Tall, Dark, and Nerdy: High School Billionaire #1

by Dallen, Maggie

  As I waited for her to answer, I said a silent prayer that she wouldn’t want to talk any more about Stuart. I was definitely tired of hearing about that moron. At least I’d gotten to the point where I could say his name without triggering my gag reflex, so that was something.

  Now that he’d broken up with Liv, one would think I’d be over him entirely, but that was not the case. Now instead of acute jealousy, the mere mention of his name brought rage. Swift, hot, boiling rage. How dare he break up with her? Who does he think he is?

  I didn’t voice any of this, however. I couldn’t, not without letting some secrets of my own slip. And when they did, I planned for it to be on my terms and not in any way having to do with the guy who’d ruined my peace of mind for the past six months.

  Liv’s nose wrinkled up like she smelled something foul. It wasn’t at first obvious if she were reacting to my mention of Stuart or if she was physically reacting to that whiff of urine when we’d passed a subway station.

  “I definitely don’t want to talk about him,” she said.

  My shoulders relaxed slightly.

  “I’d much rather talk about you,” she said.

  “What about me?”

  She arched her brows. “Seriously? What about you? Telecor potentially buying your app is the biggest news in Harmon since Terry Fletcher got caught embezzling from the Mini Mart.”

  “Wow,” I said in a flat tone. “Then it must be big news.”

  She gave me a smirk as she swatted my arm. “It is big news. And as your best friend I expect to have the insider scoop.”

  “It’s not potential,” I said.

  Her face fell. “The deal didn’t go through? I thought your dad said—”

  “Oh no,” I said quickly. “I meant that it’s now finalized.”

  She stared at me, coming to a stop in the middle of the street and seemingly not noticing that we’d created a pedestrian hazard by blocking the sidewalk.

  “It’s done?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  I could see her swallow. I watched with a little too much fascination as her tongue slipped out to lick her lips. “So, wait… Let me get this straight.”

  I turned to face her and give her my full attention. It gave me a great opportunity to study her, and note all of the ways she’d changed in the past two months, and all the ways she hadn’t.

  This face…this face was my favorite thing in the world. Expressive and interesting, she wasn’t some exquisite beauty, she was so much more than that. She was unique, and alive, and vibrant, and filled with energy. She was—

  “Let me get this straight,” she said again, louder this time and with enough insistence that I forced my attention back to her words and not the sexy, pouty lips that formed them. “Yes?”

  “The deal is done, which means that you are…” She shook her head quickly. “You are a billionaire?”

  I winced at the word. It sounded weird, still, especially coming from her. “Well, technically, I guess my company is now worth—”

  “No technicallys,” she shouted. Once again she didn’t seem to notice the looks we were getting. I didn’t particularly care, either. She smacked my arm so hard I had a feeling it might bruise. “You are a billionaire!”

  Now the looks we were getting were seriously curious.

  I didn’t directly answer, instead I gestured to a little restaurant that was nicely empty. “Shall we have a cup of coffee?”

  The last thing my best friend needed was caffeine, but I had a lot to catch her up on and I preferred not to do it in the middle of the street.

  She dragged me into the restaurant and we found a table in the corner. After we ordered a couple coffees, Liv leveled me with a stare. “Speak,” she ordered. “And don’t leave anything out.”

  I started to fill her in on the logistics of the acquisition, but she got distracted when I mentioned that my new success had garnered the attention of Jamie’s dad’s magazine.

  “Wait a second,” she said. Her lips were parted with shock and I tried not to focus too much on the hot spot on my arm where her hand rested.

  “Yes?”

  “You are going to be featured in The Fortune Hunter’s thirty under thirty piece?”

  I frowned. “You know it?”

  She looked temporarily disgusted by my ignorance. “Everyone knows it.”

  “They do?”

