“No, I don’t. What about Nichole?” Somehow, Rosalind’s upper and lower teeth had declared war on each other, not out of anger, out of fear and confusion. The clenching stopped, however, when her imagination took off. “Oh my God, is she dead? Kamakshi, tell me she’s not dead. I know I’ve been busy, but I haven’t been that busy. I would notice if one of my best friends died.”
“No, she’s fine!” Kamakshi took the flute Carmen offered. “She moved to Dubai with her husband. You don’t remember me telling you about that Arab millionaire she married? Yup, he’s heading up his daddy’s construction firm.”
“Wait! Nichole is married?” Shell shocked was putting it mildly. “And Jamie had a baby? Like, a baby human?”
“Last spring. Ben. He’s almost a year old. He is so cute! Last week he started doing this thing where he… Roz, you don’t look well. Sit down. Carmen, help me?”
Together, they hooked arms with Rosalind and maneuvered her around a glass coffee table with chrome accents, then lowered her to the white leather sofa. Her body surrendered to the couch with a gentle moan of the leather under her lithe frame.
“Drink this.” Carmen pushed the flute into Rosalind’s hand.
Without looking anywhere except dead ahead, Rosalind pressed the glass to her lips, tilted it back, and in one fell swoop, downed the entirety.
Kamakshi bit her bottom lip. “Maybe we should have gotten her some water instead.”
The penthouse loft on the fifteenth floor boasted an expansive view of the city by the bay. Rosalind’s prime SOMA location afforded a view of the Museum of Modern Art and the Moscone Center. Though the hills in the mid part of the city rose to block her view of the sunset, she could still see it by the time the reality sunk in, red and orange staining the sky.
Okay, so she was a little behind on the lives of women she used to be so close to in college, they’d text each other good night across campus as part of an on-going joke.
“What did I think, that they’d all stop moving on with their lives just because I got a little distracted?”
She hadn’t realized she’d said it aloud until Kamakshi answered, “Of course not. And they all understood. You were building BetaHouse, working fourteen-hour days when you weren’t traveling. You were doing it: living the dream we all had.”
“But that’s what gets me, Kam. This is what we all wanted to do. We all said bras and biz before bros, cash before cocks. What happened? Seems like you and I are the only ones who remained true to that.”
Carmen, the outsider to the sisterhood, perhaps had the best perspective. “Miss Betters, that’s how life works. Sometimes you set out walking down a road thinking you’re going somewhere, and somewhere along the way something else grabs your attention.”
Rosalind inhaled deeply, gathering all her tension into a ball at the pit of her stomach, then convincing herself it was leaving her body as she pushed the breath out through pursed lips. The coping routine was one she’d been taught long ago as a child. “Right, Carmen. You’re absolutely right.” Then she turned to Kamakshi. The stark ivory of her own hand looked even paler when laid atop her Indian friend’s latte tone. “At least we’re still in it together. I got BetaHouse, you have KeyTerra, and we’re going to rule the world, just like we planned, right? No relationships, just equity.”
As though Kamakshi had suddenly developed an intestinal bug, she cringed and squirmed. “Um, yeah.”
The nerves were back, and so was the sound of her own pulse pounding in her ears. “No, I am not that out of the loop! You, I know. We still have dinner once a week! Well, except these last few weeks, but leading up to the big meeting… What happened? Did your funding fall through? Did you liquidate? Whatever it is, we can undo it. With the next phase of BetaHouse underway, we can get together and brainstorm like we used to do. We’ll find a way to fix it.”
“No, no, no! KeyTerra is fine. And both you and I know that your big contract is going to double your work load, not lighten it,” Kamakshi returned. “It’s… something else completely. This isn’t really the way I pictured telling you this, but…” Pushing her hand in to her pocket, Kamakshi withdrew a gemstone that could choke a goat. It was only when she slipped the rock over her finger that Rosalind noticed there was a ring attached to it. “I’m engaged.”
