The Start-Up

by A K Kingston

  “Maybe, I wasn’t, but I am now.”

  She shook her head. “I saw how much she was wiling to fight me for you. There might still be something there.”

  “There isn’t! Why can’t you believe me?”

  "I just can’t. It's too much of a risk. I can't." Fi closed the door in Crawford’s face before he could talk her out of her decision.

  Chapter 19

  It had been over a week since anyone had heard from Fi. Crawford had gone over to her house to confront her. From what he said, that didn't exactly go well. Blaine wasn't going to make the same mistake.

  He understood why Fi wanted to end things with Crawford. Well, he sort of understood. Tina had a way of being possessive. She'd floated in and out of Crawford's life so many times that it made sense Fi was apprehensive to get in the middle of that.

  But, why had she broken off things with Blaine? What had he done?

  He kept going over in his mind what happened the last time they hung out. The more he thought about it, the more anxiety crept up in his chest.

  They'd had a great time out on the boat. He could see how things could have been misconstrued at the club. Sienna and Flora were girls he knew way back, all the way from high school. They were all friends.

  Then again, he had leaned into their friendliness that bordered on flirtation. Why had he done that?

  It was a tactic that he'd done before. It made girls crazy with jealousy to see him chatting up another woman. He'd fallen into doing that with Fi when he shouldn't have. He wasn't a girl he wanted to make wild with envy. She was a girl that he truly cared about.

  But… He cared about her in a way that made him feel exposed and weak. He couldn’t

  He couldn't go to her house and stalk her. Crawford had already tried that. Camping out a woman's house was not his style, but staking out the coffee shop down the street? That was less intrusive.

  She'd come into work with a coffee cups from Flytown Coffee. Sooner or later, she'd walk in there. He would causually approach her as if it was a coincidence.

  Three days later of spending eight hour a day working out of Flytown, Blaine became disheartened. Had she completely moved out of town? He had an urge to walk the four blocks over to her apartment and knock on her door. Where was she?

  He was on a call with a prospective investor when he saw her enter the coffee shop. He threw his plan to be aloof when he approached her out the window. He'd been waiting three days faithfully waiting for her appearance.

  "I've got to call you back!" he said into the phone, hanging up before anyone could respond. He hopped up from the table and sprinted to her.

  "Blaine!" Fi said . "What are you doing here?"

  With his heart racing, Blaine suddenly remembered the rehearsed speech. "I was just in the neighborhood." He shrugged, trying to maintain a causual air.

  "Here? Why? This is a long way from the office," Fi said, looking around.

  "I..." He'd concoted a story about having a meeting there, but it seemed too limp of a story to actually say to her. It was too much of a coincidence he was at the coffee shop he knew she frequented,

  He dropped the act. "I miss you."

  Fi shook her head. "I can't do this right now. I have an interview."

  "An interview? With who?" He pleaded with her. "What about Luv Maite? I thought you believed in our product?"

  Fi gripped the strap of her satchel. "I do, but things got complicated when we all..." She straightened herself up and looked him in the eye. "Blain, you will never be satisified with just me." She stepped away, making her way to the door.

  He followed her out onto the street. "Why would you say that? I will. I am!"

  Fi checked her watch. "I've got to go, or I'll be late."

  "Please, don't do this. I've never felt this way about any woman before."

  Fi looked back at him as she walked away. "That may be so, but it's not enough. I'm not enough."

  "That's not true!" he protested, but she'd already walked away.

  Chapter 20

  When Adam walked into the gym, he was completely surprised to see Fi sitting on the bleachers with one of his students, Bonnie. They had their laptops open. Fi looked to be showing Bonnie something on her screen.

  Adam’s emotions got the best of him. He had missed her so much and was eager to set things straight with her.

  “Fi! Hi! What are you doing here?”

  Fi glanced up from her computer. “I’m helping Bonnie with a coding project.” She clenched her jaw. “You probably don’t think I’m qualified enough to teach.”

  “What? Why would you say that?” Adam asked.

  Fi calmly closed her laptop. “Bonnie, try the exercise I gave you. I will be right back.”

  “Okay!” Bonnie said, retreating into her computer screen.

  Fi stood up. “Do you want to talk outside?”

  “Yes! Absolutely!” Adam said.

  In the hall, Fi crossed her arms. “I know you are hiring another engineer. Did you only hire me because you wanted to sleep with me?”

  Adam retorted, “What? Why would you say that? Of course not!”

  Fi nodded her head slowly. “I overheard you talking with a new engineer. You said I needed help! I get that I still have a lot to learn, but why lie to me? Why boost me up and say how great I am when you obviously don’t think that!”

  Adam couldn’t understand why Fi was so upset. He tried to explain. “You are a great engineer, but we are expanding. There are a ton of more features I want to get working on Luv Maite before we present to Z-Combinator.”

