Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

Clint

She looks beautiful.

Fresh out of the shower, wearing her shorts and my shirt.

So beautiful.

I don’t want to have this conversation even though I know we need to have it. I realize I don’t want to have the conversation because the conversation may be the end of this relationship, such as it is. Damn it, though. I can’t keep feeling like we’re damaging each other or, more accurately, that she might experience damage.

“Why do you hate me, Livvy?” I ask.

She stares at me for a second and then a slight smile appears on her face. “Wow. Get right to it, huh? Well, let’s start from the other direction. Why do you hate me?”

“I don’t hate you.”

“Okay, why do I frustrate the hell out of you?”

It’s my turn to smile. “You got angry about my land. You wanted it and you couldn’t accept that I wasn’t interested in selling at all. You called me unreasonable. You called me stupid. You called me a number of names.”

Her eyes narrowed for a moment. Then they change. They’re not friendly but they’re not angry. When she speaks, I can hear something almost like desolation in her voice. She says, “I was a millionaire at seventeen. I… People look at me and they see a pair of tits and an ass. Not everybody but most people. Even enlightened people.”

“Enlightened people?”

She smiles. “I mean even people who are gung ho for women’s rights or whatever. Even women. Women CEOs and entrepreneurs. I’m too successful and so they think I must be sucking dicks to get the deals I get or batting my eyes or wiggling my ass. They think that now. That probably started when I was fifteen. Before that, people assumed my parents were rich or that I was just a big talker. Or cute.”

“Cute?”

“Just a cute kid who thought she was a real estate investor.” She gets that same faraway look on her face. “My whole life nobody just sees me. They see this… well, they either resent me or they see my accomplishments, you know. And so, nobody knows me and all I can do is make sure the accomplishments are still happening. All I can do is keep winning.”

I feel like I should say something but I don’t know what. I take a sip of my coffee mostly because it’s something to do that precludes speaking. She says, “I have to keep winning because that’s what people value. Nothing else. They don’t know anything else about me.”

“I know that you bought a piece of land when you were fourteen or fifteen and you turned it into an RV park. You sold it for a million dollars. I don’t know what kind of pressure that puts on someone.”

“How did you know that?”

“It was in the newspaper. I found the article online.”

“That was my first deal. It made me seven-hundred thousand.”

“And everyone looking at you differently.”

She nods. “Yeah, exactly.”

“They see a version of you but not the real you. So, you think you can’t let them in to see the real you and even if you did, there’s no guarantee they’ll accept the real you.”

She nods. “Yeah. That’s it. You think I’m stupid but that’s it.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” I say.

“Sure, you do.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You don’t have to bullshit me, Clint. You already get to stick your dick in me whenever you want to. You don’t have to act like you understand me. It’d be easier to deal with things if you were just an asshole to me, actually.” She sighs and says, “a lot less complicated, actually.”

“I’m not bullshitting. It’s not pretend. I don’t think you’re stupid and I know exactly how it feels to hide the real me.”

She scoffs. “Now I know you’re full of shit. You’re a he-man fireman. The real you isn’t fucking complicated. You’re as predictable and normal as a man can be. You don’t know a fucking thing about how I feel.”

That makes me angry but I fight down the emotion. “Get dressed. I’m going to show you why I didn’t sell you my land.”