Page 52 of Ghost of Ex-mas Past
Bea has been busy.
“Read the article, I guess?” It comes out almost a rasp.
The look she gives me is more sympathetic than anything else. But there’s still anger there, aimed, deservedly, at me.
“Yeah.” She stacks her things together and scoots to the edge of the bed, planting her feet on the floor and mirroring me.
My hands are sweating and I run my palms over my jeans before knotting my fingers together and resting my elbows on my knees. “There are some things I need to tell you.”
Bea waits.
“We had a letter of intent to sell Rivrse to ImmUniverse.”
Her eyes widen.
“I didn’t tell you for a few reasons. One was that I’d signed an NDA. The other was that I wanted to surprise everyone. I didn’t even tell my parents. And I think that the stress of it was wearing on me even more because of that.
“I’m selling Rivrse because the stress of a rapidly expanding business is not doing good things to me. Arlo, my mentor, helps a lot. So does my therapist. But I put a lot of pressure on myself, both just running the business and keeping it afloat while also trying to leave it in better hands with someone else.” I laugh with no humor. “Unfortunately, the hands I picked were worse ones. All of this is to say, I’m sorry I left. I’m sorry I panicked and didn’t think about anything other than myself.”
“Yourself and everyone who works for you,” Bea points out. “I read the article. I talked to Nash.”
I close my eyes. Her wildly successful boss, a man whose career I admire, probably thinks I’m responsible for everything the article accuses me, or at least, my company, of.
“I didn’t misuse data.”
“I know,” she says.
She says it so fast that I have to pause. Arlo didn’t even ask—he knows everything there is to know about my business, almost knows it as well as I do. He gives me his support, always, and for that I’m thankful.
But there’s something different about Bea saying it.
My eyes water and I look down, pinching the bridge of my nose and willing tears not to fall. She has faith in me, even after I drove away from her.
“I’m so sorry I left.” I feel like I can’t say the words enough. “I’ll make it up to you.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Bea stand and make her way over to me. She perches on the bed and rests her hand on my thigh. “I know you will. And I’m glad you came back. It would have been nice, though,” she says, a hint of tease in her voice, “if you’d just never left in the first place.”
I raise my arm and pull her into my side, kissing the top of her head. “There’s something else I should tell you. Remember the summer I went to my grandma’s house?”
“Yeah.” Bea curls closer into me, like she knows what’s coming, even though the only people I’ve ever talked to about this are Arlo, my therapist, and my parents.
“That was after dad got laid off, and we moved away from you. I loved my grandma, but she was a complicated woman. That summer all she could talk about was my parents’ troubles, especially with money. She never liked that my mom worked as a waitress, and she said a lot of nasty things about...” I sigh. It’s hard to say, even all these years later. “She said my mom was draining my dad, and she was going to leave him.”
Bea’s arm wraps around me and squeezes me tight.
“I didn’t realize how much that fucked me up. And I’m working on it. But I’m terrified that someday I’ll be on the other side of that story. I’ll be the one sending my kid away and fighting about money.”
“Have you talked to your parents about it?” Bea’s whisper comes from somewhere next to my heart.
“Yeah. Years later. Mom cried and Dad was upset, but in that way that is really him upset with himself. They told me that their relationship troubleswereabout money, but it wasmoreabout Dad’s rejection and his loss of self-worth.” My therapist had gently pointed out that just because my grandmother had been an adult didn’t mean that I should take what she said as truth. By the time I’d worked all this out, I went through a whole grief period of being angry at my grandmother, who, at that point, was already gone.
I hold Bea, and she holds me, and, after a few minutes, the thoughts of my company, my parents, and my grandmother fade away, so it’s just me and Bea together.
“There’s one more thing.”
Bea stills, bracing herself for another painful memory or a more uncertain future.
“I love you,” I say. “I don’t expect you to say it back to me, because I was a colossal dick to you today, but you make me feel hope and joy and love even on one of the shittiest days of my life. And I promise, from now on, I will turn to you when I need to feel those things, even if it’s hard and even if you don’t want to give them to me. Ihavechanged. Maybe not enough, but I want to keep working on it here with you.”
