31. Alex
ALEX
Monday has already lasted about a hundred years. By midnight, I’m pacing my apartment in a nightgown, reviewing the whole disaster, wondering what I could have done differently.
First, Rolf and I worked a twelve-hour day. Then I presided over a business dinner I planned for my chief technology officer and my corporate treasurer.
The conversation needed secrecy, so I booked the tiny private dining room at En on Hudson Street.
And there—over exquisite Japanese food—I described the scenario that Max had laid out.
Then I presented my plan to double down on motherboards, ordering half from an untested Thai producer and half from a man I suspected would embed them with malicious hardware.
And they balked.
“I don’t understand why we have to play this game,” my CTO said.
“What if we end up with twice as many perfectly good parts?” the CFO wanted to know.
“So Max Bayer is telepathic? Does he have a crystal ball? How could he possibly know?”
And so on and so on. It only got worse when someone asked, “What does counsel think?” Because I’m not telling Whitbread about this crisis until I absolutely have to.
They didn’t like that either.
“Listen, I spent all of yesterday reeling from this news,” I tried to reassure them. “I know it sounds crazy. But this is the hand we’ve been dealt. No good deed goes unpunished. We made a great product, and someone else wants to use it to his advantage. We can’t let that happen.”
I’d estimate that I left them—hours later—eighty percent convinced.
It’s that last twenty percent that’s bothering me now.
It occurs to me that I should have asked Max to explain it.
He could whip out his top-secret hacker chip and weave the tale.
Max is very convincing. He has those flinty gray eyes and the air of craftiness that comes with spending all your time thinking like a thief.
He also has a penis. And in my experience, executives with penises are ninety percent more likely to accept bad news from a person who also has a penis.
Or maybe that’s just the panic talking.
I march over to my new, unhacked phone and dial the person I try never to turn to. But I need him right now. And it’s only nine o’clock in California.
“Darling girl!” my father booms from the line. “What’s got you up so late?”
“There’s a problem with my rollout. It’s confidential. And it’s weird as hell.”
“Let’s hear it,” he says.
“Sit down,” I begin. “It’s not a short story.”
“Motherfucker,” my father says when I’ve explained the whole thing. “Do you really think you can keep this secret?”
“I have to. I can use Max’s people for some of the extra legwork.”
“Can you do the final assembly in this country?”
“Maybe. There’s a recently shuttered cabinet factory in Pennsylvania that might work. Nine hundred employees are jobless.”
“Sawdust, though,” my father grumbles.
“I hired an environmental company to fly down and check it out.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “You’ll have the technical issues handled, Alexandra. You’re an ace at that. But your credibility might take a hit.”
“It might,” I agree.
“I can’t decide if it will be worse in the press, or worse in the boardroom. If institutional investors get jumpy, they’ll be calling for your head.”
“That’s why I need secrecy.”
“That comes with a cost, too,” Dad says. “You’re relying on Max Bayer’s intuition. Not like that’s bad. I trust those guys with my life. But when this leaks to the board, you’ll be saying a lot of ‘Max says this and Max says that.’ Without much proof.”
“Without any proof,” I grumble.
“They’re going to say Max runs your company.”
“Dad!” I gripe, sounding like a pissed-off teenager. “I already understand how that works. Half of them already think that you run my company. The other half thinks that Nate Kattenberger does. That rumor started when I licensed his AI software.”
He chuckles. “I know you’re just trying to save the world, honey. But so many people will be ungrateful. Especially when they realize they’ve been kept out of the loop.”
“You’re preaching to the choir. But I can’t let anyone in on this until after the trap’s been set. I need a month at least.”
He clicks his tongue. “Be careful with the optics. Don’t let Max hire out anything you can do yourself. And for God’s sake, squash those rumors about you and the other Bayer kid. The athlete.”
“What? He has nothing to do with this.”
“Gossip forms in a vacuum. I’ve heard so many rumors about the father of your child. First I heard Nate; then I heard Max. Now Eric.”
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I have over a thousand employees. I knew people would gossip. But the fact that my own father hears these rumors? That makes me ill.
“Hang in there, honey. Don’t give them any extra reasons to doubt you. When the baby comes, you won’t be around to defend yourself, either. The timing is terrible.”
“You think?”
“Deep breaths. You need me to fly out for a visit?”
“No,” I say quickly. “Not until the holidays. I don’t want people saying that daddy had to come and rescue me.”
I don’t need anyone to rescue me. This problem is big, but it will not break me.
“Okay. Call me tomorrow? I know you hate asking for help, Alexandra. But everyone needs a springboard sometimes. And there aren’t many people you can trust.”
“Thank you,” I say softly, because he’s right. “I’ll fill you in tomorrow.”
“Sleep well, honey. I can’t wait to meet my granddaughter.”
My stupid eyes fill. “Night dad.”
We hang up, and I shut out the light. Then I curl up in the center of my giant bed. I take one of my many pillows and tuck it between my knees. Then I grab another and hug it in my arms. Sleeping while eight months pregnant is hard. It requires props. Or the hard body of a man—
No. It does not require that.
I close my eyes.
“Alexxxxx!” someone bellows.
My eyes fly open in the dark, and my heart is already pounding.
I hear a muted thud. Like a body falling against my front door. “Alex, baby! I need to speak to you!”
As I wake up quickly, I realize that’s Eric’s voice. Eric’s very drunk voice. And he seems to be outside my apartment.
