Betting on the Brainiac: a Sweet Romantic Comedy

23. Chapter Twenty-Three

“You’ve probably guessed my family is stupid rich,” I tell Oliver.

“The Bentley sort of gave it away. The shouting match about your trust confirmed it.”

“Twenty million dollars,” I tell him.

“Uh, what?”

“My trust fund. That’s how much it is. My grandmother set one up for each of her grandchildren. There are three of us, counting a cousin, me, and Kaitlyn, my sister.”

“Each of you gets that much?” He’s trying to keep his expression neutral, closing his mouth when it starts to fall open.

I shake my head. “Your face.”

“Is so handsome?” he finishes.

I roll my eyes at him, although I admit it’s a cute face. Some guys are like that when you get to know them. “The face you’re trying not to make is the reason I’ve never told anyone this whole story. I’ve known Ruby, Sami, and Ava since we were freshmen at UT. I brought them to my parents’ house once during our first winter break, and they all tried to act low-key about having a weekend slumber party in a mansion, but I’d catch them trading looks with each other, and I hated it.”

“Mean looks? Was I making a mean face?”

I shake my head, trying to think of how to explain it. “You ever pull up to a nice restaurant, and the valets park all the most expensive cars right in front, so then everyone in your car kind of freaks out at the Ferraris or whatever?” When he nods, I say, “Them coming to my house was like that, even though they tried to hide it. It made me feel like I wasn’t their dorm friend anymore. I’d become something exotic. And unrelatable. That’s the part I hate the most, because by then I was ashamed of everything I’d gotten from their corrupt money. I didn’t want to be connected to it.”

“I’m not like that,” he says. “I’ve met rich people, although you’re the first millionaire who’s ever sat on my lap.”

I smile but set him straight. “I’m not a millionaire.”

“Right. Multimillionaire.”

“No. I do okay. Six figures, barely, but that’s all from work.”

Now he looks truly shocked. “Wait, you earn that doing bottle service on weekends? Are you hiring? I’ll wear a skirt.”

“Tips plus a supplemental base salary for doing the books, hiring and training new wait staff, scheduling, payroll, and managing the floor alcohol sales. Do yourself a favor and don’t look surprised that I can do all that, or I might choose violence.”

“Why would I be surprised?”

His honest confusion makes me want to kiss him. Figuratively. “Because I spend a lot of time trying to give the impression that I skate by on looking good and flirting?” I drop my head into my hands with a small laugh. “I’m a mess, and it all has to do with the money.”

“The money that you don’t have? Honestly, I’m not dumb, but I’m having a hard time keeping up.” He sounds so apologetic that I laugh again.

“Let’s start with once upon a time, and if you need it broken down into a flowchart, you let me know.”

He gives me a skeptical double thumbs-up, so I start the story, the one the rest of my roommates know, from the founding of Copperhead Boots to my parents’ marriage. I leave out the whole frog-kissing thing, but in my defense, it’s only because it makes me sound incredibly dumb for believing it.

“And that’s the deep backstory.”

“So far, so good,” he says. “Don’t need the flowchart.”

“This is the part of the story I haven’t told before.” I draw a calming breath. Nothing I’m about to say would make my friends judge me or like me less, but it would make them look at me differently. It’s only because Oliver is a new friend that I’m okay taking that risk.

“Growing up, I understood we had more than other people. By high school, I understood we were rich. In college, I started to understand how rich, but by then, I didn’t want anyone to know about my family.”

“Were you worried about being used?” he asks.

I shake my head. “No. I was worried about anyone thinking I was like my parents. The most generous way I can describe them is unscrupulous. A massive financial scandal broke when I was a junior, and once I understood it, I made it my mission to punish them when the courts went too easy on them.” I pick up my phone and wave it at him. “Are you dying to google them yet? ‘Why does Armstrong Industries suck?’ would be a good search to start with.”

“Madi . . .” His voice is soft.

“That’s the first time you’ve called me that.”

“Should I not?”

I shrug. “It’s what all my friends call me. Go ahead.”

“Will you tell me, Madi?”

Oliver is so . . . present. I can barely remember thinking he was awkward when I met him. Maybe he was shy at first, but Oliver now is so comfortable with himself that I don’t think it would cross his mind to be self-conscious.

I study his eyes through his glasses. “Do you ever wear contacts?”

He goes still. “Why?”

“That gold ring around your irises is intense. You could up your rizz, easy.”

He gives me a half smile. “You saying I need to?”

“Don’t most guys want to?”

“Maybe if they can’t get women.”

“Oliver!” His half smile is still there. No, that’s a smirk, the kind that comes second nature to guys like Joey and Josh. It’s an earned smirk used by guys who already have a high baseline of rizz—the stupid name we’re giving charisma this year.

