I shower. I dress down. Then I look in the mirror and dress down further. The feeling that I’ve acted like a call girl thus far is a lead necklace. I’m trying to remind myself of all the flattering things Evan said about my instinct and ability to bond with people, but what keeps coming back to me is the feeling of his hands on my ass, his big cock sliding in and out with no resistance. What I keep thinking of, while I try to pack my bag for the day’s work, is the taste of Evan’s flesh in my mouth, the feel of his tongue between my spread legs.
I dress down one more time.
When I arrive at LiveLyfe’s office, I do the same thing that I did yesterday. I go into the bathroom. And goddammit if I don’t look kind of slutty again, despite all the dressing down. I put on pants instead of a dress or skirt, but they’re tighter than I realized. My blouse is clingy and shows my boobs too much. And the fucking thing doesn’t have buttons above a certain point, and I’ve worn that bra that promises to lift and separate, so it looks a little I’m walking into the room offering tits on a platter.
I need to go home. Screw the job. Screw the million. He can have it back.
I’m halfway to the elevator when a woman shouts after me. She catches me and extends a hand.
“Rebecca?”
I nod.
“I’m Taylor. Evan’s executive assistant.”
“I dressed down today.”
This isn’t what Taylor expected me to say. I’ve got such a loose verbal sphincter; I just poop words out without even meaning to. My lack of filter does have some use, at least: I checked my website stats before leaving my place, and the doctored dick pics went over like gangbusters. “Strangled Cock” has even started to go viral. 113 people joined my email list this morning before my teapot boiled. It’s like I’m allergic to failure. I just drunkenly stumble my way into success.
“That’s nice,” is all Taylor can say.
We shake hands.
“Evan is waiting for you.”
I manage not to say, … naked, on silk sheets, with a giant boner and a red bow tie?
“He’s in his office.”
“Not the conference room?” You know, the scene of my crime?
Taylor takes my hand and starts to lead. I drag my heels like a dog reluctant to visit the vet. Taylor looks at me like I’m crazy. Or perhaps six years old.
“Is everything okay?”
“I saw a Hill of Beans downstairs. Could you ask him to meet me there?”
Taylor stalls like a robot chewing on bad input. I guess most people do what Evan wants rather than making suggestions of their own.
“Please?” I add. “I’d really like some oatmeal.”
“Hill of Beans sells oatmeal?”
“I was surprised, too.”
I know this exchange isn’t logical. It’s like she’s speaking one language and I’m speaking another, but we’re both trying to pretend it’s all good and we haven’t noticed.
“O-okay.”
“I’ll be down there.”
I leave Taylor baffled.
Ten minutes later, Evan and I are sitting in two uncomfortable chairs with a wobbly round table between us. I don’t have the confidence to put my tea on its top, for fear of spilling. I didn’t get oatmeal. I don’t like oatmeal. I hope Taylor didn’t lead Evan to expect it.
I let Evan lead the discussion. We don’t talk about yesterday, though he tries to bring it up several times. I’m not sure how I feel. My mind keeps revisiting our conference room encounter, and the word he said that started us groping: “Maybe.” In response to my question about whether he hired me for any reason other than my brain.
At the time, it seemed hot. It meant he was into me for reasons unknown.
Now, I can’t help but hear it like a whore’s dinner bell. Oh, I need to perform for my pay? Okay, here’s pussy.
Not that it was that way. Not that Evan meant it like that, because I’m sure he didn’t. But I’m already unsure about this whole thing, and the fact that I dropped my panties on my first day of work isn’t exactly helping me to feel like an all-star.
I look across the table at Evan. There’s heat on my body, in all the right places.
I look away when he looks directly at me because I’m not sure what any of this means. At this point, it needs to be work first, “bonuses” second. If at all. I do have some self-respect. Let’s get this project up and running, and never mind the way Evan keeps looking at me: like he’s a wolf on a tether, held back only by civil restraint. Thank God I chose Hill of Beans. We’d be interfacing like bunnies right now if we were alone in his office.