  She bit her lip. “Right. Features you don’t think I can manage.”

  Adam shook his head. “No! So many features that it isn’t right to have you work on all of them. You put in so many long nights. We need help! Not because you’re not capable, but it’s because you deserve to rest.”

  Fi looked away from him. She kept shaking her head. “I don’t know if I believe you. I feel like you’ve lied to me this entire time.”

  Adam asked, “I’m not lying to you. Have you listened to any of the messages I’ve left? We are drowning right now without you.”

  Fi laughed. “I’m sure the new guy you’ve hired will get you up to speed.”

  Adam stepped forward. He wanted to put his arms around her. Fi took two steps back.

  “It doesn’t feel right to not have you still be part of this. You are a part of Luv Maite. Your work is integral to how the application works. We need you.” He paused trying to decipher how she was feeling from her face. “We want you to come with us to Z-Combinator when we present.”

  “I can’t do that,” Fi said sadly. “I wish you guys the best of luck.”

  Adam felt like she'd punched him in his chest. "Don't you want to come with us? I've already booked your flight with us."

  Fi looked away. "Why would you do that when I don't even work with you anymore?"

  "Because you deserve to come with us. You've made LuvMaite better. Your work on the code is what has made us jump ahead of the rest. It's why we even got into the accelerator."

  Fi held her arms tightly across her chest. "I doubt that."

  "Why do you doubt that? You are a fantastic engineer."

  Fi backed away. "I don't know if I can trust that assessment from you."

  "Why not? I wouldn't have hired you."

  She shrugged. "Maybe you hired me because of the way I look."

  Adam chuckled. "I care about LuvMaite as much as you do, as much as any one of us on the team. That's the thing! You are part of our team! We need you!"

  Fi made her away to the doors. "You don't need me. You'll be fine."

  Adam chased after her through the high school courtyard. When he had been a high schooler himself, he'd never had the balls to go after a girl so strongly. He'd always been timid, but he couldn't let Fi walk out of his life.

  "I need you," Adam pleaded.

  Fi spun around. "Do you need me as your girlfriend or as an engineer?" />
  Adam put his hands on his hips. "Both. I need you as both things."

  Fi looked up at the sky. A dark gray cloud hovered above the courtyard, but nowhere else. It was an otherwise sunny day, aside from that one ominous cloud.

  Looking back down at Adam's face, she said, "I don't know if I can be any of those things for you."

  She turned around slowly and walked away. Adam let her go. The sting of her rejection hit him square in the chest. What more could he do? What more could he say?

  Chapter 21

  BLAINE CHAPTER - be sure to have blaine explain it was his sister

  Fi's confidence in her engineer abilities was shaken. She couldn't tell if Adam was truly being genuine. What he said to her actually made sense, but she was too on guard to accept his praise. She didn't know anymore what was true and false. It was true they eventually were going to need to hire more engineers. She couldn't accept that it had nothing to do with her abilities.

  Too unsure of herself, she couldn't apply to any new engineer positions. At her state, she wouldn't be able to make it through the interviews. She felt completely out of sorts. She needed to do something completely different for a while to figure herself out.

  The only thing she could think of she would actually enjoy doing was working in a coffee shop. She loved coffee, and it had nothing to do with programming. She'd worked as a barista in high school. Although it had been a number of years, her old manager gave her a great recommendation. She landed a position at Flytown Coffee, her favorite coffee spot. It was only a a few blocks from her house.

  On her first day, she was hit with the memory of Blaine finding her there. He looked like a lost puppy that day. She initially thought it was a mere coincidence, but it couldn’t have been. Although she had never said anything about it, he must have noticed her coffee cups with the Flytown logo on it. This little minute detail touched her.

  His blue eyes had been rimmed with red. Every time a sharp pain of missing him struck her, she remembered the women at the yacht club. Even if the woman she'd seen caught him with was actually his sister, it didn't erase how easily Blaine could replace her.

  He'd demonstrated that with the women at the yacht club. Fi was indispensable. She had to remember that. All the hurt she felt now would be nothing compared to later when Blaine tossed her to the side like all the other women before her.

  After a week of ignoring the guys' texts, emails, and voicemails, the immediate pain of what transpired had gone away. Not being around a computer had also given her some space from her self deprecation. She focused on her job as a barista. She gave herself a break of thinking of all the ways she failed as a person, a girlfriend, and engineer.

  She made coffee for customers. People loved coffee especially Flytown’s. She was happy to give people what the wanted point blank. She was tired of falling short in every way possible.

  Throughout all this pain, she had distanced herself from Tessa. It wasn’t intentional. She needed her best friend more than ever, but she hadn’t told her the details while they were unfolding. She felt foolish. As she stewed in her sadness, she couldn’t handle sharing how awful things had gone with her dear friend.

