He leans against the booth, letting his arm trail along the back. He has Blake’s wiry build, but there’s an edginess to him that Blake lacks, as if he has a low-voltage current running through him at all times. He drums his fingers against the table as if to dispel a constant case of jitters. His glare intensifies.
“Cut the innocent act. If you’re smart enough to hold Blake’s interest, you’re smart enough to know what I’m talking about. My son is obviously emotionally invested in you, and I’d rather he not be hurt any more than necessary. If all you want is money, I’ll give you fifty thousand dollars to walk away right now.”
I pause, considering this. On the one hand, fifty thousand dollars to walk away from a nonexistent relationship is a lot of money. On the other hand, technically, at this point, Blake has offered me more. Besides, I doubt Mr. Reynolds would ever actually pay me. He’d just spill everything to Blake, assuming that revealing my money-grubbing status would end this relationship.
In other words, true to form, he’s being a dick. Surprise, surprise.
“I see you’re thinking about it,” he says. “Chances are this thing, whatever it is, won’t last. We’ve established that you don’t really care about Blake. The only thing left to do is haggle over the price.”
“That’s not what I’m thinking.” I pick up my own water glass and take a sip. “I think we need to make the stakes even. I’ll accept sixty-six billion dollars. I take cash, check, and nonliquid assets.”
His knowing smirk fades. “Now you’re just being ridiculous.”
I set my glass down. “No. I’m simply establishing that you don’t love your son, either.”
He almost growls. “What the fuck kind of logic is that? Sixty-six billion dollars is materially different than fifty thousand.”
The bathroom door opens behind us, and Blake starts toward us. Mr. Reynolds looks away from me in annoyance. Blake approaches the table and slides in next to me. He sits so close I can feel the warm pressure of his thigh against mine.
He looks from me to his father and back. “What’s going on?”
The fact that I’m not actually dating Blake, and don’t care about the state of his relationship with his terrible father, makes this extremely easy.
“Your father and I,” I tell him sweetly, “are arguing over how much he’ll pay me to dump you. Stay out of this; we’re not finished yet.”
“Oh.” A curiously amused look crosses Blake’s face.
“He offered fifty thousand bucks,” I say. “I countered with sixty-six billion.”
Blake’s smile widens.
“She’s not negotiating in good faith,” Mr. Reynolds growls. “What the fuck kind of girlfriend did you bring?”
“Don’t mind me.” Blake crosses his arms and leans back. “Pretend I’m not here. Carry on.”
Son of a bitch. Blake probably knew something like this would happen. He set me up. He did it on purpose.
“I don’t have to negotiate in good faith,” I tell his father. “You brought money into this in the first place. That was a dick move. Why should I play fair?”
“You’ve admitted that you’d sell him out,” he snaps. “That at some point, money is more important than he is.”
“You’ve admitted the same thing. If I’m a faithless whore because I’ll take a check to break up with Blake, you’re the asshole who values his company and lifestyle more than your son.”
“That’s not just my company. That’s my life. It’s his life. It’s—”
“Oh, and you think it’s just money for me?” I glare at him. “You think that you’d give me fifty thousand dollars and I’d spend it all on shoes and diamond-studded cat collars? Fifty thousand dollars would pay for the rest of my college tuition. It would buy my dad a lawyer so that the next time his knee acted up, he could finally get disability instead of scrambling to find some job he can manage. It would make it so I didn’t have to work for the next year and could concentrate on my schoolwork. That’s a really ugly double standard, Mr. Reynolds. When money exists to make your life more pleasant, it’s not just money. But when it’s my family and my dreams at stake, it’s just pieces of green paper.”
Blake smiles softly.
His father reaches across the table and flicks Blake’s forehead. “Stop grinning.”
“No way.” Blake is smiling harder. “She’s kicking your ass. This is the best day ever.”
His father grunts.