On the whole, I’d rather not think about it.
I think about it after I go home again. I think about it once in bed, then again in the shower. I think about it again in the morning, remembering the way Evan’s eyes drilled into mine while his cock drilled somewhere else. Then I force myself to pull my panties back up and stop thinking about it. If I think about it much more, I’ll develop a callus.
The next day, we meet in the Hill of Beans again.
Then the next day.
We work right through the weekend. Evan eventually vetoes the coffee shop, so I order up. The delivery guys come into his office right after the door closes and we’re alone together. I tell them to leave the door open on their way out because I have a medical condition and need the fresh air.
The project goes nowhere.
At all.
This doesn’t seem to bother Evan. Most of the time when we’re together, we don’t even talk about anything that feels directly like work. He asks about me, but that’s not strange because my business (which is relevant) is braided with my personal life (which is none of Evan’s business). He asks how I got started. How I learned what I learned. What signals I use to help me make decisions: do my choices come purely from instinct, or do I watch statistics and indicators? He wants to know what kinds of sales funnels I’ve built and how I built them. He asks about my facility with LiveLyfe ads: how I choose exactly the right image, exactly the right text, and target exactly the right demographics.
Even I can’t place LiveLyfe ads as effective as yours, he tells me.
Time passes. It feels like we’re on an enormous, week-long date.
Evan keeps trying to get me alone. I resist. He keeps looking at me in that way of his, and I try to resist looking back. I usually fail. I’m having dreams about Evan. It’s not just fucking. I imagine us building a great unseen thing. I don’t know what the thing is, but in my dreams Evan does. I ask, and Dream Evan tells me to be patient. Answers will come.
More days. More nights.
One night I dream I’m on a three-way date with Evan and Steve. We all walk down a boardwalk arm-in-arm-in-arm with me in the middle. We reach the end, cross a stretch of beach, and wrap around so we’re under the boardwalk, which looms overhead. Our arms separate, and Evan beats Steve until he apologizes to me. For everything.
Day ten or eleven, we’re in a Cheesecake Factory down the block from Evan’s office, and I’ve insisted on paying so hard that I’ll fight him if I have to. We’re at a square table in the restaurant’s center. It’s too loud, but that’s the idea. I’m afraid to be alone with Evan. I’d hoped what was between us would go away, but it’s more like an obstruction building pressure in a hose. It’s been hard to think of anything but Evan. And I can tell by the way he watches me and tries to touch me that he’s been thinking of me.
It scares me. A lot.
“This isn’t working,” I say.
Evan kind of shakes his head. “What isn’t?”
“I’m not helping you at all. All we do is sit around and talk, and you’ve paid me a million dollars.”
He looks relieved as if he thought this isn’t working meant something more dire. “This is how the process works,” he says.
“It’s not a process. It’s just discussion.”
“That’s the process.”
I sigh, exasperated. I meet his eyes. Hard. “Evan,” I
say. “Tell me the truth.”
“Okay.”
“Do you plan for this to become something, or did you just want to sleep with me?”
He fumbles, but recovers quickly. “Of course I have a plan. I contacted you about it before I’d even met you.”
“But it’s been two weeks. More if you count those first talks. And we have nothing. Not even a speck of an idea. I don’t mean to beat it to death, but … a million dollars, Evan. That might be pocket change for you; I don’t know. But to me it’s a lot of money.”
“It is for me, too. For LiveLyfe. For my CFO, who’s pissed that I spent it.”
“I can give it back. I haven’t touched it. I don’t want money I didn’t earn.”
“I said I spent it,” Evan repeats, as if “spent” is forever.
“I’m not earning it. I’m not doing anything.”
“By the standards of pure ideation, you’re doing a lot.”
This baffles me. I’d accuse him of lying, but I’ve known Evan a while now, and he doesn’t strike me as a liar.
