Chapter 50

Living together changes a relationship. Brant and I didn’t have the normal relationship issues. There were no dirty dishes to argue over. No laundry left on unswept floors. No, the traditional sources of strife were handled by our over-attentive staff of seven. But even without fights, our relationship changed, improved as a result of our addresses merging.

If I had any doubt of my love, it disappeared with every morning I woke up next to this man. His focus best in the morning, when he woke me with gentle swipes of his fingers through my hair, soft kisses placed on the surface of my skin. I’d roll into his arms, and there we’d spend an extra hour in bed, blinking the sleep from our eyes as the warmth of coffee flooded our veins. Sometimes he read, my body curling into his as I fell back asleep on his shoulder. Sometimes we f**ked, his hard-on impossible to ignore between us, playful kisses turned into much more by his hands. Mostly we talked. About his day or mine. About HYA events or BSX projects. About our future and whether we would have two kids or four. Private or public schooling. Stanford or Peace Corps.

In the evenings, on the nights he came home, we cooked. Christine, the chef, acted as instructor, our skill growing with each dinner. My skill was implementation, Brant’s prep. We put on music; Christine kicked us off with general instruction, and then let us fail horribly.

Sometimes he’d get home too late. I’d save him a plate of her creation and sit with him on the upper porch. Listen to the crash of the ocean and talk while I sipped wine and he ate like a teenager. His appetite was huge. I never knew that before we lived together. Never knew that he snacked constantly then ate large, as if he was burning a thousand calories a day, his taste in cuisine as varied as my own.

He also worked impossible hours. Couldn’t recall half of his days when we sat down to talk. Lost track of time when steaks were on the grill. Loved, above all else, the sound of my orgasm. Wanted, above all else, to spend the rest of his life with me.

The closer we grew, the more I wanted to really talk. About the secrets that lay between us. There was a way for us to have a real future. I knew it. Fuck Jillian and the things she had told me. I believed our love could carry us through it. I believed I could be the glue that held him together when his world fell apart.

I wanted to kick at the support beams of all that he knew. Expose the truth behind all of this. Tell him everything. And see if he survived. See if he stayed.

I risked losing him.

I risked destroying his life.

I risked saving our love. Our future.

Chapter 51

Brant

I am not a simple man. I know that. We all discovered that the summer of my eleventh year. The summer it snowed in San Francisco. The summer the three girls disappeared. The summer my parents bought a computer, and I stopped playing outside. That summer, everything as I knew it changed.

The simple Apple II processor, set up in my father’s office, unlocked an entire world for me. The introduction to advanced technology took my childhood obsession with calculators and small appliances to an entirely new level. A switch turned on in my mind, and I opened the door wider, letting a pent up sea of ‘what if’ thought processes loose. I dismantled the expensive new purchase, its guts stretching out across my father’s desk, and learned its language in days. My parents were furious, then confused, then saw the genius, and moved me and the computer down to the basement. Gave me a workspace, tools, and freedom.

I learned at a furious pace. Visited the library, checked out every book on technology I could get my hands on. My interest became an obsession, my passion a madness. The more I learned, the more I unlocked different pieces of my mind and learned of their potential, the further I pushed my intellectual limits. Chaos began to reign in my mind, a complicated race of intellectual competition, as one thought process competed with another, all in an attempt to fight to the front of my subconscious first.

I worked harder. Didn’t eat. Barely slept. Ignored my parents, became irritable. Spent every spare moment in the basement. It was as if technology spoke the only language that my newfound madness understood. And inside those basement walls the chaos—for one brief moment—stopped. Focus came. Everything else disappeared. I worked in my new home, and my parents called specialists. Discussed me in hushed tones as if I was sick.

Then, October 12th occurred. Our little family’s version of Armageddon – a disaster of epic proportions. I was taken to doctors. a slew of them. Dr. F was the face that stuck. A constant presence in the carousel of different tests and meds. He was a psychologist, asked questions, examined experiences. Tried to sort through the kaleidoscope of my mind and understand its structure and balance. I told him a hundred stories, walked him through every piece of my past. Everything except what happened on October 12th. On that subject, on that date, I remained mute. It wasn’t a conscious decision, I wasn’t being stubborn or secretive. I didn’t tell him because I didn’t know what happened. It was as simple as that. I couldn’t remember. Or my subconscious wouldn’t let me remember.

Eventually, life took on a new reality: Jillian and I against the world. I built computers, she brokered deals, and we redefined success. Any deceit we orchestrated… it didn’t seem to matter. Money was rolling in, I was well-adjusted, and my parents believed anything we said.

I lied for almost a decade, Jillian covering my sins with a smile and words so smooth that I almost believed them myself. Then, the lies stopped, medication fixing all of my problems.

It’d been 27 years since October 12th.