Chapter 5
chapter five
camilo
“Last time I take your advice at a fancy gala!” I yelled as I barged into Ayako’s office, firmly closing the door behind me. I paced the space in front of her desk a couple of times, then slumped into a chair while she stared at me like I’d lost my mind.
“Could you please start by telling me what the hell you’re talking about? I thought you were with Melissa and that donor.”
I pulled hard on my hair when she said the word donor and covered my face with my hands. “It’s the same guy.”
“Who’s the same guy?” Ayako asked sounding exasperated.
I took my hands off my face and leaned my head back, staring at the ceiling, before facing her again.
“Tom, the guy from the gala, is the fucking mystery donor!”
Ayako’s face went from confusion to realization and then horror.
“Oh shit.”
I hung my head sighing. “Exactly.”
“Oh my God, did he say something at the meeting? Was he an asshole about it? He seemed like a nice guy, but we know that counts for nothing.”
I tried to collect my thoughts and tamp down the panic, which had returned with a vengeance. I was going to give my brain whiplash from the hot and cold. One moment I’m elated about getting to see Tom again, and the next I’m having a meltdown because I have to see him again.
“No he was fine, actually went out of his way to make me feel comfortable. He didn’t mention anything.”
Ayako relaxed her shoulders. “That’s good then, right?”
I shook my head again, struggling to come up with everything that was going through my mind at the moment.
“It’s good he didn’t spill the beans on me choking down his dick at the party, sure, but that doesn’t mean I’m free and clear.
He wants to be closely involved in the initial stages of the project, Ayako!
” I stood up and started pacing again as I talked.
“Apparently he’s giving the money for personal reasons.
The plan is for us to meet once a week, so I can keep him updated on the project. ”
Ayako burst out laughing.
“Oh shit, Camilo. This could only happen to you! Of course, the guy you decide to suck off at a party turns out to be the millionaire who wants to fix the shelter. You can’t make this shit up!” She cackled some more while I glared at her, hating my life.
“What am I going to do, Ayako? I can’t jeopardize this project, and I honestly have no clue how to handle this. What if this guy wants to turn me into his sex toy? Or tries to fuck with me because he has all the leverage?”
Ayako’s face got serious then. “Melissa would never let that happen, she’d tell him to take his money and fuck off if he tried anything like that.
” She held up her hand, probably guessing that I was too deep in my spiral to be reasonable.
“But we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves.
Let’s not jump to conclusions. He didn’t say anything about Friday at the meeting, and you said he tried to put you at ease.
I mean you’re both adults; these things happen.
You can work together; it’s not like you were involved with him or anything. It was a one-time thing.”
A lot of what she was saying made sense, but I was still coiled up in knots. Tom Hughes was too much of a temptation to underestimate the possibility of disaster.
“From what we know from this guy so far, he seems to be a decent person, who’s extremely invested in giving away a lot of money to causes you care about.”
That was true.
So far, the one thing I knew for sure about Tom was that he was a very generous man who cared about things which were very important to me. He also had an enormous dick I’d been dreaming about since the party on Friday, but I digressed.
“We need to take this whole thing to Dr. Google,” Ayako snapped, bringing me out of my thoughts.
“Here,” she said as she pivoted her desktop monitor so I could see it. “Let’s look him up.”
I gave her his full name, and as soon as she typed it in, we saw there was a ton of information about Tom on the internet. Ayako clicked on a link to a Forbes magazine article, and we both started to read in silence. After a couple of minutes Ayako whistled.
“Damn, Camilo, this dude is a legit zillionaire. Holy fuck.”
Apparently, Thomas Hughes, age forty-one, was a legend in the entrepreneurial world.
Thirteen years ago, when he was twenty-eight, he’d started his company, Nuntius, while attending business school at MIT.
Tom and his two best friends from the program created a service through which immigrants living overseas could pay their families’ bills back home.
If you lived in New York City and needed to pay your mom’s rent and electric bill in the Dominican Republic, you could go to the Nuntius website and for a fee, have a messenger service go take care of the payments without wiring money or having a relative lift a finger on the other side.
You could do anything: pay for school or medical fees, even pay their groceries.
It was like Postmates, but for bills, and it worked all over the world.
It was brilliant.
They initially piloted the model in the trio’s hometowns: Santo Domingo, New Delhi, and Addis Ababa.
Within five years of them starting the company, smartphones made their way around the world and the Nuntius app blew up.
By year six, they were operating in more than sixty countries and booming.
The article Ayako and I read was written three years ago when Tom and his partners sold Nuntius for just over a billion dollars.
I let out the long breath I’d been holding after reading the sum of money for the third time, still unable to make words. Ayako looked up from the screen and flinched when she saw my face.
“Okay this is pretty intense, and I can tell from how stiff you are right now that you’re freaking out. But I just want to point out a couple of things before you do or say something over the top.” I just stared at her in silence, because the screaming inside my head was too loud for me to speak.
She held up a finger.
“One: Even on Friday when we knew nothing about him, we both thought he was charming and very low-key.” Another finger joined the first one.
“Two: It seems this guy made his money working. Also, I don’t know about you, but I think this whole story is amazing.
