But it was neither.
It was John Underwood. Her boss.
“John?” she answered.
“Hi, Gigi. I’m so sorry to bother you at home, especially when you’re not feeling well. When I went looking for you this morning, HR told me you were taking a sick day. I hope it’s nothing too serious.”
“Uh, no,” she lied. “It’s just a…just a flu bug. Not even the flu, really, just a…just a…is everything okay?”
“Well, I’m calling to pass along a message. I would’ve given it to you in person this morning, but anyway, here I am, giving it to you over the phone.”
“Okay…”
“Your mother contacted us yesterday. She said she was having trouble reaching you and wanted to know if she could leave us her number and make sure you received it. She got hold of someone who passed her along to someone else, who passed her along to someone else—who eventually came to me to ask what to do. I didn’t speak directly to your mother myself, but had Darrin assure her that we’d give her number to you once you came back to work today.”
Gigi was silent for a moment. Her face felt hot. “Did she give any indication what this is about?”
“Not to my knowledge,” said John, “but the impression she gave Darrin was that it’s important. Which is why I’m contacting you at home. Do you have something to write on?”
Gigi rifled through her nightstand drawer for a pen and pad. “Yes, go ahead.”
John read off the numbers, then slowly repeated them.
“Thank you so much, John. You didn’t have to do this.”
“Don’t mention it. I hope everything’s okay.”
“It is. It will be.” Gigi tossed the pen on the nightstand next to the pad and put her hand to her forehead. “Thanks so much, John.”
“Bye, Gigi.”
She waited a full hour before dialing.
Touching the numbers on her phone’s keypad, shaking her head “no,” Gigi thought, Momma, what the hell are you trying to pull?
Chapter 18
Second-Guessing
Damian couldn’t remember the last time he had been so wrong.
He had helped build a multi-billion-dollar company on the soundness of his judgment—his gut. His judgment, insofar as it concerned business and tech trends, had never failed him. Even his judgment in dealing with women had never been so far off. He had successfully avoided the gold-diggers and blackmailers. He’d even avoided dating D-list celebrities hoping to ride his coattails to mainstream success. He’d avoided, truth be told, any serious entanglements whatsoever, preferring the relative ease of dating shallow women who understood the good business sense of dating, if only for a week or two, the Bad Boy Playboy of Silicon Valley.
For his part, Damian understood the business sense it made, the economic incentive to play the media game. Yet, deep down, he was not implacably opposed to a genuine relationship. He just didn’t think he’d ever find one.
The women he’d known—the actresses, the models, the singers—had never struck him as being serious about dating. And he was fine with that. He never took it personally. “Everything is transient,” he’d always said. “Nothing lasts.” That was as true for love as it was for hairstyles and music trends. The thought of never finding his one true love—he hated the term “soul mate”—was not devastating to Damian, but if he were honest with himself, he’d have to admit it did, on occasion, prick him with a bit of sadness.
That’s why meeting Gigi had rocked him back on his heels, a sensation he’d rarely experienced. Usually, he was the one setting others off-kilter. But something about Gigi had struck him immediately. Yes, she was beautiful, blah blah blah, and the dimple that appeared on the left side of her face when she smiled made him experience a kind of oxygen-deprived swooning he imagined was shared by climbers scaling Everest. But if her physical beauty had compelled him to introduce himself the night of the party, something else altogether had compelled him to pursue her. What is was, however, mystified him.
He was surprised to realize that he’d never really pursued a woman before. The women—especially once he became the world-famous face of SXz—had pursued him. Men with money were accustomed to getting those things they desired. There was no malice involved; rather, it was simply seen as the natural order of things. I’m a fucking billionaire: I do what I want, take what I want, get what I want.
But Gigi Stevens had slipped his grasp and remained elusive.
Then why didn’t he pursue her?
He wasn’t entirely certain. He assumed it was partly the fact that he’d never had to pursue anyone before and therefore wasn’t sure how to proceed. How do you purse a woman in the 21st century and not come off as a stalker? This was one reason among many why he’d always enjoyed his high-profile bachelor status: the women came to him. It took the guesswork out of everything. Made it simple.
Georgina Stevens, meanwhile, was not simple.
What on earth had he done to cause her to flip like this? Everything was fine until he’d left her room to go take a shower. When he’d come back, she was noticeably distant and cool to him, and grew only chillier throughout the flight back to the States. What had happened?
It was a mystery to him.
He’d give her some time, though. Some space. Let her work through whatever was bothering her. She’d seemed, after all, weirdly concerned about her upbringing. Like I give a shit, he remembered thinking at the time. I’m interested in you, not your entire family tree.
Women, he concluded, were simply made from a completely different set of blueprints. They would never be understood fully, but he wanted to understand Gigi Stevens as much as she’d allow. He would wait a few days and call her.
Chapter 19
Late Stage
Her mother’s voice sounded scratchy, like an old LP, and echoed weirdly in Gigi’s head. She’d not heard her mother’s voice in five years.
