Page 80 of Hard to Get

We order our lunches, a Thai peanut and noodle salad for me, the kale and quinoa salad for him. The server can’t take her eyes off Jayden. And can’t stop smiling at him.

“I think she knows who you are,” I murmur when she leaves.

“Who? The waitress?” He shrugs.

“She’s pretty. Probably your age.”

He drops his chin and gives me a seriously? look. “Don’t do that.”

“What?”

He waves his hand. “Whatever that was. Don’t make your age a thing.”

My mouth pinches together.

“It’s not a thing,” he adds.

Right. It’s not like I’m looking to settle down while he’s sowing his wild oats, to use an old-fashioned expression. We’re both just having fun. I nod. “Yeah. You’re right.”

“Good. So tell me what happened with your meeting with that consultant.”

I tell him about the follow-up meeting Troy and I had with Adam, the acquisitions consultant we hired. “He put together a list of five potential target companies with all the background on each company we need to know. We went through each of them.” I scrunch up my face.

“You’re not happy about them?”

“Well. I think a couple of them would be solid businesses for us to acquire. But…”

“They’re sports betting businesses, right?”

“Yes.” I look down at the tablecloth. “I don’t want to get into sports betting.”

“Oh. Then why are you doing this?”

I look up at him. “Troy wants to do it. He thinks it’s a no-brainer way for us to grow our business. And he’s probably right.”

“But…?” He watches me with steady eyes.

“But… sports book companies make it so easy to gamble, and they do so much predatory marketing, targeting people who can least afford to lose money. It destroys lives and all they care about is making money.” I spew all that out in a rush.

“Ah. You sound pretty passionate about that.”

My mouth tightens. I could make some kind of dismissive comment but he’s so attentive and focused on me and… “My dad was addicted to gambling.”

“Oh no.” His eyebrows lower. “Is that… why your parents are divorced?”

I nod. “He pretty much bankrupt our family.”

“Jesus. How old were you?”

“Fifteen. I knew Mom and Dad had been arguing a lot and I’d been worried about it for a while. At first, I didn’t know exactly what they were arguing about, but it made me feel sick. Then I realized it was money problems. I was terrified they were going to get a divorce. And then they did.”

“That’s hard.”

“Yeah. And it’s hard enough your parents getting divorced without all the money issues that we had. We had to move. Harrison and I stayed with Mom, because Dad ended up in this tiny one-bedroom apartment. Mom managed to rent a crappy little house in the same neighbourhood we lived in so we didn’t have to change schools. But we had no money for extra things.”

Somehow, there was money for Harrison’s hockey. And a cell phone for him but not for me. I love my brother, but I admit to feeling resentful as a teenager. And that was on top of the abandonment and loss I felt about losing my dad, and my mom being all wrapped up in finding a man. I spent a lot of time in my bedroom plotting heinous revenge scenarios, planning how to steal a phone from Best Buy, and contemplating running away from home. Now I know underneath the anger was hurt and betrayal and helplessness.

“I knew there wasn’t going to be money for university. That was partly what motivated me to start my stats business.”