One final thud of her heart, and Rosalind was through. There were only so many revelations a body could take before it had to reboot. Rosalind Betters rebooted, right onto the floor.
Left Column, Right Column
“When will you be home tonight?”
Rosalind pulled her blonde hair back into a high ponytail, her eyes searching the drawer for the bobby pins she’d need to secure her bun in place. “Don’t know. I have an all-hands meeting at six-thirty and a one-on-one with my chief web architect at eight. Then some phone calls to Asia, emails… Could be pretty late.”
Chris sighed like she just told him his car had been towed.
Rosalind reached behind her and rubbed his smooth cheek, using his reflection in the mirror behind her to see. He lowered his mouth to the meeting of her neck and shoulders, a move with him that signaled moping. “Hey, I’m sorry. You’d know I’d much rather be here with you, eating take out and watching Fred Astaire. But this is a critical time. If BetaHouse is going to get that investment line secured, we have to show them a fully functional demonstration of the first application by the end of next week. I can’t screw this up.”
“Yeah, I know.” The corners of his mouth lifted as she turned in his arms. His infectious smile brought one to her face as well. He leaned over and kissed the tip of her nose. “I feel like we never spend any time together anymore. I know we haven’t been together long, but I kinda, you know, miss you.”
In the psychosis playground of her mind, a behemoth clunky robot had a warning light on full blast, telling Will Robinson to get his ass home and lock the door tight when he got there. “Really?” she managed to say without sounding panicked. “You miss me that much?”
His laugh managed to sound simultaneously light and dark. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Was it? Could being close enough to someone for them to miss you be a bad thing? Logic and her mother’s voice in her head said no, but something about having someone depending on her for that sort of emotional connection gave her a fear of roots. Everything these days was so live-by-the-minute. She feared ties.
“Of course not. I’m just flattered.” She wished she could find a less dismissive word, but nothing came to mind at the moment. “Tell you what? I’ll bump back my eight o’clock to seven and only answer the most critical emails. I’ll try to be home in time for The Daily Show, okay?” Playfully, she closed her eyes and raised up on her toes to weave her hands behind his neck. “And if you give me a little reminder of what I’m coming home to, I might even pick up dinner on the way.”
Chris’s strong hands anchored on her cheeks, the pads of his middle fingers skimming her earlobes. Gently, he coaxed her toward him, angling her head up, bringing them to the point of contact. The scent of lavender—an odd choice for cologne, but he must have known how she liked it—tickled her senses.
And then he licked her like a man; full, wet, warm slops of saliva spread from her chin, up a line, past her lips and up the arc of her nose. Over and over his tongue darted out and lapped her face, moving left to her cheek bone, then her eye lid. Rapid, needing, aching...
“STRUDEL! Stop!”
Carmen’s hands fretted about her own neck, as though she were trying to decide whether or not to strangle herself. Kamakshi, on the other hand, stood overhead, a small brown bottle in her hand, looking down at Rosalind, proud as a peacock.
“I knew lavender oil would do the trick. It’s her favorite.”
When the licking resumed, Rosalind jolted up to a sitting position. Her head still swam in confusion about what had just happened. As the
fuzzy image before her sharpened into fur, she realized her saliva suitor was none other than her dog, Strudel. The seventy-pound canine was still under the impression that one, he was a puppy and two, that Rosalind’s lap was actually a doggy mat. He crawled on to her legs and proceeded to cover her face in spit-fueled love.
“Hello, baby,” Rosalind cooed, taking the dog’s ears in her hands and scratching. “Momma missed you. Did you just get back from your walk?” Then, looking up at a beaming Kamakshi, who considered Strudel Rosalind’s second best friend in the world, she asked, “What happened?”
“I told you I was getting married, and you decided to pioneer apartment floor planking.”
Carmen reached out a hand and hoisted Rosalind to her feet. “I’ve never actually seen someone faint from shock before. It was just like a scene out of some old Hollywood movie.”
