Billionaire With a Twist - Part 3

“So, what’s the future hold?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” she admitted, “but I’ve been getting awfully restless lately. New York, maybe. The art scene there has always been amazing. And if my party planning ever gets off the ground, who knows? I might have to city-hop for a while, go where the work is.”

“Well, if you need a stepping stone, there’s always room on my couch.”

Paige made grateful noises, but I knew she wouldn’t be taking me up on my offer.

Paige had seen my couch, and she knew that there was only room on it for me and my self-pity.

#

The reality show had ended hours ago and there was never anything remotely interesting on at this time of night, but I knew that turning the TV off would only fill the apartment with a terrible silence that I couldn’t face. So I was flipping through channels, trying to find something that wasn’t a congressional hearing or an infomercial for a food processor that sliced, diced, and also organized your socks or some shit.

And then the Douchebros’ ad came on.

“Oh, baby, oh—” Creaking springs and lustful moans gave way to the sight of a barely clad, barely legal blonde sucking eagerly at the neck of a Knox bourbon bottle, held directly at the crotch line of a smirking male model.

I wasn’t sure what I was more disgusted with: the objectification, or how insultingly unsubtle it was.

“Yeah, swallow it,” the man urged. “You know you like the taste.”

She murmured happy agreement, but then there came a whimper of pure need from the floor beside the bed, where multiple near-nude supermodels lay entwined. “When’s my turn?”

The man looked straight into the camera and winked.

KNOX BOURBON, said the letters slapped up over his face as the audio cut to a poorly sampled hip hop track. EVEN GOOD GIRLS SWALLOW IT.

I let the remote fall out of my hands, horrified. Distantly, I heard the sound as it hit the floor.

This was how Chuck wanted the company represented to the world?

Hunter had to be tearing out his hair right now.

Hunter—

I grabbed for my cell phone and punched in his number. I had to hear his voice, had to know he was okay, had to let him know that this wasn’t me, I had never wanted this—

“This is Hunter Knox.”

“Hunter, I—” I began.

“Leave a message after the beep, and don’t forget your number if it’s blocked.”

Frustrated tears filled my eyes. Damn. Voicemail again, and I’d let it fool me. I’d heard it over and over these past few weeks until I had every cadence of every syllable memorized, and I still let it fool me because I was so desperate for his forgiveness.

“I—Hunter, I, I just saw the ad, and—” When I’d picked up the phone, I’d been so certain I’d know what to say, that the words would just come. But now that the moment was there, they were all so out of reach. Just like Hunter. “I’m so sorry.”

That was all I had left. That was all I could say.

“God, Hunter, I am so, so sorry.”

THREE

I looked away from my computer screen and rubbed my bloodshot eyes, massaged my forehead and tense, aching jaw. I sighed.

Damn, damn, and double damn.

Hunter still hadn’t called me back, but the burst of energy I’d gotten from my revulsion at the ad had still managed to propel me across my apartment to do some research. And that research was not encouraging.

The new campaign was bombing harder than a fighter plane over enemy territory. Sales of Knox bourbon were way down, share prices were plummeting even faster, and Twitter feeds were blowing up with hashtags denouncing every person involved in its production as sexist scum. I stalked the social media profiles of the Douchebros and pretty soon had to look away; they were still virulently defending the product, not even realizing that they were fanning the flames of the online outrage with their outdated misogynistic rhetoric. It had a desperate note to it, though; even they realized that something was wrong. Somewhere way back in those reptilian brains, they had to know that they had f**ked up, and f**ked up bad.

There was even talk of a boycott.

I clicked on one of the links in the tweets, which took me to an online Forbes article. The outlook was grim, according to that reporter: she claimed that with the share price tumbling, it might be the end of the line for the heritage company. Bigger drinks companies were circling like vultures over a dying rhinoceros, and no executives could be reached for comment.

I thought about the pride in Hunter’s face as he talked about family heritage, about the meaning in the careful, artistic production of each bottle of bourbon, about carrying on tradition.

? Also By Lila Monroe

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