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“Fine. But c’mon. You know what I’m interested in. What the hell did he look like? Spill it!” she demanded.
I hesitated to torment her further, and leaned forward conspiratorially.
“He was about the most freaking handsome guy I’ve ever seen up close and personal. Thick black hair, a little on the long side, square chin with a dimple in the middle, dark, dark eyes with lashes to kill for.”
Joi’s mouth fell open.
“And even in my heels, I had to look up at him.” I demonstrated by craning my neck. “He must have been six-four.”
She fell back in her chair. Maybe she shouldn’t have been getting married after all.
“Wow. Well, you’ll have to see him again. That’s all there is to it.”
She gave one of those “done deal” waves of her hand. Easy for her to say. She’d been with Jack since college and their getting married had been a foregone conclusion since then. She had no idea, really, how to date or what it was like.
“Yeah well, that’s not gonna happen. I’m way too busy with the company.” I looked around for the waiter. I was starving.
And I wanted to ignore the speech I knew she was about to give me.
“Oh, that’s bullshit, and you know it. Everyone has time for a date now and then,” she snapped.
Why were people who were in relationship always so pushy about making sure everyone else was paired off? It was as if being single was a disease.
“He did ask me to dinner, which I thought was very nice. But I came back to work instead.”
The waiter finally came with my shish tawook. I grabbed my fork so fast I think I scared him.
Joi stared. “Are you crazy? Why the hell didn’t you go?”
“Just didn’t want to. I mean, I’m sure he’s a jerk.” I shrugged.
But on the other hand, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had sex. Maybe there would be a benefit to having won an auction date.
“But you just said…” She shook her head and picked up her fork, resigned to my stubbornness. We’d been friends so long she knew not to waste her breath.
I never did anything until I was damn good and ready.
She dropped it. “Okay, okay. I give up. So what else is going on?”
I had to tell her. It had been eating at me for days.
“You know Simon, right?” Of course she did. She tried to talk me out of marrying him way back when.
I should have listened.
“Ugh. Why aren’t you divorced yet?”
She couldn’t stand him, and had thought he was no good from the beginning.
But what could I say? I had been nearly broke, and ten grand had seemed like all the money in the world at the time.
“I should be divorced by now. But, he’s turned out to be a major asshole.” I sipped my wine.
I wasn’t doing any more work today. Who was I kidding?
I continued. “He wants his ten grand back and is threatening to expose me if I don’t pay him. And make the divorce difficult.”
I set my fork down, my stomach soured at the thought of him.
“What? How can he do that? He’d just expose himself. He’d be deported.”
She leaned toward me for emphasis. “He knows that, doesn’t he? Or is he really that stupid? And how can he keep you from getting divorced?”
I nodded. “He has got to know that, and yet he’s still trying to shake me down. He knows I won’t let anything get in the way of the company’s success. As for the divorce, I guess he could just make it really hard.”
The color drained from her face, and she looked like she’d lost her appetite, too. I hated that she, the company, and our team could be affected by a bad decision I’d made years ago in a moment of desperation.
“Can you just pay him?” she asked quietly.
“That was my thought, too. Just get him the hell out of my hair. But one, I don’t have an extra ten grand. I’ve sunk every penny I have into this business. You know that. And two”—I slapped my hand on the table, causing our wine to slosh—“why the hell should I? He got his citizenship. It was a fair exchange.”
I shook my head. “I never should have broken the law. I’m paying for it now. I should have listened to you.”
“Well, yes you should always listen to me. But you didn’t,” she said. “Why do you think he’s coming after you now, instead of just getting the divorce underway?”
I shook my head. “He seems to think I’m making big bucks or something from the software app, which is really stupid. I thought everyone knew it took a long time for a start-up to make money. He refuses to believe I’ve maxed out my line of credit and that we’re one mistake away from shutting our doors.”
“Little does he know we’re also one investor away from massive success,” she offered.
And she was right.
But we’d been down that road many times, gotten our hopes up, only to have investors back out at the last minute for a variety of reasons—they might have found a better investment or had just plain changed their minds.
The first few times it had happened, I’d been devastated. I finally learned, however, it was just business.
If they didn’t see the value in Mommy Knows, someone else eventually would.
But the fact that Simon was even thinking about undermining all that I’d worked for made me crazy with rage.
The waiter brought us some juicy, sticky baklava for dessert. But I could only play with mine, peeling off the thin layers of pastry until my plate was a thick mess of honey and ground pistachios.
Kind of how I viewed my life at that moment. A big, gooey mess.
