Deliciously Obedient (36 page)

Caleb
appeared just then with more coffee and a disgusted look on his face.
“I give up. I’m never serving you two again. From now on, you get
everything yourselves.”

“
Sorry
we brought up your favorite fantasy!” Lydia called after him,
receiving a middle finger as an answer.

“
Such
a loving family,” Krysta intoned.

“
We
try. Mom and Dad are so proud.”

“
Speaking
of Mom and Dad…” The clock Krysta looked at said Lydia had twenty
more minutes before she had to leave.

“
Are
you going for it?”

“
Dating
two guys?’

“
Whatevering
two guys.”

“
Would
you? If you were in my shoes?”

Krysta
gave it some thought, then poured herself a cup of coffee, fixing it
just right. “I would give it a try, I guess.” Her half-shrugged
shoulder and weak wording made Lydia doubt her.

“
Maybe
kinda sorta? It’s a genie you unleash and you can’t stuff back in
the bottle.”

“
Or
other places.”

“
Ewwww.”

“
Sorry.
The jokes write themselves.”

“
Speaking
of jokes, let’s talk about your imaginary relationship with Caleb.”

Krysta’s
mouth puckered with disapproval. “Let’s not.”

“
You
can dish it out, but—”

“
Quit
deflecting.”

“
Fine.”
Lydia frowned and poured herself some coffee. “I just—I don’t
know where to start.”

Sympathy
lined her friend’s face. “I keep making jokes, but you really are
in one hell of a bind, aren’t you.”

“
Let’s
not add BDSM to this.”

“
Ha
ha.”

“
I
feel like I’ve never really gotten beyond that woman in my car in
the parking lot, finding out that what I had worked so hard for was
swept out from under me when ‘Matt Jones’ was given the social
media job,” she said, her voice soft and breathy. “That day all
those years of work just disappeared. And there he was, so hot and
adorable and strong and sensitive—the perfect package, you know?
They don’t exactly grow in a cubicle farm.”

“
Tell
me about it,” Krysta agreed.

“
The
big project I pitched to Dave, Matt—Mike—finding me in the
closet, our elevator moment…” Her voice trailed off.

“
You
feel like you’re not the same Lydia? Of course you are.”

Sipping
half the cup in one long, contemplative move, Lydia finished and set
her coffee cup down, noting how full the restaurant had become.

“
It’s
not that I shouldn’t be me. The feeling is more about being stuck.
Reactive. My default is to react to life instead of taking action.”

Shaking
her head, Krysta took a look around as well. A crowd had poured in
and Caleb looked like a jackrabbit with a coffee pot in hand. Lydia
knew she should get up and help, but this was too important.

“
You
might see me that way. And I might even
be
that way. But
that’s not how I feel, you know?”

Krysta
nodded. “I get it.”

“
Here
I am again, reacting to what Jeremy said, responding to Mike’s
initiative, fumbling through my reactions to them without being the
one who sets the tone. I’m tired of always changing my frequency to
be in tune with someone else’s vibration. From now on, I want to
be
the vibration.”

“
Then
do it.”

“
How?”
Saying it was easy. But taking the steps she needed to be at the
vanguard of her own life seemed like being told she needed to learn a
language, but not knowing its name.

“
Start
by figuring out what your gut tells you.”

Just
then, her stomach gurgled.

“
Okay,
it’s telling me I ate too much.” The two shared a smile only old
friends can exchange.

“
What
do
you
want? Ignore what Jeremy and Mike want. Ignore what the
world says you should want. Push aside convention and expectations.
Lydia, what do you want?”

Silence.

“
And
once you decide that,” Krysta said, her eyes tracking Caleb, “you
need to go after it with fierce love. Because that’s the only way
any of us should live.”

Jeremy
hadn’t planned to spend his afternoon with the man who had just
made love to Lydia, doing twenty-pound barbell diagonal lunges, but
the effort and concentration required for the free-weight room at
Mike’s apartment building’s gym was a welcome change from the
emotionally overwrought state that everyone seemed to be in.

Present
company included.

Mike
was bench pressing, waving off any spotting, able to lift his weight
easily and punishing himself by adding a twenty-kilogram weight on
either side of the bar.

No
thanks. Jeremy rather enjoyed having fascia connecting his ribs. If
he tried to lift his own weight plus forty kilos he’d be a walking
hemorrhage.

