Chapter Twenty-Two
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
To get to the first supplier we’re visiting in Peru, I must fly first to Atlanta (where Will and I plan to meet), second to Lima, and finally to the Alfredo Rodríguez Ballón International Airport in Arequipa—a Peruvian city close to the southernmost tip of the country and nestled right below the Andes Mountains.
Will has already arrived from New York by the time I deplane in Atlanta. I meet him at a Panda Express near our gate for the Lima flight. He’s dressed in professional clothes—slacks and a button-down—but his honey-brown hair looks messy and tugged-at. He’s devouring orange chicken and fried rice when I walk up to him, wheeling my suitcase alongside me.
He stands up that very instant, swallowing.
“You really need to stop standing when you see me,” I say.
“It’s a sign of respect,” he says.
“Respect me less.”
Will’s eyes heat, one brow rising comically. “Are you—”
“Not like that!”
Will laughs, and the sound is warm enough to liquefy my spine. He scoops his sweatshirt off the seat across from him and I sit, eyeing the book on the table near his food. Madhouse at the End of the Earth. The jacket of the book is torn in one spot.
Don’t show interest. Don’t show interest. Don’t—
“What are you reading?” I ask, completely un-fucking-able to help myself.
“It’s about explorers on a ship in Antarctica,” he says, his voice jumping with… boyish excitement? “And it’s a true story, but sort of fictionalized.”
“You like to read?”
“Yes.” He says it very simply. Our eyes move from the book back toward each other.
Something about the (surprisingly aggressive) Panda Express lighting draws out the individual marks on his face in stark relief. A few freckles, a tiny scar on his upper lip. A mole on the rim of his ear.
“What about you?” Will asks.
I blink. “I forgot what we were talking about.”
His mouth curves up. “Do you like to read?”
“Oh. I don’t really have time for reading anymore.” I hold up the fashion magazines I just purchased at a news store. “Even these are more like market research.”
Will frowns. “That’s too bad.”
Don’t share personal details. Don’t share personal—
“When I was younger,” I say, the words spilling out of me in a gush, “I devoured books at Sea Island, where my family went during my school breaks.”
“I remember,” Will says, his eyes warm as he stretches back in his chair. “You took Zoe with you over fall break.”
“Right,” I say. “We both spent that whole break reading by the pool. Zoe kept her nose buried in some dystopian sci-fi or dragon fantasy with wars and kingdoms. I went for summery beach reads about teenagers and love and family and first jobs at shrimp shacks.”
“That tracks,” Will says.
“I could read one per day during the summer months, too,” I go on. “Wouldn’t even leave the beach unless it was to get in the ocean or run up to our house for some lunch. Up until I turned eighteen, I would read until the sun set and my sunburn formed goose bumps.”
Will’s lips part just slightly, in awe at my oversharing about my teenage reading habits. “What changed when you turned eighteen?”
I shrug, my shoulders concaving. I roll up the magazines in a tight wad. “I guess I stopped thinking of that girl in all those summer books and me as the same kind of girl.”
He’s quiet for a minute. I keep my focus on my lap. “Are you going to Sea Island this summer?” he asks.
I shake my head. “I haven’t been in years, actually.”
“No time for vacations?”
My eyes draw back up to his, hazel against blue. “What do you think?”
“I think I’m going to spend some time on this trip enjoying myself,” he says, voice almost scolding. “You’re welcome to join me. But I’m not going to force you to treat this trip like a partial vacation if you aren’t up to it.”
We’re not eating hotel food and getting our exercise in a workout room, he’d said.
“Will, it really isn’t supposed to be like—”
“Did you think I don’t know when your birthday is?”
I freeze. “Cami told you.”
His head tilts just a fraction, eyes roaming my face. “Actually,” he says, voice dropping low, “Zoe did.”
Zoe?
Did Will tell her we’d be going on this two-week trip together?
Has he told her… other things?
“Your brain is working so damn hard right now,” Will says, dryly amused. “You know you can just ask me anything you want to know about Zoe, right?”
I cock my head, thinking, and tap my phone screen to check the time. First class is boarding in less than ten minutes.
I use the bathroom and buy a Diet Coke, and then we board our next flight. Will finishes his book while I catch up on some emails.
There’s one from Nora Lindberg, the Forbes journalist who keeps trying to get in touch about the 30 Under 30 list. She’s been after me for years, reaching out once every six months to ask for an interview. But unlike the editor who wrote the profile on me that Will read twice, this woman gives me bad vibes. I’ve read some of her other stuff; she makes a lot of inferences. And via email, she’s pushy and manipulative, telling me she’s going to write about me eventually, so I might as well control the narrative. Which is alarming and problematic.
I huff at her latest message. Will glances over just as I’m deleting the email. His shoulder brushing mine makes our little row of seats feel more intimate than it should. “Wait a minute. I know her.”
“Nora Lindberg?”
“Yeah. I know her from New York. She works for Forbes, right?”
“Yeah…”
Will glances over at me. “She wants you for the Thirty Under Thirty list.”
“See?” I hold out my hand. “It’s just so obvious. ”
“A lot of people would kill for a shot at that list, Josie.”
“Not me.”
“It’s good press.”
“There’s no such thing.”
Will scoffs. “That’s what people say about bad press.”
I snort in retaliation to his scoff. “There is definitely such a thing as bad press.”
“Are you really planning to leave Nora Lindberg on read?”
“Why did you say her name like that?” I ask.
