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Chapter One
JACK
I’mnervousenough.Ican’t believe the bus is late. I’m sitting here, looking at my watch, my right leg jumping involuntarily. This is all I need. This is a big meeting I have got to get to. At the moment, I have only got about twenty minutes to get there.Where is that damned bus?
I would’ve caught the earlier bus if not for that stupid pigeon attack on my way out the door. My brand new suede and leather jacket was completely ruined and I went back inside and spent another twenty minutes going through my closet looking for another coat. Surprisingly, I don’t have a lot of nice coats. At least not as many that were as nice as that one.
I have got a head thing about being late. It’s one of those things about me. I have always lived by the rule that if you’re on time, you’re fifteen minutes late. It would just figure that I have an important business conference to attend today and the universe is finding every possible way to slow me down. I look down at my phone for the time and it buzzes. What do you know? Clark’s calling.Of course, he is.
“Jack, where the hell are you?” he barks. “The conference is going to begin in, like, literally 20 minutes, and we still need to go over our stuff. Jeez, I told you to be on time, man.”
“It’s the universe’s fault, Clark,” I say wearily. “I was shat on by a pigeon this morning and by the time I finally got out to the bus stop, it turns out that I was on time, but it wasn’t. What can I do?”
“You can try by not sounding so nonchalant about it,” he growls. “Look, I don’t actually care how you do it, but I need you here ASAP. Run here if you have to. If you don’t get here before this conference begins, we are dead meat.” And with that said, he hung up before I could say anything more.
I don’t blame Clark for being pissed. He means well, even if he’s confused about who really is the boss at times. He didn’t always use to be this way. Before he became CEO, he was a pretty mellow guy. After, though…well, I guess the stress of the whole thing has just gotten to him.
Still, this is my company he’s losing his head over. I was the one who came up with the idea for the app. I started the first bits of coding for it and organized the first beta tests. I can’t tell you how many nights I stayed up late, hunched over my laptop at the kitchen table. I have got chronic back pain and carpal tunnel from those long nights and now, all those small beginnings have finally turned into a startup with a bright future and high valuation. I mean, we aren’t quite there yet. A lot of other companies have their eyes on us. This time, though, it feels like the rent is finally due after all these years and we’re about to get paid.
And yet…here I’m stuck at the bus stop instead of at a meeting where one of those big companies is waiting for my presentation. I pull out my phone again and decide to get an Uber. I can’t afford it, but what other choice do I have?
Minutes later, the Uber pulls up and I slide in the back. The car smelled heavily of some incense-y car potpourri and the driver was all smiles when I got in. “Hi, there!” she said. “Having a good morning?”
I can’t express how not in the mood I was for this. “Can you just drive? I’m running late.”
“Ooh,” she says. “Somebody’s grumpy.”
She’s driving entirely too slow, or at least it feels that way (funny how it always feels that way when you’re in a hurry), but, to her credit, she manages to get me there in less than ten minutes. Relieved, I make sure to put in a big tip in the app as hazard pay for my ‘grumpiness.’ I jump out of the car and bolt up the stairs of the building, whizzing past security and straight up the stairs. When I get to the second floor, I race down the hallways to Clark’s office.
I open the sleek glass door and see Clark pacing back and forth while looking at his phone.
“Sweet baby Jesus, you made it,” he says. I almost expect him to fall to his knees in gratitude. He walks up to me, then takes a sharp step back. I was a sweaty mess. “Oh, my God, did you actually run all the way here?”
I’m gasping for breath, but I still manage to say, “Can we please get on with this?”
“Right.” He turns around and brings me the folder with all the talking points for the presentation. As soon as the folder hits my hand, my work mode switches on.
The conference starts and I’m ready. After everything that’s gone down this morning, this will make it all worth it.
The thing is, this meeting is with our potential new investor who, if they actually sign up with us, we’ll all end up making millions of dollars. Being the president and founder, my status would go from single dad juggling work and parenting and barely staying afloat to millionaire status and being able to have whatever I wanted.
That includes time and energy for Martin. Being a single dad, I do whatever I can to make sure Martin never wants for anything. It hasn’t been easy since Camilla left. I do my best to make sure he doesn’t miss the presence of a motherly figure, but it isn’t easy. I try my very hardest to give Martin the best and not let him feel the void of a motherly figure. I try not to think too hard about those first days after Camilla left. It was like she took a piece of me with her and I was left with this gaping hole in my heart. When things were the darkest, I turned to my son instead of turning inward. It isn’t his fault his mom left and he shouldn’t pay for my heartbreak. He deserves to have a good childhood.
Now I can see that my relationship with Camilla was a mistake. Her carefree and wanderlust personality had attracted me at first. She was a party girl and I was all for the excitement that brought. We had fun drinking and staying out at all hours. Every night with her felt like tomorrow was never going to come. The party just didn’t end.
That is until Camilla got pregnant. And then I realized it was time to grow up.
It’s crazy. You’d think that pregnancy would have slowed her down. It didn’t. And that’s about when the fights started. She stopped drinking, thank goodness, but everything else just kept going. Staying out at all hours, dancing until the sun came up. At first, I went with her, thinking I could reign her in. After a while, though, she started going out without me. Nothing I said mattered to her and the farther along she got in her pregnancy, the more I started to worry for our son.
Luckily, Martin was born healthy despite his mother’s partying ways. Somehow, I thought that all it would take was for her to see him. To just hold him and look him in the eyes and everything would calm down finally. It didn’t. It wasn’t much longer than that she left me for another man.
So, now it’s just me and my boy.
Bringing up a child is one of the most expensive undertakings possible, trust me. Between diapers and formula, then clothes and shoes, then daycare and school uniforms and immunizations… It’s a wonder I have been able to keep any money in my account. I want to provide my son with the best education, the best food, and the best of everything, but all of that costs money. We’ve been able to get by all right. I wouldn’t call us dirt poor or anything, but nice things just aren’t on the grocery list.
When you know your child deserves better, it drives you. It drove me to create this app. For him, I stayed up late every night working on this thing and finding investors, all in the hopes that someday I’ll make it big and provide him with a life that most people dream about.
He’s who I’m thinking of when the doors to the conference room open and our potential investors pour in. Five of them, each dressed in expensive suits and ties. I scan each of them, one by one, silently assessing them. And then I see her. It’s Sarah.
