Chapter 23

Jacob

I AWOKE, bleary-eyed, to the sound of my alarm clock blaring like a steamer ship.

I went back to sleep, having hardly slept the night before, pounding the alarm clock into ‘snooze’ mode.

I awoke again, this time to the alarm clock practically jumping off the desk.

Shit.

Of course I’d overslept on the day of the most important pitch of my life. That just figured.

As I raced around my room, trying to put on some semblance of a business suit while also brushing my teeth, I found that, despite all the things that needed taking care of, my brain still managed to find time to punish me with thoughts of Sierra. How nice.

While shoving my arms into sleeves and wrapping a loose tie around my neck, I wondered where she was. Had she already landed back home? Was she still here? Wherever she was… did she hate me?

That was a stupid question. I knew the answer.

Should I text her? I didn’t have much time, but maybe enough to fire off a quick one, just a Hey, thinking of you. Was that a good idea?

Uh, no, my inner voice asserted. Not a good idea.

Sage advice. After all, Sierra and I had some baggage around texts. Me breaking up with her via one. Plus, I didn’t have time to carefully draft and revise an emotionally intelligent message. If I did send her something later, it’d have to be perfect. Perfection can’t be rushed.

As I raced down to the conference room, feet slapping on the stairwell, I wondered what I’d even say. Hey, sorry I got you fired. Will you be my girlfriend again? What was there to say that could begin to earn Sierra’s forgiveness?

Probably nothing.

So it was for the best that I didn’t send a text, right? Anything I sent would be a mistake. Which explains why Sierra never heard from me two years ago. Once again, there was no right way to apologize. The only halfway decent choice was radio silence.

Besides, I’d already arrived at the meeting room. Even if I changed my mind, it was too late to do anything about it.

“Hey,” I said as I opened the door. “Sorry for being—”

I looked around, and realized that the entire company was already gathered. I didn’t want to look down at my watch and risk further social idiocy, but was I really that late?

Yeah, my inner voice said helpfully. You are.

Charles drily replied, “Good of you to join us. Please, take a seat.”

I took one of the two last seats available in the room, which appeared to be not just a meeting space but an actual conference room. Did Charles host entire companies so often that he needed a room for that express purpose? It was a question for another time.

“And where’s your lovely partner?” he asked. “I assumed she’d be with you.”

My eyes darted to Joe, who gave me the faintness shake of his head, as if to say: Don’t tell him.

Gulp. That was probably the right choice, in terms of business — it would be, uh, difficult to explain why Sierra had been fired, and would probably require me to mention that we’d been fucking in his ornately upholstered room. Nah, I’d pass on that particular conversation, though I hated to be made a liar.

“Sierra is indisposed,” I said carefully, selecting the fancy, catchall word for ‘don’t ask.’

Charles, who spoke ‘fancy,’ nodded with understanding. “I see. Pity. That must be why you were late.”

Well, in a way, yes. So I felt only slightly less bad in replying, “Yup.”

“Understood.” He leaned back in his comically large swivel chair, and waved an arm. “Then let the pitch begin.”

I wished his tone had been less… gladiatorial? But oh well. I suppose you don’t get obscenely wealthy by making friends.

Joe and Tom stood up first, and introduced the basic pitch. Safety blah blah luxury blah blah speed. I tuned it out — though I hadn’t heard this pitch a million times, I’d been at plenty of these meetings, and there was little variety. Same buzzwords, different locations. And besides, if I paid Joe too much attention, I’d get to thinking about how he’d basically brought to pass one of the worst moments of my life, and then I’d lose my temper, and then who knows? Total chaos.

On a note of minor interest, Charles seemed to have entirely dropped his eccentric persona and now he was utterly focused, listening intently, eyes scrutinizing every word Joe and Tom uttered, no matter how inconsequential I deemed them. Interesting.

I wondered if Sierra would’ve been responsible for this part of the pitch, if she would’ve been at the front of the room, delivering the same speech but with better-placed emphasis. My heart twinged as I thought of how well she’d have done. She’d be in a perfectly pressed shirt and pencil skirt, professional, beautiful, in-command. She’d enunciate every word with ease and manage to put passion into even the driest of details. She would have brought the whole thing to life, made the colors just that much brighter.

Don’t think about her, my brain insisted. You can’t.

My mind wanted to go into a downward spiral, but my ears caught something. I looked up, and saw Joe and Tom frantically shuffling through some papers.

“Sorry, sorry,” Tom was muttering. “We just—”

“Organizational issues?” Charles said with a thinly veiled tone of regret.

