7. Eric
Eric
I idle in the driveway for a while, replaying the last hour in my mind. It’s good that I have a meeting this morning. It turned out to be a good excuse for a quick exit, in case she turned me down.
Which she did.
Maybe I should have known better than to take her drunk ramblings last night to heart.
I don’t know what came over me. Lust for Rebecca and her curves, maybe, or the words of my older brothers from days ago, about my potential to be a father one day, the stage in life they’re both entering while I remain firmly behind, trailing behind them in life as I always seem to do.
I’ve spent most of my life with my head down in books, studying, researching, and inventing. With Elijah and Emmett, we’ve built an empire that is guaranteed to outlive ourselves. And maybe that’s the only legacy I need to leave, the only mark I need to make on this world.
Maybe.
But I want more. And after last night, I can’t seem to look at Rebecca in quite the same way.
It’s not as if I haven’t noticed her beauty before. It’s obvious to anyone who looks at her. It’s the reason I made her move her office next to mine, away from the rest of the staff, so that they could actually get some work done and stop eyeing her like candy.
Maybe I’ve always felt as though I have ownership over her. She’s been with me for seven years, my faithful assistant, my right hand at the office who never fails me.
I wasn’t surprised to learn last night that she doesn’t like her job all that much. But what I didn’t know is that she has something else she wants, a completely different path in life that she always meant to take after graduating college.
Instead she came to work for me at the tender age of twenty-three, pouring herself into her work, giving in to my demands, stretching to meet my high bar.
Before she came to Stone Enterprises, my assistant position was a revolving door of rejects who either left voluntarily because they couldn’t handle working for me, or who were eventually fired.
Then she came along.
As beautiful back then as she is now. Slightly afraid of me, although that fear is long gone by now.
Now she’s the only person in my office with the backbone to stand up to me.
To tell me that I’m making a mistake, that I’m wrong.
She’s saved my ass more than once due to this, always telling me the truth while the yes-men around me pretended to overlook my errors.
She has my respect. A hard thing to earn. And she has my trust, as well.
Who better to marry? Who better to raise children with?
It’s a solid foundation, better than most start out with. But she thinks she needs something more than this. She thinks she needs love. Something I’ll never be able to promise her.
How the hell can I promise to love, when I’ve never loved a woman before?
It’s not as though I don’t know what love is. I suspect it’s just different for me. I feel love differently. And I express it differently, much to the frustration of those around me.
I feel love for my family. My brothers, my niece…even my unborn nephew.
And if I ever have children, I’ll love them too. But that’s a different kind of love. Family love. Automatic love .
Falling in love with a woman is…different. A gradual process that occurs with time, if you’re lucky. I’ve never been able to get into dating. The demands of romantic relationships are too much.
Maybe if I married a woman, I would eventually love her.
But maybe not.
I can promise Rebecca a lot of things. But I can’t promise love. I just can’t.
“You look like shit.”
“Thanks. You too.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. I was up all night again with Ellie.”
“Right.”
I look away from my oldest brother and gaze around the room. This quaint restaurant isn’t our usual meeting place, but it’s closer to Elijah’s house than our downtown offices are.
Lately, Elijah has this thing about working on weekends.
He prefers not to do it at all if he can avoid it, no longer the workaholic he once was before he met his wife.
And if we have to have a work meeting on a weekend, he demands that we meet somewhere closer to his house, so he doesn’t have to drive far or be gone from his family for long.
And I get it. I do. But right now, I don’t want to talk to Elijah about his daughter. It’s just another unwelcome reminder that my brothers are both married men, both becoming dads, and I’m…not.
A flash of Rebecca from this morning runs through my mind, only it’s not an image based in reality. Instead, it’s a scene that didn’t happen, a scene where Rebecca said yes. And then we quickly got to work making a baby, right there on my bed.
I was prepared to do it.
Prepared to get started this morning, if she was feeling up to it.
Fucking her this morning would serve two purposes. Filling her with my seed, the first time of many if we were to try for a baby together….and at the same time, finally taking care of the erection I’d been battling back all morning long as we talked in my bedroom.
Sure, I saw her naked last night. But that was different. It wasn’t sexual . I was caretaking, washing her up and changing her into clean clothes, making sure she made it to bed, taking care of her when she woke up several times throughout the night.
