by Jade Allen
A soft chime filled the room, and the cool voice of his assistant followed. “Will you be needing takeout ordered, Mr. Wyles?”
“No, Alexis,” Damian answered, “and hey—go home. Have a good weekend.”
“Yes, sir,” Alexis said, and he could hear the relief in her tone, though she tried hard to hide it. “You, too. Don’t forget to find your dress shoes tonight.”
As the intercom fell into silence again, Damian felt confusion tint the words tumbling around his skull. Dress shoes? What did he need dress shoes for?
Damian’s eyes rose to the LED calendar he kept on the wall at the exact moment he remembered his gala. Despair flooded his weary bones, and he collapsed into the chair behind his desk as his visions of a relaxing Saturday evening at home were dispelled. He’d forgotten he bought a $20,000 table at a charity gala a month ago, and not only did he invite friends to fill the seats, the chairman of the Lupus charity was expecting him to show. That would mean a minimum of three hours of rubbing shoulders with men who would kill their own trophy wives to be able to steal his youth and vigor, and women who would smother their lauded husbands for a weekend with him—every one of them climbing all over themselves to impress or undermine him with every word. He got enough ass-kissing in his school days; he’d done enough ass-kissing, too, come to think of it.
A crowd of voices moved down the hall toward the bank of elevators around the corner from his office. His inner door was open, so their words were just clear enough to make out as they went by.
“Yeah, I’d like that too,” someone was saying. “But we already know that doesn’t work.”
“Those women went about it all wrong,” said a second voice. “You have to be accommodating and transparent every step of the way—or at least appear that way.”
“For the shareholders?”
“No,” the second voice said mildly. “For the public. That was their downfall—the public can and will affect your success, even before you open the doors on your product.”
“How do you even call a people tracking app a product, anyway?” the man said, who sounded a lot like Gary.
“Don’t call it tracking, for one,” said the other man, who was probably Miles. “It’s surveying. Curating. Recording.”
“Stalking,” said a third man. “You can’t have an app where you review people, period. I know you want this to work, Miles, but it’s going to fail. Hell, the boss tried to do it before you did—you think you have a better shot?”
Damian rose from his seat and closed the door to his inner office before he had the time to catch Miles’ indignant reply. His face was burning, and he was struggling to contain his shame at the mention of his old project, even though the name hadn’t even been uttered aloud. A people reviewing app. Damian smiled, bittersweet memories rushing back as he recalled his time only seven years before.
The app had begun as a way to alert vulnerable people about abusive men in their area, aptly named Lookout4. Damian’s younger sister June had a habit of attracting men who were as violent as they were good looking, and he wanted a way to warn other women before they walked into the same trap. After a year, the app had a respectable presence on college campuses, and the then 24-year-old Damian Wyles was riding high on his own success. He felt that he’d done his duty to make sure the app was stable and functional, so when a buyer came forward with a price tag far higher than the app’s worth, he jumped at the chance. Suddenly, he had enough money to start a new business while the app he founded spiraled into a bloated platform for advertisements and pointless features that turned Lookout4 into more of a social media hangout than an alert system.
“They added aesthetic ratings,” Damian told June over the phone one night. “And stickers. You can slap on a cherry stamp or a sparkly birthday cake next to Richard Banks’ long list of domestic offenses, if you want.”
“Good thing you got out,” June said calmly. “Sounds like it really changed.”
“It changed because I left,” Damian replied. “If I hadn’t sold the company, who knows what it would have been.”
This wasn’t how the rest of the world saw it, however; because of media spin, the world thought Damian Wyles’s pet project tanked after a year, only to be rescued and then eventually mercy killed by Johnathan “Jack” Summers, the investor whose managerial and operational tweaks often rescued a project that should have been dead. Worse, Jack Summers didn’t deny this rumor at all—it was better than letting people know the truth, which might lead them to realize that his success rate wasn’t as high as it seemed. Damian didn’t push the issue, because Lookout4 was long gone—plus, he really hated dealing with Jack Summers. Jack loved riding his old friends’ coattails to his destinations and then throwing them under a passing bus if it felt convenient, so they were closer to enemies than former business partners; still, Jack’s acquisition of Lookout4 made IQID possible, so Damian tried not to harbor too much animosity toward him.
Damian realized the hall had been silent for quite some time. He put away his notes and locked the drawers on his desk, pulling his phone off its charger before switching off the overhead light in his inner office. His outer office was already dark, but he knew how to locate the door handle from five years of making this exact trek in various states of darkness and daylight. This office had been his home more than the apartment he owned had been at first; Damian remembered his long nights of coding and correcting with a mixture of fondness and joy—he’d never be so young and energetic ever again, but he also was far more confident now, and his success was undeniable. He might get nostalgic, he decided, but he was definitely happier now.
The elevator doors showed him his face again in their reflective surface as they slid closed, and he was struck by the depth of the circles beneath his eyes—they were soft and purpled, like two impressionist black holes beneath twin pools of crystal blue water. He closed his eyes again.
I need a drink.