“The day I first went to lunch with Blake, I had less than twenty dollars in my possession. Total,” I tell his father. “I would completely sell Blake out for fifty thousand dollars. Some days I’d do it for ten. Dollars. Not thousands. None of this makes me a gold digger. It just means that I’m poor. When times get desperate, I’ll pawn anything of value to survive. I might cry when I do it, but I’m going to be realistic about it. So take your stupid does-she-love-Blake test and shove it.”
Mr. Reynolds looks at me. He looks at Blake. And then, very slowly, he holds out his hands, palms up. “Well. Fuck me twice on Sundays,” he says. From the expression on his face, I take it that this is intended to be a good thing.
“First time I talked to her,” Blake says with a nod that could only be described as prideful. “Before I asked her out. I knew I had to introduce her to you.”
“Shit,” Mr. Reynolds says. He holds up a fist, and Blake fist bumps him in return.
Now they’re both being dicks.
“Smile,” Blake’s dad says to me. “You pass the test.”
“Oh, thank goodness.” I put on a brilliant smile. “Do you really mean it? Do you mean that you, the one, the only, the incomparable Adam Reynolds, has deigned to recognize me as a human being? My life is changed forever.”
Mr. Reynolds’s expression goes completely blank. “Why is she being sarcastic, Blake?”
“Why is he talking to you like I’m not here, Blake?”
Mr. Reynolds turns to me. “Fine. Why are you being sarcastic?”
“You don’t get to test me,” I tell him. “You’re not my teacher. You don’t get to act like you’re the only one with a choice, and I have to be grateful if you accept me. I don’t have any illusions about me and Blake. Fitting our lives together is like trying to finish a thousand-piece puzzle with Lego bricks. But you know what? Bullshit like this is what’s going to break us up. You had a test, too. You could have treated me like a human being. You failed.”
Blake reaches out and twines his fingers with mine.
For a moment, I feel all the emotion that I’ve just expressed. I feel that we’re hopeless, that there is an unbridgeable gulf between us. I look at our hands, laced together on my lap. I look over at his wide, blue eyes, and I ask myself how our relationship can possibly survive.
Then I remember that we don’t actually have a relationship. He held my hand for the first time this afternoon. This doesn’t exist. It’s just a reminder of why I need to be careful.
“Dad?” Blake says in a low voice. “What is the one thing I asked you to do at this lunch?”
There’s a long pause. “You told me not to be a dick to Tina.”
“I told you not to be a dick to Tina.” His hand squeezes mine. “For one, she’ll hand you your ass, and she won’t be nice about it. But there’s something more important than that.”
He’s talking to his father, but his fingers play with mine, whispering that there is something there. That he cares. I know it’s an illusion, but still…
“I don’t like it when people hurt Tina,” he says. “I keep trying to convince her that she’s wrong, that nothing will break us up.” His hand exerts a subtle pressure on mine. “But you know what? I let you hurt her. If this was a test for any of us, it was a test for me, and I fucked it up. It won’t happen again.”
There is a long moment. I don’t even understand why he’s standing up for me in front of his father. In another handful of months, the truth will come out. I’m not his girlfriend. I’m not someone he cares about. I am on
ly after his money.
But for a second, the lie seems real. Blake’s eyes blaze. His hand holds mine. I can actually believe that he cares about me, that he’s willing to stand up to his father for me. It’s like Romeo and Juliet.
The version of Romeo and Juliet where the Montagues have nothing and the Capulets can crush them all without thinking, that is. The version where Juliet dies alone in the tomb from a drug overdose and Romeo says, “Oh, shit, I knew I was forgetting something, but I was trying to figure out how to get out of paying ordinary income tax.”
His father’s face becomes solemn. He looks between us. “This is serious.” He reaches for his water glass and frowns at it. “Fuck. Is it too early to drink?” As if in answer to his own question, he grimaces and takes a swallow of water.
“It’s very serious,” Blake assures him. “This is how serious it is: I want her on the Fernanda prototype list.”
