Chapter 2
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Thirty minutes later, after a mortifying amount of “your card was declined” attempts at the bar, I shove through the heavy
office door with a half-drunk bottle of wine in hand. The draft guard hisses against the carpet as I see Cecily’s and Pacha’s
heads pop up from behind their computer screens. The familiar scent of lit TK Maxx candles that, according to Cecily, “smell
just like the ones from Anthropologie” hits me as I nearly trip over a box of promotional T-shirts to get to my desk.
“How did it go?” Pacha asks, his green Adidas tracksuit looking particularly neon today.
“Have you not told him?” I ask Cecily.
She shrugs. “He’s been locked in for the past few hours.” Pacha is fluent in JavaScript, not in office small talk, but we soon found his no-nonsense ways the perfect antithesis to my and Cecily’s ability to talk about literally anything for hours on end.
I throw my bag down and slump in my office chair. “He thought it was a date and stiffed me with the bill for a ￡150 bottle
of wine.”
“Such an arsehole,” Cecily replies, “but I will happily take that off your hands.” She picks the bottle up out of my grip.
“Why did he think it was a date?” Pacha asks, his focus already half back on his computer.
Cecily shouts before I can, “Because she has a vagina and therefore is incapable of presenting a business proposal!”
Pacha looks at me, perplexed. “Really?”
I give him a look. “Are you shocked about the business proposal or the vagina?”
Pacha screws up his face and slides his over-ear headphones back on.
Cecily relaxes into her seat, handing me a coffee in a light purple Wyst-branded mug. “If you were a man that would have gone
a lot differently.”
I rub my temples. “If I were a man, a lot of things would be different. Look at this.”
She peers at the Odericco Investments post on my phone screen.
Her eyes widen. “Are you going to apply? The deadline is midnight.”
“I have all the pitch decks ready.” I click through to the application portal and, as I start to type in my name, huff out
a laugh, toggling over the different options on the prefix drop-down menu. “Maybe I should select ‘Mr.’ Cole just to make sure the entirety of Odericco Investments knows I’m not asking them on a date.”
“It would probably get their attention too,” Cecily surmises while picking at her manicure. “Everyone loves it when a man
is championing women’s issues.”
Rolling my eyes, I say, “Especially massive companies like Odericco.”
Odericco Investments is a leading investment firm with offices all over the world. TechRumble is hosted at their annual Summit
of Innovation. Rookies can only get in if they are competing in Odericco Investments’ Hunger Games–esque, multi-round, knockout competition. Thousands of young companies enter every year, and there is first-, second-, and
third-prize money, earning ￡500K, ￡250K, and ￡100K respectively, as well as the backing and guidance from Dominic Odericco
himself. Dominic is notoriously cutthroat, but it’s serious cash. But even if you don’t win, just being there, receiving an
invitation to get up on that stage and compete, puts you in front of big venture capitalists and investors who are there to
discover the “next big thing” in the tech world. Opening doors I’ve been scratching at for two years.
As I watch the upload bar slide on my presentation, my phone dings with a LinkedIn message from Will. I click it, in the hopes
it will be an apology for running out on the bill. Now that sleeping with me is off the table, maybe he’ll actually be interested
in hearing about the investment opportunity.
One new message from William Salter.
I remember where I know you from.
My ears begin to ring as I freeze, immediately going to block him as another message pops up on my screen.
Guess I should have stayed ;)
And there it is.
The demon on my back. The specter that doesn’t always pop up behind me in the bathroom mirror, but just often enough to make me flinch every time I look.
The sound of the telecom jolts me back into the room. Followed by my brother, Spencer, flying through the door like a car
running a red light. I glance back at my phone, blocking Will’s account before he can send me anything else.
“Please don’t talk to me,” Spencer announces, throwing off his green angora check scarf and matching beanie hat. His dirty
blond hair bounces in the air as his body drops down. “I’ve been up since 3 a.m., and I think my bones have transformed into
icicles.” His face, still with a sheen of last night’s stage makeup, gleams in the fluorescent lights.
London is freezing. An out-of-context cold that should be enjoyed curled up in a cottage in front of a roaring fire, with a glass of red wine and a good book.
Only occasionally looking out the window and commenting, “Maybe we could make snowmen before dinner,” as some sort of small furry cat or dog curls around your thick-socked feet.
