Chapter Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Eight
It was embarrassing how often Max found himself checking his phone throughout the day.
He had work to do—a whole company to run—yet all he could think about was if Stella had texted him back.
It wasn’t until halfway through his dinner with some of his biggest investors and top engineers that he finally got a response.
Stella
I know we’re not supposed to talk about work but it’s Sprint Week in the office so I’ll probably be MIA until Friday, sorry! I hope your work dinner goes well.
Max’s first question was what the hell was Sprint Week? Seeing as Stella’s profession wasn’t track athlete, he assumed it wasn’t running related. This was the kind of thing that would keep circling through his head until he got an answer, so he had to ask.
Max
That sounds intense. What exactly is Sprint Week?
They were on their third course at dinner before Stella responded.
Stella
Basically we all have to make 20 posts this week. Once we do all 20 we can leave, i.e. if I had finished all my posts today I’d be off for the rest of the week. But alas I am a slowpoke so I’m only one tenth of the way there.
Max had to turn his chuckle into a cough when everyone turned to him while Rashid was explaining the work he was doing with Yellow Sparks and Sparky. Rashid caught his eye, and Max waved him on to continue. From then on, Max knew it’d be safer to keep his phone and Stella at bay.
By the time the dinner had wrapped up and Max and Rashid had secured the investors’ continued support in AIX, it was almost nine.
“Shall we do celebratory drinks?” Rashid asked.
Max was exhausted and knew the responsible thing would be to take his ass to bed, but what was the harm in one beer?
“Sure, got a place in mind?”
Rashid shrugged and pointed to a dive bar across the street from the very fancy restaurant they had just left.
“That looks good enough for me.”
Thanks to it being a Monday night and still cold as hell outside, it was very easy for Max and Rashid to grab two seats at the bar.
Their bartender, a surly, heavily tatted, and bulky dude with a comb-over, took their order, handing them both bottles of beer that were sweating with condensation.
“Thanks,” Max said. The man just grunted in return before moving down the bar to the only other patron in the place.
“Wow, I really love the vibes of this place,” Rashid said, grinning.
What was scary was that Max knew Rashid wasn’t being sarcastic.
“Cheers, mate,” Rashid said, clinking his beer against Max’s before taking a sip.
“Mate?” Max said after he’d had a sip.
“Yes, I’m prepping for my trip to England,” he said. Then, donning a very bad British accent, he added, “Cheerio, old chap!”
“You know, I don’t think anyone expects you to have a British accent when visiting,” Max said with a shake of his head. “In fact, I think they’d prefer if you didn’t.”
“Ah, but how else will I fit in with all my Brit cousins?” Rashid asked. “I don’t want to spend the whole weekend being called a Yankee.”
“And you think the fake accent will prevent that?” Max asked.
“No, but it’ll make for great entertainment and hopefully distract my aunties from asking me when I’ll be getting married.”
Max took another swig of his beer. “What’s happening with Sabrina? I thought it was going well.”
Rashid sighed, and Max already knew that wasn’t a good sign.
“It’s fine, but you know I’m Indian and she’s Chinese.
Neither of us are itching to meet the other’s family.
A part of me feels like we should end it now before it gets harder to split, but every time I think about broaching the topic, she does something so disgustingly cute that I convince myself we can make this work. ”
Max grinned. “It sounds like you want to make it work.”
“Yeah,” Rashid said, sighing again. “I fear I might love her or something.”
“Or something,” Max said, rolling his eyes. “Maybe instead of telling her you’re worried you’ll need to break up, you try telling her that you’re worried about your families’ reactions but you want to make it work. Have you considered that?”
Rashid squinted at him. “Why do you sound so logical?”
“I’m always logical,” Max said.
“Oh sure, that’s why you’re dating one of your brother’s employees, right? How’s that going, by the way?”
Max was already regretting telling Rashid about Stella. He hadn’t planned to, but Rashid had caught him smiling at his phone one too many times recently, so he fessed up.
“It’s going well,” Max said. “We were together all weekend, actually. But now she’s doing some Sprint Week thing so she said she’ll probably be busy this whole week.”
“Ah, yes, your brother’s brilliant idea,” Rashid said. “I have to admit, it is working. I’ve had more people ask me about Sparky and how to use it today than all of my previous office hours combined.”
“What brilliant idea?” Max asked.
Max’s confusion must’ve been evident on his face because Rashid frowned.
“Dude, I literally just spent a good fifteen minutes telling those rich guys back there about this whole thing,” Rashid said. “And Stella didn’t tell you?”
Now Max frowned. “She only told me that she’s doing Sprint Week. What is Miles doing?”
Rashid shook his head. “Truly just a man with his head in the clouds, I swear.”
“Tell me, Rashid,” Max said.
“Alright, I’ll go through my spiel again,” Rashid said, pointedly.
“Sprint Week is something Miles does periodically, but for this one, to encourage his staff to use Sparky, whoever wins Sprint Week will get ten thousand dollars—but they have to have used Sparky for all of their posts to win the grand prize. So even if someone gets the most traffic for the week, if they didn’t use Sparky to get there, they won’t win the ten grand.
“So, of course, now all of them want to figure out how to use it so they can get paid.”
“That’s…interesting,” Max finally said.
“It’s genius,” Rashid said. “I checked in today, and just in one day, there are already one hundred Sparky-generated posts that have gone up. It’ll be interesting to see how they perform and the learnings we’ll get from it.”
Max could only nod as his thoughts spun. He didn’t have to wonder why Stella left this part out when she texted. Not talking about work, and Sparky specifically, was a part of their arrangement, after all.
And yet he couldn’t help but feel like she’d lied to him by omission, and he hated how that made him feel. They should be able to talk to each other about anything. That’s what people in a—
He cut off his thoughts there. No, they weren’t in a relationship. They were keeping things casual, nothing serious.
Except it hadn’t felt that way to him lately. Max wasn’t sure it ever felt that way to him.
Rashid waved a hand in Max’s face, disrupting his thoughts.
“You look like you need another beer,” Rashid said.
“No, I think I should call it,” he said, pushing back from the bar. He reached into his pocket for his wallet and dropped two twenties on the bar.
“There’s no way these beers cost that much,” Rashid said, looking up at him.
“Get yourself another,” Max said, clapping his friend on the back. “You earned it.”
“Wow, an extra beer for my hard work? Is that all?”
Max rolled his eyes. “I pay you way over the market rate, but if this is your way of pushing for a raise, write down a number on a piece of paper and slide it across my desk tomorrow like a real adult.”
Rashid barked out a laugh and waved as Max left the bar, his head still filled with thoughts of Stella.