Chapter 14 #2
There was that smile I’d missed for the past few days and those laughing eyes.
When I’d entered the restaurant that evening, I truly wasn’t sure what my plan was: my intentions, if you will.
But seeing him there, outside of the lab, relaxed and happy despite his dad’s strange mood, I knew, without a doubt, that nothing else mattered other than him being happy.
No, more than that, I knew I wanted to be the one to make him happy.
He may have convinced himself that our connection was merely hero worship on his part, but he was wrong.
Or maybe he was just using that as an excuse because he felt the need to protect me.
I didn’t need him to protect me; I just needed him to care about me the way I cared about him, assuming that’s what he wanted.
Finding the way to convince him of that was a challenge I was ready to face.
Benji may have been busy preparing for graduation and spending time with his father when we weren’t working together remotely during our few days apart, but I had used my down time to do a different type of research, staying up all night the evening before to try and figure something out.
As we joked about sharing a pizza from his favorite restaurant, I was fairly sure that I was ready to share my findings with Benji.
But not in front of his father, obviously, so I opened my mouth, ready to counter that Benji was always starving, no matter how many times we took food breaks, but Ben looked between us quizzically and muttered, “Working?”
“I do have a tendency to forget to eat when I’m working,” I responded, and Benji and I both laughed.
“That’s the understatement of the century!” he agreed. We were staring at each other over the heavy menus, champagne flutes, and a flickering candle, the sunset softening the room around us. I’d almost forgotten that Ben sat next to his son until he cleared his throat.
Benji’s eyes widened, but he quickly reverted to a smile. He turned to face his father, and I missed the candlelight popping off his glasses, causing his chocolate eyes to dance.
“He gets in the zone, Dad.” Benji’s hands were adorably animated again as he described our time together to Ben.
“It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.
He’ll start typing and bam, all of a sudden …
” Benji made a sound like a firework going off and opened his fingers in front of his dad’s face.
“Bam. Huh?” Ben repeated cautiously. “You’ve started work already, Benji? I don’t understand. You haven’t even graduated yet. I thought you told me you were starting next week?”
“Officially,” Benji began. “But Dad. You know the project I was working on for my dissertation?” Ben nodded, and Benji began describing his work in detail and how it matched up with mine.
“You mentioned that when you told me you got this job, but Benj …” Ben looked at me and didn’t finish his sentence. Benji exuberantly continued to share about our work.
“And it’s really moving along, Dad. Anson’s equipment is incredible.
I mean, the equipment at MIT is incredible, too, but I don’t have to fight for time on the 3D printers in Anson’s personal lab, you know?
I can just … we can just map something out, then give it a try!
If it’s wrong, oh, well! We start again!
“It’s so … liberating. And what we’re creating, Dad. It has the potential to be a game changer. I think it’s really going to help people!” Enthusiasm was vibrating off Benji. I found it infectious, but Ben looked concerned.
“So you started working already?” Ben looked at me as he asked.
“Benji’s official start date was supposed to be after graduation. What we’re working on is a collaborative project, part of Benji’s project-specific profit-sharing agreement with us.”
I hadn’t intended to blurt that out in front of Ben and probably shouldn’t have, as it really wasn’t appropriate for me to discuss private agreements with outsiders.
But he seemed genuinely concerned about our working together, and I wanted to put his mind at ease and to find a way to explain to him that Benji may technically be an employee, but it didn’t feel that way to me when we worked on Project Orthos.
And Benji’s employment agreement had been structured to acknowledge his contribution.
This was key to the nonscientific research I had been doing. Maybe in telling his dad, it was really Benji I was trying to communicate with.
“Anson …” Benji began, but I didn’t let him finish his thought.
“We are almost equal partners in Project Orthos, Benji. Or we should be.” I really needed to talk to Benji and not in front of his father.
“Profit-sharing agreement? I thought you were an employee of New Day?” Ben didn’t sound happy about it, or maybe he sounded suspicious.
Ben’s brow was definitely furrowed, not unlike Beck’s when he was displeased.
“Yeah, Dad. I didn’t want to bore you with all the legal details. But because the work from my dissertation is being used on Project Orthos, and because we’re working together on it, I get to have a share in any profits!”
