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I drop my chin to my chest and wonder if it’s physically possible to kick myself in the head—with or without a bad back.
She’s only been out of sight for a handful of seconds when the sound of footsteps pulls my head upright, and Max strides into view.
He puts an arm around my shoulders and leads me toward the elevators. “And that, little brother, is why we have a company nonfraternization policy and a family subclause.”
21
CHARLOTTE
Saturday evenings don’t get more exciting than this.
I set my mug of Good Sleep tea on the nightstand, adjust my pillows, and open my laptop.
All sleep experts say you shouldn’t work in bed or right up to bedtime, but there’s less than forty-eight hours to go till the First Byte launch, and I can’t help but run through all the plans one more time.
Once this is over and Max gives me more responsibility, I’ll have leverage for a significant pay raise and might be able to afford to find a slightly bigger place. Even having just a separate bedroom would feel like living in a palace.
I do love this little studio apartment, though. My proudest moment of adulting so far was when I got the job working for Max and was able to finally afford this tiny home and no longer had to crash at my friend’s.
I’ve come a long way since Brody recovered enough to leave for college and I could finally pack my bags and move away from home.
I hadn’t asked Notre Dame if I could defer and I didn’t want to reapply. I’d already lost so much time, I just wanted to get into the New York business world and start making things happen—find somewhere to get in on the ground level, learn as much as I could, and work my way up.
Luckily, a friend from high school who was studying at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, put me up for free till I was able to find my feet. Her parents are well off—they own a bunch of gas stations across Indiana—and they bought an apartment for her near the art school.
But it all went sideways when she got a little chihuahua and used me as an on-call dog sitter and walker. She was putting me up for free, so I wanted to help as much as I could, but I missed out on some important work events because I had to get back to the pooch. I felt a shift in my bosses’ attitudes toward me after that, like they thought I wasn’t committed enough.
Maybe Elliot was right to be surprised by how much I’ve given up for others. It’s only looking back that I see what a fool I was to allow myself to be taken advantage of.
I sure as hell wouldn’t miss out on anything to look after the dog now. I’d research a good doggie day care she could use instead. That way I’d get to go to the work event, little Buttercup would be well looked after, and everyone’s a winner. It was an unnecessary sacrifice for me to make.
After the terrible bosses, I was happy working for an amazing Realtor, but I knew it was time for a big push—time to allow myself to believe I could be more than a great assistant.
During one long, sleepless winter night trawling the internet, looking at different companies and imagining which one might be my dream workplace, I found Harvest Enterprises.
Everything I read about it made me more and more excited. It checked every box as somewhere I could grow and build a whole career. Then I researched Max, and the more I learned about how he was a self-made man from a working-class background, the more I knew he was the man I wanted to work for. I hoped he would see something of himself in me.
I sent him my résumé and a fresh cover letter every two months for a year. I didn’t think anything would ever come of it—it was more about making myself feel like I was doing something to get me where I wanted to be.
But then, he called me.
Himself.
Max Dashwood called me.
It was all I could do not to fangirl. Well, I might have fangirled a bit. Particularly about his inspired purchase of TrankWill—a mindfulness app he picked up for a song when it looked like it was about to nosedive, then grew it to be the most downloaded in its field.
I dream of being able to make a business decision like that one day.
I now know he called me just ten minutes after Anna had gotten so sick of Connor’s attention that she’d walked out. While Max was swirling in the panic of having to deal with his own inbox, my bimonthly résumé dropped into it.
As soon as I received my first Harvest paycheck—the first decent one I’d ever had—I looked for my own place. And that month I’d also met a guy, Greg, who’d just gotten his first job out of law school at one of the city’s most prestigious firms. Things were looking up.
In that first heady flush of love, he wanted us to get a place together. And it would have made sense because cash doesn’t go far in New York. But I also knew I didn’t want to go straight from living with my family to living with a friend to living with a guy.
This was my time, and I wanted to focus on no one but me for a change, to build my own life before I added another human to it.
And I figured this was the last, brief window I’d have to do that before Greg and I settled down together forever. Even though it was early days, I thought he was the man I’d marry. He was as driven to succeed as I was. But I didn’t want to regret never having experienced living alone and throwing myself into my career.