****
Damian hesitated before pulling the royal blue door of the bar open, noticing the strange coolness of the metal handle as he pressed his palm against it. He could feel all of his nervous energy getting transferred to the chipped paint, and he wondered if his hand would come away with blue when he pulled it back, the colors warmed and runny from his heat.
Just go in, he told himself firmly. You’ve been to bars before. So this one’s sketchy? You’ve been to sketchy bars before. Just go in, don’t look at anyone, and head toward the bar.
The gloom upon entering didn’t surprise Damian. Circular lamps hung from the high ceiling, dangling fifteen feet above their heads like huge fireflies without wings, punctuating the dark every ten feet or so with their soft yellow glow. He wasn’t surprised to find the jukebox playing a country song he couldn’t name or even recognize as five or six patrons sat in chairs near the center of the room, seated around each other but not in a way that suggested they were sitting together. Damian was surprised to find the bar almost completely deserted except for two women and a man who appeared to be sleeping, unless corpses could snore.
The stool was softer than it looked, and Damian was only seated for a second before the bartender appeared before him, the cleanliness of her uniform somewhat ruined by her unkempt chestnut-colored bun.
“What’ll you have?”
“Uh, Fat Tire, please?”
The bartender nodded and shuffled away to pull out a glass from under the bar. Now that his eyes had adjusted, Damian could see that there were a few more people present than he realized—and more of them were women than he’d first noticed, as well. As the waitress came back with his beer, he could feel more eyes turning toward him and climbing the fabric of his slacks and blazer—and doing more than just studying the carefully muscled body filling out the all-black ensemble; Damian knew from experience that many women who approached him in bars knew the price tags of his clothing better than he did.
His eyes turned to the two women at the other end of the L-shaped bar, giggling tog
ether with their heads almost touching above their drinks. The one with her face turned away from him had short, curly black hair and a low, sultry laugh, but the one he could see was laughing loudly and in such a high-pitched tone that it almost seemed like the call of some jungle bird—sharp and lilting and echoing through your body so as to almost be alarming, but commanding, so you could do nothing but listen. She had thick red hair softly curling inward just above her collarbone, and the deep blue of her collared button-down shirt brought out the warm tones of her chocolate brown eyes. Her heart-shaped face was alive with delight at something her friend was saying, and as she lifted her drink, the deep pucker of her lips sent a violent shiver down his spine.
Damian turned away, suddenly conscious of his staring. He took a long drink of his beer, uncomfortably aware of every fiber in his blazer as he fought to sort through the storm of emotions prohibiting his train of thought. Drink, he thought desperately, and his hand was halfway to his mouth again before he clarified to himself: Send her a drink. You should send her a drink.
Damian waved the bartender over with a twenty between his fingers and noted that she moved much faster this time. “Would you please send another of what that lovely redhead is drinking over to her at the end of the bar? And keep them coming. Let her know she doesn’t owe me a thing.”
He ran a sweaty palm through his hair and glanced at his reflection in the dusty mirror over the bar. Pushing his hand through it had given him a pleasant bed-head look, but his eyes were still worryingly bagged. Should he call it a night after this? Damian looked over at the young woman, whose eyes were trained on the bartender as she explained where the new drink had come from. The curly haired woman looked over at him curiously, but the redhead stared at the martini in shock for a few moments before looking up and smiling at him—wide enough to show dimples on both of her cheeks.
She lifted the drink and nodded, and Damian forced himself to do the same, just to be in motion so the fine tremble in his body wouldn’t be evident from across the room. A wave of energy slid across his skin— slow and bone meltingly-hot, like lava—and the burn lingered even after she finally tore her eyes away from his.
Good job, Damian congratulated himself as he drained the last of his beer. Now don’t screw it up. You should probably leave ASAP, in fact.
His eyes finally noticed the television in a high corner near him, and he glued his eyes to the screen as a slow smile slid across his face. He had no idea what he was looking at, because the redhead’s dazzling grin was branded into his vision like an afterimage, so the moving pictures before his eyes might as well have been static. He felt like a stone had been sitting on his heart, and the lift in her cheeks had tumbled it over. You sound like you hit your head, he told himself sternly. It’s definitely time to leave.
Before he could motion to close his tab, the bartender thunked down another frosty glass of Fat Tire, smiling faintly at his surprise. “From the… ‘lovely redhead’ drinking martinis. Says you’re a true gentleman.”
Damian’s gentle smile was spreading when another voice spoke at his side, “Should have just told you that myself.”
He turned and had to fight to hide his surprise to find the redhead standing before him. She laughed, and Damian realized he hadn’t hid it well at all.
“I’m Rebecca—or Becca, if you like.” The woman gestured to the empty seat beside him. “May I? My friend has had enough, and I hate to drink alone.”
He nodded and looked in time to see her friend stumbling out on coltish legs on the arm of a rotund man he hadn’t seen at the bar. “I’m Damian...wow. It’s before ten and she’s already had…enough?”
Becca shrugged, and Damian realized she was nearly a foot shorter than him just before she settled onto the stool, which made her around five-two. “We’re celebrating. Well, she is.” She wrinkled her nose and shot a dark glance toward the now closed door, scratched and covered in faded stickers from chain restaurants and now defunct bands and brands.