  She didn’t elaborate and I didn’t expect her to. If she said everyone had heard of it then I believed her. I might have been the straight-A student in our little twosome, but Liv was the one who actually lived in the real world. She paid attention to things like who was dating whom at Harmon High and what actress had just been cast in the movie adaptation of our favorite book series, and, apparently, some feature that some magazine put out once a year on young wealthy people.

  She gasped so loudly our waiter stopped to look. I gave him a little shake of my head. Nothing to see here. We’re all good. My friend here is just a tad melodramatic.

  Now her hands were on my arms, squeezing tight. “Oh my gosh, they’re going to feature you?”

  I drew my brows together in confusion because I wasn’t quite certain what she meant by that. “I will be mentioned, yes, but not necessarily featured.”

  She blinked and I knew that I had missed her meaning. I tried to explain that there was one chosen for the cover feature who’d have a full-length article written about him, while the others merely had their photos taken along with a brief bio blurb.

  She nodded. “But you could be featured,” she said. “And then you’d be on the cover.”

  I took a quick sip of water in an attempt to swallow down bile. The thought of being in the spotlight had never appealed to me, and being on the cover of a magazine? That sounded like attention. A lot of attention.

  “Don’t you even think about wussing out,” Liv demanded.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I lied.

  Her arched brow silently called me out on that lie. But, much as I might want to, I couldn’t shirk this duty. “My contract with Telecor stipulates that I do my part for publicity, so I’m legally unable to ‘wuss out.’”

  She let out a huff of laughter at my use of air quotes but I saw the moment when what I’d said registered. “So, wait…Telecor is keeping you on?”

  I nodded, my chest clenching with emotion at her squeal of joy on my behalf. Only Liv truly understood how much I’d wanted to retain some control over my app, and how much I wanted to continue to create. Thanks to my new position at Telecor, I had every resource at my disposal.

  She gave her head a little shake of disbelief. “That’s so awesome, Jackson. I’m so happy for you.” Leaning over the table to give my hand a little squeeze, and the friendly gesture sent a shock wave of sensation through my arm. “And I’m so proud of you, too. Not just for all the hard work that got you where you are, but for the fact that you’ve agreed to do the publicity stuff that I’m sure you hate.”

  I shrugged, heat creeping up my neck at the unexpected praise. For more than a year now I’d been getting a lot of adulation from my parents, my teachers, and from the press that had started calling me “genius,” and a “teen tech whiz,” and “the next Steve Jobs.” But all of that paled in comparison to Liv’s look of pride right now.

  Everyone else seemed to be awed by the success, so incredibly focused on the dollar amount whenever the topic of my app and its sale came up. But Liv got it. Much as she might joke about all the things we could do with the money, she understood that’s never what it was about for me.

  She drew back and removed her hand from mine, which meant I could once more breathe regularly. “You got your dream job,” she said, her tone filled with awe.

  “I got my dream job.” Saying it aloud added a whole new level of reality to my current situation.

  “You really know how to bury the lead, you know that, right?” Liv said.

  “I was going to tell you, but you were sidetracked by the magazine feat
ure.”

  “I still can’t believe you’re going to be one of the thirty under thirty,” she said. “Are you ready?”

  “No,” I said honestly. The thought of doing an interview made my stomach churn, but this would be the first of many so I supposed I ought to get used to it. “But it’s not like the company is just going to throw me to the wolves. My publicist is sending someone next week to help me prepare.”

  Her eyes were so bright with excitement it was difficult to stay on task. “To prep you on what to say to the interviewer?”

  I nodded. “That, but also to make sure I look all right for the photo shoot.”

  “What do you mean, make you look all right? You always look good.” She crossed her arms, her tone defensive on my behalf. “You are an attractive young man, Mr. Jackson, there are no two ways about it.”

  Her eyes narrowed as she took in my hair, my glasses, my features. I knew what she was seeing, of course. I’d seen it just this morning in the mirror. But having her study me like this made me acutely conscious of what she was seeing…or rather, how she was seeing it. For example, she’d just referred to me as attractive, and this was something she’d said to me on multiple occasions.