“Pretend you’re building a mansion,” Evan says. “In one part of the mansion, there’s a spectacular room. You build every inch of it. You hang the chandeliers and lay the rugs and paint the walls and choose the furnishings. But until the room is mostly finished, you can’t turn on the lights. You can’t install windows. So, you work in the dark, operating by feel. Only when it’s done can you install a door, open the room, and see what you’ve created.”
“This isn’t the same,” I say.
“It is. We build beneath the surface first. Whatever this is, it’s growing. I can feel it. It’s in my subconscious, and in yours. At some point, we’ll find the door and peek inside to see what we’ve made.”
“I’m not like you, Evan. I can’t work in abstractions. I’m the queen of transparency. I’m the opposite of what you’re describing. I start with what’s in front of me. My own two hands. If you like what I do so much, you’d know that: all my success online has been about restating what’s personal, present, and obvious.”
“You have to try.”
I shake my head. “You have to explain it to me. Don’t leave it all to mystery. Maybe you can do alchemy, but I can’t. If you want my help, I need to know the shape of the machine behind the curtain.”
“I can’t tell you,” he says.
I send his own words back to him. “You have to try.”
Evan thinks. Looks around.
“If you had to start all over,” I say. “If you had to burn LiveLyfe to the ground, and do it all again from the beginning, what would you build?”
A long moment passes. Then his eyes light up.
It’s intense. Seductive. Mesmerizing. It’s impossible for my soul to resist, and I feel the way it slips through my fingers as it streams across the table to find him. I feel me bleed into him, drawn by the idea’s birth like a moth to a flame.
But instead of telling me what’s on his mind, Evan stands. “I’m sorry about lunch. I need to think. But meet me for dinner.”
“Here?”
He shakes his head. “I’ll send a car.”
I know I should resist.
But before Evan leaves the restaurant, I nod my yes.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
EVAN
IF YOU HAD TO START all over — if you had to burn LiveLyfe to the ground and do it all again from the beginning — what would you build?
I’ve been asking myself variations of this question for months. I said something similar, albeit in less definitive terms, while climbing with Hampton and Mateo. I even discussed it with Mateo afterward, because even as big as he’s built his PEZA restaurants, the same sort of wanderlust seems to have infiltrated his bones, with his plans to buy his mountain.
Even success, for people like us, can be a trap. I made LiveLyfe, and it’s like a child to me. I’d never burn it down, but every day I have to feed it. I don’t want LiveLyfe to define me, just like Mateo doesn’t want PEZA to define him. There’s a duality within me, same as Mateo. We both made something for the world. Now we want to do it again, but this time for ourselves.
My thoughts have stalled, caught in internal snares and thorns. The problem is that LiveLyfe doesn’t strike me as “for the world” at all. It’s made me incredibly wealthy. It’s changed the world — in many cases, for the better, and I have reaped all the benefit. I feel guilty wanting more than LiveLyfe, and I feel obligated by it. My plans revolve around it by necessity. To think from a blank slate — as if LiveLyfe doesn’t exist? That’d be like designing a highway to cross Gibraltar without considering the enormous rock in its heart.
But as I make my preparations for dinner, I hear Rebecca’s words and new possibilities open like buds to greet the morning sun.
That’s why you paid her so much, I think. That’s why Callie was wrong. You had to spend a million dollars so you’d take your consultant’s words seriously.
But so much of the nuance, as I roll her words around, is in the tone of Becca’s voice. I can picture her saying them. I see her across from me in that loud restaurant. The way her lips moved. The toss of her dark hair in the breeze from an overhead fan. Those blue, blue eyes, unlike any I’ve seen before I met her.
When I go to bed at night, I remember the way she looked at me, that day in the conference room.
When I wake in the morning, I’ve gotten into the habit of taking time I can’t afford to waste to read the latest on her website. I tell myself I’m doing it to see if she’s leaking confidential information through her lack of a filter; paradoxically I find myself disappointed every time I go unmentioned.
