Page 84 of A Little Too Late
“You made Deevers feelseen. Good work in there. Now you can go home to your empty apartment and celebrate by spending the evening on the treadmill, catching up on your email.”
“Jesus.” I let out a snort. “That’s not very flattering, is it?”
Although it is frighteningly accurate.
“Was Prashant satisfied?” she asks.
“More than. He sent me a bottle of scotch so rare that I had to google it to know what it is.”
“Righteous,” she says. “Good thing you’re fine with drinking alone.”
I snort.
“Let me ask you something,” Sheila presses on, and I can feel her wide-eyed stare even from hundreds of miles away. “Is this a better job than running a ski resort?”
“Well, yeah.” I don’t even understand the question. “This is a much bigger job. I just won a big stake in one of the most creative engineering projects in California. Deevers could be bought out by Meta in a year. For a billion dollars.”
“Bigger jobis an interesting way to describe it. You wear nice clothes, and you work in a shiny building. But there’s no torch-lit ski parade, am I right?”
“What is your point?” I demand. “It sounds like you think I should drop everything and move home to Madigan Mountain. Is this because I haven’t put through that raise yet?”
Her voice is low and oddly serious. “I know you think it sounds outrageous to turn your whole life on a dime. But what if it’s outrageous not to?”
“Sheila. If I drop everything and move back to Colorado next weekend, are you going with me?”
“I might,” she says. And it doesn’t sound like a joke.
“Didn’t I just write you a recommendation for your application to Stanford business school?”
“Yes,” she says quietly. “But I might not decide to go. Even if I get in.”
“Really?” I yelp. “When did you make this decision?”
“Yesterday on the peak lift, I think.” She clears her throat.
“I have no idea if we’re joking or not right now,” I grumble. “But I seriously hope so.”
“It’s not a joke, Reed. I like working for you. You’re so smart, and we make it fun. But I don’t want tobeyou. I want a lifesomewhere different. I want to work normal hours and have more fun than you do.”
Well, ouch. “You think Ava works normal hours?”
“They’re more normal than yours, the odd raccoon notwithstanding. And she has a real community. They aren’t all secretly plotting to undermine each other, like the people in our office.”
I don’t even know what to say. “You’re too young for a midlife crisis. Are you really going to bail on business school? Don’t you want to wait to hear if you’ll get into Stanford?”
“Yes,” she says softly. “Of course.”
“And you’ll be here on Thursday, right?”
“You know it,” she says. “Even if I wish you weren’t there. I just don’t understand why you’re going to let your father sell the resort to Sharpe.”
“Maybe because I don’t have a choice?”
“He might come around if you put a little pressure on him. You’re good at that, Reed. Deevers just gave you another piece of his company, and all you had to bring were oatmeal cookies.”
“I don’t have fourteen years of bad blood with Deevers. And they’re really good cookies.”
She lets out a sniff. “What if you could buy time? Make it hard for the Sharpes to win.”