Instead, you are forced to battle royal for an inch of space on the Tube, as those who usually walk or cycle avoid spending a moment more than necessary outside with the bitter wind, murky slush, and 4 p.m. darkness.
Like going from freezing to sweating to freezing ten times over in the world’s angriest Austrian spa before you’ve even made it to the office.
“So the shoot went well?” I ask with an arched brow.
He shakes off his layers of North Face padding and throws them onto his desk at the opposite side of the room. “I thought
I was getting a featured role, but all I did was walk pensively from one side of the street to the other. Then, when we were
finally wrapping, a PA noticed one of the extras wearing his Apple Watch with his Elizabethan three-piece suit, so we had to all
get back into costume and reshoot for another three very long hours.”
I cringe. “Nooo, did they get fired?”
He nods solemnly. “Shot on sight.”
“Any celebos?” Cecily asks, wide-eyed.
“Jennifer Lawrence bought everyone fancy hot chocolate.” He shrugs nonchalantly, but a subtle smile appears on his lips when
Cecily gasps with excitement.
These small, seemingly insignificant details have all of our friends and family eating out of Spencer’s hands. I have never
had that, an innate ability to charm people so naturally it’s like breathing. When we shared a womb, the charming, confident,
and good public speaker genes went wholeheartedly to Spencer. His latest acting gig, a minimum wage featured-extra role in
a period biopic, Hugh Jackman’s directorial debut starring Jennifer Lawrence, was the hero piece of the annual Cole Christmas
newsletter. Subject line: Spencer the Superstar!
Wyst has never made it into the family newsletter. My mother assures me once I secure seed round funding, she would include it, but for the time being she doesn’t want to “embarrass” me in case the business fails.
While Spencer’s natural charisma and career trajectory followed a trail of breadcrumbed hopes and dreams, my skill set mostly
came in the form of sheer will power. A willingness to prioritize achievements over sleeping, eating, self-care, and, as my
father likes to say, “Being an active member of this family.”
“Mum keeps asking me to send her pictures of my costume for her Facebook page,” Spencer remarks.
He avoids saying it’s not explicitly her Facebook page, but a Facebook page she runs for him, posting updates of his latest work and “exclusive behind-the-scenes content.” In Spencer’s defense, he didn’t ask her to
set it up, but he never asked her to take it down.
“Oh, so she is alive,” I say. She hasn’t returned my calls for the past two weeks after I turned down Dad’s job offer from
his mate Darren who is looking for a new line manager at his local waste processing plant:
“You want me to literally manage shit shoveling?”
“There’s plenty of career growth; the waste industry is booming right now.”
“So is FemTech,” I countered.
“If it’s booming so much, why are you always struggling?”
Spencer wheels his chair over to my desk. Light from the third-story window illuminates his face as he crosses his legs and
laces his fingers together on his knee. “So I actually came to talk to you.”
“You just said, ‘Please don’t talk to me,’” I remind him, remaining focused on copying and pasting the company information
into the application.
He smiles a cheesy grin. “That’s fine because I just need a nod of the head from you.”
I say nothing, as previously instructed.
“You know how you are my favorite twin sister?” he continues.
“One: I am your only twin sister. Two: Are you suggesting if you had any other non-twin siblings, I would not be the favorite?”
He refuses to play ball. “I was thinking now the movie has wrapped, I could up my office hours a bit?”
In between acting gigs, Spencer helps out replying to user emails, tidying the office, creating expense sheets, and answering
the phones. Essentially a glorified intern with a company email address, but I can only afford to give him sixteen hours a
week.
Swinging my chair round to face him, I say, “I’d love for you to find us a mountain of cash?”
“What happened?”
“A potential investor turned out to be a date,” Cecily says.
He shoots me a look of concern you would give a child who just fell over while running. “Oh, Jess, surely you’re not that
desperate?”
I throw a pen at him. “No! I just wish we could have had something in place for the meeting with Dr. Bernie tomorrow.” My
mind goes blank for a few seconds as the voice echoes in my head:
Maybe it’s your name, maybe all previous investors recognize it just like Will did—that’s why they keep rejecting you. Maybe Dr. Bernie will see you just like everyone else: a woman who made a stupid decision that cost two people their promising careers.
“Maybe we should reschedule,” I say to Cecily, anxiety rising like dry heat up my throat.
She looks offended. “Do you know how long it took me to just get a sniff of a meeting with Dr. Bernie? There’s absolutely