The Next Big Thing

by Sadie Hayes

  Chad was so unawkward that Amelia decided he must not remember she was Patty’s roommate and definitely didn’t know she knew about their hooking up, and she was grateful for it and happily ignored it, too.

  “Where are we?” Amelia turned to ask. She liked Jason, and was happy to see T-Bag so happy with him.

  “The sadistically named Donner Pass. It’s where the Donner party became the Donner party.”

  Amelia gave Jason a blank stare, to which he responded with shock: “You don’t know about the Donner family?”

  Amelia shook her head no.

  “So basically this group of explorers was trying to cross the mountains right over there. They got stuck in a snowstorm and ended up eating each other for survival.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Chad interrupted. “It wasn’t quite that dramatic. They were snowed in and ran out of food. They tried eating tree bark first—you can still see strips of bark removed from the tree trunks. Well, turns out you can’t survive on tree bark, so after a few members of the party died, the ones who were still living ate the dead bodies.”

  “Ewww,” T-Bag moaned. “That is so, so gross.”

  “What else were they going to do?” Chad asked defensively. “There was no point in everyone starving. And humans have meat just like any cow or pig.”

  “Did they survive?” Amelia asked, wanting to get off the subject of eating human flesh.

  “Yeah,” Chad said, “a lot of them did. Which is why we know how.”

  “I could never eat someone I’d previously had a conversation with,” Jason insisted. “I mean, can you imagine?”

  “I don’t think you can judge people’s actions when they’re in that desperate a situation. I mean, have you ever been that close to death? I think our survival instinct can lead us to extraordinary behavior,” Chad continued to defend the legend.

  “Ugh,” Jason said, “which is why I try to avoid situations that call upon my unfiltered biological tendencies.”

  “No comment,” T-Bag said wryly.

  “Which is also why,” Jason continued, “I am going to take a nap before we get to the house. So that my biological tendency to be a grump when I’m sleepy doesn’t cause poor behavior at tonight’s party.”

  “There’s a party tonight?” Amelia asked.

  “Just people playing beer pong and cooking dinner at the house. Nothing major,” Chad explained.

  A few minutes later Amelia heard Jason and T-Bag’s quiet snoring in the backseat. She turned and smiled at her friend.

  “How long have you known Theo?”

  It took a minute to register that Chad meant T-Bag, who had sent her a text earlier that day warning her he went by a different iteration of his name with this crowd.

  “Since last year. Computer Science geek circuit,” she explained.

  The silence resumed.

  “I really like Jason,” she said to fill it. “I mean, I like them together. He seems really good for … Theo.”

  Chad looked at her with a lifted eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

  Amelia suddenly realized her faux pas. Surely Chad knew? T-Bag told her Jason wasn’t out of the closet, but they were practically cuddling in the backseat, and Chad was Jason’s roommate. Was he really not in on the secret?

  Before she could think of a way to backpedal, Chad whispered, “Wait—are they a couple?”

  Amelia shook her head frantically. This was it—she’d finally blown her one friendship, given up the first and only secret T-Bag had ever trusted her with. “I—I—I don’t know.”

  “I knew it!” Chad whispered excitedly, grinning from ear to ear.

  “No!” Amelia hissed. “I don’t know. Oh my God, I just assumed…”

  “He told me they were cousins. Ha. That asshole.” He smiled in the rearview back at his sleeping friend.

  “You can not tell,” Amelia pleaded. “Please please please don’t tell. He’s my only friend. I can’t—”

  “Don’t worry,” Chad said. “I always suspected. I mean, I don’t care, but I’m his roommate, so even if I said something to him it would be totally plausible that I figured it out on my own.”

  Amelia was staring at him with pleading eyes, unsatisfied.

  “What?” Chad lifted his eyebrows. “It’s not like you don’t have anything on me.”

  So he did remember. Amelia looked straight ahead at the road and said resolutely, “It’s not my place to judge what you do.”

  “The fact that it’s not your place does not preclude you from doing so,” Chad said with a smile. Then, “Regardless, I appreciate your keeping what happened between Patty and me quiet.”

  Amelia didn’t say anything.

  “I guess I got what I deserved, though, in the end.”

  Still, Amelia kept quiet.

  “I mean, it didn’t make the whole thing any less humiliating. Being stood up at the altar and having your fiancée pick up with some other guy when you were supposed to be on your honeymoon is awfully humbling,” Chad mused. “But I guess it was all more bearable thinking of it as deserved punishment.”

  “Did you love her?” Amelia finally said. She was thinking of T.J., wondering how people knew.

  “Honestly?” Chad asked, with genuine reflection. “I loved them both.” He paused, and then said, as if he was trying the phrase out for the first time: “But I didn’t love either of them completely.”

  Amelia nodded, not because she understood, but because she didn’t know what else to do. And felt a pang thinking maybe that was T.J.’s feeling toward her: He cared about her a little bit, but not completely.

  “I mean, I think if you love someone completely, you’re not capable of doing what I did. And I guess I live in this world where I love certain people for certain things. But when I find a woman who I really love for everything, even the things about her that drive me crazy … well, then I guess I’ll know I’ve found the one.”

