Thread: Paradise Isle  (Fades & Good Girls)

Scarlett was a talker, that much was clear. Maybe or maybe not a speech giver, but what she had shown thus far was the grace of a dancer, the deftness of a thief, traipsing nimbly around the conversation at hand to create what she wanted out of each moment as gracefully as possible. She'd do well at the negotiating table, Jeffrey knew with a smile, watching the blue-eyed blonde from his place at the podium as she spoke to him, yet spoke to them all, microphone in hand. It was the beauty that drew you in first, on a level men ached for and women, if they weren't of the persuasion to ache for it publicly or privately, would first resent, then turn around and admire soon after. She had a voice, indeed, like the smoothest bourbon, and gave it in amounts that left you wanting more. Most importantly, eye contact. She knew that part, it was clear. It made for a very disarming package that, for a moment, he chuckled privately to himself, recalling a scene in his mind's eye of a certain Black Widow interrogating her Asgardian God captive Loki, allowing a man of such a tier of power to go on considering as if he held all the cards, until she turned around and revealed to him the only card that mattered. One that shown a live mic, and the ability to walk away. That's a very fair request, said to everyone, but primarily to her. Even if he was speaking toward a podium with two microphones dedicated to picking up every sound, his body turned to the crowd, his head was turned to her, as was the smile. It's a one-sided conversation that, honestly, I had already planned to have today, but I was thinking more later, more when it was just myself and those that wished to join me, where I could talk and they could ask whatever questions they wanted. Something private, something intimate. But...I guess this works too? He chuckled, then looked to the crowd. Though, please don't go expecting me to strip my clothes off, brand my own initials on my chest and then masturbate to it. A round of amusement from the crowd. I mean, I'm into some kinky stuff, clearly, if a press conference like this is how I spend my afternoons, holding pause at another wave of light laughter for those present, but I don't think any of us are quite ready for that. His smile maintained. A few seconds passed, letting the amusement die down, and he took a breath, looked down a moment, and began, Jeffrey Tremonti...is kind of pathetic, really, if we can be brutally honest with one another. He's worked hard enough to buy everything in the room, yet lacks something that poorer men often seem to have in spades. And it eats at him, daily. He looked to his shoulder, to Scarlett again, his tone notably different than before, If we can be candid together, I don't know that he's the one to follow, much in the way that we're all imperfect creatures, desperately searching for the other half of ourselves that's been achingly missing all this time. He turned back to the crowd, but kept his gaze downward now, at the podium itself. There was a pregnant pause, enough perhaps for twins, as he searched for words to come to him. Have you ever gotten to...like...meet your parents? Like, not your future in-laws, after dating someone for seven months. I mean your own, the ones you're supposed to grow up with. Mine were a shame. They were workaholics. They weren't bad people, but they were more robot than person, when I try to recall some childhood memories. Dad was a neuroscientist. Mom was an engineer, at a time where women typically didn't dedicate themselves to that line of work. They were both dedicated. They both worked hard, right, and that's what matters? Success? Except, it can't be. For that to be the single most important thing to us, it would be mad. But I didn't grow up understanding that. I grew up understanding I'd see them very briefly in the mornings, then there was a nanny, then there were private tutors, then I'd eventually go to sleep and they'd get home after, and that was generally my day. Each worked seven days a week, most likely because working eight wasn't mathematically available. His voice held alright, but his body language as he spoke was riddled with little tells. Rather than stand up straight, both hands had come to hold the sides of the podium as he leaned forward against it slightly, fingers wrapped around its clear frame, moving against the clear glass absentmindedly. I grew up home-schooled so there really wasn't an interaction with others my age, no real childhood in that sense. No siblings. I grew up in this drab bubble, where...where I didn't know any better, that this wasn't the way things were supposed to be. I grew up thinking you were supposed to push that hard to excel, that that's just what adults did, and that's how you got ahead of everyone else that was willing to work almost as hard as you, for almost as long, but not quite. And that's not really wrong, is it? If you want something that bad, to push for it that hard. But where does it end? If you're a hard worker, milestones can be like a drug. They're like a high. You hit one, then if you keep going you know you'll hit the next, then you've got a taste for it, you know you can reach that next one if you just keep on keepin' on, not really thinking what you're trading away in the meantime. That's what it's like to be a workaholic. ...I know about it, first-hand. I mean, you don't walk into an empty sandbox one day and just create something that's grown to the level of Innovation Inc. without being like that, right? So their having no real presence in my life, that was the weird fertilizer that got packed around the sapling that