Chapter 6
SIX
Alex
“What the fuck,” I groan out loud at the computer in front of me just as the door to my office opens.
I look up with startled eyes only to see Kyle walking in with no care in the world.
“Knock before you walk in.” My voice comes out more like a growl, and a lesser person would cower in fear. Not Kyle, though. The guy walks around with a constant smile on his face that I want to punch every time I see it.
“I don’t see you jerking off or anything,” he shrugs. “So a knock would’ve been wasted had I done it.”
I squint at him. “Are you speaking in riddles? Because I am not in the mood.”
He plops himself in the chair across from my desk, resting his foot on the opposite knee. The smile is still firm on his face. Nothing ever wipes that off. He is the happiest person I have ever met, and it is quite annoying at times.
“I came to tell you that I want us to hire Owen as a consultant for the games,” he says without any other introduction.
My computer now forgotten, I lean back in my chair and stare at him.
“Who the fuck is Owen?” I ask.
That seems to annoy him a little bit, but he recovers quickly, never letting it get to him.
“Owen is Zara’s brother. I placed him on one of the beta teams, and his feedback has been awesome. I think he would be very valuable as a consultant.”
I instantly start mulling things over. The last two games Kyle developed have been a huge hit with the audiences, and now that I think of it, this Owen character joined the beta team while Kyle was in the middle of the first video game.
That’s also when he fell in love, and I almost ruined his life because of it, but that’s neither here nor there.
“Zara is my girlfriend,” Kyle adds when I am obviously taking too much time to respond. “You’ve met them both, and…”
“I know who the fuck she is, asshole!” I grab a stress ball from the desk and throw it at his head. Like the clown that he is, he almost falls back with the chair when he tries to catch it.
“It’s a yes then?” he asks once he’s sitting up right again.
“It depends.” My first instinct is to start running numbers in my head and figure out how us hiring someone new would affect the bottom line. It’s all about the money.
“I will pay him from my profit.” Kyle reads my hesitation correctly.
“I just think Owen is really good, and now that he caught a taste of how it all works, he might want to do it for other developers. I want him to be under contract with us. Besides, it’s only a few hours a week.
He has a demanding full time job that he doesn’t plan on quitting just to chat about video games. ”
If I remember correctly, Zara’s brother is a firefighter, and an overall badass dude. He looks the part, too, and I have to say that I felt a bit intimidated the first time I met him despite not showing it.
“I’ll have Legal draw out an agreement,” I now tell Kyle. “With a clear specification that his pay comes out of your profit.”
Kyle rolls his eyes at me but nods in agreement.
It’s not like he can’t afford it. When I started my software company, I had to raise capital, and my friends were my first stop for it.
Kyle was the only one who couldn’t participate with cash, but he more than made up for it with his brain.
He worked for me for free until we hit gold, at which point everyone involved became an instant millionaire many times over.
I’ve always been very careful with my money, and I made sure that no one would take advantage of the fact that I had it, never flaunting it.
My first assumption was always that they were after it, and I protected that with my life.
I also did the same for my friends, however, they didn’t appreciate me getting involved in their love lives to protect their assets.
To say that it backfired a couple of times would put it mildly.
It got very close to ruining lifelong friendships permanently.
While I apologized once it was determined that my suspicions were unfounded, I never regretted calling out Kyle’s girlfriend, Zara, or the girlfriend-now-turned-wife of our other friend, Ray.
“Anything else I can help you with?” I ask when I see that Kyle is not showing signs of wanting to leave. The tone of my voice implies that I expect him to go.
Like the asshole that he is, Kyle grins at me. “Why? Am I holding you from something?”
My eyes go to the computer screen. The browser is open, and I have the Holidates site up.
“No fucking way!” Kyle busts out laughing, and when I turn my head, I see him leaning forward as he tries to get a better look at my screen. “I told Zara you were gonna do this, but I didn’t really believe it myself. I can’t wait to tell her!”
He jumps out of the chair, now looking like he wants to bolt. Couldn’t he do that when I first asked him to go?
“Sit your ass back down,” I snap at him. “I need help with this shit. You might as well help me.”
His eyes widen in surprise, but he doesn’t listen. “Dude, I love you like a brother, but I need to tell someone about this. It’ll be either Zara or the rest of the guys. Your choice.”
I shake my head in disgust. “You’re really not capable of keeping a secret, are you?”
“I am.” He bobs his head up and down. “But not yours.”
“Fair enough.”
I run my hands through my hair, digging the heels into the sockets of my eyes. The pressure makes me see stars, but it doesn’t give me the focus I need.
“Are you trying to get a hold of Mona through the Holidates?”
“Something like that.” I let out a heavy sigh as I bring my hands down. “This seems to be the only way that I can since she blocked me on everything else.”
Kyle watches me, his eyes looking wider than the usual. “So you’re signed up and everything?”
“I’m having a hard time with that,” I admit.
He shakes his head in confusion. “Like your computer is too slow or something?”
I throw my arms forward in despair. “No, like they’re asking me all these fucking questions, and I don’t know what to say.”
The second Kyle busts out laughing again, I know I should’ve kept my damn mouth shut. Why wasn’t I fast enough to close the browser the second he invaded my office? Now I have to put up with his shit. I guess I deserve it given how I almost ruined his relationship, but still, what the fuck.
“You don’t know how to answer the questions?” He is wheezing now. “How did you start a billion dollar company but don’t know how to answer the Holidates questions?”
I let him do his thing, watching as he bends at the waist and leans against the chair so that he wouldn’t fall over while still laughing.
“I don’t want her to know it’s me,” I finally manage to inform him once he’s calmed down. That puts a stop to his amusement while also bringing the confused look back.
“I don’t get it.”