  He turned and smiled a sad smile at Amelia that made her want to give him a hug.

  “How about you?”

  “What?”

  “Are you seeing anyone?”

  Amelia instinctively laughed. “Are you kidding?”

  “What?”

  “Look at me.” She gestured to herself, suddenly feeling again how ridiculous the whole T.J. fantasy was. “I’m a computer dork. I don’t date.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Please don’t tell me I’m not that bad; that just makes it worse.”

  “No, I’m sure you are just as dorky as you think. But I think there’s someone out there for everyone, and that the only way you find them is by being your full self.”

  Chad looked in the rearview mirror again, at the couple sleeping in the back. “Can you imagine how difficult it is?”

  “What?”

  “Being Jason. I mean, feeling like you can’t tell your friends about the people you’re attracted to. Thinking they won’t accept you if they know who you really are.”

  “People are cruel,” Amelia said softly. “They don’t understand.”

  “The people who matter understand,” Chad argued, “and anyone who doesn’t understand? Screw ’em.”

  Amelia felt the words settle in the air. How could he say that so casually?

  “So do you ski?”

  “No.”

  “You going to try?”

  “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “Want me to teach you?”

  Amelia felt herself blush and was grateful for the darkness. “Sure,” she heard herself say.

  “It’s a date,” he said, and leaned forward to turn on music from his iPhone. “Grateful Dead okay?”

  43

  Under Par

  Ted Bristol spiraled his torso right and left, stretching out his spine, then swung his arms to loosen up his chest before reaching for his driver.

  He squinted to see the pin and mentally calculated the angle at which to align his stroke with the golf ball. He took a few pract
ice swings, appreciating the gentle swoosh as the club hit the top of the ground just so, and he knew today was going to be a good golf day. The rain had kept him off the course for the past three weeks, but the clouds had finally cleared to hand him a perfect, crisp, sunny day and an eleven-o’clock tee time.

  He moved forward to address the ball, carefully lining the front of his club with the tee. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and gently bounced in his knees to get his balance just right. Ted paused, exhaled, and pulled his driver back and through, making perfect contact with the ball and sending it soaring, straight down the fairway. He followed it with his eyes and let his face curve into a smile as he saw it land right where he wanted it to, thinking to himself for the millionth time that golf really is the perfect sport.

  “Nice shot,” a woman’s voice said from behind him.

  He turned to find Violet wearing a short white golf skirt and navy collared shirt whose top three buttons were all undone. Her hair was back in a curled ponytail and she had a white glove on one hand. Golf was also a great game for a sexy woman in the right outfit, and Violet was definitely a sexy woman in the right outfit. That she saw his perfect drive made it even better.

  “All in a day’s work.” He grinned flirtatiously. “You’re right on time. Walk with me?”

  “Yep,” she said, picking up her clubs.

  “How was your game?” he asked, knowing from having checked the member sign-in sheet that she’d had an 8:30 A.M. tee time with someone named Austin, which made him irrationally jealous.

  “Great,” she said, unsurprised that he knew. “Shot seventy-two. Not bad for me.”

  “Well done,” Ted said, struggling to hide his astonishment. The best he’d ever shot on this course was a seventy-five, and that was ten years ago. Suddenly his drive didn’t feel so perfect.

  They headed down the cart path toward Ted’s ball. When they were out of sight of the clubhouse Ted reached into the pocket of his bag and pulled out a thin envelope, which he handed to Violet.

  She opened it and read the number on the check, which was branded by a bank in the Cayman Islands. “More than we agreed,” she commented, looking up at him skeptically.

  “I threw in a bonus for your work with Adam Dory. I’d never have convinced him to fire Amelia on my own.”

  Violet took her iPhone out of her pocket and logged in to her Chase online banking app, snapping a picture of the check to deposit it to her account. “Can I be sure this check’s going to clear? You know I’d have preferred cash.”

  Ted’s voice betrayed his irritation. He hated when attractive women tried to be tough businessmen. She should be grateful for the bonus. “You have my guarantee the check will clear.”

  She watched the phone to see that the transaction had been processed, then put it and the check in her bag. She said calmly, “It’s just I know your cash situation isn’t quite what it used to be, since the Gibly deal.”

  “Just because Gibly didn’t sell for two point three billion doesn’t mean it didn’t sell for a lot,” Ted answered, his voice loaded like a spring. “Our investors still made money.”

  “Some made money. But not you.” She stared fearlessly into Ted’s eyes, the slightest hint of a smile at the corner of her dark pink lips.

  Ted studied her face, wanting at once to hit and to fiercely kiss her. “What do you know?” he demanded in a low voice.

  She lifted an eyebrow. “Well,” she started, turning her gaze to a nearby tree. “Hours before the deal was first announced you secretly loaded all of your net worth into the company, expecting to make an impressive—albeit not public—return. But”—she turned back to face him—“of course you can’t say anything since it wasn’t exactly a legal move to begin with; your American government doesn’t take kindly to transactions made off of insider knowledge.”

  The British accent he’d found so irresistible when he hired her now grated on his last nerve. “So what,” he said. “I lost my money. Shit, Violet, I lost a lot of it. But I’ll recover.”

