Chapter4:The Crack

Julie wanted to vomit and hug him at once. She nodded, playing wife, feeling like the worst actress in the world, but also feeling a strange protectiveness over this old man who built an empire from nothing on a boat from Greece and just wanted his son to be happy before he died.

That night she posted on her private finsta with 3 followers, her real private account no one knew about: I wanted luxury without suffering. I didn't know luxury would make me feel guilty. And I didn't know a contract husband would be the first man to actually respect my boundaries. What is happening to me?

Tommy liked the post with his private I*******m that only had 2 followers: her and Mark.

Month eight. Everything should have been perfect. Everything on paper was perfect. The board voted unanimously at the emergency board meeting that had been called for 9 AM on a Tuesday. Tommy got the chairmanship of Asher Capital officially. Not interim, not acting. Chairman. His father, even in his wheelchair, even with oxygen, cried real tears when Eleni told him. Eleni kissed Julie on both cheeks for real, not the fake air kiss she gave charity wives, but a real Greek mother kiss that left lipstick. At the celebration dinner at Milos in Hudson Yards, Stavros stood, fragile, with help from two nurses, and said in Greek then in English, Now give me a grandchild. Make me a papou before I go to God. Everyone laughed, clapped, raised glasses of very expensive red wine. Julie felt Tommy's hand go cold in hers under the table, his palm sweating. She squeezed it hard. She felt his pulse racing like a trapped bird.

That night, after everyone left, after the plates were cleared, after Eleni took Stavros home, Tommy drank. Really drank, not the controlled one whiskey he had with board members. He sat on her balcony, legs over the edge, 40 floors up, expensive Loro Piana suit ruined by wind, tie off, hair messy from hands running through it. Julie sat next to him, in sweatpants, no makeup, two glasses, one with whiskey for him, one with water for her, because someone had to be sober.

My dad has maybe three months, maybe less, the doctors say, he said, staring at the Hudson River, at New Jersey, at Newark somewhere in the distance that you couldn't see but he knew she was thinking about. He thinks you will give him a grandson. He thinks you are the vessel. I can't tell him I will never give him that. Not with you, not with anyone biologically with you. Mark wants kids. He wants us to have kids via surrogate someday. I can't give him that publicly for at least two more years, maybe ever if I stay closeted for business. You said you never want kids. Is that true? Or was that just for the post to sound hardcore and attract a gay guy?

Julie looked at the river, at the lights reflecting, at the life she had built in eight months that was both fake and the most real life she had ever had.

True, she said, voice small, honest. I watched my cousins lose themselves. My cousin Tasha had a baby at 19, now she is 27 with three kids, no job, baby daddy in jail, living with my aunt, Section 8, WIC, whole life gone. My other cousin, Keisha, had a baby and the baby daddy said he would stay and left at six months. I don't want to be a mother. I want to be free. I want to be rich and free and selfish. I have wanted that since I was 12. But maybe... I don't know anymore. Watching your dad die makes you think weird things about legacy. About what you leave behind. I don't want to leave a child, but I want to leave something. A store. A building. Something with my name on it, not someone else's last name.

Tommy turned, eyes wet, red from drinking.

You are a good person, Julie from Newark, he said. Better than this contract. Better than what I can offer you, which is just money and lies.

So are you, she said. You are a good man stuck in a bad system built by old men who think love is a weakness.

They almost kissed. Not romantically, not sexually. Just two lonely people leaning toward comfort, toward human warmth, toward someone who finally understood the specific loneliness of performing a perfect life. Two people who had been performing for eight months and were tired of performing for everyone else. He stopped himself, forehead almost touching hers, breathing each other's air.

Can't, he whispered, breath smelling like whiskey and sadness. If I kiss you, I will confuse everything. And I love Mark. I love him so much it hurts to hide him. And I respect you too much to make this messy and turn you into a real beard who catches feelings. You are my friend. My best fake wife.

I know, she said, tears now, because she was also tired. And I don't love you like that. I don't want to. I never want to love a man like that. But I love this. Us. As friends? As weird fake married friends? Is that allowed in the contract? Can we be friends in the contract?

We can add an amendment, he joked, and for the first time in months, she saw him not as a billionaire CEO, not as Mr. Asher, but as a 34-year-old boy who was tired of being a symbol for an empire.

The next morning, disaster struck at 6:47 AM, before Carlos even made coffee. Julie woke to 43 missed calls from Miriam Klein and 19 texts from Eleni that were all in caps and Greek. A gossip blog, DeuxMoi's evil cousin called The Real Deal, which specialized in outing closeted Wall Street gays, got photos of Mark and Tommy in London from six months ago, high resolution, undeniable, from a long lens. Kissing outside a restaurant in Soho, holding hands on the Tube, Mark's head on Tommy's shoulder at a park. The headline was brutal, in red letters: IS BILLIONAIRE TOMMY ASHER'S NEW MARRIAGE A SHAM? IS MRS. ASHER A BEARD? SOURCES SAY CEO IS GAY AND MARRIAGE IS COVER FOR $4.7B EMPIRE. IS JULIE FROM NEWARK IN ON IT?