“A direct share?” Ben looked from one to the other of us as we nodded in affirmation.
Slowly he said, “That’s very generous of you, Anson.” It came out as part question, part accusation.
My eyes locked with Benji’s, and he nodded his permission for me to answer.
“The way his current agreement works, he’ll have a share of the profits, Ben, but New Day Tech will hold the patent. It’s company policy and fairly standard in the industry. I’ve made sure that Benji has a very favorable agreement.”
“You have, have you?”
“Dad?” Benji sounded confused and maybe a little hurt. I jumped in to try and help Ben understand. Beck and the legal team were about to hate me.
“If Benji wants you, or an attorney, to review it, I would understand that. Benji’s contribution has been extraordinary.
This is truly a shared project. We can revisit the terms if you want to, Benji.
” I didn’t know which of them I wanted to hear my pleas more.
Ben seemed so concerned about his son’s employment at New Day.
I ended up looking at him because had I looked at Benji, I don’t think I could have kept my emotions in check. “It is imperative to me that our … arrangement be equitable to Benji. We are equals in this project.”
To Benji, I added, “If you or your dad thinks there’s an issue, I want to make it right.
” My chest constricted, my heart arguing with me that it wanted to go and live inside Benji’s chest. I hoped Benji knew that I was talking about more than a stupid business agreement, about so much more than Project Orthos.
“See, Dad!” Benji pointed his hand at me.
“It’s a favorable agreement! You have nothing to worry about.
You don’t need to fret over some stupid legal document when …
you have your own business to take care of, and when”—he looked at me, and there was an apology in the tilt of his head—“this is everything I’ve ever dreamed of.
” It was a reminder to us both that Benji had been a fan long before he’d ever stepped foot in my lab.
Benji nodded encouragingly at his father, his eyes pleading.
Ben gave me one last stern look before finally letting out a small, cautious chuckle.
It didn’t seem as if we’d convinced him that Benji wasn’t being taken advantage of, but I hoped Ben realized that there was no reason to make a scene or ruin Benji’s celebratory dinner.
It was important to me that Ben knew his son wasn’t being fleeced, but it was imperative that Benji knew. If I could convince the son, I hoped the father would eventually come around.
Ben looked my way with a cautious smile and shared, “Benji was always creating something. One summer, he didn’t come out of his room for a whole week.
We had to drag him out every night just to have dinner with us,” Ben began.
Benji picked up the story, visibly relaxing at the change in Ben’s demeanor.
“At the other end of it, I’d created a simple video game!”
“He was eight.” Ben laughed. “After he showed it to me …”
“After I made him play it …”
“I was blown away at what he’d accomplished. I had no idea …”
“He told me he was proud of me.” I could tell that Benji cherished the memory as much as Ben did. “But as soon as we had played for a while, my grandparents showed up.”
“He’d really holed up for, like, a whole week, and he looked so pale. My parents took one look at him and gave Ash and me such shit about it. I grabbed two fishing rods and took him down to the creek. Benji tried to explain to me how he’d created the game the whole time we were out there.
“We went to touch some grass, as the kids say these days. Or, well, we went to touch some fish, I guess.”
“Touch grass,” I repeated, and Benji and I couldn’t help but share a knowing smile.
Ben looked between us before repeating, “Fish. We caught some fish.”
Simultaneously, the smiles we were sharing turned to disgusted faces. My stomach swooped as Benji pointed at me. “The worms, right?”
“Well, that. And the hooks and the poor fish! It’s like I can hear their little voices when you catch one. No. Noooo!”
“Exactly!” Benji’s eyes were dancing again in the candlelight.
I really loved making Benji laugh and loved that we’d found another thing we had in common. In an effort to stop myself from staring at Benji as much as to further the conversation, I asked Ben, “The creek behind our houses?”
Ben nodded, and I think we all sighed in relief that the topic of conversation was now much lighter. “Anson may not have liked to fish, but I’d find him down by that creek when we were young. Usually with a book in his hand.”
“I sketched my first robot sitting against a tree in our fort, with that creek behind me. I found the gurgle of it soothing, and to your father’s point, I was not opposed to touching grass every once in a while. I really liked it out there.”