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While Aaron ate chocolate cake, she realised the most interesting things in her life weren’t going on at this table, or at Wentworth or Turnbull and Co, they were happening in her loft home with Mace, in her studio with her paints, and in the classroom she’d entered with a mixture of fear and determination, half expecting to fail and wanting to push herself to prove she could still stand and fight, even with her knees cut off.
Aaron was an associate, not a friend. They would never sneak out and watch a movie together, and he could check out her legs all he wanted, he’d never get past the acceptable public mauling of a kiss on the cheek.
All of that was more disorienting than how easy it was to build a strategy for Aaron out of nothing more than his enquiry, a plate of seafood salad and her deep knowledge of the bank and its issues, as well as the best way to appeal to Tom.
On one hand, it was good to know she hadn’t lost the ability to think about strategic issues amidst all the new focus on shapes and textures, lines and layering, colour and form. On the other, it was a shock to realise how much her life away from her usual life was starting to mean to her.
And despite the flaming bridges, perhaps she shouldn’t be giving this knowledge away for the price of a posh lunch.
Aaron promised to stay in contact, keep her informed of any movements in the job market, or opportunities she should be aware of. Hell would sprout snowmen first, but still, he owed her one now, so maybe the lipstick wasn’t a complete waste.
She made it back to home in time to catch the last of the good daylight, but she was too distracted to get much done in the studio. Lunch with Aaron was a magician’s misdirection. All the look of something important happening, but it was Mace’s pitch that was the showstopper. Win or lose, it was going to change things. Alone with her music and art, it was hard not to stop herself nurturing the tiniest hope the pitch failed.
Not because it would cut Mace in half and devastate Dillon, but because if the pitch failed, she and Mace would go on as they had been, in this gorgeous bubble of unexpected freedom and affection they’d built together. If it failed, they had time and space and energy for each other. If it failed, they had a chance to be lovers and partners and there was no outside agenda that could make it hard to be devoted, to split their attention.
Hoping for failure made her a terrible person. The take no prisoners, cold, hard, bitch type she’d inferred she was to Aaron, that Mace had first taken her for, but she didn’t care, because if Summers-Denby funded Ipseity, she was well aware of what they faced as a couple and she’d need to be strong to get through it.
For Mace it would be a rollercoaster rocket ship ride. He’d need to climb on board and hang on tight or get thrown off. They’d be no second ticket. It was one shot, nothing guaranteed, step out of line, lose your place, and someone with grippier hands would step in.
And much as she could coach and cheer from the sidelines, the most she could be in this was the magician’s assistant. The one left holding the bunny, while Mace took the applause.
It wasn’t jealousy. Nothing as simple as that. It was his turn and he’d wor
ked so hard for it, and she knew what it felt like to have a goal, coat it in dream and work for it—thrilling, miraculous, life-altering. She wanted him to have that for himself.
It wasn’t envy or resentment that he was starting when she’d failed either, but it might’ve been, and she could’ve talked herself out of that mean-spiritedness because she loved that man.
It was so much worse.
If Mace won his funding, if Ipseity gestated, it meant the pressure on them as a couple would be immense. It was unrealistic not to fear that. After Brent, she’d spent her life in anticipation of it. Staying aloof because being involved was too complicated. She knew the cost of dreams, she’d paid them. Mace was still learning the full penalty rates.
But in spite of vague premonitions of doom, she’d hope for success, she’d revel in it with Mace and she’d find a way to do more than coach and cheer. She’d use her fear and knowledge to make sure they didn’t fail, to make sure they were smarter, stronger, more able to press back on a world that could squeeze them lifeless, because that idea of permanence, it’d come to her at the oddest moment and seemed so awkward and embarrassing, but it was stuck in her head and wouldn’t shake free.
Not the sugarplum fairy white dress and tiered froufrou cake stuff of a wedding fantasy, that wasn’t her thing, but the idea of the kind of security and belonging, of deep trust and partnership, of being supported and cherished, that came with loving one incredible person who loved you just as hard back. That was a dream she had no intention of giving up and every means of fighting for.
It made her nervous in a way she didn’t remember having been for a long time, sick to the stomach and a little light-headed. She itched to ring Jay, text him, take a back channel approach to check in on Mace, but even Jay wouldn’t play that game, she was forced to wait. She made a tuna pasta, enough for both boys, and then wandered around, vaguely tidying up, waiting for Mace’s key to go in the door and the next phase of their lives together to start.
30: Quit
Mace stood at the head of the boardroom table. His collar was too tight. He hated this tie. The new suit was charcoal with a light pinstripe and made him feel like an insurance salesman. He had no insurance, if this failed they were out of luck, and he was no salesman, but that’s the job that was expected of him now.
He should’ve come in his jeans, at least then he’d be comfortable when his ambition got blasted to pieces and his future caved in around him, but he’d listened to Dillon who’d insisted he dress like everyone else in the room, and that it was bad luck to wear the suit he’d bought for Buster’s funeral and had worn to each of their failed pitch meetings.
He cleared his throat and eyed the glass of water in front of him. It was small and he was monstrously big and out of place, in this room full of PhDs and MBAs, but if it were at all possible, he’d prefer to drown in it than do what he was about to do.
He looked at Dillon who’d spoken for forty minutes without drawing breath. He was pale and kept licking his lips. Jay was standing at the back of the room wearing a suit that was worth more than a car. In a minute he’d finish the call he was on and then everything would come down to whether or not Mace could convince the investment committee they should green light first round funding for Ipseity.
He’d done this basic pitch five times now and five times they’d failed, each time on the merits of the software. In the twenty-four hours since Anderson Abbott invited them to take the spot another start-up had suddenly withdrawn from, Dillon and Cinta had helped him recraft his presentation and practise it till he was able to speak confidently without notes. He should be able to give this presentation in his sleep, or under extreme provocation.
But looking down the barrel of the table at Anderson and nine other men just like him with their business haircuts, expensive watches and shoes that cost more than a month’s rent, he couldn’t remember a single word of what he was supposed to say. And this delay was making him want to lose his shit, and break something like he’d done his last day at Wentworth, like Cinta had done the night she’d heard about Malcolm being forcibly stepped down.
And if he lost control, it really was all over. They had nowhere else to go.
He loosened the tie, pulling it out from his collar a little. They could struggle on using what was now left of Buster’s money after they’d redeveloped the prototype, maybe get a bank loan. Cinta was prepared to lean on Tom if she had to for them, but without the finance, investment support and the influence a VC could bring they were as good as dead in the water before they could dog paddle.
Dillon gave him a terse grin. He made a remark Mace didn’t catch because his brain was having a white-out, reduced to the functions that kept him breathing and standing. And then Jay stepped up to the table.
“When you’re ready, Mace.”
