32. Ash
ASH
As one week slips into two, relief at not getting fired hardens into an ugly suspicion that maybe Kael made Alistair into more of a threat than he really was.
But I’ve kept his email open on a separate tab the whole week. I should delete it. Or reply. Or do anything but keep it open as some landmine I keep stepping on. Instead, I just let it sit there.
The recording is scary. It may confirm everything Kael said, but it’s not enough to blow up a billionaire.
Kael’s the one who pushed Alistair. He literally shoved a billionaire onto the floor. Threats were almost inevitable after that. Empty ones, if I’m lucky.
The rest of his email contains a ridiculous list of proposed uses for the recording: sell it to the press, take it to the cops, email it to the whole company, give it to HR, and several that read like he typed “ways to blackmail a billionaire” into AI and copy-pasted the results.
It reads like a joke, one that’s almost amusing, until I remember it’s a wager Kael made with my life while lying about the whole thing.
I’m lucky to keep my job and avoid disaster by a hair. A sticky note that reads “BE GRATEFUL” is stuck to the right of the mousepad so that every time I open my laptop I ground myself in that reality.
But the work is no less mind-numbing. The hours slog by no faster.
Infected with questions Kael put in my mind, old joys like adding to my list of post-FIRE hobbies feel sad instead of empowering. If Pawpaw had a list like mine, I’d carry that, instead of his debt, as proof that work drains the soul.
That’s why I need to save, invest, and focus on my future. The market is ripping, and… and—
Kael’s face won’t leave me alone. His smile, his laugh, the way his dimples crinkled during both. I try pushing the memories away, but they keep resurfacing as reminders I had something real.
And I broke it.
On my better days, I can admit my failure. On the rest, it’s a mistake I tell myself was never right to begin with. I need to move on.
Jenny, our podcast, and the market’s returns are the best things I’ve got left, so I throw myself into them.
In Jenny’s garage, she introduces the guest whose face sits in the center of our orange lacquered table on a laptop set between us.
“Like me,” Jenny says. “Mark Johnson is pursuing—or should I say, pursued—Lean FIRE by reducing expenses to achieve financial independence and retire early.”
“Mark!” I say, smiling at the early-forties guy on the screen who looks like he lives halfway up a mountain. “Thanks for being with us. Please tell us a bit about your journey. In particular, why prioritize reducing expenses over increasing income?”
We’ve interviewed a dozen folks like Jenny and Mark, but this time, my question is a desperate exploration into something I never imagined considering.
Thanks to my own stupid decisions, my income is effectively frozen, and thanks to Kael’s, I’m lucky to have it at all. Lean FIRE may be my only hope.
“Longtime listener, first-time caller.” Mark’s scraggly red beard parts into a smile. “Look, the traditional FIRE path places a huge emphasis on getting to freedom through career advancement and maximizing income. And, I guess I should say, it’s a huge privilege to get to examine this path at all.”
Jenny and I nod, and she says, “Preach.”
“But,” I add, “not everyone who has that privilege takes advantage like you. What sparked your interest in turning off the normal path?”
“My kids, obviously,” he says. “Anyone worried about staying in your job because you want your kids to see you work, trust me, mine see me work. It just looks… happier.”
Add another tally mark to the shrine of “more time with kids.” It almost makes me roll my eyes.
Frankly, I’m sick of interviewing people who agonize over one cute little detour off the normal path.
Some of us can’t even see the normal path.
Some of us don’t have kids and won’t have a white picket fence.
Some of us don’t even have a fucking boyfriend.
“But why Lean FIRE?” I ask, my stomach turning.
I’ve heard this spiel a dozen times. Joy through simplicity; freedom through sacrifice.
Today it sounds more like punishment than inspiration, like choosing to live in a cave with a brokerage account is noble.
Lean FIRE might be my best path now, but it feels like pleading guilty to a life so much smaller than the one I wanted a week ago.
Happy. Full. With Kael.
We thank Mark and let him go before Jenny triggers the siren for Net Worth Updates.
Jenny’s at ninety-three percent. I’m at fifty-one.
But I skip mentioning the year I’ll hit my goal to avoid questions about why it’s so much further away than it should be. The whole update leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
Once the mics are off, it’s just Jenny and me in her garage. The familiar scent of grease and the sight of bicycles, metal shelves overflowing with children’s toys, and the trash can do weird things to me.
“You okay?” Jenny asks, her brow either furrowed with concern or frustration since everything went down.
“What am I doing with my life? I’m staring at your trash can thinking, ‘I don’t even have enough trash to fill one of those.’”
“Um. Ouch?” Jenny laughs, but when I give no response, she hops up from her chair and runs around the table to give me a hug. “You miss him.”
“I miss the idea of him,” I correct.
“And work?”
“Sucks. I think Alistair was trying to scare Kael. So, I get to turn my cog every day with only minimal existential dread.”
“Did you email him back yet?”
“What am I supposed to say?” I pull my laptop closer, flicking to the tab with Kael’s email. “You heard it. It’s horrible—for Kael. But it’s not what he thinks.”
“You can still message him back.”
I hesitate, the weight of our last encounter pressing down on me, the absurdity of it all hitting me with renewed force.
