Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (88 page)

“Someone’s having a bad day,” Nicole
murmured, as the server stalked off.

Red chuckled.
 
“Aren’t we all?”

Nicole tapped her fingers on the tabletop
nervously.
 
Red seemed to relax in
his chair, comfortable now that the two of them had some time to speak.
 

The moody waitress came back and took
their order.
 
A couple of beers and
nothing else; she wasn’t impressed and left in a hurry.

“You said having me in the house
triggered something,” Nicole reminded him.

The smile faded from his lips and his
eyes grew cold.
 
“Yes.”

“I don’t understand why.”

He shifted in his seat.
 
She could tell he truly didn’t want to
talk about it, the conversation was making him anxious—and nothing ever
made Red anxious.

“It sounds silly,” he began,
hesitant.
 
“But when I was a
kid—“

The waitress stomped back to their table
and plopped down the two glasses of beer.
 
“Should I start a tab?”

Red checked with Nicole, which she’d
never seen him do.
 

She shook her head.
 
“Just these, I think.”

The waitress rolled her eyes.
 
“That’ll be ten dollars and fifty
cents.”

Red immediately paid with a twenty.
 
“Keep the change.”

She didn’t even thank him, just took the
bill and clomped off again.

“What happened when you were a kid?”

He held his beer and examined it, turning
the glass this way and that, tilting it, finally he drank deeply, licked his
lips.
 
“My childhood wasn’t so
easy,” he said, finally.
 
“I don’t
want to make it overly dramatic, though.
 
Plenty have it worse.”

“Why was it hard?”
 
She asked.
 
She could see his body language changing
drastically.
 

He was closing in on himself, shutting
down.
 
His eyes stared off into the
distance—a thousand yard stare.
 
His arms were crossed, he turned slightly away from her.
   
“My father and mother
divorced when I was three and my younger brother was just under a year
old.
 
Dad moved about sixty miles
away, and we saw him rarely.
 
Weekends at first, then once a month, and soon it was less than once a year.”

She tried to picture Red as a child,
needing the care and guidance of a parent.
 
Somehow she couldn’t imagine it, as though he’d always been a capable
adult.
 
“So you lived with your
mother and brother?”

“Yes.
 
And my mother was…” he paused and searched
for adequate words.
 
“She was very
strange.”

“Strange,” Nicole repeated.
 
Her stomach felt tense, her shoulders
tightened with nervousness as he continued.
 
She picked up her beer and drank a large
gulp, feeling some awful revelation was coming her way.

“I didn’t know as a young boy what was
wrong.
 
Only when I got older, much
older—I started to realize that she wasn’t normal.
 
And when I finally moved out and went to
college, really got out in the world, I began to see just how screwed up my
childhood was.”

Nicole sipped her beer again.
 
“Did she abuse you?” she asked suddenly.

He shrugged.
 
“I guess.
 
I don’t think of it in those terms.”

“She hit you…or…something else?”

“A lot of it was emotional.
 
Most of it,” he said.
 
“She got in moods.
 
Sometimes good moods, but very often it
was bad moods.
 
And they could last
weeks, even months.
 
When she was in
one of her bad times, every day she would tell me that I was ungrateful,
stupid, ugly, a monster who was ruining her life.”

Nicole put a hand over her mouth.
 
“No, Red.”

He shrugged.
 
“It was pretty bad.
 
It would be horrible for months on end
and then she’d sort of snap out of it.
 
I would be relieved to have some peace for as long as the good times
lasted, but I never knew what would set her off.
 
One day, out of nowhere, it would
happen.
 
She’d get angry again,
something would rub her the wrong way, and I was back to dealing with the
insults and the yelling for weeks and months, until she cycled out of it.”

“What about your brother?” Nicole asked.

Red smiled sadly.
 
“Jeb’s a nice guy.
 
If you met him you’d think he’s a really
upstanding guy, a family care practitioner, very smart and logical and polite.
 
But he’s deeply broken, I’m afraid.
 
Never married, barely ever even had a
relationship.
 
The one serious
girlfriend he had when he was in his early twenties—my mother ordered him
to break it off.
 
Jeb said he was
going to marry this girl, but eventually he caved to my mom’s demands.
 
They’re very close, Jeb and mom.”

Nicole was watching him closely as he
relayed this information.
 
If you
didn’t know him, you might think he was just talking about his family in a sort
of casual way, like people do sometimes.
 

But it wasn’t the case.
 

Something in Red’s demeanor told her that
he was deeply troubled by it all—and that telling her these things was
incredibly difficult for him, yet he was doing it anyway.
 
Doing it for her.

She knew to tread carefully here.
 
She was no therapist, but Nicole sensed
that saying the wrong thing could send him spiraling into a dark place.
 
“That night we were together in your
home, did I remind you of her?”

“Of my mother?”

Nicole nodded mutely.

For a moment he just stared at her, as if
in total shock.
 
And then he burst
into laughter.
 
“No,” he said, still
laughing.
 
“No, you are very
different.
 