With a groan, I throw my pillows out of the way and heave myself off the bed. As I approach the front door, I hear Duff out there trying to reason with him.
“Eric, buddy, I can see that you have a few things on your mind. But maybe sleep on it? You can come back tomorrow.”
“Alex! It can’t wait!”
“Cut it out,” Duff complains. “I like you, and I don’t want to pull rank, here. But if you keep yelling, I’ll put you in a headlock and stuff you into that elevator. It’s, like, literally my job.”
I’m right outside the door now, and Eric switches to a stage whisper. “Alex! Open the door!”
I yank it open. “This better be good. I was sleeping. After the longest day of my career, I was out cold.”
“Dude,” says a man I’ve never seen before. “Rough start. But you can turn this around. I believe in you. When you know, you know.”
“When you know, you know!” crows a drunken Eric. His beautiful gray eyes are a little unfocused, but he’s grinning at me. “Alex, baby, let me in. We gotta talk.”
“Who’s that?” I demand, pointing at the stranger.
“My cousin,” Eric slurs. “He’s the newest Bayer on the Bruisers. That’s what twenty-two and optimistic looks like.”
“I’ll show them both the door,” Duff says. “So sorry about this.”
But I have a feeling that hurricane Eric won’t leave quietly. My quickest path back to bed is just to hear the man out. “You have five minutes,” I say with a sigh, widening the door. “Start talking.”
“You got this, buddy!” says the cousin in the Bruisers T-shirt. “You’re right. She is a hot whale.”
“What did you just call me?” I yelp.
“He said fox tail,” Duff says quickly. “They’ve been, um, drinking.”
“Gosh, really?” I wave Eric inside, and then close the door. “I was sleeping, and I’d like to do that again soon. So what did you need to say?”
Eric paces into my darkened foyer and stands in the middle of the marble floor. “You know how people say I was just in the neighborhood?”
“Yeah?” I tap my foot.
“Well, I was just nowhere near yours, but there’s always Lyft, you know? And I realized I had something to say to you, Alex. In my whole life, I thought I never would say these words.”
That’s some build up. I just cross my arms over my giant tummy and wait.
He throws his hands out to the sides. “I love you, and I think we should get married.”
At first I’m distracted by a muffled cheer from the other side of the door. But then the words sink in. “Wait. What?” I yelp. “You’re crazy. Eric, you did not just get wasted and ride into Manhattan to stand here and say that.”
“Oh, shit. I am standing!” Eric slaps himself in the forehead. “I’m doing it all wrong. All the jewelry stores are closed. I checked. But I guess I could kneel—” He starts to slide toward the floor.
“Stop!” I shriek, thinking of his injured knees. “It’s marble!”
He catches himself with his hands. “Shit. My knees. I can’t even kneel right. And I don’t have a ring.”
“It’s not about that!” I can’t believe this is happening. The only marriage proposal I’m ever going to hear is from a drunk man who probably won’t remember this in the morning. “This visit isn’t about me at all. It’s about too much scotch and not enough hockey.”
He lifts a finger in the air. “Tequila, actually.”
“Whatever! Eric, go home. We had a lot of fun.” So, so much fun. “But it can’t last. I’m in deep with a problem that I might not be able to solve before I give birth to a tiny, needy human…”
“I could help you with that!” Eric crows. “Not the, uh, birth-giving but I could hold it.” He burps. “The baby, I mean.”
And, damn it, I can almost picture it. Not this drunk version of Eric, of course.
But the kind one who shows up here to kiss me and feed me bagels.
That Eric—the sober one—never once said anything about babies, though.
And I clearly remember that first day when I told him I was pregnant, when utter horror crossed his rugged features.
Right. Eric loves hockey and beaches and sexy-times. I don’t blame him one bit. But I’m pissed off that drunk Eric showed up to mockingly propose to me at one in the morning.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I say in a cool voice.
“You’re going to go home and sleep it off.
And I hope for both our sakes that you don’t remember this conversation in the morning.
I’m going back to bed. And tomorrow I’m going to keep fighting for my company and for New York City’s cybersecurity until this baby shows up.
At which time I’ll take at least a nine week maternity leave—or I’ll pretend to—because if I don’t, then I’m sending the wrong message.
I’ll be telling the women who work at Engels Cable Media that they can’t have a personal life.
Even if that seems utterly, horribly true in my case. ”
“No way,” Eric says, shaking his head so hard that he sways. “I’m your personal life. I’m a person!” He thinks that over a second. “Your person. Yeah. That. We’re supposed to be a team. All of us.”
He looks as sincere as a babbling, heavy-lidded hottie can. But that’s just the Jose Cuervo talking. “You’re the one who told me I can’t,” I remind him. “Remember? You can do anything, but you can’t do everything.”
Eric gives a slow blink. “What if I was wrong about that?”
“You called it the best advice you’ve ever been given in your life, Eric. So forgive me if I’m skeptical when you’re marinated. Now take your midlife crisis and your twenty-two year-old cousin home.”
The door pops open. “Time’s up, big man,” Duff says. “You heard the lady.”
Eric turns, giving me puppy dog eyes. That’s how I know he’s not himself. He doesn’t ever look at me like that. He takes one of my hands and lifts it, kissing the back of it. “Take care, honey. I’m sorry I interrupted your sleep.”
Then he goes.
Duff gives me a pitying look before he closes the door again.
I go back to bed, arranging my pillows just-so. And I try not to imagine what it would be like to hear sober words of love from Eric Bayer.