The corner of Kamakshi’s mouth pulled back into a pinch. “Where would Rosalind have seen any old Hollywood movies?” she asked with a healthy dose of sarcasm.
Carmen was undeterred. “You need me to set up an appointment for you, Miss Betters? You feeling okay?”
Strudel pushed his snout under Rosalind’s hand, his big black eyes fixed on her as he jumped down to the floor and stationed himself at her feet and at the ready to go anywhere she was. “Thank you, Carmen. I’m fine. Can you help me walk to the sofa? I think I just need to sit a few minutes.”
Few times in her life had she actually been blown completely out of the water. The first had been when Arnold Swartzenegger managed to become governor of California. Unless Carmen was about to add that she was actually a Siamese twin living in disguise, Rosalind felt confident it would be a while before anything like this walloped her again.
“Who?”
Kamakshi fidgeted. “His name is Prashant.”
“Prashant?” She searched her memories. True, Betahouse’s to-do list came before keeping up with Kamakshi’s social life as of late, so they hadn’t exactly been sharing minute-by-minute blows of all their going-ons, but still. “Prashant who?”
“Radhakrishnan,” Kamakshi supplemented, seating herself on the edge of the couch next to her friend. “Don’t worry, you aren’t completely scatter-brained. You’ve never met him. Actually, until a few weeks ago, I’d never met him either.”
Rosalind’s eyebrows knitted. “So you, what, fell in love at first sight or something?”
“Well, not exactly.” Pinching her fingers together, Kamakshi scooted to the edge of the cushion. “A matchamaker found him for me.”
Well, didn’t that up the ante of on the WTF-o-meter. “Are you saying that you had someone find you a husband?”
Nervously, Kamakshi bobbed her head.
Rosalind blanched. “You mean you’re getting marrieds… on purpose?”
“Miss Betters, I don’t want to intrude, so I’m going to go ahead and take off.” Carmen, who had already been inching toward the door as Rosalind’s face inched toward the red spectrum of the color wheel, cleared her throat and grabbed her purse off the side table. It wasn’t so much excusing herself as fleeing the scene lest later she be subpoenaed as a witness. “Congratulations again! I’ll see you in the morning for the nine-thirty debriefing?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. With a quick wave and a sympathetic glance at Kamakshi, Carmen bolted out the door.
Which left the two of them alone, glaring.
Kamakshi was the one to finally break the silence. “I know what you’re going to say.”
“Do you, Kam? Do you really?” She shot to her feet and began measuring the width of the loft’s seating area footstep by footstep. “Because I’m not sure I do. I mean, if you had told me you decided to cut off all your hair and join a biker gang, I think that would have made more sense. That would be in line with how bold, how committed, how willing you are to being your own person and being a success in the way you see it. But marriage? I thought we all agreed that was an old world practice meant to keep a woman in check so she doesn’t get too uppity and independent? To make sure she remembers her highest purpose in life is to be the servant of her husband and, lord help me, kids?”
To her utter amazement, Kamakshi took every slight with grace. Never did she bristle or bite; she just waited for Rosalind to lay out her piece, then explained in a voice both calm and firm, “Roz, when we said those things, we were twenty years old. And I agree with you still; many women use marriage as a crutch to prop up their own sense of identity. But we’re older now, and hopefully a little bit wiser. We see those things we once thought black and white have many shades of gray in between. That’s what a marriage can be for some, but it’s not what it has to be for all.”
Rosalind stared slack-jawed and gap-mouthed, like Kamakshi was trying to explain the basic principles of astrophysics and not justify spontaneous matrimony. “I don’t get it.”
Kamakshi reached across and took Rosalind’s hand into her own. Strudel took advantage of the joining to lick over both the women’s knuckles.
“Rosalind, why are you trying so hard to make BetaHouse a success?”
The befuddled blonde withdrew her hand and leapt to her feet. “Gah, that’s such a stupid question!”
