Page 52 of Return Billionaire to Sender

I could never be one of the people in that video, all fun and laughing in a group. I don’t like people. I don’t like being around people, and vice versa.

“Can we wrap it up now?” I ask. “You can take the rest of the food to your room if you want. They’re just going to throw it away.”

“Wait—you haven’t watched the whole hour,” she says.

“Come on,” I say. “I feel like I won emotional intelligence today. I get nothing for that?”

“Talking doesn’t count. The hour is only you watching the video,” she says.

“You understand, don’t you, that the more of this video I watch, the more convinced I am that this is a piece of property that should’ve been torn down long ago. I think it’ll be good for these people to be out of there—the place is a dump.”

“It’s not at all a dump,” she protests. “All of those vintage details? The moldings? The chandelier?”

“The way I see it, I’m doing them a favor. It’s called reality feedback.”

She goes still for a moment—she even looks a bit pale. I wait for her to reply; it certainly seems as though she wants to, but then she scoots her chair forward, and without a word, she hits play, or more, stabs it. I can only see the back of her head now, and I can see that her arms are crossed.

“Buildings come down and buildings go up,” I say to the back of her head.

“What about Maisey and John?” she asks. “You would tear them apart?”

“If they want each other badly enough, they’ll find a way to be together. That’s how it works.”

“How would they have a chance of being together if they never even saw each other ever again? It’s not as if they’re going to find rent-controlled apartments in Manhattan,” she says, trying to keep the emotion out of her voice. “More likely, they’ll end up miles and miles from each other and never see each other again.”

“Or John finally realizes he has to act, and he declares his love and Maybelline reciprocates and they get a little place together on Long Island or in Florida or something, which they never would have done if the building remained. Humans thrive on challenge. It’s how we’re designed. Maybe they’ve become too comfortable in that place.”

She turns to me. Hotly, she asks, “Is that what you tell yourself? When you throw people from their homes? That they’ve become too comfortable in their places?”

“No,” I say, picking up my glass of lemonade and swirling around the ice. “I tell myself that I’m going to make a whole boatload of money while improving the city.”

She regards me dolefully, then turns away from me and hits play yet again.

14

Noelle

I startthe video back up, trying to keep my hand from trembling.

Am I making things worse? Are these videos making Malcolm want to knock down the place even more? I’ve never met anybody like him.

“The entire neighborhood will improve,” he adds.

I grit my teeth. Nisha and Coralee and those guys warned me not to let him get into my head, and he’s definitely in there, now. More than in there—he’s rooting around like a warthog in a china shop.

I hate that he’s in my head. I hate that he saw things about John and Maisey that I never did. I hate that he’s brought me all this food and it’s so delicious, and now I just want to eat more, and it’s not just because I’m hungry, it’s that I’m tired in some soul-deep way that I can’t define.

I hate how his voice gets me so stupidly quivery inside. I hate how muscular he looks under his sexy suit and how I have to exert actual energy not to imagine what it would be like to climb onto his lap, to press a kiss to his lips, to feel his hands clamp around my hips, solid and strong.

“What is it that you want, little country mouse?” he asks softly.

“For you to have empathy for these people.”

“Negotiation one-oh-one,” he says softly, “never ask for something that a person doesn’t have to give.”

“All humans are capable of empathy,” I say. “Including you.”

A deafening silence hangs in the air.

---