Her bush objects of attr.., p.15
Her Bush (Objects of Attraction), page 15
I laughed. “I might’ve had a good time.”
“A good time? I thought you were about to start speaking in tongues for a minute there.”
I swatted at his shoulder and curled over to rest my head on him. “Don’t tease me about that. You’re going to make me self-conscious.”
“Joking aside… I’ve never had sex like that. Never.”
“You’re only saying that because I tried to stick my toe in your butthole.”
Harry laughed in surprise. “Wait, what? You didn’t actually try that, did you?”
I grinned. “I’m just messing with you. Maybe.”
Harry studied me with those mesmerizing eyes of his. The mid-afternoon sun was streaming in the window behind him and catching little motes of dust that floated lazily through the air. I felt about as carefree as they must right now, like nothing in the world could touch us. And then I realized I was thinking about Harry and me as “us” already. Somehow, that felt like a big step.
Harry opened his mouth, frowned, and then closed it.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing. I’m just wondering how this is all going to work out.”
From the look in his eyes, I thought he wasn’t being entirely honest. I couldn’t help wondering if the same “L” word was floating around in his head, but that would be wishful thinking. I shouldn’t have even been thinking about that word, let alone hoping he was, too.
“It’s going to work out,” I said. “And we’re going to figure it out together.”
Harry took my hand in his and kissed my fingers.
21
HARRY
Every author I represented sat in the conference room in my house. William had also decided to come, and Nell was sitting beside me. I was slightly self-conscious about the fact that we both had wet hair from the shower we’d taken after our little diversion in my bedroom. Anyone with a few hints about my feelings for her could probably work out what had happened, and the look on Peter’s face said he had already put two and two together.
“Most of you already know why I asked you to be here,” I said. “I haven’t heard specifics yet, but I know Damian Cross is likely going to get me blacklisted with his father’s influence. Unfortunately, that falls back on all of you. I can’t say for sure, but my best guess is that Nathaniel will come after some of you personally once he’s done with me.”
“Why is he so intent on coming after you?” asked Ross, one of my nonfiction authors.
Blake Renshaw stood up and pointed across the table at me. “Because our ‘agent’ couldn’t keep his dick out of her.”
I calmly stood up and started walking toward Blake, who, to his credit, seemed to consider running. I took him by his shirt and walked him backwards to the wall, pressing him there just hard enough to let him know that he wasn’t getting down until I’d finished talking.
William started a slow clap, but Hailey put one hand over her eyes and the other on his wrist.
“Really?” Hailey muttered.
“What? This is so much more entertaining than I thought it was going to be,” William whispered loudly.
I looked Blake in the eye. I’d been representing him since his debut novel seven years ago, but we’d never really crossed the business line to become friends. “I do have feelings for Nell. Strong ones, actually, but—”
William started slow clapping again. “What?” he asked when everyone turned to glare at him. “I can’t slow clap for the action scene or the romantic scene? What does that leave me with?”
“How about no clapping. Period,” Hailey suggested.
“Uh, then how is Harry going to know when I’m enjoying myself?”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll just assume if things are going to shit in some capacity, you’re having the time of your life. Sound good?”
“Fair enough,” William muttered. “I still don’t get what’s so bad about a little applause.”
“Damian decided he was either going to sleep with Nell or he was going to try to ruin her life. And yes, I’m dating Nell, but I wasn’t going to let some piece of slime sexually harass her because I was scared of retaliation. I knew the risks, but I also didn’t have a choice. All I can say is that I’m truly sorry it came to this. Damian and his father put all of us in a shitty situation, and now we don’t have any choice but to deal with as best we can. Considering this was my mess that turned into yours—”
“You don’t sound as pissed anymore,” Blake said. His voice was a little strained, which made me realize one of my hands had slipped slightly and was pushing into his neck. “Do you think you could put me down for the rest of the speech?”
“That depends. Can you stop yourself from making me want to punch you in the face for the rest of my speech?”
Blake held up his palms and shrugged.
I grudgingly let him go, even though punching him would’ve felt good. I knew he had a right to be pissed, anyway. I might not have felt like I had a choice, but this was still somebody else’s fight spilling into the laps of all my clients.
“So,” I continued. “If any of you want to cut ties and leave, I’ll have my team tear up our contracts, even on existing projects. You won’t owe me a dime going forward, and maybe that’ll help convince Nathaniel that he already punished me enough by chasing you off. If you’re leaving,” I said, gesturing to the door. “Thanks for letting me represent you, and I’m sorry it came to this.”
There was a great shuffling of chairs and feet as almost everyone in the room got up and walked out. Some took a moment to come over and pat me on the shoulder, shake my hand, or give me a quick hug and a rushed “goodbye,” but when the dust settled, only Nell, William, and Hailey were still in the room.
William rocked back in his chair and brought his hands together in a few loud, piercing slow claps.
Nell and I waited on a loading dock behind the building where Maya North’s gala was behind held in downtown New York.
I put my hand to a strand of Nell’s hair and held it up with a smile. “I like the new color.”
