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I’ve been in love with her on some level ever since. “She asked me to meet with her and offered me an internship that summer. Paid because she told me I should never work for someone else with no pay. While my friends were doing volunteer work at the hospital or helping with their family business, I was learning how to navigate the world of angel investors and getting paid to do it. The next summer I came to her with my first business plan. I’d written my first game. It was a version of chess with the teachers at my school as the pieces. She gave me a four-hundred-dollar loan for marketing, and I paid her back within a month. Within a year I had adapted it so you could easily change out the pieces with your own characters, and that is how I partially paid for MIT. The rest was scholarships and work study programs. And yes, one of the scholarships was from the Foust Foundation.”
“So she’s been your mentor for years.”
“Over a decade.” It’s more than a mentorship. I spent most of my summers with CeCe until I graduated and took a job with a tech firm in Austin. Then I’d moved out to Silicon Valley and the worst had happened and I hadn’t called her in over a year.
I’m kind of an asshole.
When I’d pulled away, Anika and Harper had shown up on my doorstep. CeCe didn’t work that way. She’d called and left a message, and then the ball had been in my court.
“Since I graduated, I’ve worked for three start-ups, two corporations, and a nonprofit. Six jobs in seven years, and most of them I didn’t walk away from,” Heath says with a sigh. “I was either laid off or the company went under. I’ve never had time anywhere to find a mentor like that.”
“Is that why you decided to work for yourself? I’ve seen what you can do. You could get a job,” I point out. I’m not surprised to hear his story. I’ve heard it a thousand times. Businesses start-up and then nose-dive, and the employees keep riding the wave.
“I’m tired of moving around, tired of always being the new guy. I want to build something for myself, something that can last.”
But our world moves so fast that nothing lasts for long. What’s the highest of tech today will be antiquated in a few years. It’s why I never get too invested in any project. If what Heath is working on had only one application, I would not be sitting here with him.
Because I’m all business. I wouldn’t be sitting here with him because I like him, because he moves me in a way I haven’t felt in a long time.
Heath turns my way. “So that was an incredible place. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a brownstone that big. Was your place in San Francisco that nice?”
I laugh at the thought, happy to be able to veer away from thinking about how he’s probably going to fail and I’m going to be there when it happens. “No. Not even close, but it was nice. I liked having more than one bathroom.”
“Growing up we had a place with two and a half baths,” Heath says with a sigh. “I had my own. My parents had their own, and there was a place for guests, too. I miss that. I share with Darnell. I think he wants to kill me sometimes. I’m probably the messier one.”
“Because you’re a princess who had your own bathroom.” There’s a lot we haven’t talked about yet, and I’ve been hesitant because I’ve enjoyed the easy conversation we’ve found, but I can’t let the night end without knowing a few things. “So you said you did more research this afternoon. Were you upset by what you found out? Were you upset to find out you’d hitched yourself to someone who had to sell her company? I did, you know. And the house. That was how in debt we were at the end.”
He seems to think about that for a moment. “I think we all have our ups and downs, and we fail until we succeed. Yours happened to be really big and covered by a bunch of media outlets. Mine were small and no one noticed. Mine felt very lonely.”
“And mine felt like the world was ending and everyone was watching me. Still are.” I know they’re talking about me back at CeCe’s. The party will be going to the wee hours of the morning, and I will be the center of gossip whether or not I’m there.
“That’s a mark of success,” he argues. “You know the old ‘no publicity is bad publicity’ saying.”
“Well, it feels bad.” Now it felt like a healing wound—itchy at times, like the skin isn’t really mine and fits too tight. At the time it had felt like the end of the world.
