I’m just heading back to Archie when my phone rings.
It’s my friend Andrew.
After Vaughn stole my idea and got promoted ahead of me, I hadn’t lasted long at QuantumTech. My next job was a gamble—VP of a startup run by a kid fresh out of college with a brilliant idea and crippling social anxiety. In Andrew, I saw who I’d been: someone with something to prove and no one watching his back.
So I learned how to be the person who made sure no one took advantage of him.
We built NovaCore into something worth a fortune, becoming good friends in the process, before Andrew decided tosell. Our friendship meant I’d had a front-row seat as Andrew embarked on his recent revenge plan after he encountered his high school bully Justin, who hadn’t recognized him. Andrew decided to worm his way into Justin’s life to get revenge, and proceeded to do the absolute worst thing possible.
Fall in love with him.
The fallout was spectacular. Andrew flew back to the States to try to fix things, and I’ve been waiting to hear the verdict.
I juggle the ice to my other hand so I can answer the phone.
“Hey, Andrew,” I say.
“Hey, how’s it going?” he says.
“Uh…I’m not having the best night, actually,” I say truthfully.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s kind of a long story. Anyway, how is everything with you? Did you sort things out with Justin?”
As I head back to the orange zone clutching my ice, Andrew proceeds to tell me how things went down, and I have a pulse of relief that everything has ended up far better than I anticipated.
“So, what’s your long story?” he asks when he finishes.
I can’t help giving a dark chuckle as I turn the corner and see Archie right where I left him. Jaymee has taken the cake out of the box, and she and Billy are leaning over it.
“Well, remember how I talked about getting revenge on Vaughn?” I ask.
“Vaughn Mansley, the guy who stole your idea and used it to get a promotion ahead of you?”
“Yeah, him.”
Billy gets something out of his pocket. It looks to be a lighter.
“What happened?” Andrew asks.
“Well, I ran into him, and an opportunity came up to exact some revenge, so I decided to take it, but…uh…things have gone slightly wrong,” I explain, watching with growing horror as Billy lights the candles on the cake.
“What went wrong?”
“Well, I may or may not have accidentally gotten my revenge on his brother instead.”
It appears the candles aren’t ordinary candles. They are weird sparking candles that immediately ignite and start fizzing like sparklers on the Fourth of July.
“What? What happened?” Andrew is saying in my ear.
But I’m not listening to him now. I’m jogging toward the unfolding disaster. Because, unfortunately, the sparks from the candles are spraying out from the cake in an indiscriminate fashion.
And it turns out sparks don’t play nicely with the nearby hand sanitizer dispenser, which has a puddle of liquid underneath from where someone obviously rage-pumped fourteen times.
The hand sanitizer ignites.
“Uh…I’ll have to fill in all the details later. I’m at the hospital right now,” I say breathlessly.
