“But why Lean FIRE?” I ask, my stomach turning.
I’ve heard this spiel a dozen times.Joy through simplicity; freedom through sacrifice.Today it sounds more like punishment than inspiration, like choosing to live in a cave with a brokerage account is noble. Lean FIRE might be my best path now, but it feels like pleading guilty to a life so much smaller than the one I wanted a week ago.
Happy. Full. With Kael.
We thank Mark and let him go before Jenny triggers the siren for Net Worth Updates.
Jenny’s at ninety-three percent. I’m at fifty-one.
But I skip mentioning the year I’ll hit my goal to avoid questions about why it’s so much further away than it should be. The whole update leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
Once the mics are off, it’s just Jenny and me in her garage. The familiar scent of grease and the sight of bicycles, metal shelves overflowing with children’s toys, and the trash can do weird things to me.
“You okay?” Jenny asks, her brow either furrowed with concern or frustration since everything went down.
“What am I doing with my life? I’m staring at your trash can thinking, ‘I don’t even have enough trash to fill one of those.’”
“Um. Ouch?” Jenny laughs, but when I give no response, she hops up from her chair and runs around the table to give me a hug. “You miss him.”
“I miss the idea of him,” I correct.
“And work?”
“Sucks. I think Alistair was trying to scare Kael. So, I get to turn my cog every day with only minimal existential dread.”
“Did you email him back yet?”
“What am I supposed to say?” I pull my laptop closer, flicking to the tab with Kael’s email. “You heard it. It’s horrible—for Kael. But it’s not what he thinks.”
“You can still message him back.”
I hesitate, the weight of our last encounter pressing down on me, the absurdity of it all hitting me with renewed force.
“And say what?” I shake my head, lamenting the smoldering ache our fight left behind. “Thanks for almost losing my job? Thanks for recording yourself rejecting a lonely billionaire?”
“He’s trying,” Jenny insists, her voice firm. “He messed up, but he’s trying to fix it.”
“He thinks he’s in some Disney Channel original movie.” I scroll through his email and read one bullet point aloud. “Demand a stake in one of Alistair’s companies. I mean…”
Jenny guffaws, pushing me aside to reread his email herself. “I forgot he put that in there. He’s joking.”
“With my life!”
“You’re mad he did all this without you,” Jenny says, her expression softening. She cocks her head, using that lawyer trick she told me about. “Now he’s asking what you want, and you won’t even respond.”
I groan, dropping my head into my hands. “Why can’t I just crawl into a cave, hit my FIRE number, and be done with it?”
“You sound pathetic,” she says. “You hate Lean FIRE, but you’re fine with that cave fantasy?”
“I want takeout delivered to my cave, thank you very much.” I point at the laptop. “He doesn’t even apologize.”
“Did you let him?” Jenny asks, eyebrow up, seeing straight through the deflection.
“He sent an email without an apology,” I say, ignoring the fact that he did apologize at the gallery. It was just too full of excuses to count.
Jenny throws her hands up and heads for the kitchen door. “I’m getting beers for wallowing. You coming?”
“I thought we did that already.”