Thank god.”

One or two of the regulars at the bar had
turned to see what all the commotion was.
 
They slowly turned back to the TV set and their conversations.

“Well, I don’t understand why you reacted
that way to me,” Nicole told him.
 

He threw up his hands.
 
“I’m trying to explain the best I
can.
 
I don’t totally understand
it.
 
If I did, I wouldn’t act that
way.”

“But you think it’s because of your
childhood?”

“My mother was unpredictable and
cruel.
 
But the worst part didn’t
start until I got into my teen years.
 
Puberty.
 
It’s a tough time
for any kid, but she made it into something hellish.”
 
Red’s face grew dark and his expression
contorted, as he seemed to fall into the memories of his past.
 
“I remember one day, she found some old
tissues in my waste basket in my room.
 
You know, I’d started masturbating like any teenager.
 
Looking at magazines, fantasizing about
girls in my class.
 
And my mom found
those tissues one day and came into the kitchen where I was eating.
 
She dumped the wastebasket on me from
behind.”

“Oh my god,” Nicole uttered.

Red’s hands curled into fists.
 
“She started telling me I was disgusting
and perverted.
 
She said I should be
locked up for doing that in the apartment with her right in the next room.”

“That’s so wrong.
 
So, so wrong.
 
And humiliating.”

“You could say that.
 
And it got worse when I finally started
to date girls.
 
I tried to hide it
from her, but she had a nose for things like that.
 
She’d sniff out when I was doing certain
things.
 
And sometimes, if she was
in one of her moods, she’d follow me around the apartment, telling me all the
perverted stuff I was doing to those ‘sluts,’ as she called them.”

“That’s sick.”

“Of course, I wasn’t actually doing the
things she accused me of.
 
I was
kissing girls, holding hands, maybe a copping a feel here and there.
 
But she put other ideas in my head,” he
growled.

Nicole gulped, hardly able to keep the
shock and horror from her face.
 
She
hadn’t expected this outpouring from him, hadn’t even imagined that he was
hiding this kind of history beneath his polished, brash exterior.
 
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
 
“What your mother did to you was wrong.”

“Thanks for saying that,” he said in a
clipped voice.
 
Then he downed the
rest of his beer.
 
His eyes were
watery, but he seemed calmer now, less of a live wire.

“Is that why you…do what you do?
 
With women?”

He pushed the empty beer glass away from
himself.
 
“I’m sure it’s not a
coincidence.
 
But it is what it
is.
 
I stopped trying to fight my
peculiar urges a long time ago.”

Nicole didn’t know what she thought or
felt about Red’s confession.
 
She
was sympathetic to what he’d gone through, but part of her was also wondering
what kind of husband Red could make, given his traumatic upbringing.

“I did live with a woman before, and it
was pretty awful,” he said.
 
“I was
a cold, dismissive person to her.
 
And I suppose you saw a glimpse of that when you came back with me to
the house.
 
I didn’t think I’d do
that with you,” he said, shaking his head in confusion.
 
“I thought things would be different.”

“Maybe I’m not who you need me to be,”
Nicole said.

“No,” he said, leaning forward and
reaching across the table to put his hand on hers.
 
“You’re exactly who I need you to
be.
 
I just didn’t have the courage
to tell you what I’ve been living with.
 
I’m ashamed of my needs—ashamed of the way I treat you.
 
After we were together at my house that
night, I became disgusted with myself.
 
I sat in the study and all I heard was
her
voice, telling me how perverted and vile and sick I am.”

Nicole put both of her hands on his and
massaged him comfortingly.
 
He
really was just a wounded boy at heart, and he was allowing her to see it.
 
He was making himself completely
vulnerable to her---she imagined it must be terrifying to someone who’d gone
through that kind of betrayal from the most important woman in his life.

“You’re not sick or vile or perverted,”
she said softly.

He looked up at her.
 
“Tell me the truth.
 
I disgust you.”

She laughed and shook her head.
 
“I like what we do together, Red.
 
I just want you to love me
afterwards.
 
And during, I want to
know that you love me underneath it all.”

“Of course I love you, more than anything
in this world,” he told her.

“How do I know that you won’t send me
away again?” she asked.

“Never,” he said, turning his gaze fully
to her and holding it.
 
“I made the
biggest mistake of my life when I treated you badly.”
 

“I don’t want you getting angry and
smashing things, throwing things,” she said.
 
“I can’t be around that.
 
It makes me nervous.”

He agreed.
 
“I won’t ever make you feel unsafe
again.”
 
Red started stroking her
wrist softly and it felt so good, so incredible to feel his touch again after
so long.
 
“Give me another chance,
Nicole, and I promise I won’t let you down.”

She looked at him and slowly smiled.
 
“If I agree, will you let me drive your
car?”

Red laughed.
 
“If you give me another chance, I’ll let
you run my company if you want.”

“Just the car,” Nicole said.
 
“That would make me happy.
 
That, and spending the night with you
tonight.”

“I think we can arrange that,” he told
her.