“I like my glasses, Madi. Is this your way of changing the subject?”

“No.” But now I kind of want to follow up on the idea of Oliver, rizz, and what he looks like without glasses.

“You were going to tell me why Armstrong Holdings sucks?”

“It’s heavy,” I warn him.

“Understood.”

A shadow of the sick, helpless feeling that had roiled through me the day I learned the truth almost ten years ago snakes through me now. “Copperhead Boots is our prestige brand. It could keep my parents comfortable for the rest of their lives. Private yacht comfortable. Never have to work comfortable. But that wasn’t enough for my dad. He has a brilliant business mind, but he sees everything in terms of numbers. Profit. He saw opportunities in the midnineties to expand into fast fashion and founded Jeneze, which is a pun on the early spinning jennies that made mass textile manufacturing possible.”

A pun, when nothing about this was ever funny. “He acquired factories in lower-income countries where he could get the buildings and the labor for cheap. It put Jeneze in the perfect position to explode when internet commerce took off. Jeneze was able to scale up faster than the brick-and-mortar retail giants. My dad ordered increases in production in his existing factories, but his crown jewel was Bangladesh. Still is. Second-highest producer of ready-made garments after China, and even when the government restricted ownership of new factories to Bangladeshi citizens, Jeneze had made enough locals wealthy that they happily serve as the front for his purchase of more factories.”

Oliver hasn’t moved, hasn’t taken his eyes off me, but I shift in my seat anyway, suddenly unable to find a comfortable position. “Sorry. I know this is dry.”

“It’s not.”

That’s all he says.

“Kaitlyn and I were trained from the time we were tiny that the clothing Jeneze manufactures is not for us to wear; that’s for other people, people with budgets who need an easy way to keep up with trends. Armstrongs buy from the boutiques and salons in first-look invitation-only appointments and pay at least twenty times as much for the couture version of the knockoffs that our factories churn out. But selling cheap knockoffs is how we could take the company jet to Bergdorf Goodman so I could buy a $700 Eres bikini.”

For the first time, Oliver shows some shock. “A $700 bikini? I’ve paid that for a suit and even that seemed like way too much.”

“I only wore it twice before I lost it on a trip to Hawaii with the governor’s kids.” I lean forward, challenging him. “Gross, isn’t it? The privilege. The entitlement.”

“You’ve grown out of it. Cut yourself a break.”

“How about the part where my dad’s unethical business practices paid for our hypocritical lifestyle?”

He rubs his hand over his jaw. “It’s not great, but . . .”

“But what? Knockoffs are legal? Simply supplying the demand?”

“It’s not how I’d do business, but yeah.”

“But Oliver,” I say with fake earnestness, “it was actually a moral good we were doing. Those factories provided so many jobs that thousands of women were able to bring home a wage to their families for the first time ever. The ready-made garment industry revolutionized the Bangladesh economy. So much opportunity. My dad told us all about how the company was changing lives.”

Oliver senses a trap. “But . . .”

I sit back hard against the booth. “But I had to question his version of events when a Jeneze factory collapsed and killed over two hundred employees, almost all of them women. Another four hundred suffered injuries so severe that it caused permanent disability.”

Oliver’s jaw hardens.

“That’s not even the worst part. The company couldn’t control the flow of information, and the collapse made headlines all over the world because almost a third of the victims were kids. Girls as young as ten, kept out of school to work.”

“I don’t even know what to say. That’s awful.”

“But do you feel sick yet, Oliver? Because you’re about to.” Remembering has transported the weight of those horrifying hours and days into my body in the present, my fingers digging into the edges of the bench, my jaw tight and my eyes dry like when I run a fever.

I press my hands to my cheeks. I don’t know if my face is hot or my hands are cold, but the contrast is stark. I slide out of the booth.

“I’m sorry, Oliver. This is why I’ve never told the story. I knew I would lose it.”

“Hey, hey, no,” he says, sliding out too. “Come here, Madi. Don’t apologize.”

Every bit of me feels stiff with anger, but I don’t resist when he pulls me to him, settling me against his chest. Between Sami’s party yesterday and the shoulder to cry on today, his body is beginning to feel familiar, like mine has always known the size and shape of his.

He just holds me, not trying to pat me or make any soothing noises, but the steady beat of his heart beneath my ear calms me after a couple of minutes. As the tension ebbs out of me, his hold relaxes to match.

“Can I tell you something?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“I already knew your dad was in the wrong for yelling at you, but now I wish I would have punched him.”

I’m so surprised I don’t say anything for a second, and then I laugh at the idea of calm Oliver in his hoodie and glasses punching anyone. “If you want to hit him where it hurts, you have to defy him. Straight-up revolt.”

