I laugh bitterly. “It was technically his office so I couldn’t exactly do that. Errol, she’d probably been banging Tyler since… I don’t even know! I just —I felt so fuckingstupid. Like, how’d I not see that coming? Why didn’t I realize what she was doing?”
“You can’t blame yourself for not going through life assuming people who supposedly care about you are secretly trying to fuck you over,” he says. He folds his arms, eyes flashing. “Seriously. She was really shitty to you.”
My words are uncomfortably thick in my mouth. “Thanks, man.”
“So what’d you do after the dust settled? Wait —” Errol frowns. “When did this happen?”
“Last week — not even enough time to get tested and make sure she didn’t leave me with a fucking parting gift I need antibiotics to return,” I say bitterly. “Because we were still fucking! That’s the thing —well, one of the things —messing with my head about this.”
I shake my head. “The other thing was finding out thateverymotherfucking one of my employees knew about Eliza and Tyler.” I huff out a dark laugh. “And here I thought I was finally becoming less socially clueless. I wassofucking embarrassed.” As anger and shame roil my guts, it dawns on me that chasing super-sweet coffee with a shot of whiskey on an empty stomach was a mistake.
“You OK?” Errol asks suddenly. I must look as green as I feel. Before I can answer, he hurriedly fills a glass with water and pushes it towards me. “Here. Get some of this down. I’m sorry, I shouldn't have given you that shot.”
“It’s alright.” I wave his concern away. “I’ll be OK.” But I drink the water anyway, just to be on the safe side, before I take a deep breath.
“So anyway, I went straight into my office. And then I made one phone call.”
“Marcus Enterprises,” Errol says.
I blink in surprise at him. “Shit, you weren’t kidding when you told me you tracked what my company was doing!” When I remember the bourbon thing, I frown. “I don’t know if I should be flattered or worried. You’re not, like, stalking me, right?”
Errol turns beet red and glances down. “No —of course not,” he mumbles. “Just your work stuff and, you know, looking at your social media feeds. But not often! Not often enough that it would be creepy or anything, I swear!”
This is unexpected information to try and process right now, especially because… “Um, aren’t we friends on social media?” Still looking down, Errol shakes his head. “Not onanyof them?” I ask.
I’m a little embarrassed to realize I just assumed. I’m not really on any of those platforms much. I get so many resumes, idea pitches and the like that going on there starts to feel like work after a little while.
“Sorry,” I say. “I’m not on them much.”
“You used to be more,” Errol says. He’s not wrong. It dawns on me that he might have been following me the entire time we’ve been living separate lives. OK, so maybe that’s a little stalkery. But I’ve been a terrible friend, and he’s not holdingthatagainst me.
Fuck it. At this point, I couldreallyuse a friend.
I drain the rest of my coffee and turn back to Errol. “So, yeah. I guess you know the rest of the story. The CEO of Marcus had been hounding me to sell the company to him. I always brushed him off, but he made one last pitch —and sweetened the offer —after rumors started circulating that we were going to go public. I called him that morning. Told him he could fucking have it — just like that. He thought he was going to have to ply me with all sorts of incentives to give up operational control. I told him to add some more money to the offer and I’d basically just hand him the keys and walk away.”
“So this wasn’t great for Tyler, though, right? For his investment, I mean.”
The grin that spreads across my face is genuine. “Sure as hell wasn’t. He was drawing a nominal salary because he expected a windfall in stock when we went public. As long as the company did good until his lockup period expired and he could sell, Tyler was going to be a very rich man. But that was contingent on there being stock shares for him to sell.”
Errol has his elbows on the bar, looking engrossed in the story. “You sold it out from under him first.”
“I sure as hell did.”
Errol’s quiet for a minute, digesting that. “So what happens now? You already walked away?”
“Everything’s been signed. The actual handover process will take, oh, I don’t know how long. I’ve never done this before.”
I scrub my hand over my eyes with a groan. “So at some point, I’m going to have to go back down to New York City, or maybe even out to California. They probably all hate my guts, because I heard through the grapevine he wants to fire most of the top managers and bring in his own team. I don’t care.” I scowl down at the dregs of sugar sludge in my coffee cup. “Eliza can go fucking pound salt. I swear to God, if I could erase her entire existence from my memory, I’d be happier.”
Errol doesn’t say anything for another moment before piping up, “So, did you make a huge amount of money on it? Or was it some kind of stock deal or a thing where your shares are all locked up or whatever it’s called?”
It’s an obvious attempt to change the subject, but I welcome it. “Nah, it was pretty straightforward. I think Marcus wanted to integrate it into a bigger platform rollout they’re doing, so they just kind of… absorbed it. We’re small potatoes to them.”
Errol shrugs and walks back to refill my coffee cup. “Small potatoes for them sounds like a windfall for you,” he says.
“That’s true,” I acknowledge.
Errol kind of sighs. “At least you left this town in the first place,” he says quietly. “You got out and saw things. You did stuff —successful stuff.” He shrugs and kind of makes a face.