  The days that followed were cloaked in loneliness and coffee. She only had the energy to wake, go to work, and go to straight to sleep. Her productivity levels had gone down. She even gave up on daily meditations. She didn’t want to think, nor mediate on her bereavement. She just wanted it all to go away.

  As the days piled on top of each other, the calls, emails, and texts from Blaine, Adam, and Crawford became fewer and fewer. This was proof that she had been right along. They moved on with a speed outpacing hers simply because she had been more invested in the relationship more than they had. She couldn’t bring herself to read or listen to any of their pleas for correspondence for fear she would be sucked back in to thinking she meant something to them.

  One night at Flytown when she was on the later closing shift, she overheard a woman and a man talking in the corner table. She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but the woman was in tears. Fi sympathized with her. She guessed the couple was breaking up. Fi couldn’t help but pay attention to the drama as it unfolded as a reminder that ultimately this would have happened with her and the guys, only her pain would be multiplied by three.

  The man handed the woman a napkin. “I hate that you feel this way,” he said.

  The woman took the napkin and dabbed at her wet cheeks. “I just… I don’t think I can do it.”

  The man took her hand. “You can do it.”

  She nodded her head, trying to hold back the tears that couldn’t stop coming. Fi’s heart ached for the girl. Fi felt grateful that she wouldn’t ever be in her position again.

  The woman took a deep breath and then another. “I just don’t think I’m ready.”

  Fi cringed. She couldn’t listen to this woman beg for him to take her back.

  The man squeezed her hand. “You are ready.”

  “I can’t do this without you!” the woman sobbed.

  Fi again thanked her lucky stars she walked away from the guys before she was in the kind of intractable pain this woman was in.

  The man took the woman’s other hand. “Look at me. You’re ready. You don’t need me. I did nothing! You did everything!”

  At least, he was admitting he wasn’t a good boyfriend to her. The woman could take solace in that. Fi then wondered what all the messages and voicemails had said. Did Crawford, Blaine, and Adam leave her the same kind of messages? She threw that thought out of her head. She didn’t need to hear them break up with her a thousand more times.

  The woman took another deep breath. “What if I bomb the interview?”

  Fi stopped in her tracks. Wait. What were they talking about?

  The man brushed the a tear off the woman's cheek. "Penny, you won't! We've practiced so many interview scenarios. You've run through hundreds of technical interview questions. You're ready! I believe in you."

  Penny pulled her hands away from him and crossed her arms. "You're just saying that!"

  The man leaned back in his chair. His shoulders drooped. "I would never just say that. You are a capable engineer. If I were to tell you any different, I would be lying." He chuckled. "It would be because I'm jealous!"

  Penny sniffled and patted the napkin to her cheeks. "Really?"

  Her boyfriend said, "Really. If I were to dissuade you in any way from continuing to pursue your engineering career, it would be because I am insecure about my own abilities. That's how good you are."

  Fi felt flush all over her body. Trevor had always been dismissive of her ambitions of becoming an engineer. Every step she took towards furthering her career, he persisted on telling her she was worthless. She had never considered it before, but... Was Trevor jealous of her and her success? Was he trying to hold her back out of his own securities?

  She thought of Adam, who had never discouraged her. Despite feeling convinced he thought she was a horrible addition to the Luv Maite engineering team, he had never actually said that. In fact, he tried to tell her countless times how valuable she was.

  She felt a tightness in her chest. Perhaps Fi had it all wrong. Perhaps she was wrong about everything.

  That night after work, she took the time to finally read the messages and listen to the voicemails Adam, Crawford, and Blaine had left her. Their voices sounded genuine. They sounded emphatically in pain without her. Their texts and emails had the same genuine feeling of loss.

  I'm sorry for how I acted at the yacht club. I've never admitted this before to any woman, but I'm afraid. I'm afraid to fall in love. It makes me feel vulnerable. I acted like an asshole with those women to make myself feel better. Sadly, it was also to show you how powerful I could be being a player. It was stupid. I was wrong.

  Blaine's email had hit her right in the heart. She felt just as vulnerable as he did.

  Tina used to be everything to me, but she isn't anymore. I promise you it's over with her. I
want you to be the woman in my life. I want you to be the woman I take hikes with. I should have told you I contacted her to come over to get the rest of her things. I just wanted her out of lives for good.

  Crawford's words soothed her. He couldn't help how awful Tina had treated her. If he had reached out to her to get her stuff out of the house, then that was a good thing. It meant he had moved on.

  I can see how you might think I was being dishonest with you. As your CTO and boyfriend, I should have told you the team was expanding. It was irresponsible of me to not make you aware. Now, you think you're not an awesome engineer when you are. I had to have shaken your confidence. I hate that I've made you feel so insignificant when you are a huge part of Luv Maite's success. I hate that you aren't going to be at Z-Combinator with us.