“This was actually the color I originally went for when I screwed up and got that neon orange. I took a few minutes to read the instructions on the bottle this time.”
“Blonde suits you. But, then again, so did orange and purple with a white stripe.”
“You’re only saying that because you like me.”
“Guilty,” I said, leaning in to kiss her. “About liking you, at least. It’s not my fault you can pull off any hair color.”
“Well, it is going to be my fault if this art show is a major bust.”
“It won’t. But you’re sure you don’t want to use the stand-in bush penis my guys made?”
“I’m sure. I appreciate that you had them do that, but I actually made something on purpose this time. It might not even fully make sense to me or seem like it should be worth any money, but I made it. That’s my foot and my ball sack. The penis and balls were just a mistake.”
I grinned. “This would be the perfect conversation for somebody to walk in on with no context.”
Nell laughed. “At least I didn’t reference what color all of it is.”
“Did you tell your sister?”
“No. She knows I met some hot rich guy and managed to get a minor concussion while making out with him on a boat. Beyond that, she has no idea any of this is going on, and that’s how I want it. She’s still just a kid, and I don’t need her stressing or feeling guilty about everything I’m doing.”
“I can respect that.” For about the hundredth time since I’d learned about Nell’s desire to pay Ashley’s way through music school, I had to fight the urge to offer her the money myself. Even if all but two of my clients just walked out on me yesterday and the remaining two were probably going to be crippled by Nathaniel’s bullshit, I could afford to help her. I wanted to help her. But I also knew Nell wasn’t asking me for a reason. It was important to her to do this in a way she could be proud of. It meant something to her—enough that she wasn’t even willing to show up with the art Maya North was almost guaranteed to sell for an amount of money that could’ve changed Nell’s life.
I didn’t offer her the money because I knew she wouldn’t take it, and I also knew if she did take it, she wouldn’t have been the woman I was rapidly falling for.
The original cock bush hadn’t survived Damian’s sword attack. I had an arborist try to reattach the severed top of the penis, but the leaves wilted and browned. My backup plan had been to pay an artist to recreate the original, but Nell had insisted on going with her foot and balls.
The gala started a few hours later.
The art shows we’d been to earlier seemed small by comparison. This wasn’t just a gathering of a few dozen rich art enthusiasts and their dealers; it was an event. There was press, celebrities, and of course, the buyers.
Nell and I watched as groups of people passed by her piece, scratching their chins and squinting. In most cases, it was impossible to tell what anyone thought. The norm at the gala seemed to be for people to look like they were contemplating everything on the deepest level so nobody would think they were too dull to grasp a piece. I even saw a group of people spend close to five minutes discussing the fire extinguisher hanging on the wall, which was definitely not an art piece.
Maya found us a few minutes into the showing.
“I was sorry to hear about everything that happened with Damian,” Maya said. “He has spent the past few days trying to convince everybody that you’re just a hack. He said you’d show up with some glued together version of your piece and it would prove you weren’t a true artist.” Maya gave me a little shrug and a wink. “But I guess he underestimated you, didn’t he?”
“Do you like the new piece?” Nell asked.
“Personally? No. I think it’s derivative and shows you’ve got some work to do, that maybe we were reading more into your original than you intended.”
“Oh,” she said quietly.
Maya flashed a tight smile, then left.
“Hey,” I said, pulling Nell into a tight hug. “You okay? I know that wasn’t exactly what you wanted to hear.”
“No. It’s fine. I don’t think I quite realized how much I had wanted to impress Maya with my art until she told me I’d failed. She was like the final boss version of my douchebag of an art teacher back in high school, and this bush foot and balls were supposed to be my triumphant moment where the universe had to admit I was actually good at something.”
“Wait,” I said suddenly, pulling back. “Where are the keys to your apartment?”
“Here?” she said uncertainly, plucking them from her bag and holding them up.
I snatched them from me and ran toward the nearest exit.
“Harry?” she said. “What the hell!?”
“I’ll be back. One hour!”
It ended up taking me more like an hour and a half to get back to the gala. Nell lived outside the city, and I had to wait for a rental car to show up that had enough room to carry all the sculptures she had squirreled away in her apartment. My heart had been aching for her after what Maya said, but then it had occurred to me. I’d seen a closet full of sculptures on my first visit to Nell’s apartment. I hadn’t expected them to also be stuffed under her bed, in cabinets, and even under the bathroom sink.
Apparently, Nell had been keeping her real passion for art a closely guarded secret. I couldn’t be sure if anyone at Maya’s gala would be interested in Nell’s other stuff, but I knew I had to try something. If I had stood there watching Nell try to hold it together for another minute, I would’ve lost my mind. She was too sweet and pure to have her hopes smashed like that, especially after everything she’d already been through in the past few days.
I came rushing back to where her bush sculpture was set up in the gala with a giant box stuffed full of her art.
Nell was watching me come, fists planted on her hips. “I knew that’s what you were doing as soon as you left. What if I don’t want people to see my crappy art I made in the kitchen?”
