It's black or white. Gay or straight. Alpha or beta. And when someone starts coloring outside the lines, flowing back and forth between one thing and the other, refusing to put labels on things but simply allowing them to be and unfold... that's when people get uncomfortable and their prejudices emerge.
We all knew these things. So when college ended and we entered the real world of business, we pretended to forget all that we'd shared. We still moved in the same circles, attended the same parties, but we stopped fucking each other and taking women to our beds to share between us. Or at least we did it less frequently. Such things were a scandal waiting to happen. Even in this super progressive world we all supposedly live in.
Besides we didn't have time for it. We each had companies to run. Two of us—Griffin and myself—had inherited ours in a sense, each of them Fortune 500 companies everyone knows the name of but no regular person on the street knows who's in charge. It's only a few multi-national companies where the CEO is also a household name—a celebrity almost. Dayne started his own company, not yet as successful. He already owns several properties overseas. So let's be serious, he doesn't have to work. None of us do. We're driven by things greater than money.
“You ready to do this?” Griffin asks, interrupting my thoughts.
Dayne is a few feet away setting up a camera on a tripod, and focusing it on Livia. We want to really sell this story. What we're doing is dangerous. We have families to think of. We have companies. We have status it may seem we were born to, but we've fought and clawed every step of the way to maintain our positions. There is little room at the top for slackers who want to coast on daddy's money. At least there is little respect for it.
We've moved beyond conspicuous consumption to conspicuous production—the new status symbol.
I glance back over at Livia. Her very existence calms me. She makes my brain stop spinning. She makes the state of just being seem so effortless. We work and work and climb and build empires, but we don't have the ability to just sit back and enjoy it, just sigh into it. And yet that's Livia's natural state. She's a long deep calming breath from a guided meditation no one had to guide her through.
This girl can never know the power she has. She is the keystone that can hold us all together, but I've seen how she can play.
“Livia, are you ready?”
She looks up at me and raises her sunglasses briefly in acknowledgment, then drops them back down again without a word. This attitude she's starting to develop isn't working for me. I tell myself it's because I'm spoiling her, so naturally she's becoming entitled. But this is her rebellion against my orders that she will be mine. Ours.
I want to flip her over and spank her. I want to pull her bikini bottoms down and leave hand prints on her in the same exact color as the fabric barely covering her ass. But I take that long slow breath and reign it in. There's plenty of time to take deeper control of her. There is plenty of time to teach her not to cross us. For now, I need her to be able to act convincingly. I need her to sell this so any doubt is erased from the minds of any of our friends and associates that this is real, we are in love, we are forever.
“Do you remember what to say?” I ask her.
“Yes, Soren. I'm not a child. I know my lines. We've rehearsed them a thousand times... with feeling,” she says exasperated.
Dayne gives me a look like, are you letting that slide, really? I sigh and shrug because we need the footage, and we need it to look good. We need parents to laugh, grandparents to cry, and every bridesmaid in attendance to be jealous. I can't have her looking like a hostage reading lines off a cue card.
So for now, yes, I'm really letting that slide.
Dayne turns on the camera, and we're rolling.
“Livia, I have something for you.”
Her eyes light up, and for a moment I believe this act, even though I've seen her do this more times than I can count.
“A present? Is it a pony?”
I chuckle. “Not a pony.”
“A Ferrari?”
“Nope.”
Griffin gets credit for this script. I wish we could credit him at the end when the screen goes black. The innocent bride-to-be: Livia Fairchild. The happy groom-to be: Soren Kingston. Script written by: Griffin Macdonald. Camera work: Dayne Montgomery.
“Open it,” I say.
I watch as she rips through each box in turn. We didn't practice this part because I didn't want to have to wrap things up this many times. Plus, she hasn't seen the ring yet. She doesn't know where I got it from. She doesn't know that her little girl fantasy of getting a blue box is about to come true. And I know it's her little girl fantasy because I got it out of her best friend, the sole person in her life who even knew she was dating.
This part isn't a script. It's the sheer pleasure of watching her face when she understands where that ring came from.
It doesn't matter what diamond may or may not be the most expensive, what brand may be the most valuable in reality or in perception. What matters is that she fantasized about an engagement ring from Tiffany. And that is what she's getting. Griffin, Dayne, and I all went together to pick it out. We got her the best ring they had.
“Is it an empty box?” she says, just like we practiced.
I chuckle again, real anticipation growing this time. It's an odd feeling to be having after so much time of a kind of void inside me. There has been nothing but stark, cold ambition with no soft place to land. Until her. “No. There's something in there,” I assure her.
She opens the final package to see the small distinctive blue ring box—a shade of blue that can be mistaken for no other jeweler—a box that even the least brand-aware person just knows is something special.
I see the shock in her face, but she doesn't break character. She playfully delivers that final joke. “Is it a clown pin?”
This part comes from a commercial we all saw once. Despite all the social reference points that divide us, that one stupid commercial is something we all share. I can't even remember what they were selling, but the scene is a woman in a romantic restaurant opening what she thinks is an engagement ring. But instead it's this ridiculous clown pin. We thought it would be funny. And it's a reference many of our guests will get because they saw that commercial too.
I laugh again, for once glad the camera is trained on her, not me, because for fuck's sake, I think I might tear up here. “No,” I say as stoically as I can manage.
She opens the box, and then everything she's held in comes rolling out down her face as she cries. Real tears.
I get down on one knee. “Livia Fairchild, will you be my person?”
It's another cutesy line meant to tug on heartstrings at the reception when we unveil the premiere of this short Oscar-contending film.
She cries harder “Yes, I will be your person.” And in this moment I know she means this and wants every promise contained in that blue box. My mouth claims hers, and I put the ring on her finger. It glints brilliantly in the sun against her tanned skin. It's all so perfect.
12
Soren
New Year's Eve
Six months ago. New Year's Eve.