Page 10 of Joey

And this was a goddamned grand gesture.

Charlotte was almost convinced.

Almost.

I look pretty good on paper. Joey Boston. Billionaire. One-third owner of Cryptomation. We were still a private company then, but we were just about to go public. About to make untold billions in the next few weeks.

But in real life I’m a mess. And Charlotte wasn’t dumb. She knew. She saw her future if she hitched her wagon to mine. Every time she looked at me I pictured this little thought bubble over her head. Like she and I were characters is some dark and dangerous graphic novel. And that thought bubble always said the same thing.

You’re not him.

I don’t know who she wanted me to be, but I wasn’t him, whoever he was.

She didn’t say any of that, not even the thought bubble stuff. But she didn’t have to. I could just tell she didn’t want me around. She got moody as she got bigger and farther along. She got emotional, and bossy, and mean.

Meaner than she was.

And some guy was calling her all the time.

Another me, probably. Another could-be. Another what-if.

We didn’t live together or anything. She stayed… wherever she stayed. Some family estate the Kanes owned in the country. And I stayed in a nice hotel down on First because there was no way in hell I was moving back into the Bossy with Jesse, Zach, and Johnny when I knew—I goddam knew—that my grand gesture in the form of a nursery had gone unnoticed.

I was there when Maisy was born. Not in the room. The other guy was in the room. But I saw her little face right afterward through a window.

I saw Charlotte too. And her guy. Bruce. His name was Bruce.

Funny, thinking back. That I knew Bruce’s name that day, but I didn’t know Maisy’s.

On second thought, that’s not funny. That’s sad.

I bought Charlotte a card in the hospital gift shop. Tacky, I know. And told her good luck. I was leaving. And if she ever wanted me around she could call me at such-and-such number.

She never called. In fact, she actually disappeared.

I tried to check in a few weeks later. Just a phone call. But her number was disconnected.

I took the hint. I was out.

It ate away at me for a while. Almost a year, actually.

Believe me. I get it. I know. I’m not father material. Bruce was, I guess. But a kid sounded a little bit fun. A little girl.

God, my heart hurts just thinking about this.

Because it could’ve given me a purpose. A reason to live and go on and hell, maybe even try to be a better man? You never know.

And that’s all kinds of wrong and dramatic. I get that too.

But it’s just how I felt.

How did I walk away then? That’s a question I asked myself for a long time. If I wanted this family thing so bad, why didn’t I try harder? Why didn’t I make it happen? Why did I give up?

I didn’t think of it as giving up, I guess. I had this romantic notion that I was protecting them. Walking away was another grand gesture. Keeping them safe and separate from this dark, cryptic, mysterious thing called the Boston family.

I’m not gonna lie. Putting Charlotte and the baby behind me was hard for a while. I wanted to go back every day and beg her to see me as someone else. See me as the guy I could be and not the guy I was.

But Charlotte is not the kind of woman who wants to be chased. She is the kind of woman who wants to be left alone—until she doesn’t—and then she does again.