21. Leo
LEO
“Well, here we are.”
Leo stepped into the Palasa office, sweeping his arm to present the bright hallways and glass-windowed rooms of his kingdom.
“It looks exactly like I thought it would,” Olivia said, stepping off the elevator behind him.
“Is that a good thing?” He looked down at her.
She grinned. “Sure. It looks like a flourishing tech company.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I see some people playing ping-pong.” Olivia slowly walked down the hallway. “I see people in suits and people in band T-shirts. I see someone napping in a pod. I see… is that an ice cream machine?”
Leo chuckled. “Would you like some?”
“Maybe in a bit. Show me your office, first.”
“Follow me.”
Leo was uncharacteristically nervous as he led Olivia to his private office.
Last night, over cookies they’d baked together, Olivia had mentioned that she wanted to see Palasa.
After all, she’d said, he had talked about it so much that she felt like she knew it, and she wanted to see it for herself.
Leo had been flattered, and he still was, but part of him worried that Olivia wouldn’t like it.
She was a creative person, a talented photographer, and Leo’s work was very different from hers.
Sure, his work relied on creativity, too, but in a very different way.
“This is it.” Leo opened the door to his office for Olivia to enter. She crossed his office, ran a hand along the top of his mahogany desk, spun his desk chair, and gazed out at the view. Then she turned back to Leo.
“You really are a CEO.”
He laughed. “Did you doubt that?”
“No, but actually seeing this place with my own eyes is different from hearing you talk about it. At home, or when we’re out together, you’re just Leo. But here, you’re Leo Barclay, billionaire, co-founder and CEO of Palasa.” She said the last bit in a joking hoity-toity voice.
Leo shrugged. “I suppose.” Something felt just a little bit off, though he couldn’t put his finger on what.
“So.” Olivia turned back to him. “Is this where the magic happens?”
“The magic?”
She blushed. “Okay. Maybe I don’t completely understand what you do. Do you write code? Or… supervise people? I didn’t want to look silly, so I said magic.”
Leo chuckled. “Well, you succeeded in not looking silly. The truth is, some of both. Most CEOs aren’t directly involved in coding, but I love that part, so I still do it. And there are lots of parts of my job that involve managing people, organizing things, making decisions…”
“Can you show me?”
“How I make decisions?”
“No.” Olivia rolled her eyes as she grinned. “How you code.”
Leo glanced at her. “Really? It’s boring.”
“I’m sure it isn’t. And you looked at my pictures the other night.”
“This is definitely more boring than that. But ask, and you shall receive.” He went to his desk, sat, and pulled up a few lines of code he’d been tinkering with. Olivia leaned over his shoulder, close enough that he could feel the warmth of her body.
“This should speed up the loading times of an app we’re working on,” Leo explained. “But I can’t quite piece it together…” He briefly explained, in layman’s terms, what he was working on. “Pretty boring, right?”
“It sounds like you find it interesting.”
“I do.”
“Then it must be interesting,” Olivia said loyally. “Even if I don’t really get it.”
Leo chuckled. Just then, there was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” Leo called. One of his newer employees, a young man with large glasses who always wore red shoes, Amir something, entered.
“Mr. Barclay, sir?—”
“Leo, please,” Leo said.
“Leo, sir, my team asked me to let you know that we haven’t quite finished the graphics for the Kederman account.”
“That’s all right,” Leo smiled. “We have a bit of a buffer built in. Did something go wrong?”
“Well, our team lead, Laurie, is out because her son is sick, and that set us back a little. She’s the only one who knows all the ins and outs.”
“Understood,” Leo said. “Listen, go talk to James in the frontend team. He used to be a graphic designer in your team, and I bet he still knows some of the basics. Maybe he can help. And you should be able to take… another day, maybe two, to finish it without any issues.”
“Thank you, Leo, sir.”
“Just Leo!” Leo called after Amir as the younger man slipped out. He looked back at Olivia, who was staring at him like he’d just pulled a rabbit out of a hat.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“That was just… so… nice!” She looked shocked. “You weren’t mad at that man, or at Laurie. Even though the project was delayed!”
“Why should I be mad?” Leo asked. “It isn’t Laurie’s fault her kid is sick, and it isn’t Amir’s fault that his team struggles without her. That’s why I always build a buffer into the deadlines I give.”
“Wow.” Olivia perched on the edge of his desk and shook her head. “That’s hard to believe.”
“Why?”
