Page 13 of The Boyfriend Experience

She’s not one of those I-love-beer-so-I-think-I’ll-start-a-brewery people.

She’s a fucking scientist and fermentation is something she understands. Lives and knows deep down, like an instinct.

And she came up in the business. Her becoming a brewmaster was almost inevitable.

My email dings, so I switch screens to bring it up and find a message from the acquisitions department at Home TV with the details of next week’s meeting.

It’s a form letter, I’m sure of that. Explaining the details. Time, date, place. Shit like that. And the little paragraph they send at the end of every single email I’ve ever gotten from them telling me to study their successful shows so I understand what they’re looking for.

I know what they’re looking for. We’ve had more than a dozen phone conversations since I started this process. More emails than I can count. And lots of back-and-forth with the lawyers to get to this point.

This is my chance. We’re so close to the end and all I have to do is close the damn deal with this one final meeting.

They love my idea. They have several shows about mountain homes but none of them are based on the hosts and all of them focus on the houses. They have one short season, maybe two. Then they cut them loose, find another angle, and try again.

They are desperate to find that critical combination of personality and wow factor. They want something fresh. Something relevant.

They’ve said that to me many times and I’ve assured them I’ve got what they need.

And they’ve mostly been on board, but with a healthy dose of caution mixed in. Like they like me, but they don’t love me. And they’re going to decide one way or another at this final meeting.

And Jordan hit it on the head. They want me, but not just me. They want a couple.

And Oaklee Ryan is perfect. She is everything I need to get the Rocky Mountain Millionaires show off the ground. Hell, she’s a fuckin’ millionaire too! Not in the mountains, but that’s what I bring to the table. I’m the one with that dream. So all I gotta do is fit her oval peg into my round hole…

Which makes me chuckle. Because sexual innuendo and all that.

Except she made it very clear there’s no sex involved in this boyfriend experience.

And then there’s that flashing red sign again.

Why? She makes no sense at all.

The test, the contract, the game… none of it adds up.

What is her angle?

I slap my laptop closed, exhausted, then place it on my bedside table and turn over so I can see the lights from her window down the alley. A few seconds later, they go out, and I picture her getting into bed. Thinking about me. Thinking about what we might do tomorrow. I wonder if she thinks I’m as interesting as I think she is.

Probably not. This is business to her. As it is to me. So it doesn’t even matter if she likes me.

I close my eyes, shut out the view of her apartment, and drift off thinking about how my life will change next week.

How I can sell off all my city real estate, buy that place up in the foothills, and start a whole new life far, far away from the city. I envision a life of traipsing through the mountains, looking for homes, and empty lots with the perfect building sites next to rivers, and finding other people their perfect piece of the Wild West.

City life will be a thing of the past. The rat race over.

And all of this is now in reach. This plan is perfect and Oaklee Ryan is my ticket to freedom.

The next morning I find myself standing on my terrace, coffee cup in hand, looking over at Oaklee’s penthouse. I can’t see the street because my building is set back and my penthouse is on the far side of that, but I get glimpses of people rushing past the entrance to the alley. It’s Saturday, so families are out early to eat breakfast at one of the many restaurants on this block. The sun is shining, the temperature mild—gonna hit high sixties today—and there’s no sign of rain coming in over the mountains.

And I have a girlfriend to share it with.

That makes me laugh.

I mean, for all intents and purposes she is my girlfriend. We will be spending the next two weeks doing pretty much everything couples do.

What do couples do?