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When we reached my place, I started to make dinner. “You sit and rest,” I told her.
“I just had a bit of blood drawn,” she laughed. “I’m not an invalid.”
“Even so.” I set a pot on the stove and started to chop garlic while she took out her phone. “Anything good on there?”
“Probably not.” She frowned at the screen. “What’s Firefounder, again?”
“That crowdfunding site.” I’d heard of it but never used it. “You post an idea and if people like it, they can sign up to buy the first version of your product. If not enough people are into it, they get their money back. It’s kind of a cool idea. Why do you ask?”
“I got an email from them.” She tapped on the screen, still looking confused. “It says my project is fully funded.”
“What project?”
“I don’t—wait.” Her face paled, and her mouth formed a small O. “Don’t kill me for this.”
The knife I was holding clattered out of my hand. “For what, exactly?”
“The game you made… I may have posted it.”
I rushed over to her. Her phone screen showed a mocked-up picture of my game box, along with a price and a brief, gushing description of the contents. “You did this? How could you not tell me?”
“I didn’t want you to get your hopes up and be disappointed,” she said. “And then… I kind of forgot.”
Wordless, I gaped at her.
“I did it late at night when I was half-asleep,” she said apologetically. “I couldn’t find the page again afterwards, so I thought I’d come back to it later, and then with everything else that’s been going on, it kind of got shoved to the back of my mind. I should’ve told you, baby, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” I was still just starting to grasp what had happened—beginning with the fact that she believed in me. “You’ve had alotgoing on—it’s understandable. But… when you said it was fully funded…”
“I’m not sure.” She sounded as confused and hopeful as I felt. “I had to put down that you need a certain amount before you can produce it. I did some research and said five thousand dollars. I wasn’t quite sure, but…”
“Does that mean people have pledged five thousand dollars?” I scrolled on the phone, and my eyes nearly popped out of my head. “It says I have backers!”
She peered over my shoulder. “Fifty bucks a pop—it seemed like a reasonable price for a brand-new party game. And then, well, that looks like it might be a hundred people. They must’ve found it on the Firefounder main page, or maybe it got picked up somewhere. It could’ve even just been word of mouth.”
I tuned her out, still scrolling through the list that went on and on and on. “I can’t believe this!” I put my hands to my head. I felt like I was going to pass out.
“Sit down, baby. Take a breath.” She eased me into a chair. Despite the calm words, her voice sounded almost as frantic as mine. “I told you that one rejection wasn’t the end of the world.”
“You’re really going to sit there and say ‘I told you so’?” My pulse was picking up more speed with every passing second. “I never thought about launching this game independently! I don’t have the least clue of what to do. I’m going to have to get in touch with suppliers, wholesalers, exporters, importers…” The half-forgotten technology from long-ago logistics classes danced through my head. Maybe I did have a clue, or at least half of one.
“You can do it, baby. I know you can.” There was something new in the way she looked at me. It seemed almost like admiration. “A hundred people opened their wallets for your game without any promotions or any proof it was good. Imagine how far this could go once it gets off the ground.”
I sucked in a breath. I couldn’t quite imagine it. “Thank you so much. You made this happen.”
“I’m not the one who made the game, Chelsea.”
“But you’re the one who talked me into trying to sell it. You comforted me when it was rejected, and you wrote a description and submitted it to Firefounder.” My adoration for her was overwhelming. “And all because you believed in me.”
“Of course I did.”
She didn’t understand. It wasn’t just the game.
When I looked at myself from a few months ago, I didn’t like what I saw. Living at home, content with a boring job, drinking away my liver every other night—not to mention how I was sleeping around constantly and that my main problem in life was that I couldn’t keep a man. I’d been so self-centered. Even when I first became interested in Tara, I’d been flighty and immature. I’d planned to use her with no consideration for how she felt. She’d taught me that there was more to life than being in a relationship—all the while she was showing me how to be in one as well.
I wrapped my arms around her. “I love you,” I said to her softly.
It didn’t even begin to express how I felt.