At last, Joe found the papers. “Nope, no worries, sir, we’ve got it.”

Charles nodded, but looked displeased.

I knew that, had Sierra been here, she never would’ve let the papers get out of order. It was a minor slip, but it rang through my head.

Next up was what I took to be the architecture team. They were one group before me, and would explain the design of the compound — or village, whatever you prefer to call it.

They had difficulty setting up their presentation slides — there seemed to be some kind of technical errors. Charles told them it was fine, things happen, but I could see him tapping his fingers and looking irritated. Again, something that never would’ve occurred on Sierra’s watch.

Why wasn’t she here? She deserved to be here, probably more than I did. I’d worked hard, and I knew it, but nobody worked as hard as Sierra. It was impossible — she was a machine. While I’d pretty much waltzed into this pitch with only a hint of preparation, I was certain she’d been rehearsing it for months. I’d robbed her of the opportunity to bring all her efforts to fruition.

I was a fucking bastard.

That was the thought in my head as I scraped my chair legs back across the hardwood floor and stood to give my aspect of the presentation.

The architecture team had finally managed to bring their slides up, but when they did, they seemed unfamiliar with which slide went where, and what the overall framing of the pitch was. Like, they knew the internal logic of their designs, but not how to sell them. They needed Sierra, who would have been the thread of continuity for this huge presentation. If she or the people she was presenting with didn’t know the answer, she would have known who to ask immediately instead of the presenters turning to Tom and Joe and everyone jumping into the uncomfortable void of silence.

And I needed her too.

But it was too late. I was already walking up to the front, eyes down, trying to run over what I remembered of the pitch. It was a large job, but nothing unusual. Shouldn’t be too hard to describe it, right? I knew what I was doing.

My team stayed seated — framing didn’t require multiple voices. Like I said — straightforward. Easy. Simple.

“What are you presenting?” Charles asked, as I assumed my position.

“Framing, sir.”

“Right, right, you mentioned that the other night. Let’s hear it.”

I took the remote Tom handed me surreptitiously and clicked to my first slide.

“Hi,” I said. Pause. Too long of a pause. Then, “I’m the owner — uh, CEO, rather — of Got Wood Inc. I have wood.”

There were a few raised eyebrows in the room. I raced to clarify, “Rather, the company has wood. Lots of wood.”

Some of my team nodded, giving me much needed encouragement, but others in the room looked baffled. Several exchanged glances that seemed to ask, ‘Is he high?’ If only. If only.

I coughed, and continued. “We’re a timber supply company, and I also do framing. So it’s a two-in-one business. We cut out the middleman.”

Good, good. That was all accurate.

“For this job, we’ll be… framing things,” I finished weakly, clicking to the next slide.

Okay, small slip there — but nothing I couldn’t handle. Or, at least, nothing that Sierra couldn’t have handled. God, I wish Sierra was here.

“Jacob?” Charles prodded.

I swallowed heavily, realizing that I’d accidentally drifted off in the middle of my own presentation.

“Sorry,” I apologized. “I was just… thinking.”

“You do that often?” he joked, but there was an edge of steel in his tone. The subtext was clearly: What the fuck are you doing?

And the answer, if I’d been able to give it, was that I had no idea. What was I even doing here without Sierra? As much as my dad and I needed this job, this wasn’t my dream — the project, that is. She was my dream.

But I had responsibilities. Dreams were for untethered men, guys who didn’t have sick, bankrupt fathers and a company to keep afloat, didn’t have others depending on them. Lucky for them. I wondered what that was like, wondered if I could remember a time when I was a free agent. None came to mind.

“Jacob,” Charles repeated, this time with the steel edge fully bared, “do you need us to return to you later, when perhaps you’ve had a moment to collect yourself?”

I moved my eyes down from the crenelated ceiling to the long, oval table at which every one of my colleagues sat. Joe and Tom were making furious eyes at me, as though their pupils could jump out of their faces and bitch slap me. The others merely looked confused, or vaguely concerned. People shuffled papers, twiddled with pencils, anything at all to avoid watching… me, I suppose. A live-action, slo-mo train wreck.

“I’m fine,” I said, trying to save myself from the humiliation. “I’m fine. Apologies.”

Charles leaned back in his seat, waiting and irritated.

I clicked the remote, and a new slide flicked on. It was the structure of an average house in the village, which was a mixture of condos and bungalows. The houses, unlike the usual retirement home fare, were quaint, adorable even. What you would picture in the middle of an English garden, surrounded by roses and latticework — not in Florida.