His father chokes and spatters water all over the table. For a second, he coughs heavily.
Then—“Hands,” Mr. Reynolds snarls, which makes no sense to me.
Blake brings our intertwined hands up, and sets them on the table.
“No dice,” his father says. “You know the rule. Your girl gets on the prototype list when your ring is on her finger. I don’t see a ring.”
What the fuck? That, that was not something Blake mentioned to me.
“We’re not in the same place yet,” Blake says calmly. “But if it’s up to me, you will. One day.”
I know he’s lying, but even so, he could convince me if I was stupid enough to let him do it. I yank my hand from his. He reaches over and takes it back calmly, as if he’s making a statement.
“You know what?” I tell him. “Same holds true for you as for your dad. You don’t get to announce that you’re…you’re…” I choke on the words. Marrying me. The concept is completely ridiculous. We don’t even know each other. And even though he’s acting, even though I know this isn’t real, I don’t even know why he’s doing this. “You don’t get to announce that without talking to me about it.”
He looks me square in the eyes. “It’s a statement of intent.”
Fuck. I can feel a tension winding in me, curling tighter and tighter.
“I got her out to meet you under false pretenses,” Blake says. “She doesn’t know how serious I am. In fact, I bet she doesn’t believe me now. She’s coming up with a reason why I’d say this to you.”
True. I have to keep reminding myself of that reason. He wants to do the swap; he thinks I should have the prototypes. Ergo, he must pretend to be serious about me.
“One of these days, though,” Blake tells his father, “she’s going to realize that I think the sun rises on her smile.”
I inhale slowly. It’s almost cruel of him to be such a good actor. If we were in any kind of relationship—if we’d so much as kissed before—I would have been completely snowed.
Mr. Reynolds simply nods, as if Blake makes announcements like this about girls all the time. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll start over. I can be polite. Hi, Tina. It’s nice to meet you. What are you studying?”
“Chemistry and computer science.”
He doesn’t look impressed by this, which is unusual. He snorts instead. “And what are you planning on doing with that mouthful of letters?”
This, apparently, is his version of polite. He managed about two seconds.
“I want to be a doctor.”
He blows out his breath. “Golly gee fucking willikers. At least that’s one of the few things that you actually need a university education to do. It’s a shit-stupid thing, of course. Being a doctor is like being a fast food worker, except with less sleep and more money. But at least it’s a thing.” He looks at me dubiously. “You want to help people and save lives?”
“On my med school applications? Yes. That’s all I care about. In reality? I just want to make enough money that my parents don’t have to worry ever again.”
He considers this. “The computer science degree seems superfluous to that goal.”
“Yeah, well. If it were just chemistry, my application wouldn’t stand out. I’m not going to be able to go volunteer with Doctors Without Borders in Ghana for a semester like half the other med school applicants. I wanted to do something different.”
“Different means playing the fucking flute or raising show llamas,” he says. “Computer science is just masochism. You’re lying. Nobody would get a CS degree without wanting to use it. What’s your deal?”
It’s kind of scary that he’s right. “Nothing that’s going to happen.” I don’t drop his gaze. “Maybe I just want a fallback plan in case med school doesn’t pan out.”
He considers me. “Nah. You told me to go to hell. I don’t think you’re the kind of person who worries about Plan B. You’re the kind of person who would make Plan A happen. What do you really want to do?”
I swallow. I can see how he came to be one of the most powerful men in the country. He’s an asshole—but he’s looking right through me, his gaze like a knife.
And so I tell him something I’ve never told anyone else before. “Maybe there’s part of me that plays with the idea of going into medical research.”
“What kind of medical research?”
I inhale. “Making tiny medical robots.”
“Pipe dream.” He waves a hand dismissively. “That will never happen.”
“It has to happen,” I reply. “Every year, more bacterial strains become resistant to more antibiotics, and we find fewer and fewer effective ones. Think what will happen when we can’t perform open heart surgery or biopsies without risking serious infection.”
