Page 6 of Ghost of Ex-mas Past
She gives me the stink eye. It would be best to redirect her ire.
“Never saw traffic like this in Mobile. Or anywhere else. I’m sorry your boss treated you like a PA.”
She shrugs. “I got a better job.”
Bea and I have seen each other every year at Christmastime since our breakup. I hear about her job over unwrapped presents and big family meals. During the rest of the year, I’ve seen peeks of her life via social media posts and updates from our families.
Bea is gorgeous and lives in the big city. How she’s still single is one of the great mysteries of the universe. I was an idiot to let her go.
Traffic is thick on the GW Bridge, and it’s stop-and-go for a while. Bea doesn’t say anything, just focuses on driving, while the radio plays pop music—she didn’t bother to connect her phone, and I’m wondering if that’s because she’s too distracted by me.
Once we get on the Palisades Parkway, I pull out my laptop. My legal team sent over some new documents that I haven’t had the time to read yet. PDF’d legalese is too hard on my phone, so I open up the files on the big screen and dive in.
Many people would look at a coding screen full of Python or Rust and complain about not making sense of it. I feel the same way about legal documents, but right now, they hold the key to selling Rivrse.
Dealing with my burnout was scary. It turned me into someone I didn’t recognize. One day I snapped and yelled at Arlo. Thank god it was him and not one of my thirty-seven employees in the San Francisco office. But he forced me to look back and realize that nothing had been sudden—for the previous few months, I hadn’t been sleeping well, and I’d been driving myself harder and harder at the expense of my body.
Of course, I didn’t listen at the time because I’m a stubborn asshole, but it kept getting worse. And then it was one of the scariest moments of my life, to see everything I’d ever wanted slipping out of my hands because I couldn’t focus, couldn’t get out of bed.
Now I have almost the same feeling, but it’s not me this time. I’m on the cusp of selling my business and every day, there seems to be more and more foot-dragging happening.
Once this deal closes, all these worries will just slough right off, like unfastening a cape that was choking me and letting it fall to the floor.
And most of all, this will prove that the greatest sacrifice of my life was worth it. I left Bea and my family behind so that they would never have to worry about money ever again. I’m so close to that success, I’m starting to dream about what my future—our future—could be like.
One possible future sits in the car next to me, humming along to a Chappell Roan song.
The eight years since Bea and I broke up have nurtured my workaholic tendencies and loneliness. I haven’t been celibate, but dating has been a nightmare. Arlo says I have Bea on a pedestal, which is probably true.
It’s hard to forget your first love, especially when you didn’t value it like you should have.
The song ends and switches to a commercial break. Bea shifts in her seat before glancing at me. “How come I didn’t know you were in the city?”
“I didn’t know I was going to move until a few weeks ago. Rivrse opened an office here and I flew back and forth for a bit and then realized I needed a change in scenery. I didn’t tell my parents I bought a place until last week.”
Bea switches lanes to pass a slow eighteen-wheeler and goes quiet.
Arlo already lived in New York, and when Rivrse needed to open a new office, he’d suggested the city. It made sense—it put us closer to a majority of our clients and made it easier to hire a European salesperson.
I thought about reaching out to Bea. Had fantasized about the conversation, actually.
But the deal keeps getting pushed back and now that conversation would have gone something like this:
Hey, I live near you now, but I have this demanding job that was my dream but now eats away at my mental health so maybe someday when I actually get the business sold we can get together again?
The song changes, and the first strains of “Just the Way You Are” by Bruno Mars play. When I glance up from my laptop, Bea is frowning at the road ahead of us. She must feel the weight of my stare on her because her eyes dart in my direction and then down to the steering wheel.
The channel switches, and we’re no longer listening to the crooning voice.
I don’t take my eyes off Bea, though. She’s much more interesting than what’s on my laptop screen. Her blond hair is down, her blue eyes a deep oceanic color in the fading light. One of my favorite features of Bea is the dimple on either side of her cheeks when she smiles. I have not merited a smile yet today, so the dimples stay hidden.
“Just the Way You Are” was “our song” when we were lovesick teens who thought we were going to be together forever.
Or at least, I did. I was always a goner for Bea, from the very first moment I realized that someday I might fall in love and get married. This was years before I did anything about it. Years filled with inappropriate boners and the inability to focus on anything other than her lips. Years when I was learning what things like blow jobs were and not understanding why I would ever want to do that with anyone other than her.
In fact, I think this song was playing the first time I went down on her. Obviously, my sixteen-year-old self thought it was hella romantic, but looking back, I did not know what I was doing.
Except that I loved it.