“That sounds satisfying. Is that what you’ve been doing these last few years?”

“It sounds petty, but it’s all I’ve got for the next four years.”

“This goes back to the trust fund?”

“Bingo.” I survey the club. “Look, if I’m going to tell you the last part without winding up again, I need to move.”

“Like dance?”

I laugh again at his wary expression. “More like nonviolent violence.”

He only looks perplexed for a split second. “Oh, your air boxing.”

I pretend to be offended. “It’s called Tae Bo, thank you very much.”

“If that’s another language for dance-y kickboxing, then yeah. We’re talking about the same thing. How about nonviolent violence but make it satisfying?”

“How?”

“We’ll make one of those things you see boxers practice on, where their sparring partner holds it up and they pound it. Focus mitt.”

“I’m in.”

Five minutes later, we’re in the middle of the dance floor, me with dishrags tied around my fists, Oliver holding up an oversized focus mitt he rigged with a bench cushion and duct tape.

“Tell me the rest and punch as often and as hard as you need to,” he says. “This should be big enough for kicking too.”

I throw a right cross and he absorbs it with the mitt.

He smiles at me. “Let’s go.”

So I do, punching when I need to, following each memory with another strike against the target.

It all comes out—how Jeneze paid below the living wage, so mothers brought their daughters to the factories to earn enough for the family to eat. How all of the factories had unsafe working conditions. Poor ventilation, overcrowded and overheated production floors, regular UTIs for many of the women because there were no usable restrooms.

Investigations opened, lawsuits piled up, and my dad lied, gaslit, or bribed people to make it go away. For years.

I pause here, sweat rolling down my chest, breathing hard.

Oliver straightens to stretch his back. “Sorry, but I extra wish I’d punched him.”

I gesture with my makeshift glove for him to lower the mitt so I can go again. “This last part is the worst part.” I land a kick so hard Oliver grunts and takes a step back.

He resets. “Tell me.”

“If his liability had ended there, it would have been bad enough. The least damning description of his behavior is unfair labor practices, but there are plenty of fair-trade NGOs that would define it as child slavery.”

Oliver deepens his stance, sensing the crest of the wave.

Good instincts. I send a jab-cross-hook combo into the mitt, even though my knuckles are throbbing.

“When the factory collapsed, the whole time he had his fixers buying and lying his way out of any serious repercussions, and he claimed Jeneze was a victim too, defrauded by a shady building manager who’d told him the building was up to code.”

I shift into a kicking stance and make the middle of the target my whole focus. “His secretary blew up his game. When she realized that the last open lawsuit was going away, she produced a copy of an email to my father two days before the building collapse and sent it to the NGO helping the victims of the collapse get compensation. The email was from the director of operations in Dhaka, requesting permission to temporarily close that factory due to a major crack that had appeared in a third-floor wall after a small earthquake.”

Front kick. “But the building was never built to code, and the machines were too heavy, and all it took was a 3.2 earthquake for it to crack.” Side kick. “A factory closure has to go through the CEO.” Back kick. “Gordon Armstrong said no.” Jab, cross, hook. “The director emailed again, said the foreman was sending everyone home and telling them to stay there until the building was safe.” Knee strike, knee strike. “Gordon Armstrong told the director to fire anyone who left, no final wages.” Left hook, right hook, uppercut.

My fingers are screaming. I don’t care. “The foreman backed down. The work continued. Two days later, the building collapsed.” Side kick. “My dad’s order was the death warrant.”

Oliver’s face is dark and he’s ready for the final kick I slam into the mitt, but as soon as I drop my foot, he flings the mitt away and walks off with a profane two-word suggestion for what Gordon Armstrong should do with himself.

I don’t disagree.

He prowls to the far end of the club before he stops, hands laced behind his head, staring at a blank wall.

I unwrap my hands while I wait. My fingers are red and swollen, and I flex them. I’m going to need ice. And to find a boxing gym, because punching stuff is awesome.

Finally, he turns and walks back. “Why do I feel like controlling the trust fund is your dad playing checkers while you’re playing three-dimensional chess?”

I give him a slow smile. “Why, Oliver, how nice it is to be seen.”

A rueful smile tips his lips, and he shakes his head. “We need to do something about your hands. Want to tell me your nefarious scheme while I ice them?”

“I feel like a real boxer,” I say, bouncing and shaking my shoulders like I’m about to go in the ring. “What do they call the guy who squirts water in the fighter’s mouth between rounds?”

“The man in the corner? That’s the cornerman.”

I stop bouncing. “Really?”

“Really. Now let me be your cornerman.”

As I lead him to the nearest freezer, the endorphins surge in my system. That’s a little bit about the punching, but it’s a lot about having a man like Oliver in my corner.