“No. You’re just such an overprotective dick about your sister with most guys, I figured I should keep my distance.”
“Why would that be?” He leans forward again, hunching over as he squints at me. He has watched too many mafia movies. It would have been cooler if he’d leaned back casually, like Han at the cantina with Greedo. “You feel guilty or something?”
“’Course not. I have nothing to feel guilty about. Just saying you’ve always been an overprotective dick about her, and I’d rather not deal with it.”
Monty seems satisfied with that explanation, so I feel comfortable breathing again. He hails the waitress and asks for more wine and bourbon. He moves on from the subject of his sister to his own business. I can have this conversation in my sleep, so I let my mind drift to Olivia.
She has been living within driving distance of my house for over a year now. Not that I would have had much time to visit her, but now that I’ve got the green light from Monty, I need to make the most of this opportunity. I need to think carefully and strategically about how to approach this. Or…I will wait for an opportunity to present itself. Let the algorithms of the universe show me what I need, when I need it. I’ve laid the groundwork. I’ve certainly achieved everything I set out to achieve in order to win her over. I just need a plan.
I can’t honestly say that I’ve consciously thought about Olivia every day over the past couple of years since I saw her dance in Pittsburgh. But she’s like an all-time favorite song that passes through my consciousness on a regular basis, even when I don’t purposefully stop to listen. I smile and savor the thought of her. Whenever I hear a piece of music that stirs me, I wonder how it would affect her, how her body would move to it. Of course, she makes regular appearances in my fantasies—that goes without saying. But I’ve felt good, just knowing that she’s out there and that one day we’ll be together again.
I suppose I just didn’t expectone dayto come so soon.
I’m right in the middle of launching a foundation, and I’m at a critical juncture with my food-tech play. The timing isn’t ideal. But I’ll make it ideal.
Suddenly I feel nervous about seeing her in person. This young woman who was just a baby when we first met. Who probably still thinks of me as a dork. But I will apply my no-fail entrepreneurial spirit to winning her over. Every success story inSilicon Valley begins with a nerd who never believed for a second that the thing he’s envisioned wasn’t possible.
I know the fact that we’ve known each other since childhood is both a blessing and a curse. She thinks she knows me, and that’s good. I understand things about her that other men don’t, and that’s good too. But one of the things I understand is that she will always think of me as Johnny B. Nerdballs, and that…is not great.
It’s a hurdle, not a brick wall.
I’m ready to make a run at it and take the leap.
CHAPTER 6
OLIVIA
NOW
“So… Are we just going to pretend it’s a regular occurrence for me to walk in and find you embracing a beautiful man in the middle of our living room?” Callie asks. “Or are you going to tell me what the deal is with Mr. John Brandt immediately?”
As per John’s advice, I tell Callie what’s mostly true: “Johnny is someone I’ve known my whole life because he’s my brother’s best friend. I hadn’t seen him in years, and he just showed up at the restaurant today to ask me out.” Which is essentially all there is to it. Maybe he was right—by the time we get to Cleveland, it might feel real. More likely by then he will have driven me so batshit crazy that I won’t know the difference between fantasy and reality.
“Really?” My roommate looks at me with more amusement than skepticism. “You don’t honestly think I’m going to let you get away with that tiny breadcrumb, do you? I walked in on a goddamn meme. It was like,Oh, it was just a hug.And then you see the hug, and it’s, like, Heathcliff’s and Cathy’s souls making love to each other on the moor.”
“Pah! I wish.”OMG. That’s totally what it felt like.“Today was honestly the first time I’ve seen him in half a decade. He just showed up out of the blue because my brother asked him to check up on me.” I shrug. “You want tea? I’m gonna boil water for tea.”
“Oh, honey. I want all the tea. That man is a ten. He’s a ten times ten. Why are you acting like it’s no big deal?”
“Because it’s Johnny. It’snota big deal.” After filling the electric kettle, I start telling her about what a nerd he was growing up and how much time he spent at our house when I was a kid. “His parents were workaholics. For real. Probably still are. They were never home, so he’d sleep over on weekends more often than not. We celebrated his birthday when Nathan had his parties because John’s parents were always too busy to throw their son a party of his own,” I say. “But he never complained about them, as far as I know. Once, he got the flu, and when my mom found out he was home alone, she went to pick him up and brought him to our place and made him soup.”
Callie’s hands are covering her heart, and she’s making the noise she makes when we look at videos of baby animals on Instagram. “Awwww! Now I want to make him soup.”
I don’t want her to get attached to the idea of him, so I get into the other stuff. “It’s not all pathos. When he and my brother turned thirteen, they spent most of the time in the basement, but we only had one TV in the house, so there were a lot of arguments and subsequent retaliatory hijinks related to what to watch.”
“And? That’s literally what it’s like for anyone in a house with other kids.”
I tell her about the time he tried to explain the mathematics of classical music to me, and I explained how much I hated his inability to experience music viscerally by pouring a can of rootbeer onto his head. I was grounded for a week, but it was so worth it, shutting him up for five minutes.
“Gosh, O. The way you talk about him, it sounds like you barely even liked him.”
“No, I did. I liked him. He was always very neat and tidy when he shared our bathroom, so that was a plus. And he helped me with my math homework most of the time without me having to ask.”He didn’t help me so much as he’d see me struggling with it and just do my homework for me while barking out basic mathematical rules that he could not believe I didn’t comprehend.“He’s just a nerd, you know. But he’s changed.”
“Uh, yeah. He’s changed into a nerd who’s made billions of dollars. He’s a ten times one hundred million.”
I look over and realize she’s staring at her laptop. “Are you Googling him? Don’t Google him!”
“Why not? He’s highly Googleable. He has a Wikipedia page,” she says. “No way—he founded Brainy Biz?! My cousin used that to get funding for the app he developed. I knew I recognized his name. He’s a big deal! A huge deal. He’s an actual billionaire. Why aren’t you more excited?”
