Page 42 of The Boyfriend Experience

I do the sit-ups on my giant ball because I like the support, then do half of the prescribed push-up count and get on the cycle.

It’s only then that I realize the cycle is positioned so it looks out at his terrace. So I spend thirty whole minutes daydreaming like a schoolgirl about Lawton Ayers. Which is ten minutes more than his orders.

I drink the second bottle of coconut water even though I still feel full from the first one. I feel like he went to a lot of trouble coming up with this hangover cure that I didn’t need, so I should honor that by following his instructions. And then I run the bath, drop the bubble bomb in, and know, with one hundred percent certainty, that every time I smell strawberries from this day forward, I will think of him.

The outfit he chose for me is… interesting.

Jeans, which I love. And they are old jeans with rips in all the right places. Worn thin and soft from years of washing and just a little bit loose.

An old brown leather belt that he must’ve chosen because the leather is worn and has lots of scuff marks on it. Like he knew this one was my favorite, and it is, so he was right.

A t-shirt that says, Save water, drink beer—which I forgot I even had—but was actually one I gave my dad for his fiftieth birthday back when I was a teenager. I found it when I cleaned out his room just before the renovation last year and couldn’t bring myself to throw it away because he wore this thing at least once a week until he died.

Like Law’s Johnny Cash shirt yesterday, it used to be black, but has since faded to light gray and all the hems have long ago given up and turned to nothing but frayed edges.

There’s also a pair of boots sitting on top of the pile. My very first pair of Frye boots. Dark brown leather engineer boots with silver buckles near the ankles. They are quintessential biker. I hate to admit it, but Law was right. I’m not proud of it, but I like a bad boy, what can I say. And I attract them with the bad girl look.

He’s got me pegged.

In fact it’s like Lawton picked through all of the hundreds of items in my closet and found the four things that say the most about me.

How did he do that? How did he know?

I put it all on, tucking in the shirt to show off the belt, then pulling out a little so it flows over my hips in a few places. When I pull the boots on and look at myself in the mirror I feel young again.

I feel free for some reason.

So many things hadn’t touched me yet back when I was a teenager. My father was still healthy and alive. The business was booming. Like totally going gangbusters. We’d just come up with Anarchy Orange IPA, which I totally had a hand in creating. And we were winning award after award in all the global beer festivals.

How did he know?

It was also before I met Hanna Harlow at college. Before she lied her way into my life and then promptly fucked me over. Before she stole my boyfriends, and my recipes, and my personality.

Before she stole my life.

I turn away from the mirror. Mostly because it’s almost one o’clock and I want to be downstairs to let Lawton up when the girls buzz me from the lobby. But also because it makes me sad to think back on those days. It makes me realize how much I’ve lost these past few years. And it would be tolerable—I could deal with stupid Hanna—if my dad were still here. He’d take care of her. He’d make it all go away. He’d handle things like he always did, protecting me from all the nasty in the world.

But all that paradise is lost and there’s no way I’ll ever get it back.

I feel like… like I’m alone.

I know I’m not. I have a ton of friends. Acquaintances, at least. I have fifty-two employees and most of them like me. There are one or two old-timers in the brewery I bump heads with every once in a while because we have different ideas about what new brews we’ll release each year. But they’re still here. They don’t quit on me. And I don’t bulldoze over them. I listen and we fight it out and come up with a compromise.

And the waitresses all like me. I think. I mean, I can get a little crazy at times. I blow my top every now and then. But they don’t quit either. Most of them stay. I mean, you can’t expect a person to wait tables for their whole life. Turnover is expected. It’s not like the brewmasters who have a career here.

The marketing department might hate me.

Thinking about them actually makes me smile. Because I am forever in their business. Always coming up with new ways to promote. They probably wish I’d be more hands-off, but I enjoy the marketing. And my ideas are good ones.

Mostly.

There was that time I insisted we have a custom Shrike Bike built with the Winter Park Wheat beer label painted on the tank. But I rode it in the Toy Run that year and then we auctioned it off for charity a few weeks later. So that was a hundred grand well-spent if you ask me. It got everyone excited, we made sure two hundred needy kids in Denver had a nice Christmas, and when it was all said and done, the whole thing was a tax writeoff.

Then there was the time I sponsored a wet jeans contest on the roof. There were like a dozen helicopters circling overhead for that. It was great publicity.

Every time I think about it I still have to laugh out loud. It was for the release of a seasonal summer IPA called Full Boner. But hey, if bars can have wet t-shirt contests for women to highlight their tits, then we can have a men’s wet jeans contest to highlight their dicks.

Fair is fair.