Chapter 25 #2
Marcus emerged from a sea of well-wishers and smiled. “You came!” He swept Beau into a backslapping hug. “You must be Este,” he said, turning to me. “So good to finally meet you.”
Finally.
Like he had been waiting a long time, and the way Marcus beamed at me like I had done Beau some sort of kindness had me falling a little deeper in love.
“Congratulations on the opening,” I said, trying not to let Marcus see the sudden heat in my cheeks as I looked back at Beau.
“I have to say hi to a few people, but don’t leave,” Marcus insisted. “There’s a bottle of champagne for you guys behind the bar. Open it, and I’ll be over in a few minutes.”
Beau led the way, and when my phone buzzed with an incoming call from an unknown number, I killed it to voicemail without a second thought. We posted up at the bar while we watched Marcus bounce around to different conversations.
“We met at a summer camp near the Appalachian Trail when we were twelve,” Beau said of his friendship with Marcus. “The kind where they hand you a backpack and a tent and wish you luck. Surviving the elements made us fast friends, and we’ve stayed in touch.”
I pictured young versions of them both, flying between Florida—where Marcus grew up—and Beau’s hometown in North Carolina.
Watching him greet patrons, I could see Marcus had a charming warmth not unlike Beau’s.
It was in the décor of the restaurant, too.
Effortless and fun. Like everyone belonged here.
After a little while, when the crowd started to thin out, my phone rang again. I continued to ignore it as Marcus found us, pouring himself a bourbon and taking a seat at the bar.
“Proud of you,” Beau said, clapping Marcus on the back. “You’ve been talking about this for years. And you really did it.”
“Proud of you, too, man. The InfoSynth sale.” Marcus looked over to me. “A great girlfriend. We both did very well for ourselves.”
“Where’s your date?”
Marcus shook his head. “She dumped me last week. You can open a restaurant, or you can have a life. You can’t have both.”
“Oof. Sorry to hear that.”
Marcus and Beau clinked their glasses, and I joined them.
They slipped easily into banter, catching me up on stories and inside jokes. As I watched them both, relaxed and smiling, something clicked.
I had read about Winter Park on the plane ride—an artists’ haven with a liberal arts college, childhood home of River Phoenix, chock-full of old neighborhoods that used to be massive orange groves. Bohemian prep with star-studded lakefront charm.
The tropical heat in the air and the breeze from the lakes and the brick-lined streets and the way Marcus treated Beau like a brother made me think there might be something here for us. Something worth sticking around for.
The whispers I had first heard after Simon fired me—the ones that urged me to leave California behind and find somewhere new—crept back in.
In Winter Park, no one knew me as the former right hand of a failed CEO.
Late that night, we hugged Marcus goodbye and went back to the hotel.
I was washing my face as Beau brushed his teeth when I realized I had missed another four calls.
“I like Marcus,” I said.
“He likes you, too.” Beau winked at me in our mirrored reflection. “You want me to book our return flights in the morning? Or should we go to Disney World first?”
I was blotting water off my face with a towel, but the question slowed me down. “Return flights?”
I picked up my phone and started to listen to the first voicemail.
“This is Ryan Flynn with The Wall Street Journal. I’m trying to reach Este Todd for comment on the Redwood Security data breach.”
The next voicemail was from USA Today. Then The New York Times. Reporter after reporter had found my number.
“How?” was all I could say to Beau.
He took the phone from my hand and listened to the next voicemail for me.
“Marin Anders with NBC News?” He looked between me and the phone before throwing it on the bed and wrapping me up in his arms. “Fuck ’em. This will blow over. We can change your number in the morning.”
“I can’t go back to California like this. How did they get my number? Why do they know who I am?”
I knew the answer, of course. I had trusted the wrong person. Invested my time in the wrong venture. The ache and shame of failure sank in my chest. The job that was supposed to give me enough power to inoculate me from any kind of grief or loss was in embers.
When Beau said, “What if we don’t go back?” a small part of me wondered if I had willed him to say it.
Is this how my California dream ends? In hiding?
I went to L.A. to do this big thing. But what I got was nothing like what I had planned.
Did I really want to run into Simon and his business friends?
To have to watch the legal consequence stage of Redwood’s demise?
Did I need to go back to sitting at a desk, trying to prove I could outwork and outsmart everyone else?
“Okay,” I said in a daze. “We won’t go back.”
It wasn’t like I had a booming social life on the West Coast—everything I had made for myself there felt like an extension of Simon now. Gemma was my only friend of note. While I would miss her, as soon as the words left my mouth, I knew my love affair with L.A. was over.
It hurt. Just not as much as I had expected it would. There was a time when all I could picture was my life on the West Coast. California had lured me in with sought-after jobs, sunshine, and the promise that anything was possible.
But I had left before, reinvented myself before.
I told myself this would be the last time.
Beau and I would start a life somewhere new, and I would find a version of myself that wasn’t buttressed by grief and ambition.
“If we’re not going back, where are we going?
” I asked after a few minutes, trying to catch up to the leap forward we seemed to be taking.
“I’ll get on the next plane to anywhere with you,” Beau said, and I knew he meant it.
He was solid ground and a starry sky, like always.
“Or we can stay here. But it’s been a few months, and we’ve had to buy two new suitcases.
We need a home base. Or I mean, if we’re going to live like nomads, we’re going to need to stop shopping or pack lighter. ”
“That’s the meanest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
He laughed and stepped closer, arms wrapping around my hips.
One last reinvention. One more fresh start.
This time, it would be different, because I would be with Beau. I didn’t know what I’d do with my days, but I had enough savings to take my time figuring things out.
“We’re moving to Florida?” I said, trying out the words to see how they felt in my mouth.
“Fuck California,” Beau interjected dryly. “The entire West Coast is dead to me if you’re not there.” He bent down and planted a warm kiss on my shoulder.
“So do we just stay here?”
“You want to live in a Ritz-Carlton?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“Okay,” he agreed, smiling as he pulled me into a kiss. “We’ll have our mail forwarded to the cabana with the best breeze.”
“Really? You really want to do this?”
“All I want is to be where you are,” Beau said just before he kissed me deeply, tugging at my shirt as he pulled me toward the bed.
Behind us, the television glowed. But I ignored the news crawl. It would be days later before I found out.
The data breach had gutted Redwood’s stock price. The company was disintegrating in real time.