning preparing Mozambique’s signature dish, which is also a staple in Portugal and Brazil. Locals created the spicy dish after Portuguese colonists brought chile peppers to the small African country. Ciara masters the piri-piri chicken recipe so well and although I’ve attempted to make her recipe numerous times, it always turns out to be a pale imitation of her creation.
We have a lot of fun that Saturday and I feel our connection is strong enough for me to come clean about how I’m earning a living and my complicated relationship with Bryce, but in the end, my courage fails me and I remain tight-lipped about my reality.
Ciara has to leave in the early afternoon to get ready for a date with a new guy she has met. This gives me the time I need to finish last-minute preparations before Bryce shows up at my door.
At about two o’clock my phone rings and I immediately pick it up.
It’s Bryce.
“Hey, you. I can’t wait to see you again.”
“I have to cancel my return to New York for later tonight. We’re dealing with another big scandal. The news broke thirty minutes ago and everyone here has been frantically trying to contain this latest situation,” Bryce says in a cold and detached voice.
“What? You’re not coming back tonight? What happened now? Does it concern Derek?”
“Who else would it concern? Who else has a sordid past filled with sexual indiscretions with younger men?” Bryce roars at me.
“I’m sorry,” I say, genuinely hurt by his explosive reaction.
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry, Sofia. I didn’t mean to lose my temper, but this latest one is a monster and we’re not sure if we’ll be able to recover.”
“How bad is it?”
“It’s brutal. It’s not even something I would have believed possible until a member of my team handed me a file to brief me so I wasn’t completely blindsided by this latest blow.”
My heart pounds inside my chest because Bryce sounds so concerned and worried.
“For Christ’s sake, the idiot wasn’t only fucking men at the same time he was married to his wife, but as if that wasn’t enough for him, it also seems he had a thing for underage boys. “My team just informed of the latest chapter in this sordid story and I’m trying my best not to put a hole in the wall. A young man by the name of Cody Wheeler claims he’s been having a flaming affair with Derek since he was fourteen and he’s now just turned seventeen!”
I’ve never heard Bryce rage like this over anything. “Sex with a fourteen-year-old boy? Are you serious? God. That’s heavy.”
“I’m so frustrated by Derek right now. The only thing I want to do is deck him, but he beat me to the punch, since he’s dead now and he’s left me this mess behind,” Bryce says, still fuming.
“Bryce, I’m no expert, but fourteen is quite young. I understand it’s safer now to come out earlier as a gay person than ever before in history, but someone like Derek would have had a lot to lose by going after underage boys. If he had a thing for younger men, there are plenty of options over eighteen.”
“Sofia, trust me, I want this to go away badly. I want to wake up from this terrible dream, but there’s proof of Derek in extremely scandalous photos with this young Cody. When I opened the file and laid eyes on these photos, I nearly had a heart attack myself. Was Derek out of his fucking mind?”
Bryce is so angry about this discovery and honestly, who can blame him? Not even Bryce could have had a contingency plan in place to deal with Derek’s second indiscretion.
“Bryce, if this is true then Cody didn’t act alone. At fourteen, you don’t start having an affair with a man old enough to be your grandfather without persuasion,” I say, still puzzled by all this.
“What do you mean?”
“Did Cody act alone or was he pushed into this by someone who was looking for a payoff? I know this is going to sound strange, but if Derek was hiding something, maybe someone was using Cody as a decoy who could be turned into big money when the time was right.”
“Why would you say that?” Bryce asks, surprised by my theory.
I wasn’t going to tell Bryce about Brad Keller. Brad played me from the minute he met me. He kept information on me and my whereabouts so that when the time was right, he had loads of details he could manipulate to fabricate this fictitious story about me. He used it all against me to steal my money and destroy my company.
“Let’s just say I have personal experience with devious people collecting data, unbeknownst to me, and then manipulating it cleverly against me.” I can barely contain the bitterness I still foster for the asshole.
“Well, Derek was a very wealthy man. His father was in the oil business and did extremely well. Derek’s brother took over the company, but Derek still has plenty of shares and when his dad died he inherited a boatload of money.”