"Then, you could close your eyes?" I suggested as I hastily found a table and dragged it closer to where she was set up. "This stuff is as good as anything here. I mean, it's not really about precision and technicality with modern art, anyway. It's just having something that speaks to people, right? You obviously cared a hell of a lot when you made all this, and you owe it to yourself to give it a shot."
Nell put her hands on mine when I tried to take one of her pieces out of the box and tried to stop me. “Harry. I’ve never shown people these. Just Davey, and he’s way too nice to tell me how bad it all is.”
“What if that high school teacher of yours was just jealous? Maybe they hated having a student who was better than them.”
She laughed. “Any other theories?”
“One. I lifted the bowl I’d been holding for her to get a better look. “Have you ever noticed that almost every single thing you’ve sculpted here is vaguely… sexual?”
“Uh, what? I think I’d realize if I was some kind of closeted…” Nell trailed off as she tilted her head and looked at the bowl. “I mean, okay. I can see with that one how you could make an argument that it’s a little vagina-like, but it’s not as if—”
I lifted a sculpture of a woman from the box. “And this one?”
“Slightly phallic, maybe?”
“And this?” I lifted another.
Nell crossed her arms and made an annoyed sound. “Okay, so maybe I have some repressed sexual tension or something. I don’t see how this means anything?”
“It means the penis bush wasn’t completely a mistake. That’s just your style.”
Nell grinned. “My style is accidentally turning everything I touch into a vague representation of genitalia?”
"Yes! It's almost like a superpower."
"That has to be the worst superpower I've ever heard of."
“Please, Nell. Just try this. If not for yourself, then do it for me.”
She worked her lips to the side and stared at the box. “Okay. But if anybody comes by and makes fun of them, we’re packing it all up and lighting the whole box on fire.”
“If anybody makes fun of them, I’ll personally remove them from the building.”
With a sigh, Nell helped me unpack the box and set up all her sculptures on the table. Once we were finished, I took a step back and tried to take in the entire display. “You know,” I said. “Seeing all this other work by you kind of makes the foot and balls work better, I think.”
We only had to wait a few seconds before interested groups of people started circulating around the display. I noted many furrowed brows and excited whispers from dealers to their clients.
A man wearing a purple ascot with a pencil-thin beard was the first to approach me. “What’s your current offer on the figurine of the woman?”
“Ah,” I said. I hid my elation and slid right into the role of being Nell’s agent. “We actually fielded a few offers on that one, but our leading two bidders are interested in buying the figurine along with several other pieces as a package. We would need a considerable offer to think about passing them up.” I gave an apologetic shrug. “They were talking in the six figures, and—”
“Four hundred thousand,” the man said.
I made a sound in my throat. Four hundred thousand. I'd earned a fortune representing authors throughout my career, but the number throttled even me. My brother was one of the most prominent authors in the world, and he was lucky to get an advance anywhere close to that for a new book.
“Did he say four thousand freaking dollars?" Nell whispered so loud I was reasonably sure the man could hear her.
I cleared my throat. “No, no. Of course not. He knows not to insult your work with an offer that low. He said four hundred thousand.”
Nell stepped back and her face went white. “How many zeroes is that?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, wishing I could temporarily wrap Nell in a blanket and set her aside. “We don’t get her out of the studio much.”
The man gave a patient smile. “Quite alright. Will you accept our offer?”
“I wish we could. But the lowest we could afford to take considering our current bids would be half a million. Anything less than that, and we’d prefer to keep bidding open on the piece.”
“Very well.” The man handed me his card and left, as if he’d just put in an order for a hotdog at a street vendor instead of promising to pay half a million dollars of his client’s money.
“Did that just happen?” Nell asked. She was clutching my shoulder so hard it actually hurt.
“Yes,” I said. “And as much as I enjoy getting your perspective—it’s adorable, really—you might want to just stand in the background and look confident from now on.”
Nell took a step back and assumed a posture and facial expression that looked more like she was fighting food poisoning than feeling confident.
Over the next half hour, I fielded bid after bid on Nell’s work. I bluffed my way through the first few encounters and blindly inflated the prices of her work against imaginary bids, but eventually I was working with real bids. I didn’t even need to lie, because there were so many people interested in buying up everything on the table—even the foot and balls.
Maya came back with a confused look on her face. She swept her eyes across the table, eyebrows slamming together as she picked up a piece and examined it. “This is utterly brilliant. It’s so cohesive and bold. The subtext… My God, the subtext is phenomenal. It’s—” she seemed to realize she was rambling on to herself and then found Nell. “Where were you hiding all of this? Wait, no,” she stopped, putting her finger to her chin. “I understand.” She laughed suddenly, seeming more than a little insane. “You revealed the one piece, underwhelming and almost disappointing by itself. Borne from the unexpected demise of your previous work. The foot of society always crushes sexuality. But like this piece, the rest of your work rose up in spite of that. And I see now, yes, yes. I see why you couldn’t have everything on display from the beginning.”
