“Yes,” he says. Short. Curt. Dick. “Interesting choices,” he says after a few seconds of silence.
“Oh?” I say. “How so?” I don’t even remember what I picked.
“They’re not traditional,” Bric says.
Shit. What did I pick?
“But whatever. I can see this is a game to you. So we’re going to choose one of them tonight and you’ll have to live with it.”
There’s brochures stuffed between his seat and the center console, so I take them out and look at them again.
Yeah. Not really my thing. One has turrets. Looks like a fucking castle. One is contemporary, but not traditional. And the third is Santa Fe Spanish. I almost can’t stop the laugh.
“I’m disappointed in you, Nadia.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you put no thought into this. These are not your choices. And tonight I’m going to spend somewhere between three and five million dollars trying to make you happy by giving you a home, and you put no thought into it.”
“That’s not fair. First of all, I’m not asking you for a house. Second, I didn’t even have a chance to look at what was in the envelope until my break. And by that time, it was almost noon. If you want to make me happy don’t give me deadlines.”
He looks at me. Sternly. And the few moments of silence that come with that look make me squirm. “I didn’t say house, Nadia. I said home.”
OK. Just give in, Nadia. It’s easier. Get the night over with and then you can go—
“Why are you playing?”
“Why are you playing?” I ask. “If all you get out of it is disappointment.”
“I was hoping we had come to an understanding.”
“Why? Because you’re blackmailing me?”
He scoffs.
“You are,” I say. “Blackmailing me.”
“So quit the game. You’ll save me a few million dollars.”
“You could quit too,” I say. “And save yourself.”
“Jordan laughed when I texted him your choices.”
“Did he?” I say. Fucker. He hasn’t called me at all. I spent a good amount of time this morning listening for the phone to ring and Chris’s soft steps as she came to tell me I had a call. But he never called. It seems he’s abandoned me to Bric.
“He said these aren’t your choices, which I already knew since you told me traditional. And then he laughed again.”
“Does it hurt your feelings when he laughs at you, Elias?”
The sneer he shoots me makes my heart skip a beat. “You’re trying to control me. And I thought we already had this talk. I’m the top, you’re the bottom. You exist to please me. And when you please me, I please you.”
I look out the window, too angry to trust any words that might come out.
“This is a power struggle,” he says. “And I like it.”
I look back over at him, confused. “You do?”
“Of course. What good is a dom/sub relationship if there’s no power struggle? It makes things exciting. I break you down, you learn something about yourself. If I do it right, you don’t get hurt. So I learn something about myself as well.”
Is he serious right now?
“I was telling you this last night but you weren’t listening. Humans are violent. You’re violent,” he says.
“I said I was sorry.”
“But you like it, Nadia. That’s my point. You like the violence if you’re the one dishing it out. Which is why I asked if you were abused when you were younger.”
“And then you made fun of me. ‘Did your daddy beat you, Nadia?’” I spit the words out.
“Did he?” Bric asks.
“I told you no.”
“Then why do you like it?”
“It’s a game, Bric.”
“Elias,” he growls.
“That’s all. And Jordan liked it. If you don’t like it, I won’t do it. How’s that?”
“That’s a good start. Because you will not slap me again.”
“And you won’t slap me either.”
“Fair enough. But you’ll miss out on some good sex if you give me that rule.”
I huff out some air. Frustrated.
“Where do you draw the line, Nadia? With the violence?”
“I don’t want to be hit.”
“But you want to do the hitting?”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to. You told me through your actions.”
“What are you? Some kind of psychiatrist? Stop reading into things, Elias. It’s just a game. You said so yourself.”
He doesn’t answer because we pull into a driveway, pass through an open iron gate, and come to a stop behind a black Mercedes.
The Spanish house.
A man in a suit gets out of the Mercedes, younger than Bric but definitely older than me.
“Can you see yourself living here for the rest of your life, Nadia?”
I stare up at the house. Ugly orange, Spanish tile roof. Curved exterior walls covered in white stucco. Neighbors so close you can see into their windows.
“No,” I say, being truthful for once. “I can’t.”
Bric presses a button on his door and his window rolls down as the man in the suit walks up to our car. “We’re gonna pass on this one, Law. Let’s see the next one, OK?”
“Fine with me, Bric. Meet you over there.”
Bric tabs the window back up and we back out of the driveway. The next house is only a few blocks away. The contemporary one. We don’t even bother to pull into the driveway this time, just idle in the street. “How about this one, Nadia?” Bric sighs.
“No,” I say.
Law comes up to our window again. And again Bric says, “Next.”
The guy just shrugs, gets back into his car, and we follow him to the third place.
The castle with turrets.
The gate is larger than the last two and the driveway is longer, which means the lot is bigger and no neighbors can see into the house. There’s trees along the property line. Tall, skinny ones that create a wall of sticks that might even be pretty in the summer.
“Do you even want to see it before we move in? Or should we just surprise ourselves next week?”
I stare at the house. It looks cold. And old. It’s all gray-brown stone and appears to be something out of history.
The window rolls down. Bric says, “Offer five million cash. Three-day possession.”
“Don’t you want to see inside?” Law asks.
“I saw the pictures online,” Bric says. “It’s good enough.”
“Uh, OK,” Law says back. “I’ll write it up and email you.”
The window rolls back up. We sit in silence.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I say. “I have a place to live.”
“I didn’t do it for you, Nadia. I did it for us. Would you like to have dinner? Or do you want to go back to your apartment?”
“Is Jordan coming?”
“No,” Bric says. “He says he’s busy.”
I let out a long sigh. “Is he quitting on me?”
“No,” Bric says, a little bit of surprise in his voice. “Why do you think that?”
“Because ever since you showed up he’s been conveniently missing.”
“He’s got some big case, Nadia. Don’t internalize things.”
“Is he going to move into this house with us?”
“As far as I know,” Bric says. But he doesn’t sound very sure of himself. “I’ll talk to him about it tomorrow. Do you want dinner?”
“Sure,” I say. But I feel sad all of a sudden. I feel like I just lost something even though Elias Bricman just purchased a five-million-dollar house that I will soon be living in.
I stew in that as Bric makes his way across town and we unexpectedly end up back in front of my building. “I thought we were going to eat?” I say.
“I don’t want to be around you if you don’t want to be around me. So I’ll take a raincheck on that.”