“Well, I told you about my last boss, right?”
“Right. The one who had problems with everything you did.”
“Exactly. But he wasn’t unusual. All of my bosses have been like that. No matter how hard I work or what I do, they always look at me like I’m not good enough.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Leo said.
Olivia shook her head. “It’s just… it isn’t fair.
” She sighed. “You’ve created such a great workplace for your employees, but I’ve never found that.
All my jobs have made me feel terrible. I’ve had toxic coworkers who spread gossip about me.
I’ve had bosses who put me down. I’ve had jobs where I was underpaid and overworked. ”
“You need to work for a better company,” Leo said.
“I guess. I just wish that I could find that — and that I could wait until I find the perfect job, instead of just the next one.” She sighed again.
“You said the other day that I should be a photographer. I’d love to be.
But getting off the ground, especially as a nature photographer, takes so much capital.
I’d need a year of runway so that I could focus on photography and finding clients.
Or, if I’m looking to work with an existing photography company, I’d still need at least a year of runway to apply for jobs, interview, and fix up my portfolio. ”
“A year of runway can’t be too hard to build up,” Leo said.
“Easy for you to say.” She laughed, but there was no mirth in it.
“I’ve been trying to save money since I was a teenager, but something always happens.
I have to pay student loans. I have to pay rent.
Insurance. Groceries. Gas. Everything adds up, all the time.
And even when I do manage to set something aside, I end up needing it to fix the water heater in my apartment, or pay for a filling at the dentist, or buy a ticket back to Idaho to see my sister. ”
“That sounds difficult,” Leo said. And it did.
He could empathize with Olivia’s situation — and he felt bad that she was in it.
But something about the way she spoke set off alarm bells, too.
For a long time, he’d believed that she wasn’t after his money.
With how she was talking now, though, he knew that even a person as principled and wonderful as Olivia might be tempted by his money, simply because her situation was so precarious.
“Difficult isn’t the half of it.” Olivia looked straight at him.
“It’s been really nice having this break, but this is a reminder that I have to get back to real life.
I can’t stay here forever. This—” she gestured at the office, at Leo, at the whole of New York City, “—is just temporary. Isn’t it? ”
Her words stung. Leo knew she wasn’t going to stay with him forever, but he didn’t want to think of the end date. And what if she meant that her time with Leo had been great, but that she had to focus on the rest of her life — on having enough money to get by, to chase her dreams?
“Olivia…” Leo wasn’t sure what he’d wanted to say, and he trailed off. Olivia’s shoulders slumped.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to unload on you like that. I just… I was able to forget about money and work for a little while. And I can’t do that forever.”
“I know.” Leo met her gaze. “I guess I can’t forget about real life forever, either.”
“Sometimes, I wish we could,” Olivia said softly.
“Me too.”
They looked at each other for a long moment, not needing words.
Leo recognized that they’d reached a turning point.
They’d lived in a dreamland for the last few weeks, pretending they were really married, pretending they could go on as they had.
They couldn’t. Just as Olivia had bills to pay and work to do, Leo had to focus on his company again.
It was time to work on the divorce. He couldn’t offer Olivia a future. Not the kind she deserved. He’d go back to being a workaholic. He’d go back to burying his feelings. She deserved better.
But maybe Leo could set her off on the right foot. He could offer her money in the divorce — not half, but enough that she could spend a year focusing on photography, like she’d said. Maybe even two.
Maybe that was all she really wanted from him, anyway.
Leo stood, rather abruptly, breaking eye contact with Olivia.
“How about I grab us some coffee… and then we should probably talk.”
“Yeah.” Olivia looked down. “I guess we should.”
“I’ll be right back.”
Leo could have made coffee at the machine in his private office or called for Julian to make coffee for them both. Instead, he went down the hall to the break room. He needed a moment to himself to gather his thoughts.
He and Olivia had avoided talking about the divorce for so long, but the time had finally come. He’d go back in, they’d sit down, and they’d talk things through. It was time for the beautiful break from reality they’d shared to end.
It didn’t matter that thinking about Olivia leaving was like being shot with a white-hot arrow.
It didn’t matter that he couldn’t imagine having breakfasts and dinners alone or coming home to an empty apartment.
It didn’t matter that he cared about her so much, his heart ached.
It didn’t matter that he would have given almost anything to be the man she deserved.
Olivia was ready to leave, and Leo needed to get back to work. It was time to let her go.