But this morning? When she woke up, her hair all messy, face bare of any makeup, my favorite shirt draped over her curves?
I fucking wanted her.
“Her new tooth finally came through,” Elijah says. “So hopefully things will improve soon.”
“How did the call with Pete go?” I ask, wanting to get off the topic as soon as possible.
Emmett arrives as I ask the question, late by fifteen minutes, as usual. He looks from one of us to the other.
“Okay,” he says slowly, turning to look at me. “I know why Elijah looks half-dead. But what’s up with you?”
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“You look like shit.”
“I’ve been told,” I reply, running a hand through my hair.
“You okay?”
“Fine.”
Emmett glances at Elijah.
“You don’t look fine,” Emmett says. “What’s the deal? Did you drink too much at the party last night?”
His words strike a chord. It’s been a long time since alcohol has been even remotely tempting to me. It’s not Emmett’s fault. My brothers don’t know how low I once fell. I was in college, lost in the long shadows that they both cast over my life, struggling to form connections to others.
Social connection just came so naturally to everyone else. But not for me. Never for me.
I tried. Oh, I tried. For a while I had plans. I would find a girlfriend and tie the knot after we graduated. We’d have kids. We’d settle down.
Normal. We would be normal.
I would be normal.
But changing myself was hard. Going to parties, struggling to make idle conversation with people, to connect with them on an emotional level.
Alcohol helped. It lowered my inhibitions. Made jokes funnier, made small talk easier.
I was still awkward, constantly second guessing myself. What is this person feeling? What does that smile mean? If I say this, is that okay? What did they mean when they said that?
But even though I still second guessed myself, it was easier. Calmer. No anxiety, no fear.
Alcohol helped. Until one day, it didn’t anymore.
It spiraled out of control. Eventually, I didn’t know how to function without it, liquor being the fuel that kept me going, kept me forcing myself out of my comfort zone, exhausting myself mentally trying to squeeze myself into a mold that didn’t fit.
Realizing it was ruining me, I quit drinking cold turkey. The drinking and the socializing. Because I couldn't seem to do one without the other.
All of this happened in my first year of college, all without my brothers knowing a thing about it. When I came home for the summer, their familiar robotic brother was just as he had always been. Maybe a little more reclusive, a little older looking, but still Robot Eric all the same.
“I don’t drink,” I snap at Emmett. “You know that.”
“Sorry,” Emmett shrugs. “I figured you must be hungover or something, with the way you look right now. What’s up?’
“Nothing is up. Fuck off.”
Emmett’s eyes widen. Even Elijah looks surprised, looking up from his cell phone screen to scrutinize my face. I look away from them both, irritation growing by the second.
“Eric, if you -”
I cut Elijah off before he can finish the sentence.
“I need to take a piss,” I mutter, standing up abruptly. “When I come back, let’s review your phone call with Pete so we can move on with the contract details.”
My eyes scan for the restroom sign. When I spot it around a corner, I make a beeline for it, darting through the tables and chairs. But I stop when I hear a familiar feminine voice from behind a partition to my right.
“I don’t know, Mom,” Rebecca says weakly. “Does it matter?”
“Perhaps if you went back to the gym,” another woman says. Her voice is stiff yet melodic, the way a news anchor’s voice might be. It’s also way too loud, almost as though she wants to be overheard. “Did some cardio, maybe.”
“I already go to yoga twice a week,” Rebecca mumbles.
“And I think that’s wonderful, dear,” the woman continues. “But are you working up a sweat with your little yoga class? Do you get your heart rate up? You know you need to get your heart rate up for at least thirty minutes to -”
“To burn fat,” Rebecca sighs. “Thanks, I know that. You’ve only said it to me a thousand times a year since I was thirteen.”
“Well, I’m just saying,” the woman replies. “Maybe if you put in a little more effort, you’d have more luck attracting a man.”
“Mom!” Rebecca says. “There’s more to life than finding a man. Have you ever considered that?”
“Of course there’s more to life than finding a man,” Rebecca’s mother replies. “There’s also motherhood.”
“Please stop talking about this. Please .”
My gut clenches. Rebecca sounds like she’s about to cry, her voice thin and strained.