“It’s not. It’s a simple question. So answer it.” Kamakshi folded one leg over another and waited patiently. “And don’t try to tell me it’s for the money. I know for a fact that you were offered everything short of paradise by Google to stay, and that Yahoo and a handful of other valley companies chased you like a rabbit when the rumor circulated that you were leaving.”
Planting her feet into the ground, Rosalind folded her arms over her chest and huffed, “Because I didn’t want to be anyone’s lapdog!”
“That’s true, but that’s also not the reason. We both know you would never allow yourself to stay in a position where you were being taken advantage of.” Her eyes narrowed. “The truth. Now.”
It call came out like a floodgate bursting. “Because I want to make something that’s mine! I want to hone, and strive, and labor, and grunt, and at the end of the day, turn around and say, ‘Look! I did that! I made that! My work, and my time, and my idea, and it happened, because I believed I could.’”
At the end of Rosalind’s screed, Kamakshi cupped her chin and cocked her head to the side. “And you would be saying this to…”
Rosalind shrugged. “Everyone.”
“Everyone doesn’t care. Maybe some will give you a pat on the back and or a write up in Forbes, but the following day, they’ll be on to the next hot thing. Think back a bit. Remember the night you got that first investor to come on board? And you were so excited, who was it that you came running to with the news?”
“You,” Rosalind said shortly. When Kamakshi’s impatient glare continued to burn into her, she added, “And Nichole. And Lani and Jamie, I guess.”
“Exactly, your friends, because that’s whose opinion really counted. Today, quite likely the most important day in your career, and who is here?”
“You, my one remaining single, still-her-own-woman friend,” spat back Rosalind.
Still demonstrating tranquility, Kamakshi nodded. “Because Nichole, Lani, and Jamie have all moved on now. Maybe you haven’t, but I see how happy they are. I saw how their marriages worked: how they supported their husbands, and were supported by them. And here I was, slaving away day after day, and going home to my vast collection of Bollywood DVDs and microwaved chapatti. At the end of the day, I have no one to brag to, to get comfort from, or to give comfort to.”
“Your brother lives right over in Berkeley, and you still have me!” Rosalind interjected. “I’m still here. I would never turn my back on you. You know that! Okay, okay, maybe we were wrong. Maybe marriage isn’t always horrible, but I stand by it being debilitating to a career. Well, to a woman’s career, anyway. You can’t tell me that’s not true.”
“Don’t th
ink of it as a negative. It’s like Nichole told me: she just got to the point where her priorities changed. She’d look at the really successful valley suits—men and women—and see how they built empty castles. Yes, Rosalind Betters, you might be the next Meg Whitman or Carli Fiorina, but remember, they both are married, and I think the better for it. Everything you and I thought … it was wrong. Marriage doesn’t make a woman weak. A good marriage makes a woman stronger. I want that. I want to be part of something like that. I’m just as dedicated to my career as you are. I want my company to grow and flourish, but at the end of the day, I want my soul to grow and flourish, too. That’s why ... that’s why I’m getting married. Because I want what I do to count for someone who cares, who will be with me forever.”
Soft fur brushed against her hand. Rosalind looked down to find Strudel’s big black eyes fixed on her, as though issuing her a challenge to argue that.
“And Prashant… is he a…” What was the right word? “…wise decision?”
A smile spread across that beautiful sandstone-hued face framed by thick, black hair. “Are my decicions ever elsewise?”
No, they weren’t Rosalind trusted in Kamakshi’s judgment implicitly. Early on, when she’d just been getting BetaHouse going, Kamakshi served as both her biggest cheerleader and her most trusted sounding board.
Strudel let out a whine, forcing Rosalind to lean down slightly and stroke his head. The loyal mutt, basking in his master’s attention, rose to his feet and moved closer, almost throwing Rosalind onto the floor.
The shift of focus provided the moment to collect herself that she so desperately needed. It also reminded her that when Kamakshi left the apartment, it would again be a party of one. Plus a dog. Which is how Rosalind Betters came to realize that her friend had struck on something not only surprisingly true, but absolutely brilliant.
Have Gown, Will Wed Page 2