There were sides of him that he didn’t publicize. Nor did he go as far as keeping them hidden, but someone would only have known they were there if they went looking for them, which most people hadn’t bothered to do. I don’t know if I had gone looking either, or if he’d laid a trail, but I’d found them regardless, and I couldn’t have felt richer if I’d won mega millions on the lottery.
The Ty who was for my eyes only—the boy who had stopped in the hall to show me to class—was caring, charming, and funny, but not in the obvious, slapstick way most of his jock peers were. Fart and pussy jokes weren’t really his schtick, although he laughed along with everyone else, and even cracked a few himself on occasion. He was clever, and witty, and sarcastic with a fantastically dry sense of humor.
Perhaps the biggest surprise had been that Ty was bright. Not just above the intellect of the average jock, nope, he was fiercely smart. More intelligent than the average anyone—geeks included. How he managed to keep it hidden most of the time was beyond me. It wasn’t as though he played dumb. He just didn’t treat everyone to the full extent of his intellect the way he did me, and I’d treasured that fact.
I’d loved that I had an access-all-areas pass to his inner self that nobody else had. Even with his considerable physical attributes, the parts of him I was most attracted to were those I couldn’t see, and knowing him the way others didn’t made me feel like the luckiest girl alive.
Beck
Motherfucker! I banged at my steering wheel before driving the heel of my palm on the horn, and holding it there for an extended time. Of course, my frustration wasn’t purely with the New York traffic. Though that was as fucked up as it ever was, getting stressed about it was a one-way ticket to executive burn-out, or a heart attack. Even then I’d probably end up stuck in traffic en route to my own funeral.
No, the real source of my foul mood was a fiery girl with tawny skin, velvety dark eyes, and the best butt either side of the Hudson, who had left me with a raging hard on, wounded pride, and more questions than answers.
No matter which way I cut it in my mind, what she had said about the situation with her father just didn’t add up. She had been just shy of her eighteenth birthday, practically an adult, and fast approaching a time when she didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to do. Especially not whatever that monster tried to force onto her. She had graduated high school and had a bright future ahead of her.
Why give all of that up at the first sign of adversity? Why hadn’t she at least tried to get out of his clutches? Why hadn’t she called me, for fuck’s sake? I would have dropped everything and flown to Europe to go get her, if that was what it took. Hell, I would have crawled to the ends of the earth on a bed of flaming ground glass to go get her if she had just let me know she needed me to.
Maybe she’d had Stockholm Syndrome or something. Maybe her mom had had it too, and they couldn’t see a way out of their situation because they were brainwashed or paralyzed with fear. That would have been a plausible explanation were it not for the fact that it didn’t fit with the Mel I knew. That girl was fearless and determined, and although her home life was less than ideal, she was one of the most positive and vital people I had ever met.
She had always been thinking of the future, and planning for the day she would be free to be her own person, without her father controlling her every move. That Mel wouldn’t have given up at the first sign of trouble, even if it was a big bag of trouble, in the form of her old man having a psychotic break. She wouldn’t have gone down without a fight. I know it. Something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what. Yet.
In all of the chaos the pitch had been the last thing on my mind until Mel had mentioned it. Evidently, when faced with her, my professionalism had gone the way of my restraint and self-control—rapidly out of the window. The guys were going to have my balls on a stick when they realized I’d lost us the new business, but in truth, the minute I walked out of the elevator yesterday and saw Mel standing there, I had known it was all over.
We might as well have pulled out then, and at least ended the waste of time, money and energy. The damage was already done of course, both to our reputation in the industry, and to our hip pocket.
The expense of dressing the boardroom had made me wince, and that was when we had the possibility of recouping the cost when we won the pitch, and took Beyner on as a client. Now there was no chance of that. We’d just be left with an angry red blot on our books where profit should be. That wasn’t taking into account the cost in head hours of the four of us, and all of the other people in the agency who had worked on the pitch to this point.
On top of all that, there was what we called the “opportunity cost” of pitching. While time and energy was spent chasing new client opportunities that might or might not bear fruit, it was diverting resources from existing clients with live briefs, who were guaranteed to generate income. This actually cost the agency money. We understood that we had to speculate to accumulate, but we always did it on the basis that we’d make that money back once we’d won the business.
These were just some of the reasons we only pitched for business we knew we’d win. Beyner had fit in that category until I’d shat all over that chance. When I broke the news to the guys, it was going to go down like a mouthful of barbed wire. As if on cue, the phone rang. It was Raine.
“Yeah man, what’s up?”
“Don’t fucking what’s up me, like you’re not AWOL when you should have been at Confession. By the way, I have you on speaker. We’re all here.”
“I have you on speaker too, but it’s just me, myself and I don’t give a fuck.”
“Where the hell are you.?”
He clearly left his sense of humor at the bottom of a bottle of vodka today. “In the car.”
“Don’t be a facetious cunt. Why aren’t you here?”
It was a legitimate question, and one to which they were owed an honest answer. I sighed heavily. “I fucked up. Big time. I went to see Mel. Melissa.”
“What do you mean ‘went to see’? Like stalked her?” This was Nate’s interjection.
“What? No, I didn’t fucking stalk her. What kind of loser do you take me for? Wait! Don’t answer that. I met her for a coffee. Kind of to give her iPad back, kind of to get answers.”
“Right. So when were you going to tell us about this cozy little chat?” Raine again, sounding increasingly pissed.
“I’m telling you now, aren’t I?” I only seemed to have two settings at the moment, douche and asshole. I flitted equally between the two.
“What I’m sure you know he means is why didn’t you tell us before you met her, so that we could talk you out of what was bound to be an abysmally bad move?” Dillon was calm and measured as ever.
“Because I knew you’d try to talk me out of it.” With good reason. Abysmally bad didn’t even begin to cover it.
“Of course we would. It was an uncharacteristically stupid thing to do. I can’t believe you would be so selfish as to risk screwing up this pitch to satisfy your curiosity.” Curiosity? Really?
“Come on man, that’s not fair. He hadn’t seen or heard from her in over a decade. Nada. Zip. Zilch. You can’t tell me that you wouldn’t want to know what the fuck happened? I know I sure as shit would. He deserves that, and a medal for not completely losing his shit in that meeting yesterday. Seriously, cut him some fucking slack, Nate.”