“She’d only block me again if she realized it was me messaging her,” I explain. “So I was going to pretend to be someone else, get her to meet with me, and then convince her to give me another chance.”
“But why?”
That is a very good question in itself, but I don’t have a real answer. I just can’t not see her. Every fucking time we break up, I know she’s there, waiting for me. And now that I know she’s actively looking for someone else, it’s killing me. I can’t deal.
“My dick won’t work with anyone but her,” I tell Kyle. And that is actually the truth. I haven’t been able to get hard for anyone but her for the last four years, and I don’t want to try it with anyone else either. I just need to get to her before she does something we’ll both regret.
“Dude…” Kyle gives me a disappointed look. “For a second there, I thought you were in love with Mona. But if you’re just looking her up just to have sex on demand, let her go, man. She doesn’t deserve this.”
Anger instantly rises inside of me. I will not allow anyone to speak ill of Mona. But then, like a slap in the face, I realize that Kyle is actually on her side. He is trying to protect her from me. It is the exact opposite of the way I was with Zara when the two of them first met.
“I don’t know what love is.”
My jaw hurts when I mutter the words. I wouldn’t admit this to anyone other than my best friend. And he really has been a very good friend to me despite me being the asshole of our group.
“Love is when you feel like you can’t live without her,” Kyle explains. “You want to be with only her. You don’t stray. You don’t think of anyone else while you’re with her. You want to take care of her. You think life would be over if she wasn’t in it.”
I swallow around the hard lump in the back of my throat.
Those are all the things my father raised me to despise.
I never questioned his thinking until my friends started getting married and acting like fools around their significant others.
Now, our group is larger and more on the co-ed side.
They love their women being involved, and they have in turn become friends as well.
It’s a tight knit group, and I am the oddball.
I know they are careful around me, especially the girls. They always expect me to snap at them, say inappropriate things, like calling them gold diggers. And I know I deserve it, but I don’t know how to change my way of thinking.
“You mentioned your parents before.” Kyle clears his throat a couple of times. It is not a subject that’s ever mentioned, but I may have said a thing or two about it while I was trying to convince Kyle that Zara was no good for him. “What the fuck happened, man? Why do you hate women this much?”
“I only hate the money hungry ones.” I try to keep my tone light, make it sound like I’m joking, but he’s not buying it.
“They’re not all like that. I love Zara to pieces,” he tells me. “She is the best thing to happen to me.” He looks around as he thinks of more examples. “What about Cal and Evie?” he asks. “Do you think Evie is after Cal’s money?”
I cross my arms as I actually give it a thought. “No. Her family has money.”
“What about Ray and Hayden?”
I smirk at him. “Same.”
Kyle is actually amused by that. “How the fuck Ray ended up with a woman richer than him is a mystery,” he agrees, but it’s all in good nature on his end. He doesn’t care about who’s got how much money.
I’m glad that he is distracted by that so that we don’t have to talk about me anymore. My relief is very short lived, though.
“So what’s your problem with Mona? No money?”
I stare at him, knowing that my silence says it all. I don’t trust her because she’s got no money. Is it fair to her? Absolutely not. But I have this mental block that I am trying really hard to get over.
“The question stands. What the fuck happened with your parents?”
I let out a laugh that is full of sarcasm. “So many things happened. It’s too long of a story, and I don’t want to take your time.”
Kyle, in his always goofy way, makes a production out of getting more comfortable in his chair. He pops his feet on my desk and rests his hands on his stomach.
“I got nowhere to be,” he tells me.
It is on the tip of my tongue to remind him that only minutes ago he was dying to run home and tell Zara that I got on Holidates. But my chest becomes heavy with all the secrets I’ve been keeping for way too many years.
“My father was born into money.” The words taste bitter in my mouth. “He fell in love with a woman who didn’t have any. She got pregnant on purpose, and he felt obligated to marry her.”
“Why?” Kyle asks in a bewildered voice.
“So that the family name wouldn’t be tarnished by a baby being born out of wedlock.”
“I see,” he mumbles, but he clearly doesn’t see anything.
“They got married. No prenup. As soon as she gave birth, she filed for divorce and relinquished all her parental rights to the baby.”
Kyle looks like his eyeballs are about to fall out of his head. “You?”
“Obviously me. If not, what would the point of this story be?” I shake my head at him. The dumbass part is implied.
“So she wanted nothing?”
I let out a sarcastic laugh. “Oh, she wanted a lot of things. They all had a big ass dollar sign on them.”
“So she took your father to the cleaners then?”
“More than,” I confirm.
He stares at me without saying anything else, but I don’t have anything else to add either. The story of my life is pathetic and sad, and now he knows.
“So you hate all the women because of what your mother did to your father?”
I let out a long sigh. “From the time I could form words, I was told that all women are the same, and that I should never trust anyone who can’t match my wealth.”
Kyle shakes his head at me. “That’s some stupid shit. And there’s gotta be more to this story between them. Did you ever look her up?”
I glance away as I remember the summer I turned twelve. I’d been crying to my father, my nanny and to my grandparents about wanting to meet my mother. He finally gave in and hired a private investigator to find her for me. He had quite the report to give us.
“After she left my father, she ended up marrying another rich dude. Had another son. Left him as well.”
“What the fuck,” Kyle murmurs quietly.
“She then found somebody else, got pregnant again. A few years later, she died in a car accident, leaving behind her a long streak of pure misery.”
Kyle’s mouth is literally gaped open as he stares at me in disbelief. “I can’t believe someone would do anything like this.” He pauses for a second as if to think. “So, wait, you have siblings? How come you never mentioned them before?”
“I’ve never met them,” I shrug. “What would the point even be?”
My life is like a Greek tragedy, and the only person I’ve ever felt remotely close to was Mona. I need her back.