“And say what?” I shake my head, lamenting the smoldering ache our fight left behind. “Thanks for almost losing my job? Thanks for recording yourself rejecting a lonely billionaire?”
“He’s trying,” Jenny insists, her voice firm. “He messed up, but he’s trying to fix it.”
“He thinks he’s in some Disney Channel original movie.” I scroll through his email and read one bullet point aloud. “Demand a stake in one of Alistair’s companies. I mean…”
Jenny guffaws, pushing me aside to reread his email herself. “I forgot he put that in there. He’s joking.”
“With my life!”
“You’re mad he did all this without you,” Jenny says, her expression softening. She cocks her head, using that lawyer trick she told me about. “Now he’s asking what you want, and you won’t even respond.”
I groan, dropping my head into my hands. “Why can’t I just crawl into a cave, hit my FIRE number, and be done with it?”
“You sound pathetic,” she says. “You hate Lean FIRE, but you’re fine with that cave fantasy?”
“I want takeout delivered to my cave, thank you very much.” I point at the laptop. “He doesn’t even apologize.”
“Did you let him?” Jenny asks, eyebrow up, seeing straight through the deflection.
“He sent an email without an apology,” I say, ignoring the fact that he did apologize at the gallery. It was just too full of excuses to count.
Jenny throws her hands up and heads for the kitchen door. “I’m getting beers for wallowing. You coming?”
“I thought we did that already.”
“That was for you,” she says over her shoulder. “This time is for me. If I have to be around you like this, I deserve a beer.”
I push up from the chair. “I don’t get two weeks after a breakup?”
“Ash.” She turns back, expression borderline tired and fond. “I’m not saying get back together. I’m saying two weeks ago you thought you had something special. You owe it to yourself to talk to him. Not talking is what got you here in the first place.”
I groan, the sound bouncing around the garage.
“Have the decency to break up like adults,” she says.
“Ugh,” I repeat.
Dragging my feet, I follow Jenny into the kitchen, and a giant lizard jumps out from around the corner.
“Booo!”
I jolt backward into the hallway wall. Before my brain catches up, Wyatt and Jenny are high-fiving over my overreaction.
Wyatt rips off his lizard mask to point, laugh, and do a little victory dance. “Got you! Got you!”
“You got me,” I say, frazzled.
Jenny pops the top off a beer and hands it to me. “Told him he could try and scare the sad out of you.”
Wyatt looks up at me. “Did it work?”
My reply hitches in my throat. I’ve known Wyatt seven years, his whole life, and the memory of trading Jenny a balloon for a swaddled bundle at the hospital feels miles from this long-limbed kid trying to jump-scare my sad away.
I try to hide what I can’t explain behind a blank expression, but my lip keeps twitching.
“I wish,” I say, my voice wavering.
“Awww.” Wyatt looks at Jenny, and she takes one look at my face and shoos him away.
“No more. No more,” she says. “Homework time.”
“Aww!” Wyatt runs out of the kitchen.
Jenny perches on a stool at the island in the house her parents left her, where she lives with her husband and adorable son, living her life. I don’t want what she has, exactly, but I can’t help being jealous that she has what she wants.
“What was that?” she asks, dragging out the stool beside her for me. “You okay?”
“I don’t know what I want,” I admit, my gaze drifting to the blank white of the refrigerator door.
The magnets holding up Wyatt’s artwork suddenly seem incredibly significant, each one a little marker of a life I don’t share. What’s going to go on my fridge? Will my place be a messy bachelor pad forever?
“Please.” She waves a hand. “You’re acting like this is the end of the world.”
“Kael has his art. You have your amazing family. I have… what? A bank account?”
Jenny shifts, turning to face me fully. “You know I love you, right?”
“Uh-oh.”
The I love you preamble is Jenny’s equivalent of resting her case.
“You’re self-destructing,” she says, as a diagnosis, not an insult.
“It’s a breakup,” I protest, like that explains everything.
“You kissed someone on your team before Kael. You’ve obsessed about your finances forever. You’re resigned to a job you hate.” She tilts her head. “Did you really listen to that recording?”
“Yeah,” I say, picking at the label on my beer bottle. “It’s not some smoking gun though.”
“Maybe not. But I didn’t know Alistair was like that.” She shivers. “It’s… disturbing.”
“He’s a creep. Can’t believe he stayed with him as long as he did.”
Jenny shakes her head. “You work for that guy, Ash.”
“Luckily,” I say, and even to my own ears it sounds pathetic. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Last time I’ll say it,” Jenny replies, meeting my gaze. “Because if you ignore me again, I’m officially out of advice and you can self-destruct in peace.” She lets that hang for a few seconds. “Call Kael.”
She smacks me lightly on the side of the head.
The thought of calling Kael turns my stomach.
But I can’t stop replaying the last time he kissed me.
His hoodie’s still in my closet, untouched.
Yesterday I opened the door just to breathe it in and remember the way he said I love you.
Even if it was the worst possible time to hear it, he said it with so much hope.
It still smelled like oil paint, canvas, and the back of his neck after sleep.
One breath was enough to make me miss him beside me.
I owe him more than silence.