“Money makes people do crazy things.”
“I still remember when he told me how much money his dad left him and how nervous he was about doing the right thing in order to grow his fortune for his kids. It was more money than I had ever seen in my life at the time. He seemed quite concerned about protecting his legacy.”
“How much money are we talking about?” I ask, intrigued.
“He showed me his dad’s will and that’s when I found out what wealth really meant. His dad left him twelve point seven million dollars twenty years ago. Derek would have been worth at least twenty-five million dollars when he died from his heart attack, based on what we’ve been able to gather about him, but he had always been obsessively quiet about his wealth and lived a very low-key life. Well, I should say, that’s the image he allowed people to see. This new Derek, who was leading a double life, seemed to love showering his gay lovers in opulent gifts.”
“Why was Derek working for you if he had so much money?” I ask boldly.
“He was a partner in my company and owned shares. Also, Derek gets bored very easily and working kept him out of trouble. Obviously, we all know now that not even his busy schedule could prevent him from finding the time to be with young men.”
“His wife might not have known how much he was worth, but someone else must have. As the French would say, ‘
Il y a anguille sous roche
.’ There’s far more than meets the eye.”
“Hmmmmm, I’m starting to think you’re right,” Bryce murmurs under his breath.
I have only known Bryce as this strong, self-assured and ultra-confident man. The person on the other end of the phone has nothing to do with the Bryce I love.
“Again, I’m no expert, but it might be good to make sure those photos are legit, Bryce. Photoshopping is so easy. Anyone can do it with cheap fifty-dollar software you buy online. What makes you say this Cody actually had any sexual relationship with Derek? It might not actually be Derek in those photos, and if it
is
Derek, what makes you say this new lover didn’t grab Derek’s photos from the Internet and Photoshop them to make it look like they were lovers?”
“I hope to God you’re right. This is so out of my league, I can’t even think straight. No one in my team understands any of this. We can’t go asking around who here in the office is gay and can shed some light on this without attracting lawsuits for breaking privacy codes.”
“Bryce, Derek was one of your right-hand men and your company is worth a lot. You’ve just revealed he was worth at least twenty-five million dollars at the time of his death and we all know he was having sex with men while he was married. I think someone looking for a quick payday would suspect that a big enough scandal would warrant a huge payout with minimum questions asked. You want this story to go away, right?”
“Desperately.”
“That’s what seventeen-year-old Cody is counting on and he knows you’d prefer to pay him off than have this leak. Don’t let him win. The man I know and admire would fight for his company. How badly do you want this, Bryce?”
I can’t believe I’m channeling Ciara right now. She’s the one who spends all her time listening to all this success mindset stuff and when I’m down or scared, she knows exactly what to say to boost my spirits.
“Listen to you. When did you become a performance coach?”
“Well, I only oblige in critical cases and this is pretty out there, wouldn’t you say?”
“This is the craziest thing I’ve ever had to deal with in my life,” Bryce confesses.
“So I guess you’ll be stuck in Silicon Valley for a while, right?”
“Yeah, I’m afraid so. I miss you so much and I was looking forward to sleeping next to you tonight.”
“I love it when I’m able to nestle my body inside your strong arms when we sleep together. I’ll miss that. I had a surprise in store for you and spent the day cooking and getting my home ready for a sexy reunion,” I say with a sigh.
“Oh, no. I feel so badly now about this. Here you go out of your way like this and I’m a no-show.”
“It’s not your fault. I just hope to see you soon.”
“Give me a few weeks to sort this out and I’ll be in touch. I promise to do my best to be with you again. I miss you,” he says before hanging up.
* * *
Two weeks go by without a word from Bryce. I don’t want to keep texting him because I’m brutally aware of the severity of the situation and the fact that this sexual scandal has seriously jeopardized his billion-dollar company.
By the third week I get an unexpected text message from Dennis. He’s going back to South America to close more deals and wants to know if I’ll consider coming with him.
I’ll make it worth your time and will double your fees again. If you’re free, can you confirm with Todd? I’ve already spoken to him.