But it was a yes to Diwa.
Chapter Twelve
EzraHolberg had flown eleven hours from San Francisco just to tell Diwa he was being an asshole, and to his credit, he’d waited until his second glass of wine to say it.
“You’re being, like, a total asshole,” Ezra said.
He was sitting in the armchair opposite the sofa with his ankle crossed over his knee, holding a glass of the Barolo he’d brought with him from duty free. He had the pallid complexion of a man who spent his days bathing in the blue light of a computer screen, and his curly hair sat on his head in a state of barely contained revolt.
Ezra had been Diwa’s COO for five years, his college roommate for two before that, and was the person most likely to tell him the truth at any given time. He was exercising that privilege now. Brutally.
“The board meets in nine days. You’ve not returned a single call from Adhya in three weeks. She’s left you voicemails, Diwa. Plural. Adhya Dhawan does not leave voicemails. She sends one email, and if you don’t reply, she makes your life very difficultat the next compensation review. The fact that she haslowered herselfto sending you fucking voicemails should be giving you chest pains right now.”
“I’ve been busy,” Diwa said. Ezra didn’t need to know that he’d deleted those voicemails without listening to them.
“You’ve been doing yoga.”
“Mysore-style. It’s a different discipline from my usual.”
“You’ve been doingMysore-style yoga—” Ezra set his glass down on the side table, letting the base connect with a deliberate clink. “—while Adhya circles your name on a whiteboard in Menlo Park like you’re next on her kill list. Kenji has started CC’ing legal on his follow-ups.Legal, Diwa. That’s not a nudge. That’s him stacking up evidence for a subpoena in the making.”
Diwa was absolutely listening. Ezra was his best friend in the world, the person who’d been beside him since the pitch deck was a Google Doc with clip art in it. He was the only human being who’d ever seen Diwa throw up on a VC’s shoes at Demo Day, and he’d still chosen to hitch his career to him the following Monday.
Diwa needed to smooth this the fuck out.
“I hear you,” he said. “I do. And I’m going to call Adhya. I’ll call her tomorrow, first thing.”
“You’ll call her tonight.”
“I can’t call her tonight.”
Ezra’s eyebrows went up. “Why not?”
Because Colin was due at six. They’d had one date since the kiss, at a Thai place on Westbourne Grove. It wasn’t anything flash, but it had gone well enough that Colin had texted him the next morning to say the green curry was decent. Diwa had been vibrating at a frequency just below audible ever since then, and tonight was supposed to be the follow-up. Dinner at the house, something Diwa would order as soon as he got Colin’sopinion on what cuisine he wanted. He hadn’t accounted for Ezra dropping in unexpectedly.
“I’ve got a thing on tonight,” Diwa said.
Ezra looked at him for a long moment. Then he picked up his wine and settled in further on his chair.
“A thing?” he repeated.
“A thing.”
5:49.
“Look, Ez.” Diwa set his glass down and got to his feet. He moved towards the hallway with the casual purpose of a man who absolutely did not have a date arriving in eleven minutes. “You’ve had a long flight. You must be exhausted. You need to go have a shower, decompress, get some sleep. Go check into your hotel. I’ll call Adhya first thing tomorrow, I promise.”
“Hotel?” Ezra didn’t move from the armchair. “Diwa. You’ve got five bedrooms in this house. I’ve seen the realtor photos of this place. I helped you pick the paint colour for the guest suite, which you then ignored because you went with something calledCromarty.”
“Yeah, but the house is new. It’s…you know. It’s still settling.”
“It’s a couple hundred years old!”
“The plaster. The plaster needs to off-gas. There’s VOCs. Volatile organic compounds. You don’t want to be breathing those in after a transatlantic flight. Your immune system’s already compromised from the cabin air.”
“What the fuck, Diwa?”
Ezra’s eyes had gone narrow the way they went when a Series B founder tried to renegotiate terms after the handshake. He set his wine down and fixed his full attention on him, and Diwa felt the back of his neck go hot. There was now absolutely no chance of Ezra leaving.
