After I’d dropped Bella off at school, I’d been sitting at a red light, and I began to wonder what school Skye’s daughter attended. I wondered if her dad had dropped her off when she was in elementary school, or even now. Who was he? Was he still in the picture?
I’d been so lost in thought that I didn’t even realize the light had turned green until I heard honking behind me.
An hour later, during a pre-production meeting for my podcast, I had begun to wonder how Skye got into nursing, and more specifically, hospice care. It took a very special person to do that sort of work. It had to be difficult caring for patients that you knew weren’t going to be here very long.
When I heard my name being called, I looked around and saw that all of my staff were looking in my direction, waiting for an answer. I had no clue what the question was.
Even on the walk over to the Diner, I’d heard a song playing from a passing car and immediately imagined slow dancing to it with Skye. Instantly, I was transported to my back deck, beneath a blanket of stars, with my arms wrapped around Skye. That’s where my head had been when I walked right into a pole. A woman had been filming something on her phone beside me and caught it on camera. So that was fun.
When I made it to the back of the Diner, I slid into the rounded booth beside Maddox. Alex was seated across from me.
“Hey!” I greeted them.
Maddox stared at me for a second, and I saw concern register on his face. “What happened to your forehead?”
I lifted my hand to the spot where I’d smacked the pole. “I walked into a pole.”
“Are you okay?” he asked while Alex grinned, clearly amused.
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly.
“Is it what’s going on with Naomi, or did something else happen?” Alex followed up.
Yes. Skye happened.
“My head’s just all over the place.”
“I think that’s to be expected,” Maddox assured me.
Alex and Maddox had both been supportive when I told them what I was planning to do. They’d voiced their concerns about the situation, but ultimately told me, that they’d be there for me whatever I decided to do.
“How are things going logistically?” Alex asked. “Is she settling in?”
“Yeah, I think so. She’s pretty much just been sleeping.”
Alex and Maddox both nodded their heads.
“Is Bella okay? You know she can come over and stay anytime,” Maddox offered.
“Yeah, anytime she needs a break, she’s always welcome at ours,” Alex seconded.
“Actually, Bella’s doing great. She colored pictures with her yesterday, and they have a tea party planned after she gets out of school today.”
“That’s good,” Maddox enthused.
“Yeah,” Alex seconded.
Perhaps sensing my discomfort with the topic, the boys shifted the conversation to the yearly fundraiser for the non-profit we’d started, Fostering the Future, which was coming up in a few weeks. I was proud of the work we’d done for kids in the system and those who aged out. We’d helped hundreds of kids with everything from tutoring, clothes, mental health awareness and advocacy, counseling, scholarships, transportation, housing, and job placement. All the resources we’d wished we’d had. We did our best to provide these services to as many kids as possible. It certainly hadn’t solved the crisis in our foster care system, but I had to believe that, in our small way, we were making a difference.
As I stared at my friends, I realized just how lucky we all were. I wasn’t talking about professionally. Yes, we were all at the top of our games in our chosen industry, and our combined net worth rivaled the economy of a small country, but I was talking about our personal lives.
None of us had family or role models of what men were supposed to be. But somehow, we’d ended up becoming good men, good fathers, and, in Alex and Maddox’s case, good partners. That aside, it did blow my mind to think about where we’d come from and where we all were now.
The odds hadn’t been in our favor, but that hadn’t stopped us from achieving success in each of our chosen fields. Maddox, the youngest in our group, had always been genius-level smart and good with anything tech-related. Growing up, he’d been able to disarm security systems, hotwire cars, and decipher out cheat codes for video games in minutes. He’d carried his unique skill set into adulthood and developed a cybersecurity system that was used by world leaders, including the Pentagon and MI6, the British Secret Service. He’d started TTT Security in his early twenties and was offered billions of dollars for one of his first patents, but he’d declined. When his company went public, the IPO was nearly seventy-two dollars per share. Since then, it had skyrocketed.
Alex started doing construction as a teenager to support his family. In his early twenties, he and Ash saved up enough to buy a dilapidated building in Oakland. He renovated and flipped it, and that was the start of his success. He then rinsed and repeated that same model over and over again, which led to bringing on investors. Once real money got involved, Alex had been able to take his company, Vaughn Holdings, global, and the rest was history.
I also started my chosen career in my teens. From being an intern at the radio station to hosting my own program, which within two years was number one in its market and got syndicated. When I got my second on-air contract, I decided to make a few bold investments that paid off, one of which was a very popular search engine. Once I had real money coming in, I reinvested in my own business, Locke Media Group, and within eight years it was worth more than a billion dollars.
