Obsession

“I can be difficult”, I say, as though interviewing for the position as his girlfriend rather than his employee. “Particular.” I think it only fair to tell him. “I have some obsessions.”

“Like the drawings?” he asks.

“Not like that”, I say. “Compulsions. I’m OCD”, I confess, my head dropping. “I hope it’s not going to be a problem.”

“Is it a problem for you?”

“Sometimes”, I say. “It means it takes a while to do things. I get nervous. I panic a lot. I get distracted easily.”

I can feel myself going red again. I’ve already been offered the job, so there’s little reason for me to do this, apart from the fact that I think, as my future prince, it’s important that he should know just what he’s getting himself into.

“I didn’t have a chance to tell you in the bar”, I say.

“In the bar? I’m sorry, I don’t follow.”

Now I’ve done it. I can’t sit here and go along with someone else’s fiction without my own issues intruding.

“Nothing”, I say. “I meant to call, I just lost your number. To be honest, I thought it might have been a joke anyway, you know, someone like you with someone like me. I thought you might have just been making fun of me. I don’t know if I would have called you anyway, and now seeing you here, it all seems way too much like fate to ignore it. I guess you don’t remember me, that’s all. It’s okay, just pretend I haven’t said anything.”

I feel like a total idiot. I couldn’t feel any more like an idiot. I should have got up a minute ago, taken the job, left and said nothing more about it. When he found that image of my menage I wanted the world to swallow me up, now I want the whole universe to implode on itself. Obviously it was a joke in the bar, obviously he recognized me when I came in, obviously he doesn’t like me like that, he just wants me to suck his cock like Candy does and obviously I’m never going to be able to unwind this. Why can’t I just accept my single but perfectly abnormal life and forget about finding my invented, superhero, treasure hunting prince?

Jack’s now looking at me with pity, which makes me feel just that little bit worse.

“I’m sorry Penny, but I think you may have me mixed up with someone else”, Jack says.

It’s possible I suppose, I mean, I was a little bit drunk after all. There’s no way in the world I could remember his perfection inch by inch, those ice blue eyes, that perfectly square jaw, those plump kissable lips. Not to mention that perfectly tight bum, those broad shoulders, the kind of forearms you only see on north sea sailors and Canadian lumberjacks. Everything exactly as I’m seeing it now, just without the suit.

“Of course”, I lie. “It must have been someone else.”

“I’m not surprised in the slightest”, Jack says. “And I know this is incredibly unprofessional of me, but you’ll forgive me for saying it in the heat of the moment, you’re absolutely gorgeous.”

The sounds that come out of my mouth when it hangs open aren’t words at all.

“Sorry”, Jack says. “That was disrespectful of me.”

He tears a post-it note from his pad on the desk and scrawls down a phone number from memory. “Here”, he says passing it to me. “I’m sure Logan will be over the moon to hear from you.”

I look at him in utter confusion.

“Twins”, he confirms, and for the second time today, I nearly pass out with shock.

“We look the same”, Jack continues, “but we couldn’t be more different. My world is pretty much all about pretending fantasy is real, while Logan spends his life making real things look like utter fantasy. He’s an archaeologist, a treasure hunter really. A grave robber.”

“Fuck”, I say, my hand too late to my mouth to stop the word coming out.

“I know, right?” Jack says. “Way cooler than I am. Although I suppose I do get to do the things that you can never do in the real world, like create monsters, build robots, make whole universes appear and disappear in the blink of an eye, and give actors a personality, which is sometimes the hardest thing of all.”

Twins I can’t stop thinking to myself, ignoring pretty much everything else Jack has said. My Prince is twins.

“Oh, and I’m way funnier and marginally better looking”, he continues.

“You’re twins”, I say still in a state of shock.

Jack nods. “It used to happen more that people would mix us up, not so much now. I guess this is just one hell of a lucky coincidence. Who knows, maybe if nothing else happens, you’ll get some more inspiration for Sasha.”

Oh my God, the smutty picture, my twin obsession. He knows all about it now.

I realize I’m not saying anything and probably need to, but the shock of finding out he’s two different people, both of whom are essentially the men of my dreams, and both of whom have independently flirted with me, is rendering me completely incapable of all but the most primary of motor functions. How the hell am I meant to process this?

I’m not used to getting what I want, not that I think anything is going to happen even if either of these men, or both, want to get to know me, but despite my idiosyncrasies I have more of a chance now than I did before stepping into this room. I have Logan’s cell phone number again, and I have Jack’s suggestive words and panty exploding eyes all over me.

I also have a job. A real job. A drawing job with respect and dignity. There’s no cape under that suit after all, Jack really is Clark Kent, superman’s sexy twin!

“Fingers crossed”, I say, realising immediately afterwards, and completely by accident, just how provocative I’m being.

Jack smiles. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see”, he says, and I feel like it’s time to leave before I embarrass myself any further. I need to regroup my thoughts and work out exactly how to proceed. Is it greedy of me to want to try and bag them both at the same time, or should I start with Logan and make my way to Jack if that one doesn’t work out?

Maybe before all of that, I need to concentrate on the realistic. Are Logan and Jack going to want to share? Are either of them actually serious about being interested in me or am I just misinterpreting these signals? Should I be thinking about the job I’ve accepted instead of going down on the boss while his treasure hunting twin brother takes me from behind?

I can’t believe he’s a treasure hunter, by the way, talk about fate finally delivering the goods to me.

To be honest, I hardly know either of these men, yet I feel like I know exactly what I want and that these two are the perfect men to provide it for me. I guess that’s the kind of attraction you get in fairytales - instant, immediate, and absolutely unbreakable - which means that I have to be extra careful because as much as I try to pretend it is, I know this isn’t one. What I do know for certain is that fate, luck and coincidence are all shining on me right now, and I’m going to try as best as I can not to fuck this up in typical Penny Breen fashion.

After a prolonged silence of thumping sexual tension, Jack calls the interview to an end and passes me back into the hands of his faithful secretary to sort out the official details of my employment. With my portfolio pressed tightly against my chest in case more of my secret desires spill out, I take one long last look at his God-like perfection.

“Thank you”, I say again, barely able to get the words out of my mouth for delayed shock at what’s just happened.

“The pleasure is all mine”, Jack says, “I’m looking forward to seeing you again.”

I feel like I’m standing on a train platform saying goodbye to my childhood sweetheart as he disappears off to war, never to return again. I want to chase him back into the office, throw my arms around him and declare my intense and everlasting love for him, but if I did, he’d definitely call security.

I realize Candy is looking at me suggestively. She pops the lollipop that’s she’s greedily sucking away at out of her mouth for a moment.

“He’s hot isn’t he?” she says. “It’s alright, I know what you’re thinking. Everybody’s thinking it.”