She’d never allowed herself to envision a reunion with her family—and certainly never entertained the idea of a reunion under such circumstances. This wasn’t tearful, this wasn’t cathartic. This wasn’t even in person. This was taking place at a remove of 3,000 miles via what Gigi was certain was her mother’s flip-phone.
“We had to kinda hurry to find you,” her mother said, Southern accent thick and musical. “We knew it’d probably take a while, and we didn’t have a while to take.”
“How exactly did you find me?”
“Well, we called the college and they weren’t no help a’tall at first, but then we got patched through to someone in an office somewheres and they said they thought you was out in California now workin’ for some company makes games.”
“We make learning apps for children, Momma.”
“Well, that sounds right good.” Her mother stopped. Another sentence hung suspended on her lips.
“Momma, why did you call my place of business?”
There was a long silence. “I prolly should let your daddy talk to you.”
Gigi heard whispers and the sound of the flip-phone changing hands.
“Georgina?” Her father’s voice sounded ragged, worn, tired. Her parents were only in their early 50s but sounded 20 years older.
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Georgina, I…well, I been waitin’ for some time now to talk with you.”
“I’m in California, now, Daddy. My life is very busy.”
“Yeah, I ’magine it is. I ’magine it is.”
To Gigi, it sounded like her father’s voice was almost too laden with sadness to leave his mouth.
“Daddy, is something wrong?”
Her father waited, as if gathering the words he needed and placing them in the proper order before using them. “Well, sweetie, your momma and I ain’t got insurance, and we ain’t old enough yet for the Medicare. North Carolina don’t do an awful lot for folks ain’t 65 yet.”
“Is this about money?” she asked. “Do you need money to go get a check-up?” Good God, she thought, just
say it: you want money.
“Sweetie, I been havin’ some problems lately, some pains, and your momma finally done drove me up to the ’mergency room at the hospital to get checked out.”
Gigi’s stomach began knotting. Holy shit, no, no, no…
“Turns out they found somethin’ wrong with my liver.”
Gigi heard her mother say in the background: “He’s got the cancer.”
Later that day, as she made plans to go back to North Carolina, Gigi wondered why bad news—any bad news—still came as a shock in the 21st century. Humans have been around a hundred thousand years or more; you’d think we’d have all the answers by now, like in a big book we can check out from the public library. It’s hard to believe we still have no idea how to cope with life.
She spoke to Holly in HR and filed for a three-month leave of absence. Would TrekTek hold her position for her? Gigi didn’t really know and didn’t really care. The one-two punch of Damian and now her father had left her with an emotional crater at her core. She’d had a five-year plan to establish herself professionally in Silicon Valley; in another day, she would obliterate that plan with a single transcontinental flight.
It’s an odd sensation to blow up your life. It’s an even odder sensation to intentionally blow up your life.
This move would be the antithesis of everything Gigi had ever done. Her entire approach to life had been methodical, planned, sober, thoughtful, well-considered. She was a disciplined young woman not given to frivolity or recklessness. She couldn’t recall making a single spur-of-the-moment decision in her entire life.
Well, except one: meeting Damian Black for lunch at 10:30 at night. That had been spontaneous and not particularly well thought out.
Damian…
Gigi considered calling him to let him know of her departure. Would he even care? Would a phone call from her announcing she was leaving have the unintended side-effect of highlighting just how little she really meant to him? In her current raw state, Gigi didn’t think she could handle hearing Damian say, “Oh, that’s too bad. Take care.” She briefly considered texting him the news, but quickly dismissed it as somehow even more of a dodge than not letting him know anything at all. Complete silence has a purity about it, she thought. It can be cleansing.
There was, however, a call she did have to make, a call that she dreaded: to Judy.
Judy McGovern had been her best friend since freshman year at Brown. A trust fund baby, Judy would never have to work a day in her life. She never had to go to college, either, for that matter, but she was brainy, loved learning, and, most of all, was hoping to be swept off her feet by a dashing, preferably muscular, humanities major. That Judy ever thought she’d find a muscular humanities major—or that such a creature was currently in existence anywhere on planet Earth—proved that even Ivy League brainiacs were not immune to the charms of magical thinking.
Gigi picked up her phone, found Judy in the contacts, then quickly set the phone back down.
I don’t know if I can do this.
Men have their bonds and the rituals of their gender, elements of a shared masculine experience from which women are directly excluded. But it seemed to Gigi that friendship between women is an altogether different bond, a mystery whose veil men are chromosomally incapable of lifting. Women have a paradoxical advantage over men in this regard: the whole of our culture is built around the concerns of men, and thus gives women insights into men that men will never be able to reciprocate because the culture deprives them of the necessary vantage point.
Oh, for God’s sake, just do it and get it over with.
Gigi snatched the phone off her nightstand, thumbed Judy’s contact, and waited for the ringing.
Chapter 20
Leaving
“I understand you have to go be with your dad,” Judy said. “But I think you’re getting carried away with all the ‘I’m never coming back’ stuff.”
“I don’t know,” said Gigi. “It’s just a feeling. If the past week has shown me anything, it’s that my future doesn’t lie in California.”
