The Proposal - Kitty Thomas Page 0,28

fireplace and puts more tobacco in his pipe. Soren joins me without a word, but he seems far more relaxed.

The rest of the Christmas Eve festivities of gifts, gingerbread cookies, and hot cocoa goes off without another cross word from anyone, and I'm left more confused than ever.

11

Soren

The Video Proposal

Six months ago. A week before Christmas.

We're out in the middle of the ocean off the coast of Miami. We've taken a short break from the cold just before the holidays. Livia lies on the deck in a skimpy red bikini, the sun licking her bronzed skin in all the places I want to put my own tongue. It seems unfair that the sun should be allowed this intimacy with her. That is my body to heat up, consume, and devour. No celestial body should ever get to touch her. The only others who will touch her are Griffin and Dayne, but that's different.

I met the guys during rush week at Dartmouth. It was a period of serious hazing even though it was against the rules. But we weren't the kind of pussy ass little bitches who were going to whine and complain and cry to the administration like little girls. Every generation before us made it through, and we would too. We were fucked with and humiliated to the point I was ready to rip heads off and mail them back to the families in question.

I was livid at the treatment. I shouldn't have to experience it. I had money and power. But so did everyone else. It didn't hold quite the same threat that it did in broader society. At the top, money and power is as common as the Internet. Oh you have an Internet connection? Amazing. Me too.

The things that happened during that period bonded the three of us together not just as brothers, but as lovers. Then once we were in and the pussy was flowing like wine, we started to share women. We didn't think about it, it just seemed like a natural progression at the time. It didn't even occur to us to be jealous because what we had was between us, and the girl was our toy. Nothing more. Our friendship always came out on top against any woman who became our fourth.

But it wasn't a part of my life I shared with anyone outside our circle. Despite how progressive the world seems, it isn't—not beneath the surface. People like to virtue signal so they can get cookies from the wider society to show what good little obedient followers they are.

The average person accepts same sex relationships as long as everyone stays in an identifiable category. You can be with another man, but you can't be an alpha male at the same time—at least not in the eyes of most. People are comfortable with things they can label. Anything else is too scary and makes life too uncertain.

It's black or white. Gay or straight. Alpha or beta. And when someone starts coloring outside the lines, flowing back and forth between one thing and the other, refusing to put labels on things but simply allowing them to be and unfold... that's when people get uncomfortable and their prejudices emerge.

We all knew these things. So when college ended and we entered the real world of business, we pretended to forget all that we'd shared. We still moved in the same circles, attended the same parties, but we stopped fucking each other and taking women to our beds to share between us. Or at least we did it less frequently. Such things were a scandal waiting to happen. Even in this super progressive world we all supposedly live in.

Besides we didn't have time for it. We each had companies to run. Two of us—Griffin and myself—had inherited ours in a sense, each of them Fortune 500 companies everyone knows the name of but no regular person on the street knows who's in charge. It's only a few multi-national companies where the CEO is also a household name—a celebrity almost. Dayne started his own company, not yet as successful. He already owns several properties overseas. So let's be serious, he doesn't have to work. None of us do. We're driven by things greater than money.

“You ready to do this?” Griffin asks, interrupting my thoughts.

Dayne is a few feet away setting up a camera on a tripod, and focusing it on Livia. We want to really sell this story. What we're doing is dangerous. We have families to