  I knew when she lied—Liv was a terrible liar—so I knew that she genuinely believed I was attractive. But was I attractive to her? That was the question. It had become the riddle of my life. The one I was driven to solve.

  At what point had my feelings for my best friend gone from platonic to…not platonic? I wish I knew the answer. It wasn’t like there had been one particular moment, it had happened as effortlessly and organically as everything else in our relationship. I’d realized it freshman year of high school. I’d decided to do something about it sophomore year. And now here we were…seniors. At different schools.

  And about to spend the night together.

  She reached over and ruffled my hair. “I mean, you could use a trim, sure, but other than that, you already look like you should be in magazines.”

  I couldn’t quite stop my wince. The hair ruffle felt far more like something my grandmother would do than a girl who was interested in kissing me. Not exactly encouraging. But this topic was the perfect means to an end. I cleared my throat as I prepared to ask my lifelong best friend on a date, and hopefully not destroy the single most important relationship of my life in the process.

  “Yeah, well,” I said. “They seem to think my image could use some work.”

  She pouted. “They’re stupid.”

  I laughed. “I’ve missed you and your crazy overprotectiveness.”

  She grabbed my hands and squeezed them. “Oh Jackson, you have no idea how much I’ve missed you at school.”

  “Oh yeah?” That was the only prompt she needed to launch into a longwinded story that managed to encapsulate every tidbit of gossip I’d missed these past months by being away.

  “So, Gretchen Hall still doesn’t know Tyler’s cheating on her, huh?” I asked. I honestly couldn’t have cared less about the cheerleader or her moronic boyfriend, but there was literally nothing in the world I loved so much as listening to Liv talk.

  “See all the excitement you’ve been missing?” she teased.

  “Yes, I see now,” I said mildly, making her laugh. She knew very well that I didn’t care about gossip, but she loved that I listened, and I loved that she loved that I listened.

  This was one of many reasons we worked so well together.

  I cleared my throat again. At this rate, she was going to order me to see a doctor to get my throat checked. “Speaking of the magazine feature,” I said.

  “We weren’t actually,” she interrupted. “I was boring my big-city billionaire best friend with tales of small-town high school life.”

  I blinked. “Big-city billionaire best friend,” I said. “Excellent alliteration.”

  She shrugged in false modesty. I had no idea at what point alliteration had become one of our things, but it was.

  “Some call it a gift. Also, it’s true,” she said. “You’re suddenly this hotshot tech guru who’s going to be world-famous once word gets out and you’re no longer going to want to spend time with your poor, ugly, average friend from the boonies.”

  “You’re insane.”

  She made a face at me, but I’d learnt long ago that her crazier bouts of insecurities were best handled with a quick death blow. Attempting to reason with her when it came to topics such as her beauty, her appeal, her amazingness as a whole…the more one let her delve into her twisted view on it all, the more convinced she became. The girl was a verifiable genius at talking trash about herself. It was best not to give her the opportunity.

  “But, speaking of the magazine,” I tried again. “There’s this gala.”

  Her eyes widened with excitement. “Ooh, yes! I always see the behind-the-scenes pictures online from the after party.”

  Really? Okay, not what I’d been expecting. I shifted in my seat. “So, actually, what I was thinking was—”

  She gripped my arm so tightly I could feel her nails digging into my forearm. “Ooh, you should ask Jamie!”

  I stared at her for a moment as my mind tried to remember who Jamie was. Right. Blonde girl, responsible for getting Liv a weekend pass for the dorms. She wanted me to take that girl. Disappointment had my ribs tightening to the point where it seemed like they might snap. I scratched my head, unsure if I should keep going or take a detour. “Uh, well, actually…”

  “You totally should,” Liv continued undeterred. “I saw the way she was looking at you, Jackson.”