Against every conscious effort in my body, my mind flickered to what it would be like to keep a home with Sierra. We’d awaken not unlike how we’d awoken the other day — to sunlight filtering in and dappling our faces. She’d yawn happily, and I’d clamber out of bed, still naked, and make us coffee, which I’d deposit on her nightstand. And then maybe, down the line, we’d be sipping our drinks and a toddler would run and jump in between us, plopping on the pillows and giggling with delight. We’d tickle our child until tears of laugher were streaming down all our faces.

The life flashed before me in a moment, and it was so, so sweet. I thought of what my father had said, about how I shouldn’t let his troubled relationship with my mother impact how approached the rest of my life. Maybe it was right — maybe it was time to trust someone else, lean back and fall into their arms. Maybe that someone was Sierra. If she’d even have me.

“Jacob!” Charles barked, interrupting my thoughts of paradise. “What the hell is going on?”

Joe cut in before I could reply, saying, “We are so sorry, sir, he’s not usually like—”

“Enough, Joe,” I interjected. “Knock it off.”

Who was this brave guy, and why were his words coming out of my mouth?!

But it was too late to turn back, as evidenced by the gaping maws of the whole room, which hung low to the ground in shock.

I turned to Charles, feeling awake and aware for the first time all morning — hell, for the first time since Sierra had left.

“Sir, you’re probably wondering why this entire presentation is a mess.”

Charles raised an eyebrow and replied, “Well, now that you mention it. Yes, the question crossed my mind.”

Joe loudly said, “Sir—”

But Charles lifted a hand to shut him up. “No. I’d like to hear what this young man has to say.”

Joe shot daggers at me with his eyes, but I was not to be deterred. I took Charles’ opening and ran with it.

“Sir, the reason Pillers is so disorganized this morning is because last night, Sierra was fired.”

Gasps went up around the table, as people turned to one another and whispered in shock. Sierra’s team looked particularly devastated, and it gave me a little shock of unearned pride, to see how much they liked and respected her.

Charles said slowly, “I assume you’re referencing your partner.”

“Well… not quite,” I replied. “See, we’re not actually partners, not in real life. Joe and Tom asked Sierra and I to masquerade as partners to sell you on our whole family-values image. What they didn’t know was that Sierra and I had history — we’d dated before.”

Everyone fell into a deadly silence as they tilted forward in their seats to absorb the story. Joe looked like he wanted to throw his coffee or an expensive framed painting at my head, but I plowed on.

“She hated me when I arrived for how I’d treated her years ago. And she was right. But over the course of the weekend, I managed to show her that I was a new guy, one who she could trust, and that I wouldn’t make the same mistakes again. We were, um… being intimate when Joe walked in.” At this, I turned to face Joe, who was quivering with anger. “He then got mad that we were, y’know, fraternizing, even though he’d asked us to pretend to be partners. And, I guess in conjunction with some very, very minor mistake Sierra had made recently, he felt that was grounds to fire her.”

The air had been sucked out of the room. We were in a vacuum, a space vacuum, free-floating. And I had engineered the weightlessness.

A beat passed. Another, and another. I looked at Charles, at Joe and Tom, at the company, waiting for someone to say something, anything, about my outburst.

It was one more beat before Charles at last turned his chair to face my bosses. “Is what Jacob says true?” Simple, to the point.

Tom looked at Joe, and I wondered for a moment if he’d known the entire story. I suspected not. So it was left to Joe to reply, like a man being dragged across a bed of nails:

“Yes, sir. It is, technically speaking, true.” He broke off, then added, “But if I might—”

“No,” Charles bellowed, his voice suddenly terrifying. “That’s enough from you. I hate lies, gentlemen. Despise them. Especially coming from business partners. Why did you force two people to pretend to be a couple for me? What other deceptions have you practiced? I’m rejecting your pitch.”

Um.

Crap.

That’s not what’d I’d been hoping for. I just wanted to tell the truth, to honor Sierra, to call out Joe. I’d never intended for us to lose the whole deal — I mean not consciously, at least. Because it was fine for Joe to be punished, he deserved it, but all these people had families to support, bills to pay.

And I’d just screwed each and every one.

“Wait, Charles,” I exclaimed. “Give me a second, let me convince you to—”

“I’ve made up my mind. And it was all thanks to you. You have my sincere gratitude. Don’t bother trying to convince me of anything. We’re done.” He stood up, pushing his chair back and ignoring it as it banged into the wall. To the rest of the company, he said, “You can all see yourselves out.”

And with that, the man who had held my future in the palm of his hand stormed out of the room.