He taps his fingers together. “So you’re going to make tiny medical robots to do heart surgeries without risking infection. Huh.”
I let out a breath. “No.” The timeline is all wrong. I need to be making money by the time Mabel starts college, even if it’s just the bare-bones salary of a medical resident. “I’m going to be a doctor. Someone else is going to make tiny medical robots.”
But he’s already looking off into the distance. “Actually, it’s kind of an interesting project. What kind of venture funding will you need to get off the ground?”
“None, since I’m not going to do it.” I take a deep breath. “That sounds horrifying. Running a company is the last thing I want to do. That just means worrying about new and larger amounts of money all the time. I’m not going to go through fifteen years of higher education just so I can worry about money more.”
Adam Reynolds leans in. “In this world, you’re either playing the game or you’re a pawn on the board.”
I shrug. “Okay. Then I’m a pawn. Pick me up and move me any time you want to wave your checkbook in my direction. But there’s one thing I can do that you can’t.”
“What is that?”
“I imagine that running a massive corporation is like getting on a merry-go-round. It may not be going fast when you first start, but the harder you push, the faster it spins. At some point, you can’t just get off the way you got on. Stay on long enough, and you get the impression the world goes in circles. I can get off, Mr. Reynolds. You can’t. I want to keep it that way.”
His face doesn’t change, not one iota. But for a second, his fingers tighten on his water glass. “Touché,” he says quietly. “Two-fucking-shay.” He blows out his breath.
For a moment, none of us say anything. Then Mr. Reynolds shakes his head. “You want Fernanda,” he says. “Do you even know what Fernanda is?”
“I didn’t even know there was a project named Fernanda.”
“Hey,” Blake says at his father’s raised eyebrow. “You know I don’t talk about this shit. Not even with her.”
“Fernanda,” Adam Reynolds says, “is your ticket onto the merry-go-round. Welcome aboard.”
7.
BLAKE
I follow my dad to the Cyclone campus. The ride is short—not even fifteen minutes. Just long enough for Tina
and I to stew in uncomfortable silence. She’s no doubt replaying every word I said in the restaurant.
I’m doing the same thing.
Funny. I knew I was into her. My body responds to hers, and sitting so close to her in the restaurant, sitting a mere eighteen inches from her now, has given my body some really interesting ideas. Now, in the car, she’s twirling a strand of hair around one finger, playing with it.
I should tell her that I lied to my father, that everything’s cool. Instead, I feel like I just tipped my hand. To myself. Not that I’m hoping for anything as specific as what I told him. It’s just… I want. Watching her go toe-to-toe with my dad was a thing of beauty. I haven’t seen anyone take him down so effectively since Peter passed away. I want someone as directed as her to want me back.
But that’s straight-up fantasyland, right up there with the stupid idea my body has right now. Which, no, that wouldn’t work, because there is no room for me between her knees in this car, not unless we folded the seats down. But then, male hormones have never really cared about the limits of physics.
“You know,” she says, “it’s a good thing we aren’t actually dating, because if we were, I would break up with you right now.”
That’s right. There’s fantasy, and then there’s reality. The reality is that we’re not dating. The reality is that in three months, we won’t even be friends.
“Understandable,” I say. “I threw you to the wolves. In my defense, I know the wolf pretty well and my money was on you. My dad can come off as a little bit of a dick at first, but you just need to stand up to him and he backs down.”
“Oh.” There’s a dubious quality to her voice. “He’s just a little bit of a dick. Sure.”
“Really. He’s not that bad. Unless he wants to be.”
She gives me a sidelong look of deep suspicion. But I’m coming up to the Cyclone security gate, and that brings up a whole host of other memories. The sun is out today; it shines brilliantly in my eyes as the guard hands me a visitor’s badge for Tina. The gate arm rises and I drive in.