Three immigrant kids starting a company in grad school and selling it for a billion dollars.
You have to admit it’s pretty great.” I nodded slowly at that because she was right, this was the kind of story I loved.
I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard of this guy before.
My mom didn’t really have any family left in Cuba, so we didn’t send money there. But I was sure my best friends Nesto and Patrice who had family back in DR and Haiti had probably heard of Nuntius.
I held up my hands in defeat. “Okay fine, he’s a gorgeous, smart, and generous guy who started a billion-dollar company in his twenties.” I covered my face with my hands. “I should just tell Melissa, so she can deal with him herself.”
I heard teeth sucking from the direction where Ayako was sitting and even though I couldn’t see her, I could tell she was losing her patience with my whining.
“I’m not going to tell you what to do, Camilo, but I would at least give him the benefit of the doubt and go to the first meeting.
” Exasperation was quickly edging the sympathetic tone from earlier.
“You already said you would do it. If he ends up getting an email from Melissa saying you’re bailing, it’s really going to get awkward.
Especially since even if you don’t meet with him regularly, you’ll still have to be in touch. It’s your project.”
She was right, making a thing out of it was just going to make it worse. Tom had handled things like an adult, and I could, too.
I exhaled and stared at the ceiling again.
“Fine. I’ll just have to make sure to stay off his dick the next time.”
Ayako gave me her best “I have faith in you” face and squeezed my hand.
“You got this, babe.”
I was glad at least one of us thought so.
Tom
“How was the meeting?” Priya asked with enthusiasm as she munched on a graham cracker.
After her snack, we’d sat Libe down for thirty minutes of TV, so Sanjay, Priya, and I finally had a moment to chat.
“I’m so excited to hear about it! I was telling my colleague Anne at the hospital what you were doing, and she raved about New Beginning.
She said her friend volunteered for them and they do amazing work. ”
I nodded, desperate to give them the news about running into Camilo.
“Yes, they’re great.” I swallowed. “Something funny happened at the meeting though.”
“Oh?” Sanjay looked skeptical and Priya gave me a worried look.
“Nothing bad, it’s just today I was supposed to meet with the director of the residential program.
Since he’ll be my point person at the agency once the project gets going.
And um, it turns out he’s the guy from the party on Friday.
” I broke eye contact then, knowing I had to be turning red.
“You know Milo? The guy I was talking to before you guys got there.”
Priya’s cackle was epic and Sanjay just shook his head.
“Oh my god, Tom. The one time you cut loose a little at a party. What did you do?” This was from Sanjay, who I knew was feeling my pain.
“Did he freak out? You made sure he knew you weren’t going to make a big deal out of it, right?” I knew she’d say that.
“Of course, I did.” I winced and moved to grab a cracker.
“I mean, as much as I could, given the situation. There wasn’t any time to have a conversation about it, because the executive director of the agency was there, too.
But I tried to make it clear I wouldn’t be bringing it up.
He looked pretty spooked though.” I covered my face with my hands.
“I sort of requested he and I meet weekly for the foreseeable future to discuss the progress, which is completely unnecessary.”
“Wow. Tom Hughes flustered.” My best friend whistled in apparent amazement. “This is new.” Sanjay was having the time of his life watching me squirm.
“Was that a horrible abuse of power?”
I was mostly asking Priya. She entertained no bullshit, and she would give it to me straight.
Priya is as tough as they come.
She came from India on her own at eighteen on a full scholarship to Yale and was from a family without the financial means to support her while she was in school.
She worked multiple jobs under the table all four years of college.
She met Sanjay there in their sophomore year, when she was working as a server at one of the local Indian restaurants.
I had enormous respect for her and also knew she would not let me get away with being a creepy asshole.
She raised an eyebrow at me like she could read my mind.
“Wow, this is a big deal, huh? Normally I would’ve reamed you out for being a manipulative jerk, but I know you too well to dismiss that you going this far means something.
” She held up a finger at me. “What I will say is this, please be respectful and careful. He is in a very precarious position. You have all the power, and I’m sure he’s nervous.
So when you meet him, make sure you clear the air and let him know how aware you are of your position. ”
I nodded in agreement, feeling relieved that she didn’t think I’d crossed a line. “I was planning to; I don’t want him to think I’d take advantage. But when I had the chance to see him again, I just took it.”
Priya’s face softened again. “He’s certainly made an impression. It’s time to take some chances with your heart again.” Her smile was genuine and I’d bet anything she was thinking about our conversation this morning. “I think you should see where it goes.”
I was about to say something to the effect of, “I hope all of this doesn’t end blowing up in my face,” when the email alert on my phone pinged.
I looked at the screen and saw I had an email from Camilo S.
Briggs. I quickly opened it to see what he’d said, my heart pounding in my chest. After a second, I looked up at Priya and Sanjay.
“Looks like Camilo is available to meet next Wednesday afternoon.”
Priya laughed and looked over at where Libe was zoned out watching Peppa Pig.
“How convenient that he can meet on the night you have the house to yourself.”
She was giving me and my prowess way too much credit, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get a small thrill at the possibility of having some alone time with Camilo.