1: 1
Beryl Matthews handed me a bubble tea, and I drank most of it without a second thought.
Then the urge hit, unbearable and sudden.
My dark slacks soaked through fast, water tracking down the hems and dripping onto the mall's polished tile.
Glen James, Beryl's male assistant, was doubled over laughing, still holding up his phone to record.
"Beryl, I told you he's only got one kidney. Give him a diuretic and there's no way he holds it."
"That's the bet. I win."
"The top-floor suite tonight is mine. And you're staying to keep me company."
Beryl looked at the state of me and actually laughed, slapping his palm in a high-five.
"A bet's a bet."
Glen still wasn't satisfied. He waved the phone at her.
"Want to go again?"
"Guess how long before Mr. Gilbert swallows his pride and begs us to delete the video."
Beryl glanced back at me.
She didn't block the camera for me. She didn't explain what had been in the tea.
She just said, careless about it,
"He cares about face more than anything. Ten minutes."
The two of them walked into the elevator side by side, leaving me standing there in everyone's sneers and stares.
I didn't chase after them. I dialed a number I hadn't called in a long time.
Late that night, over a hundred bodyguards surrounded Glen's residence.
I pressed the blade to the side of his face and asked, calm,
"Want to make a bet?"
"Guess where my next cut lands."
"Across your face."
"Or straight into your heart?"
1
Glen stared at the blade an inch from him, face gone pale, still forcing out a sneer.
"Barret Gilbert, you try laying a hand on me."
"Beryl won't let you get away with it."
Even now, he was certain Beryl would protect him.
I pressed my wrist down slightly.
The blade grazed past his ear and sheared off a lock of his hair.
"Relax."
"I'm not planning to take your life."
"I just want to run you through the same game you two played this afternoon."
I signaled the bodyguards to open the box on the table.
Inside sat dozens of bubble teas, lined up neat.
"You like watching other people humiliate themselves, don't you?"
"Drink."
Glen pressed his lips together and didn't reach for it.
The bodyguard had just brought the cup to his face when Beryl's voice came from outside.
"Stop!"
She burst in with a lawyer and security, and the first thing she looked at wasn't me. It was whether Glen was hurt.
Once she confirmed there was no blood on his face, she moved to stand in front of him.
"Barret Gilbert, what exactly do you think you're doing?"
Glen pointed at the hair on the floor.
"Beryl, he threatened me with a knife and tried to force me to drink something drugged."
"Any later and I might have lost this face of mine."
Beryl's expression turned cold in an instant.
"Glen did take it too far this afternoon, that's true."
"But you already made a scene at the mall. Was it really necessary to come to his door with this many people?"
"He has a congenital heart condition. Drinking something like that could actually kill him."
So she remembered Glen had a heart condition.
But she'd forgotten I only had one kidney.
Years ago, protecting Beryl, I took three stab wounds from her family's enemies, and I've had only one kidney ever since.
The doctors warned me again and again: I can never take anything that throws off my fluid or electrolyte balance.
I didn't argue with her. I only asked,
"The diuretic in the tea. Who put it there?"
Beryl went quiet for two seconds.
Glen laughed instead.
"I was in charge of buying the drug. Beryl was in charge of watching you finish it."
"Division of labor. Take either of us out and the game doesn't work."
Beryl frowned and cut him off.
"Glen."
He shrugged, clearly untroubled by my humiliation.
I asked again, "And the fact that I lose control sometimes after the surgery. You told him that too?"
This time, Beryl didn't deny it.
"I only mentioned it once, in passing."
"How was I supposed to know he'd remember?"
Seven months ago, post-surgical complications damaged the nerves in my bladder.
The first time I lost control, I locked myself in the bathroom for two solid hours.
Beryl stayed outside the door, telling me over and over,
"Barret, it's nothing to be ashamed of."
"You ended up like this because you saved me."
"Only the two of us know about this. I'll never let a third person use it to hurt you."
Afterward she changed my soiled clothes with her own hands, then held me all night.
I thought that was the one secret between husband and wife that could never be betrayed.
But now, not only did Glen know, he could set up the camera in advance and wait to watch me wet myself in public.
He pulled out his phone and waved it in front of me.
The video had already been shared tens of thousands of times.
The comments were all about humiliating my body and my dignity.
Someone had turned my face in that moment into a GIF.
Someone was mocking me for not being a man.
Others were guessing what shameful disease I must have.
Beryl only gave it a glance.
"The internet has no memory."
"A few days and the heat dies down. Who's going to remember you?"
She said it so lightly.
Because she wasn't the one being gawked at, humiliated, having her illness made into a joke.
I had the bodyguard push the tea back in front of Glen.
"I won't make it hard on him."
"Delete the video, apologize publicly, and drink one cup."
"Then this is over."
But Beryl snatched the cup away and threw it in the trash.
"He can't drink that."
"And I won't let you touch him."
Then, without thinking, her palm settled over her lower belly.
"I'm pregnant."
"The child is Glen's."