  “Kind of throws a kink in the plan to destroy Amelia Dory, though, doesn’t it?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You hired me to help you hurt Amelia, to get back at her for ruining your Gibly deal.”

  “Yes.”

  “But now you need money. And you’re not getting it from that stupid social music iPhone app. So Doreye’s looking like your best investment.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “PKC would pay me a lot more than you just did—even with that very generous bonus; thank you, by the way—to show them that the infamous Ted Bristol is Doreye’s secret investor.”

  Ted didn’t move a muscle as he locked eyes with Violet, trying to decipher whether she was bluffing or had information.

  “But Doreye is on the rocks, Ted. It won’t succeed without Amelia.” Violet finally broke the stare with a giggle. “Aren’t these little ironies just delicious? Your only chance to reclaim your wealth is for Doreye to work, but now you’re starting to realize that to make it work you need help from the girl you set out to destroy in the first place.”

  Ted’s palms were sweating inside his white golf gloves. Of course the dilemma had occurred to him, but he still had T.J. and Adam in the company and was holding out for them to turn Doreye around without that girl. If Violet were a man, he would have punched her.

  “Don’t be so nervous,” she said, giggling and lifting a finger to scratch the corner of her glossed lip. “I won’t tell.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “But I do.” Violet shifted her finger from her lip and pressed it into the center of Ted’s chest. “That’s the thing. I do know about your secret investment in Doreye and I do know how you did it and I do know other things, too.”

  “Like what?”

  “Nuh-uh-uh.” Violet shook her head, then pinched her fingers and playfully zipped her lips.

  “I think you should leave,” Ted said abruptly. “Your work with Doreye and Adam Dory is done.”

  “No; your work with Adam is done. Mine is just beginning.”

  44

  When Instinct Takes Over

  “Amelia, wake up.” Amelia heard a whisper and felt a hand gently shake her shoulder. She opened her eyes and blinked several times to remember where she was—next to an MBA girl in a bedroom where two other girls were sleeping on air mattresses on the floor.

  Chad was standing over her in boxer shorts and no shirt. His chest was almost as perfect as T.J.’s; not that she had ever seen T.J. shirtless, but she’d imagined it a lot. “Can you be ready in ten? I want to beat the crowds. We’ll pick up a breakfast on the way.”

  Amelia nodded, pulling her legs from under the covers and making her way to the bathroom.

  She slurped water greedily from the faucet, desperately thirsty from the altitude and the—three? four? five? six?—drinks she’d had the night before. When their car had arrived at a massive eight-bedroom ski house in North Lake Tahoe, a dozen MBA students were seated at a table eating heaping plates of spaghetti and pizza. Three trash cans full of empty wine bottles and beer cans betrayed an aggressive predinner happy hour, and the table was in excellent spirits. The girls all squealed when Chad and Jason entered, and they’d all welcomed their friends Amelia and Theo. One girl handed Amelia a vodka-and-cranberry and said, “You look like a vodka-cran girl. Are you Shandi?” to which Amelia had blushed and tried to explain, but the girl had already drunkenly skipped away to hug Jason.

  Amelia looked up at her face in the mirror, trying to make her eyes adjust to the light as she reluctantly put her contacts in.

  When she finally came upstairs, Chad handed her ski goggles, a helmet, and poles. “Good news—Leslie’s too hungover to ski today and said you could use her stuff so you don’t have to rent. Skis are in the car. Let’s go.”

  Amelia followed Chad to the car, trying to process how he had so much energy after such a late night. �
��What time is it?” was all she could find to say.

  “Seven-thirty. Late!” he chirped.

  They stopped at a café and picked up breakfast burritos and coffee to have in the car. By the time they got to the slopes Amelia was feeling ready to take on the new challenge.

  For the next two hours, Chad guided Amelia onto her skis and down the bunny slopes, carefully avoiding packs of children in ski school. By midmorning, Amelia was starting to get the hang of it and was actually going respectably quickly down the hill.

  “You’re a natural!” Chad patted her on the back, his cheeks ruddy with the cold.

  “You’re a good teacher,” she insisted humbly. She’d never been a natural at anything other than programming.

  “Let’s try a blue.”

  Amelia followed Chad to the chairlift and, slowly but steadily, down a harder ski slope. They stopped for lunch with some of Chad’s classmates at noon. Amelia was exhausted and cold and not sure she’d ever tasted anything so wonderful as the bowl of chili before her.

  “Little more?” Chad asked when she was finished. “I think you should see backcountry.”

  Amelia’s thighs were screaming from all the work, but she didn’t want today to be over. “Sure,” she said, and they replaced their helmets and bid farewell to their lunch companions.

  Chad led Amelia to a ski lift, then to another, and when they got off they were on the ridge of a mountain looking down on Lake Tahoe. The wind hissed and blew sharp snow in her face, but Amelia didn’t care: The lake thousands of feet below was crystal blue, accentuated by the brightness of the snow on the shores around it. She thought it might be the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. It made all the problems back on campus feel totally manageable—small, even, like the trees barely visible along the lake edge.