“Because she’s Nora Lindberg. When she wants a story, she chases it until she’s got it in her grasp. Her profiles are kind of legendary.”
“Have you hooked up with her?” The red that creeps into his neck tells me all I need to know. Will glances sideways. Unsuccessfully, I try to push down the jealous knot welling in my stomach. “How many times have you hooked up with her?”
“Once,” Will rumbles. “And it was three years ago. Last I heard, she was engaged to some music producer.”
“Oh, to be a stereotypical New York City power couple.”
Will bites the inside of his cheek. “Do you care to elaborate on why you hate press, even business press, so much?”
“Not really.”
“Josephine.” Will closes his book and leans an elbow on his armrest, twisting his upper body to face me. “We’ve got two more plane rides of this, and that’s all before we reach Europe.”
“Should we order some wine?”
“Your avoidance tactics are extraordinary.”
I lean forward. “You know what nobody ever asked Mark Zuckerberg? A single question about his skin-care routine.”
“Nora Lindberg isn’t that kind of journalist.”
“Maybe so, but it doesn’t change the fact that most female founders are infantilized and branded the second they hit the spotlight. Or the fact that society turns on us more often and with more ferocity than seems to ever be aimed at our male counterparts. I don’t want people to think of me when they think of Revenant. It’s the surest way I could gut my own company.”
Will shakes his head, looking sideways. “Your opinion of yourself is abysmal.”
“Better that than an inflated one. Trust me. I’ve seen how it goes when you step into the spotlight. I’ve watched other female CEOs get dragged for the same things men get excused for. And anyway, I know myself well enough to be sure I will transform an innocent piece of press into something toxic about my self-worth. How many shares will the article get? How many clicks? How many online sales dollars will it drive?” My voice is almost desperate as I try to explain. I gulp, pushing back the emotion in my throat. “How many hate comments? How many rolled eyes? How many people thinking bad thoughts about me when they could instead not be thinking of me at all? If you don’t put yourself on display, nobody wants to hate you. I learned that after I got anonymously slut-shamed on my fucking Formspring account for making out with you in public.”
Now Will leans forward, a frown etched into his face. I can easily make out the grain of his blue irises. “I didn’t know that happened to you.” My face goes red, and his voice breaks. “Right after your oma died. I’m so sorry, Josie.”
Against my will, tears well in my eyes. I look away from him, frustrated and embarrassed. A flash of my old resentment comes back—because of course Will, a boy, didn’t have the same consequences to face for the exact same actions—but it’s followed by immediate guilt. What did I want from him? That he suffer equally? That he get privately, anonymously bullied just like me through a now-defunct social media platform that was specifically designed to hurt people’s feelings? I wanted our classmates to move on for both our sakes, but that’s not how teenagers work.
“Thank you for saying that,” I say eventually, looking back at him.
Will’s expression buckles under a gentle emotion that draws me in, makes me feel understood. Listened to.
“Fuck Nora Lindberg,” he says. “She can find another CEO to bother.”
“ Exactly, ” I say, grinning.
He rolls his head on the seat back, curving his body toward mine.
“Will?” I ask.
“Hmm?”
“How did Zoe react when you told her about your dad’s affair?”
His lips twitch. “She literally beat me up.”
I smile and laugh. “Really?”
“Left bruises and everything,” he reveals. “It was our biggest fight ever, but I think both of us were relieved we were finally talking. About Amber, about you.” He swallows. “And then, eventually, about Dad. We worked through all our shit in one night. Then discussed if we should tell Mom, what we should tell Mom.”
“And?”
“And,” Will says, “we told her the very next morning. Mom cycled through about thirty emotions in the span of an hour, grabbed my face, and said, I’m so sorry he asked this of you —which is sort of insane, considering I hadn’t even admitted that part to her yet—and then she got herself a lawyer.”
“She never considered moving home to Austin?” I ask.
Will shakes his head. “She’d found a job she loved teaching pottery at this art studio. I think she would have moved back if she hadn’t met Doug, but he came along about six months later, and that was that.”
“Do you and Zoe like Doug?” I ask.
“Doug,” Will says, “is the best. He makes Nutella pancakes and beer can grilled chicken, and he loves hockey.”
“So do you,” I say.
“I love hockey because Doug loves hockey,” Will says.
“Can we circle back to your stepfather’s cooking repertoire ranging from Nutella pancakes to beer can chicken?”
Will laughs softly. “He can make nothing else.”
“What else could you possibly need?”
“Something green?”
“True,” I concur. “Maybe we could ask Doug to learn a salad or two.”
I immediately stiffen when I realize I said we.
Will blessedly ignores me and moves on. “Over the next four years, Zoe and I went to colleges in different states. We tried to keep up with each other, but college is busy. She loved visiting me in New York, though, and got a job offer up there after graduation. The problem was, she also had another offer in San Diego with higher pay. I told her to do what felt right and promised her that if she went to San Diego, I’d visit all the time.”
I smile. “She chose the New York job.”
Will nods. “She did. That same year, Doug and my mom got married in Nashville, in the gardens at Cheekwood. It was a really good year.”
There’s a buoyancy to Will’s voice as he recounts this phase of his past. It’s easy for him, sharing the good stuff.
I yawn involuntarily.
“Am I boring you?” Will whispers.
“I’m riveted. Promise.”
“True or not, you look like you can hardly keep your eyes open.”
I rest my head against the seat back, mirroring Will’s position. We watch each other through half-closed lids, my chin tilted up, his tilted down.
He says quietly, “Why don’t you sleep?”
I do.