Chapter 3 #2
A bitter taste fills my mouth as I unpack all that. One: Over my dead body will someone else be pitching this—especially an associate. Or Matt. That sucker-sucking nice guy stealing five minutes of my show was bad enough I plotted his murder in between thoughts of brain bleeds and business models.
And two: She knows just as well as I do that a company this desirable will get snagged up faster than we can blink; there’s no time.
If we don’t buy them, someone else will.
Someone else might already be having the exact same meeting we just had at a firm two blocks away as much as one in two time zones away.
Most importantly, my mom’s brain is not what I want to talk about. “It’s not a big deal.”
She almost laughs. “It’s a big enough deal that you’re worried.”
“I’m not worried,” I insist. “I’m—” Stressed. Annoyed at my sisters. Ready to get to work on this account. I take a sip of the awful tea. “She’s fine.”
Trish’s eyes narrow. “What if she wouldn’t have been?”
“Why wouldn’t she be?” My heart skips a beat. “I planned it. It was textbook. She’s fine.”
“You can’t control how things turn out in a brain surgery,” she argues.
“Hell, we can barely control half of what happens in business. Most of life is a spin of the roulette wheel. If your mom’s surgery wouldn’t have turned out the way it seems to have, you would have lived with that regret for the rest of your life. Blamed us for not being there.”
“Blamed you?” I ask, panic building. “No. No, no, no. There’s no blaming.
She’s fine. I’m fine. Everything went the way I planned it—I’m a damn good planner.
” The increased speed of my words could compete with a semitruck rolling down a mountain road without brakes.
“I researched the hell out of the surgeon and picked the best one in the whole state of North Carolina. And it’s fine. ”
Her long look leads to me drinking the rest of my ass tea.
“What do you do when you aren’t working or walking to work?” she asks, leaning back in her chair. “Friends. Romantic relationship. Kids. What do you do with your time?”
“Do?”
Her brows lift.
“I mean do. I do a lot. I—I—” I do nothing.
I work. I ride my Peloton on after-hour conference calls.
Once I saw Lacey from accounting at the Starbucks down the street and we stood in line together.
Relationships take time. Friendships take time.
Hobbies take time. Families take time. I have none.
Other than my sisters and Mom, I don’t like most people, and even them I barely tolerate.
I clean my condo, eat protein, and work. “It’s hard to list everything I do.”
“What do you like about your job?”
For as flawless Trish is in business, her congratulations! you landed this deal speech needs work. “What do I like?”
“Mhm. Why are you here? You can’t just show up, day after day and work your ass off to pitch a purchase like Fizz Co for no reason.”
Why does anyone work? I’m here for money—I made two million dollars last year and am on track to doubling that this year.
I’m here because I started on a path in this company fifteen years ago and I have no idea what else I would do if I stopped in the middle of it.
I’m here because I’ve set goals, and when I set goals, I achieve them then set new ones and barely sleep until I take care of those too. Because I choose excellence.
“I want to . . .” I look out Trish’s window—same floor as mine but in a corner office; she has two exterior walls of windows. The next glass-drawn measure of success. “Win.”
“At what?”
“Um.” Outside, Jake passes by in his cage. Still happily whistling. Still making next to no money. Still would have been at the hospital with his mom.
Turning back to Trish, my eyes land on a silver-framed photo on her desk of her and her family.
Her husband—Jacob, an engineer—and their three kids on a beach somewhere.
She has a corner office and a family, and I don’t know how she does it.
I barely leave this building; she leaves long enough to keep little humans alive and smile on a beach.
I thought I’d have kids by now. A husband. At the very least a relationship worthy of displaying in a frame. I keep waiting for things to slow down, only one fund leads to two, leads to infinity and eternity.
“Reese?”
“Right.” I shake my head and refocus on her. “Win at getting this account.”
I haven’t thought of anything outside of work in so long it aches like an unused muscle as my thoughts go down that trail.
When I was younger, I had a timeline. I’d make my money then focus on my personal life, starting a family when I achieved financial freedom.
What I didn’t realize back then was this industry is built on an endlessly stretched horizon and the personal life I imagined seems to exist just beyond it.
Out of sight and out of mind and nothing to do with Fizz Co. “Be successful in my career.”
“Are you happy?” she asks.
“Of course.”
Right?
Sure, I’m tired and don’t have much of a personal life, but I’m doing what I always said I would. I have a job I’m good at. People need me. I add value. I make more money than I have time to spend.
“Happiness means sleeping good at night,” Trish says with a slight smile.
In that case, I might be miserable.
She continues. “My dad told me that once. He thought sleep was underrated.” She thrums her fingers on her desk.
“He started this business because a single mom out in Naperville wanted to start a bakery but didn’t have enough money to do it.
He gave her the capital to get it up and running.
Just kind of took off from there. Did you know that? ”
It’s in every write-up about our firm. “Good people help good people,” I reply, quoting her dad and the firm’s motto.
“Of course.” She takes a sip of her tea and makes a face; she must hate it too. “You’re, what, thirty-nine? Do you want a family?”
“Forty,” I correct. “And I’d always imagined a family. Kids.” I shrug a shoulder. “Someday. When things settle down.”
I’ll never admit that my longest relationship in the last ten years was a nine-month-long fuck buddy named William.
He wanted to get serious—wanted us to move in together and started talking about marriage.
I wasn’t in love with him, but I was also in the middle of a big deal that wouldn’t let me give anyone enough attention to be in love with them.
I told him the time wasn’t right; he told me I didn’t know how to let anyone get close; I told him we were done.
I force a coy smile. “But maybe one of the Fizz Co execs can set me up with a handsome friend.”
“About Fizz Co—” Her words and my heart stop midsentence. She steeples her hands together and presses her index fingers against her lips, seemingly deep in thought.
What is happening?
Finally, she pulls them away long enough to say, “The committee voted to move forward with the deal.”
The swift delivery of the news nearly sends me shooting from my seat like a rocket. I swallow my squeal and discreetly pummel the tops of my own thighs with clenched fists. “I knew it.”
“And we’ve selected Matt to be acting interim sponsor of the deal.”
“I’ll get started on next steps.” My thoughts move in a dozen directions. “We’ll need to get the ball ro—”
Wait.
That can’t be right.
She can’t have possibly said what I think she said.
But when I say, “Matt?” the look on her face lets me know she absolutely did.
That sucker-sucking son of a bitch.