“That’s nonsense. You go back to your dad, you look after him a little bit. Maybe he’ll respond well to treatments, the cancer will go into remission, and you come back to California. You’re acting like everything’s already written in stone.”
“It kinda feels like it is.”
“And you’re leaving out one big important factor.”
“What’s that?”
“Mr. Yum-Yum.”
“He’s no longer a factor.”
“Because of the caterer?”
“Judy, she’s not a caterer and you know it.”
“I don’t know that at all, and neither do you. You just immediately jumped to conclusions and assumed he’s banging her six ways from Sunday. And instead of asking him about it, you deleted the damn call from his phone and stopped seeing him.”
“Yeah, well, he hasn’t exactly broken an ankle chasing me down to get me back.”
“He probably thinks you’re a loon.”
“He might be right about that.” A pause. Then, softly: “I miss him.”
“Well, of course you miss him. He’s yummy! Who doesn’t like yummy?”
“You’ll come visit, won’t you?”
“Girl, if I weren’t so addicted to the perfect year-round weather out here, I’d probably move to North Carolina with you.”
“But you’ll visit?”
“Of course. I don’t think I’ve ever had grits before. I need to have the experience before I die.”
Not the best choice of words, Gigi thought, but I know you meant nothing by it.
She’d not lived in San Francisco very long, but Gigi was nevertheless surprised by how few possessions she had. Packing to go back home wouldn’t be nearly the chore she’d imagined it would be.
Gigi was disciplined, no-nonsense, even thrifty. Her rent, of course, was enormous, but all rents in San Francisco were enormous. Her house was small and sparsely furnished. She’d not taken vacations. Her lone splurge was an occasional half-gallon of Moose Tracks ice cream. She’d been putting her money away, saving it for an eventual start-up of her own. The start-up would have to wait, however, because she needed the money now.
Her rent was paid through the end of the month. Judy had a key, and had agreed to take whatever furniture she wanted and sell the rest.
Gigi felt a sadness that surprised her. And what surprised her was the face that generated it: Damian.
Gigi had never been an active member of the social scene. She was not someone who opened herself to friendships readily. Judy was her one good friend out here. Leaving, therefore, was not the angst-filled drama that it would’ve been for someone else. So why the intense sadness over Damian? A voice in her head tried to convince her, You don’t even know him all that well. A second voice, arguing for the defense, countered: But I know him enough.
She didn’t even have a picture of him. And this fact, strangely, cut her to the quick, and she started crying.
Two days later, just past dawn, her little Kia stuffed, Gigi stepped from her house, shut and locked the door behind her, and walked to her car. She’d decided to drive. A flight would be quicker, of course, but Gigi would need a car once she arrived in North Carolina, and her Kia was still fairly new. Plus, the few days it would take her to drive cross-country would give her time to process all that had happened recently and plan for what was now her very uncertain future.
Gigi brought her little Kia to life and backed out of her driveway and onto the street. Pausing for a final look at her house, she slowly shifted the car into drive and rolled down the hill till her house was longer visible in the rear-view mirror. Then, she wiped her eyes with her hand, stomped the gas pedal, and sped off.
Chapter 21
Out of the Blue
I’m Damian fucking Black, he thought. Gotta snap outta this.
Once he hit open water, he quickly throttled up and the Monterey M45 curved through the bay an
d toward the horizon. The marina receded behind him.
The Pacific was blue and calm and lit by white sparkles of sunlight. So different, he thought, from the somber gray of the Atlantic.
Slicing through the water, wind buffeting his body as he stood behind the steering wheel, Damian ran down his checklist.
You’re young. Check.
You’re a fucking billionaire. Check.
Your johnson’s so big you gotta use Dropbox to send a dick pic. Check.
World-class business negotiator. Check.
Your company shapes the culture on a daily basis. Check.
Woman desire you, men envy you, everybody wants to be associated with you. Check, check, and check.
So why are you so fucking miserable right now?
The answer, he knew, was very simple: Gigi Stevens.
No woman had ever affected him this way and it annoyed the hell out of him. He was so used to being in charge—in the boardroom, in the bedroom, in damn near every room he set foot—that to have a relationship dissolve so suddenly and without his permission seemed impossible, an anomaly on par with a planet-destroying meteor impact. This sort of thing just didn’t happen to Damian Black.
Except now it had. And he hated it.
Not so much because it bruised his ego, but because he had genuinely cared for Gigi. His attraction had been immediate, and his affection had followed closely behind. Smart, beautiful, and sharp-tongued, Gigi had never once been obsequious or fawning. There had been an immediate tension between them—the good kind—that propelled their single night together, in Milan, to a frenzied conclusion. Their lovemaking had been hot and sweaty and, above all, right. It had just felt right. Genuine. Sex can be athletic and impersonal, he knew; and enthusiasm for it can be faked for any number of ulterior motives. But his wordless union with Gigi had been a revelation to him—and, he was certain, for her, as well. Why had she run? Had it been too real? Was she intimidated by his status, his fame, his wealth? He didn’t know.
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