was my young mind, nurturing it. In the brief time I got to spend with my parents, I wanted to be like them, right? Because of course their child did. So I applied myself, searching for that elusive pat on the head, or to at least be closer to them by walking in their steps. And the worst part is, it worked. Again, like a drug, right? Little milestones. Before long I excelled at stuff at my own age level, then it was courses a year beyond me. Then it was three years ahead. Then four. Then six. I was reading the works of 'the bard' by nine, doing trigonometry by nine-and-a-half. Graduating with honors had never been a question, nor was getting into Yale -- my first real public experience. But I wasn't me yet then, right? The guy that can come out, control a crowd, pomp and circumstance and all that... I stuck out like a sore thumb in the manner that I didn't stick out at all. I blended in. Was quiet. Was shy. Didn't know how to really make friends. So I just plugged away at my books, content in being the 'Who was that guy?' in the yearbook for people, years on. If someone talked to me in the library I didn't know how to handle it. Even mid-conversation my mind was considering other spots to sit going forward that would just allow me to study, where I could keep focusing on things like science and math, and later I majored in business, thinking how I was going to be like my parents and one day turn all that into something. Because that was the goal, right? By my mid-twenties I was past college and my company had been born -- we were still a few years shy of you ever hearing about us, but I was looking at ways to improve all sorts of little things in many different aspects of our daily lives, creating that simple, straightforward answer, patenting it, and using the money from that to build the next project, and then the next project... Mom was gone at that point, cancer took her toward the end of my schooling. Dad fell asleep at the wheel somewhere after my second invention really started creating a buzz in the medical world. It may not be as cool as Tony Stark's origins, he smirked, but it left me one course to travel, and so I did it. The rest, after that, is pretty much public. That's the private life that pretty much started me off. Like a Mr.Stark, or some of my more real counterparts, a Mr.Musk or a Mr.Bezos, I was able to create a series of things that struck a chord, that brought in pyramids of profit that investors couldn't race fast enough to be a part of, and apparently I had this Midas Touch where the more I poured myself into it, the more and more and more we grew. Remember, little milestones, right? Lots of them, each one a high. Calendars were nothing to me, how long I was going at it, other than to keep track of meetings, release dates... That's just the life that I knew. We're all human though, right? We all crave certain things? Sometimes it's a favorite food. Other times it's more carnal, it's more about lust. Sometimes it's just about companionship. But at that point, I was no longer the awkward kid who quietly dodged frat parties at Yale to hit up another lecture, downing coffee even late at night so I'd be alert enough to soak everything in. At that point I was forced to schmooze amidst these business gatherings, these fancy parties where I was my own form of celebrity by the time I was twenty-six and being interviewed by Popular Science. Two months later they called me back and gave me the cover. And when things like that start, it's all about momentum from there on. All the men want to take you out to fancy salmon dinners, seeing who can find the restaurant with the smallest, fanciest portion. All the women are predetermined to laugh at whatever comes out of your mouth, all-the-while calculating how quickly they can get in, out, and with a fancy divorce settlement wrapped around their nest egg in a gilded bow. Thankfully, I was never so blind as to fall for any of that, a light laugh, which others joined in. But we all want approval, right? We all want to be told how good we are, what we bring to the table, and to be wanted ...so when these fake people latched on, to a degree I let it happen. Models, Bunnies, you name it. Two at a time, neither one worth half what someone who actually cared about you did. But I was so deep in success, I was already a household name. It made it hard to go on some dating site, or ask some pretty cashier somewhere out on a date. The press was everywhere. They weren't just content with an interview at an event. One time this car kept following me, kept following, kept following for several days straight, wherever I went, and when my security pulled the guy out, the found he had a camera ready and was saying he was just waiting for us to stop and get gas in town so he could give me an impromptu interview for TMZ that night. Another time, I had this favorite place to go out for lunch with a lady friend, and found out that when rumor got out, this other woman had taken a job there as a waitress just so she could attempt to win me over each day -- purely about dollar signs in her eyes, I assure you. Oh, and then there's the cameras that snap unflattering shots of you from a half mile out, even when you're on private property, through a window or such. I remember hearing about Michael Jackson, how he was so famous that he had to hire actors just to exist in public places and leave him alone, so he could have a regular experience for that little while. That's not to say I'm one thousand percent innocent, mathematical improbability aside. I did all those magazines, right? Went to all those parties. Was seen with sunglasses on, a cocktail in each