Damian didn’t say anything, but his raised eyebrows provided all the permission Becca needed.
“She got a promotion at work, but it’s not for a good reason,” she said carefully, sipping her drink as she paused. “The boss—you saw him with her—did a favor for her once, and now he’s holding this over her head so she’ll do one back… if you know what I mean.”
Damian was shocked—that it was happening, and that Becca was telling a man she’d just met. The shock must have shown clearly on his face, because she laughed again—the same hard, almost braying laugh that compelled him to lean closer rather than further away from the noise.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m screwing with you. It’s her thirtieth and she got a little too saucy on her birthday shots. Her husband is taking her home.”
Damian laughed, but shock was still coursing through him, but for a different reason now. “Do you normally play jokes like that on strangers who buy you drinks? Or just ones who are clearly stuck-up tech guys like me?”
Becca’s eyes widened with remorse, and Damian regretted the sharpness of his words. “No, oh god, no! I’m sorry, I just have this horrible sense of humor—I mean, my friends like it, and so does my mom, but that doesn’t mean you should, too.” Her cheeks were rapidly turning from cream to rose quartz to satin red, and Damian took pity on her. “I’m sorry, I’ll just…I’ll just go—”
“No,” he said, and it cut off her speech immediately. “No, it’s fine. I can be a little stuffy at times. It was funny, I’m just…” he trailed off, wondering if he should tell the truth. Damian looked into Becca’s contrite eyes and saw nothing but warmth in their depths, so he decided to plunge ahead.
“I kind of hate my job,” he said at last. “I used to be passionate about it, but now it’s all about the money. Just money. And now, I’m always bored and angry,” Damian said, taking a swig of his beer. “It’s terrible. I’m miserable, even though it seems like I have everything I could ever want.” He paused. “I lost all my friends building this wall around me until I became…this. And I know it probably seems like I’m some rich jerk feeding you lines so he can get off and put another notch on his bed post, but that’s not the case.”
Becca’s frown had been neutralizing as he spoke, and now she smiled at him, her lips curving under her wonder. “Well, I’m a newspaper journalist who also hates her job, and who took it because she thought it would lead to nobility and prestige. I do alright for myself, but I’m certainly not in your tax bracket,” she said, her eyes rolling at him over the rim of her glass. “So even with all that money, you’re still not happy, Mr. Silicon Valley Millionaire?”
“That’s right,” he admitted. “Although technically, I’m a billionaire.”
Becca’s eyebrows shot up, and she laughed. “Billionaire, then. Gosh. And to think I almost didn’t come over here and talk to you.”
Damian smiled. “Why did you decide to?”
Becca leaned in as the bartender replaced her drink. “This is embarrassing, but my best friend pressured me to do it.”
He laughed, but kindly. “Peer pressure?”
“We live thirty miles away, in Daly City,” Becca explained, her eyes shining. “Her husband wanted us to relive the nights we used to have in college…and we kind of did,” she said, chuckling. “Laura always ended up puking, Jeff danced on tables…that’s probably why none of us drink anymore.” She shook her head. “Anyway, I was always the wild card, and I’d do anything on a dare. Laura dared me to come over and talk to you, so I was bound by the laws of best friendship.”
Damian smiled and took a drink of his beer. “It’s sweet that you still adhere to that code. A lot of people let that kind of thing go as they get older.”
Becca leaned a little closer to him and shrugged again. “I’m only twenty-eight. Not old enough to use age as an excuse to be a bad friend.”
He felt his smile grow sad before Becca’s frown told him it did. “Sorry,” he said hastily. “You reminded me that
a group of people I used to think were friends did exactly that five years ago. But don’t let me put a damper on things.”
Becca looked curious now. “No, tell me about it. I want to know about you.” She smiled, and the heat beneath it sent a bolt of lust through Damian mid-sip. “That’s the real reason I came over here, after all.”
So he did. Damian told her all about how he, Jack Summer, Roger Wolf, and Ian Rivers had all been roommates throughout college, sharing goals and ideals as well as toothpaste. Then Jack and Ian started to get money-hungry, buying tiny tech businesses and flipping them on the side for profit. Then Damian’s company got involved, and when Jack flipped it, he took credit for the surge in stock while also distancing himself from both Damian and Ian. Roger assumed they’d all been colluding and pulled out, forming an angel investment group and spreading dirt about all three of them so that their reputations were tarnished before they knew it.
He told Becca all of this, and about his lingering pain over losing his best friends. She told him about growing up in Maine and nearly drowning in the river because her brother convinced her that she was a mermaid. They told each other secrets and stories for hours, until it was past midnight, and both of them were flustered and giggly from drinking and talking with their dizzy heads close.
“Okay,” Becca said at last. “Okay…wow, I put away five of these things,” she slurred, leaning a hand on Damian’s thigh. “I really am reliving those wild college nights.” She giggled shrilly, and the sound was just as charming as her squawking laugh.
Damian felt an odd tug on his heart, and he smiled. “I’d be studying if that were true for me,” he said, his voice louder than he realized. “And a fox like you would have never spoken to me while I was driving my daddy’s car.”