I blew a breath through pursed lips. “Yeah, this summer I’ve been working on a novel. It’s about a woman—she’s a corporate M&A attorney.”
“Naturally.”
I smiled. “She has this big deal, and her boyfriend is a bit too interested in it. He sneaks into her home office and reads her documents and then makes a big trade in the company.”
“Idiot.”
“Ha! Yes, such an idiot. They’re prosecuted for insider trading, drama ensues, but she forms this unlikely bond with the SEC investigator because…well, they don’t get each other at first but then they do. And they meet again by happenstance later after thinking about each other nonstop.” I was babbling.I need to work on my pitch,I thought with enthusiasm. If I wrote it down, practiced it, it would be easier to explain what I was writing on the occasions when people asked. “I guess you could say it started out being a story about betrayal, but it ended up being a story about love.”
“That sounds really interesting, Val. O would love to read something like that,” Drew said when I finally took a breath.
“Thanks. I’ll have to tell her about it.” Drew’s wife was my other source of romance novel recommendations, in addition to Natalie.
“Can I say something without you getting upset?” My brother asked after a moment.
“Oh, boy. Yes.” I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“You care too much what other people think.”
I let the words wash over me, through me. He was right. Not because Drew was pretty much always right, and not because he was an intelligent professor—because in my heart and soul and mind, I agreed with him. And I was finally willing to admit it. Hadn’t Luke and my therapist and my subconscious been trying to tell me the same thing all summer?
“Who cares if they don’t get it?”
“You shouldn’t worry more about disappointing others than you do about disappointing yourself.”
“The best decisions I ever made in my life were when I ignored everyone else and listened to myself instead.”
“What does success mean to you, personally?”
“They don’t matter. They don’t know you.”
“I think you’re right,” I said to my brother, not a hint of bitterness in my concession.
“It’s not just you—lots of people care too much what other people think. But like I’ve always said, fuck ’em, ya know?”
“Who?” I laughed. Of course he had to lob in some explicit tenet he held.
“I don’t know, everyone. Everyone that’s not you.”
I laughed again, appreciating my brother’s bluntness for once.
“Thanks, Drew. I needed that. You’ve always been better at that than me—self-confidence, not caring what other people think.”
“Eh, it’s because I’m a conceited bastard with poor people skills.”
I guffawed.
“You’ve always been better with people than me,” he went on. “And Val, you know, I had to learn my own lesson that being academically gifted and professionally successful aren’t all that matters in life, either. I nearly lost the most important thing because of my horrendous social skills. And all the books I’d read and classes I’d aced didn’t matter.”
“I want to hear that whole story sometime.”
“I’m sure O would love to tell you. You could write a book about it. What’s that type of romance book she’s always talking about…enemies to lovers?”
“I thought you guys were always friends?”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice filled with irony. “Me too.”
“Now I’m intrigued.”