hand, a floozy on each arm -- all part of a crafted public image, a Mr.No Days Off workaholic that my team advised me would keep regular eyes on my products, keep regular investors, and talent, and most importantly money coming in, and it didn't disappoint. Things ascended to a point where it was like, alright, what do you do with seventeen houses? ...You sell them, and buy an island instead. He smirked. Another round of bemusement. But seriously, it was fucking lonely as all hell. I was living a life surrounded by people, but drowning in the wrong sort of people, who didn't really care, didn't really know me, or me know them, with no way any longer to find someone who was real without forever worrying myself to sleep that this was just another, more clever wolf in sheep's clothing than before. Maybe what I've put together today is a silly, stupid answer to that. Because there's no way any of these women could love me, right? Not truly? Not yet anyway, of course not. He glanced over the backs of each, a brief moment of quiet seeping in. We've hardly swapped favorite colors, so no, of course not yet. Jeffrey looked back to the crowd, finally. He adjusted his glasses, smiled soft, took his hands from the podium and stood up straight. Blue, by the way. Anyway. So I've tried to do the right thing, be a better person over the last several years. I've always ran my company well, I think, but in the last five, six, seven years, we really ramped up what we do with charities, official charities or just donating to local communities, to the extent of what my stockholders let me get away with. We've given raises and benefits to our employees and their families to where we're now rated the Number Four company in the world to work for. He turned, smiled to someone off camera, speaking against the mic still, Sorry, sorry. We're not going for Number One. I know you want slides, Oliver. I know Google has slides instead of elevators. We're not getting slides. Jeffrey turned back to the crowd, laughing along with everyone else. So I sat down one day, I considered everything I wanted, everything I truly wanted, if I allowed myself the balls enough to dream. I drew up my Point B in my mind's eye, and how to get there. Simple things like someone to love, a family, and all the time in the world together. Things that I had grown so complacent in life to never having, that I did not realize how hungry I was, until I was starving. But, how to get there? The time, that was the easy part. I just had to give up everything I've worked for my whole life, right? Just flip that switch inside 'Off,' albeit easier said than done. Retire early, enjoy the money. But with whom? If I've already reached a point where I can't trust someone I meet to be in it for the right reasons, then what? ...If you've the perfect answer, please, let me know. But what I came up with was the idea of other celebrities. That someone like that, they can probably relate... Jeffrey glanced back over his right shoulder, to Scarlett, allowing eye contact to happen if she so wanted it. To being alone, even while surrounded by people. To having everything they've worked for, yet nothing that they truly want. To be willing to trade it all away, yet what they want most, is it even available to them? Back to the crowd, The 'slavery' thing is just a bit of kinky fun. Guilty. Another round of laughter. But, I mean, it carries a real finality to it, right? Weeds out the jokers? The fair-weather devotees? I thought it might reach out to other lonely souls, that together we might build a life, a family, see where that takes us. And it's all treading new ground -- untouched powder, after a snowfall. I didn't know to expect four, he bemused. I didn't know to expect ten, or one, or nothing at all. So three, with a fourth considering... I believe the term is an embarrassment of riches. We'll disappear from the world for awhile, and see if we can build something special and meaningful to each of us, together. Jeffrey glanced again to the backs of each of his pretty things, knelt in a show of both unending obedience and endless patience. He looked to Emilia, her bare shoulders and chestnut hair dripping downward to a shapely rear set upon her heels, and the swell of her breasts from this sideways angle. He looked to Ariana to her left, her hair more of a deeper brown chocolate, her shape more lithe, more girlish, right down to her 'cute' butt and smaller breasts rather than something like a Scarlett, who was overwhelmingly 'fully grown.' He looked to Madelaine, marriage of the sun and moon, of pale night and blazing fire. You know, as he looked at each of their backs, I've never even had a best friend. I mean, I don't even know what that's like. So we're each here, everyone on stage today, all stripped to nothing emotionally, some of us figuratively, with bated breath and fingers crossed and trust abounds. Each having travelled a different path to get here, but, I think, wanting to arrive in much the same place. Wanting it bad enough to bet everything. In football, it's called a Hail Mary play. It's something done in desperation, with only a chance of success, because you...you just fucking ache for what's on the other side of that field, and if that's what you have to do to get it, then so be it, right? Then so be it. You might fall flat on your face. But you're willing to give up everything -- me included, I'm going to be signing away my entire company today too -- just for a chance at what you can see, but can't yet touch, can't yet taste, knowing that if you don't do something drastic, that chance at everything that's worth anything could very quickly be gone forever.