  I opened my mouth and shut it again. It wasn’t just the fact that she was encouraging me to ask another girl on a date while I was in the midst of asking her on a date. That was far from ideal, but it was her use of my last name that gave me pause. There was something so very friendly about it. Familial, even. She might as well have just referred to me as her brother.

  Considering the number of hours I’d unintentionally spent dreaming and daydreaming about her body, that thought was beyond disgusting. We were friends, but there was nothing familial here.

  “Are you all right? You look sick,” she said. Before I could stop her, she reached out a hand and placed it over my forehead.

  I sighed. “Are you through?”

  She tilted her head to the side. “Have you been eating properly?”

  We both glanced down at the coffee in my hand with a frown.

  “Have you eaten today?” she asked. Judging by her tone, she knew the answer. With a shake of her head she shifted her gaze to the waiter who was standing by the host stand. “Could we have a menu, please?”

  When she looked back at me with a chastening frown, I winced. “I was busy.”

  “Uh huh.”

  It was true. I had a bad habit of forgetting to eat when I was busy working on a new app or, you know…plotting how I was going ask my best friend out on a date. Then I made things worse by eating all my calories at nighttime, and usually in the form of something salty and crunchy.

  Like chips.

  Or pork rinds.

  Not that I would mention that now. Liv had a thing about my health, even though she wasn’t exactly the healthiest person I’d ever met either. That was largely due to the fact that she was forever on some weird trendy diet in an attempt to lose weight that I would be sad to see go.

  Sure enough…

  “Just once I wish I could forget to eat,” she muttered as the waiter handed us menus. “That’s a problem I’d love to have.”

  I kept my mouth shut. I knew better than to try and tell her that she didn’t need to lose any weight. It was a lost cause. I still tried, of course, but I picked my battles, and this was not the time. I’d always been better at showing than telling, and this was one of those instances. When the waiter came over to take our order, Liv ordered a salad and I took the liberty of ordering a burger for me and a side of chicken strips for her.

  She had a thing for chicken strips. “Side of ranch,” I
told the waiter as Liv pretended to glare at me from across the table.

  But when he left she didn’t argue the point, she just patted her belly with a sigh. “What if I was really committed to a diet this weekend?”

  “Are you?”

  “No,” she said quickly. “This weekend is all about having fun with my bestie and eating my heartbreak away…with chicken strips.”

  That last part had her grinning and it made me feel slightly better about the heartbreak comment. “You’re, uh…you’re doing okay with all that?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine. The guy did have rank breath.”

  I absolutely adored Stuart for his poor oral hygiene. I cleared my throat. This was it…

  But then she kept talking. “I mean, it still sucks, though. He’s been flirting with Christie Maynard right in front of me, did I tell you that?” She stabbed a fork into a chicken strip and I reminded myself for the millionth time that she’d outright said she’d never been in love with Stuart. It was just her ego that was still smarting from being rejected.

  I wished more than anything that she’d been the one to do the dumping. The last thing Liv’s self-esteem needed was to be dumped by a lame guy like Stuart.

  She looked back at me. “And then there’s homecoming.”

  “What about it?”

  She stuck out her lower lip. “It’s in three weeks. I wasn’t exactly fighting off the guys before Stuart asked me out, and now that I’ve been dumped by a loser like him?” Her frown deepened. “I’m a pariah.”

  “You’re not a pariah. You run that school, and everyone knows it.”

  “To boys I’m a pariah,” she clarified. For her it never seemed to matter that she was a kick-butt, take-charge leader who’d done more good with her time at Harmon High than the rest of the student body combined.

  For Liv, it all came down to popularity, and while her peers were more than happy to let her do the work that went into organizing dances and garnering the money to support their extracurricular activities, they had little use for Liv herself. But I meant what I’d said, Liv wasn’t a pariah—she just didn’t fit in. And for the life of me I’d never understood why she wanted to.