I can imagine why she’s been so distant since that day. I even understand it. But I also hate it. I know what I want, and these days she’s my only fantasy.
I find myself yearning, and I’m not the kind of guy who has time or energy to yearn.
Taylor calls. Sam calls. They both remind me of all my mounting obligations. Two weeks ago, I had a schedule packed with to-dos and meetings. Now I spend hours upon hours with Rebecca. I’ve told Sam and Taylor that we’re on the cusp of a paradigm shift and that this matters more than anything else. Schedules will have to adapt. It’s the only way forward.
Ironically, once I’ve frustrated her enough, Taylor asks me if I’m willing to let what I’ve built go to shit to chase something new.
I tell her she’s being dramatic. The company should run without me. And so far, it is.
All that stuff I’ve been doing? All that’s filled my days for years? It’s starting to feel like smoke and mirrors. It didn’t matter. It was just me keeping busy; because the most important things live on even as I step back.
If you had to start all over, what would you build?
Not a new question, but I’m taking the words seriously for the first time.
But am I taking them seriously because my million-dollar consultant said them? Or because Rebecca did?
Is my new sense of seriousness and obligation coming from responsibility to the company — or to the woman I can’t banish from my mind?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
REBECCA
A GUY NAMED CURTIS CALLS me. At first, I don’t get that he’s Evan’s driver because the call comes shortly after I get back from Cheesecake Factory, announcing that he’ll be by to get me in an hour.
Even after Curtis establishes his identity and the pieces snap into place, I still find myself looking at the clock. Curtis will be here at 3 PM, it seems.
But I’ve already said okay, and the phone is dead.
Wasn’t this supposed to be dinner?
I text Evan and get nothing. I try to message him, but I get nothing on LiveLyfe, either. I’m not surprised; Evan has thus far proven impossible to reach. He’s probably in the middle of a thousand things, and “thinking” all the while. I know what I asked him, but I don’t understand his reaction.
I’m reminded of the way you bring an orchid back to life. After the flower seems to di
e, you water and water and water the nothing it’s become. For weeks. Months. You start to feel like an idiot, feeding something that’s dead and gone. But then all of a sudden, the orchid grows anew, and you realize that all the time you spent doing nothing was doing something after all.
Is that what we were doing? Watering a project that only seemed aimless? Through all those days of undirected discussion, were we serving an idea that’s finally beginning to bloom?
I have Taylor’s number. But I don’t want to bother Evan while he’s busy. It must be an early dinner. I don’t know where we’re going, so I shower and then straddle the line between dressy and dressy dressy. I know we’re not going to Applebee’s. Or the Cheesecake Factory.
I have nothing else going on today. I started a new ad for my Make Men Do Stuff course today and now it’s on autopilot, throwing so much money into my account that Evan’s million might remain forever untouched. I posted yesterday on the blog, so that’s handled. I have no other plans for the afternoon — might as well roll with whatever Evan has planned.
Curtis picks me up in a big black Escalade. I get into the front seat. Curtis looks at me funny, and I realize I was supposed to sit in the back.
“First time in a limo?”
“Yeah.”
I think he’s going to make fun of me, but he ticks his head toward the stereo system.
“That means you get to pick the music.”
I find an ‘80s station. I wasn’t around in the ‘80s, but they have their own identity and have stamped themselves firmly on the zeitgeist. The song is “Come on Eileen.” It was my favorite ‘80s song before Benji ruined it for me, pointing out that there’s a porno by the same name.
Curtis puts me at ease. This is the driver Evan told me about — the one who refuses to call the boss by his first name even though Evan insists. Luckily, Curtis isn’t as formal with me.
We’re thick into the “Safety Dance” by the time the car stops. I was vogueing, so I didn’t notice until now that we’re at an airstrip.
Curtis kills the radio. He looks at me and says, “Let me open your door for you. Please.”
The Founder (Trillionaire Boys' Club Book 7) Page 10