Page 96 of Return Billionaire to Sender

“For a little while,” I say.

“It’s like with me and the mail…” She turns on her side, props up her head on her hand, and I can see that she’s preparing to make yet another confession. And I’m excited to hear it, like a schoolgirl at a sleepover or something.

“Putting the world right, that’s how I always felt about the mail,” she says. “At the beginning of the day, the mail bag is full of square pegs, each with one specific place to go. Delivering it feels like putting the world right. Getting things where they need to be. It feels amazing.”

I love that she’s as passionate about putting the mail right as I am about putting the world of commerce right. And now she’s a coach, trying to get the big, bad wolves to see the humanity of Little Red Riding Hoods.

“You know if you save the building, there’ll just be something else or someone else you need to save. It won’t go away until you forgive yourself.”

She narrows her eyes and touches the tip of her finger to my nose. “Whatever you say, Chuckles.”

I laugh and dare her to repeat it, and she does, and I wrestle her to her back and kiss her.

She looks frail, but she’s a fighter. She fights for the mail and she fights for people. And it makes me want to do things for her. Something more than carts of food and carnal pleasures.

In my mind, I run through the things that she’s passionate about. Hedgehogs. Is there some kind of a hedgehog zoo in this part of California? They have everything else. She’s passionate about her work, of course.

It comes to me, then, that one of my West Coast development partners has a husband who is one of the top executive coaches in the nation. He’s a pompous ass, but he’s famous among executive coaches. Elle is so invested in her job, she’s probably read all of his books. She’d be over the moon to be able to sit down with him.

And his wife owes me. I’ve made her a lot of money.

A plan forms around having drinks with them. Maybe drinks before a dinner session, because I don’t want to share her for an entire night.

I’m thinking somewhere nice—with the best food. And she’ll want to be wearing something nice to meet such an esteemed colleague. And I know just the thing.

23

Noelle

Don’t lethim get into your head,that’s what the traveling team said, but they don’t realize how good it feels to tell him things, how good it feels to imagine he’s even just a little bit with you. What would it be like to really partner on something?

I can’t believe I confessed about my mother to him; it’s something I never told anybody—not even Francine.

But I wanted to tell Malcolm. It felt natural.

I’m hiding so much about my identity, but at the same time, I feel like he knows my heart better than people who’ve known me for years. I cup his cheek. “Confessing to an evil person. You are so full of shit.”

“Didn’t it help just a little bit?” he asks.

“You are so full of shit that you’re evil,” I say.

He rolls his eyes. He doesn’t like when you say he’s not evil. What does it mean? Is this idea of his that he’s evil like a suit of armor? A way he protects himself?

“I like my idea for a new kind of confessional.”

“I’m sure it’s already on the internet,” I say. “I wouldn’t want to see it. I wouldn’t want to read about the horrible things that strangers have done.”

“Me either,” he says. “It sounds absolutely tedious.” My breath catches as he wraps his arms around me, as he sets his chin onto the top of my head. “Why hedgehogs?” he asks. “Why do you like hedgehogs?”

“Hmmm,” I say. Nobody ever asked that. “They’re always out there in the dark, quietly industrious. I like their little cone faces. I like that they seem optimistic.”

“What are they optimistic about?”

I slide down next to him. “I don’t know. Just…life.”

His phone alarm sounds. He has a dinner meeting to prepare for. He asks me what I’m going to do, and I mumble something about maybe having dinner, too. My dinner will be the rest of the room service cart.

The next morning, I send AJ his gift card, feeling just awful about it. “He probably won’t kill the golden goose,” Stella had said.

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