I had no date. I had gone to college out of state and had come back so recently that I hadn’t really had time to reconnect with any old friends. Going stag was fine. I danced with who I wanted and made out with some guy I didn’t know in a stairwell for a bit.
He was a nice guy, and he smelled good, but I found I was really smitten with one of Gerry’s sons. Both of them actually. I hadn’t met them before since I hadn’t been back much during school. They were twins, a few years older than me. Tyler and Bradley. Tyler had a small scar on his chin, a white streak through tanned flesh. Otherwise, they were identical: tall, with muscular arms and toned stomachs, at least as far as I could tell beneath their impossibly expensive suits; blond hair kept about the same length; blue eyes and dazzlingly white teeth. They were handsome. They were hot. I wanted one of them to take me into that stairwell and hike my dress up and bend me over. I didn’t care which one.
I’d always been a sexual being. It was just who I was. High school, college, I liked sex. I experimented. I didn’t need to be dating guys just to sleep with them. I was tipsy at the reception. Tyler and Bradley both had dates—thin little things with fake tits. They weren’t married or anything, but I chalked it up to a missed opportunity and had more drinks.
When I sobered up the next day, sleeping in my bed at my mother’s house—I could at least stay until she was back from her honeymoon—I realized that Tyler and Brad were my stepbrothers now. I shouldn’t have wanted to have sex with my stepbrothers. That was a little too southern for Chicago.
2
I had a degree in advertising, and I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. My mom and her new husband spent two weeks in the Bahamas. Then he was back to work, and his secretary, the cute young thing who had gotten the job my mother had wanted, called me and told me my stepfather wanted to meet with me.
“When?” I asked. I had been sleeping, still at my mother’s house even though she hadn’t come home after the Bahamas. She had a new home.
“Today if that works for you. Three?”
“What time is it now?” I asked, yawning. The woman paused.
“One ten,” she said finally.
“Okay, yeah. That’s fine,” I said, and then I hung up so I didn’t have to hear her silent judgment anymore. I showered and dressed and then took a frantic drive, as I wasn’t quite sure where I was going. Even so, I found myself ten minutes early, sitting across from the woman I had spoken to on the phone in a small room outside my stepfather's office. I didn’t wait long. He opened the door and smiled as he walked over to me. I stood up, wondering if he wanted to shake my hand, but instead he pulled me into a hug.
“How are you?” he asked me.
“Great,” I said, and followed him into his office. Gerry’s office was larger than some people’s homes. It had a wonderful view, large windows along one side of the wall that looked out over the city. Gerry sat behind his desk, waving a hand at one of two chairs across from him. I sat. He smiled.
“How was your trip?” I asked.
“Wonderful,” he said, nodding his head. He was a good-looking guy, tan like my mother, white teeth like his sons. His hair was thinning and gray, the only slight against his looks. We spent some time shooting the shit, as my father always said, and then he got to the point.
“Your mother tells me you went to school for advertising.”
I nodded. “She’s right.”
“I’d like to offer you a job here.”
My mouth fell open, and I hurried to close it. “I’ve been applying to some ad firms,” I said. “I didn’t think that was something you did here.”
“We do it all,” Gerry said with a laugh. “Really, though, we’ve been putting an in-house ad team together for the last few months. Perfect timing, with you graduating.”
“Not a lot of places have in-house ad teams,” I said.
“This isn’t a lot of places,” Gerry Harding said with a wide smile. He was certainly right about that. He went on. “We make a lot of things here, a lot of products. We want to take more control of the way they’re presented to the public. We’d like you to join the small team.”
I nodded. I couldn’t believe my ears. Finding work had been difficult, to say the least, so far. But now, here was a job falling into my lap.
“Okay,” I said, and my stepfather smiled. We spent half an hour going over things, and I signed a couple of papers. I started the next day.