Bea and Oliver have a lot in common—she’s not entirely sure what she’s supposed to do with her life, much like Oliver’s discovering what he wants to do with his.
But Simon’s been eager to help Bea with ideas.
The latest is script-writing.
She told me on our drive home from the airport last week that she made suggestions on a script while I was gone, and he’s been asking her for more and more ideas and opinions and insisting she’ll get cowriter credit when the studio that made him famous produces this show too.
Every time I’ve heard her tell him she doesn’t know what she’s doing, he’s grinned and told her neither does most of Hollywood.
And honestly?
I think he’s right. About all of it.
None of us know what we’re doing.
“We’re nearly sold out today too,” she tells me. She’s manning the grill, finishing three hamburgers for late straggler customers. “Even if we don’t sell out all the way, we’re close. You sure you don’t want anything?”
“I’m good, thanks.” I glance at my phone.
No missed calls.
No missed texts.
“Daph, he’s had a busy day,” Bea says gently.
“I know.”
I was out working with a department of transportation crew all morning—Idoneed to work for a paycheck, and I still love my job and coworkers—and when I glanced at my phone during my normal lunch break, I had several missed texts.
Oliver blew up the internet again. Second—no, third time in a little over a week.
No one’s talking about how we were arrested now or even about how we were on a money-donation spree across the country.
They’re talking about how he dropped a bomb in the Miles2Go board meeting this morning.
Resigned. Announced he’s giving his stock to franchise owners. And endorsed his executive assistant to be the new CEO of the company.
He didn’t say he advised against letting his father have a continued role, but the implications were there in his subtle references to how badly Miles2Go was struggling when he took over.
He hasn’t simply left the company himself. He’s completely taken it out of his family’s hands.
They’ll no longer have majority control. Or likely even a say on the board of directors.
Some people are framing it as him fucking his family over.
I don’t see it that way.
I see it as Oliver being the Oliver that I got to know the past two weeks. Publicly giving credit where credit is due with his nomination for the new CEO and doing some of that trickle-down economics stuff at the same time with his own stock shares.
Putting more control in the hands of the people doing the everyday work.
Preventing his father from destroying what he’s built back up.
And it makes me love him even more.
So much so that I couldn’t stop crying over my lunch break and had to call my boss and beg for one more afternoon off, which I’ve sworn to make up for with extra fundraising calls.
She saw the news.