“
How—was—the—hotel?”
Mike puffed.

“Fine.”
When he’d realized that he would be homeless for the night, Jeremy
had checked into Parker Omni house, ordered three lobsters, a
cheesecake and an entire bottle of vodka, and spent the night
watching really bad porn at prices so inflated they were on the
pay-per-view equivalent of Viagra.

Nothing
helped.

“Nice
place. Been there a few times, but always on business. You okay
paying for it?”

What the
fuck?
“I’m fine.”

Mike racked
the bar and stood, moving on to do backwards lunges with forties.
“You doing all right financially?”

This felt a
bit private. Mike had never asked him about his money. Was this some
kind of dick-waving contest?

If so, once
Jeremy unzipped and pulled his out, Mike’s eyes were going to bug
out.

“Fine.”

“You can
always work with my financial advisor, you know. You don’t have to
blow through it all.”

Was that
what he assumed? Fuck it.

Time to be
the tripod.

“All
those years while I was traveling around the world, having fun,
hanging out, doing whatever I wanted…” Jeremy paused and looked
at Mike with a guarded set of eyes.

“
Yeah.”
Where is he going with this?
Mike
wondered.

“
I
wasn’t just drinking and sleeping around and getting caught, thrown
in jail, and all that.”

“
Okay.”
Mike
really
wondered where Jeremy was going with all this. He
racked the weights and grabbed his water bottle, chugging but keeping
eye contact.

“
It
started when I had this opportunity while I was in Fiji to help this
non-profit organization out.” Jeremy seemed really reluctant to say
whatever he was saying, so Mike relaxed his arms, uncrossed them and
tried to be as casual as he could be to hear the guy out. Whatever
was coming was going to be a doozy. Mike wondered what international
agency it involved. MI5? CIA? Interpol?

“
So
these micro-loan programs that are out there, you know, give somebody
in India $300 to start a company.”

“
Yeah,
sure. They’re like, uh…like little…it’s almost like investing
in little mini start-ups.” Why was he babbling on about social
programs? Mike had asked about his finances, not his liberal-driven
guilt projects.

“
Right,
right,” Jeremy said, nodding his head vigorously. “I had this
opportunity and threw $10,000 into the first one.” He racked his
weights and joined Mike in refilling his sports bottle at the water
cooler.

Mike
just nodded and made a motion to Jeremy to get to the point. “And
that went well, no problems. A handful of defaults, but the agency
distributes the loans and they process everything and I, you know,
get a small, uh—not quite a dividend check, but a repayment check
every month, and I went to Sri Lanka and did the same thing. So, for
the past ten years, whenever I go to a new place, I find out about
these micro-loan programs and I invest ten, twenty grand, sometimes
more and just see where it goes.”
Sometimes a lot more.

Jeremy’s
eyes bored into his. Mike frowned. “So, you’re a good steward.
You donate money—”

“
No,
I don’t
donate
money,” Jeremy interrupted. “I invest,
and over the course of ten years I’ve invested millions.”

He
nodded slowly. They both nodded slowly at each other. Jeremy’s eyes
sank into a kind of strange panic that did not fit with his
personality at all.

And
then, Mike understood. “Oh, God—Jeremy, you lost it all, didn’t
you? Holy shit, man! When we walked out of the company thirteen years
ago we were both worth millions and now you’ve just blown it?” A
sense of self-righteous outrage bubbled up in Mike. “You have just
been…so fucking irresponsible. You’ve spent all these years just
screwing anything that you could get your hands on and drinking—”

“
Mike.”
Jeremy held up one palm. “It’s the opposite. It’s. The.
Opposite.”

Mike
stopped himself in his spiral of indignation. “What do you mean
it’s the opposite?”

“
My
investments have all paid off.”

Mike
cocked his head, his lips parted. He took a deep sigh, sizing up
Jeremy, who now had a look of confidence in his face that belied what
had been written all over him just seconds ago. Sweat poured over
their foreheads and both took a moment to wipe with the hems of their
shirts, the room suddenly warmer than it should be.

“
What
do you mean they’ve paid off?”

“
Let’s
just say that two of us are standing here in this room and one of us
is a billionaire.” Jeremy’s lips twitched with amusement.