“Inadvisable but admirable,” she clarifies.
I stop pacing. “Oh. Thank you?”
“I have had many emails and messages from my audience to interview you.”
My heart begins to pound. “Right, well, I am technically still the owner of the company but I’m no longer the CEO, so I’m not really doing any press at the moment. But maybe in the future we coul—”
“I do not want to interview you,” she says matter-of-factly.
“Okay,” I say, finally matching the flow of her speech.
“I’d rather meet to discuss prospective investment options.”
My eyebrows hit the ceiling. “Excuse me?”
“Do you have a portfolio you could send to my business manager? Some of my network is also very interested in hearing more.”
I scramble to the floor, pulling my laptop onto my lap. “Umm, yes, of course. I will send it over right away!”
“Thank you. I’ll have my team contact you to discuss next steps.”
“Great, thank you so much!” My voice wobbles as I try to get the words out.
“I am hosting a women in business event in London next month. You should come.”
“Ummm, okay. I’ll discuss it with Dominic and get back to you.” As amazing as that sounds, I don’t know if I’m quite ready for it yet.
With every neuron in my brain firing at five times speed, I tentatively step out of Oliver’s bedroom and into the kitchen.
Oliver is clanging pots and plates around, dipping his finger into some sort of jammy sauce and tasting it. “What was that about?”
I blink furiously, trying to decide whether the call was real, before looking over to him. “I think I just got an investor for Wyst.”
He drops his pan of eggs into the sink. He scoops me up, arms linked under my backside, and spins me around. “Are you serious?”
Droplets of liquid appear on his T-shirt, and I realize I’m crying. The relief, the stress, the pain, the excitement. Everything swirls in my head and comes out of me in a teary fit of laughter.
Epilogue
One year later
Personal Account BALANCE: £27,340
Recent transactions:
The Withering Vine New York: $150.00
“Thoughts?” Dominic asks.
I examine my glass of Château Batailley 2005. “Mmmm, it’s a lot nicer when you’re not swigging it from the bottle.”
Dominic crosses the wide carpeted expanse overlooking Queens and sits in an office chair next to me, “I meant the location,” he clarifies. “It’s not Manhattan.”
I give him a look, my face reflecting against the floor-to-ceiling windows framing the city skyline. We’re not quite on bestie terms yet, but we sit comfortably somewhere between “my boss” and “my brother’s boyfriend.” This means most of the time we can skip the polite pleasantries neither of us is interested in. Also, I’m in love with his cousin. It’s messy, but luckily, I don’t see any of it going south anytime soon. Spencer and Dominic are so sickeningly in love. It always hits me likewhiplash when Dominic’s demeanor shifts from an immovable stoic businessman to a malleable lovable boyfriend around my brother. Over the past year, I’ve had the good fortune to meet him somewhere in the middle.
“I think if you squint hard enough you can see Spencer from here,” I say with an impish grin.
Dominic rolls his eyes, pouring his own glass from the bottle I brought to celebrate signing the lease. I think he is secretly using our trip to find an office space for the new FemTech Fund headquarters as an excuse to go see his boyfriend, but he’s refusing to admit it. Spencer has been back in New York for four months now, filming on and off for the second season of his show with BBC America. Weirdly, I think many couples would have struggled to make long-distance work so soon into a relationship, but dating an international businessman with offices in London and New York helps considerably.
