Trillionaire Boys' Club: The Internet Giant Page 6

  “I never tried to—”

  “I like you as a person,” Alyssa says. “But frankly, aside from being hot and rich and powerful, I think you suck as a man. If you want to be a better one, great. Good for you. But it can’t start with Mia. That ship has sailed. Do better next time, but not with her. I get that you’re sorry, and that’s a start. But you don’t get to wipe the slate clean. You’d better learn to accept that what’s done is done.”

  I want to say more, but I’ve reached the limit of what Alyssa can hear. Maybe it’s good she refused this job. Once she was here, with a signed NDA and the truth, Alyssa would never have gone along with it anyway.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “We can talk later.”

  “All right. And Alyssa?”

  But she’s already mumbled goodbye and hung up. The line is dead.

  I set the phone down and walk to the giant window. Inferno sprawls beyond my expansive lawn. Somewhere down there, Mia is stewing about me.

  I have no idea how the hell I’m going to turn her around, but I have to try.

  My business depends on it.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MIA

  I wake up sweaty in my childhood bedroom. At first there’s that strange dislocation that comes whenever you sleep somewhere new — that sense of this isn’t where I belong. But then I remember where I am, why I’m here, and the dream that dragged me through the night.

  I sit up, blinking in the sunlight. It’s Saturday, right? I don’t have to go to work, and that’s good because lately I don’t seem capable of going in without causing some sort of a spectacle. So far, nobody other than Jamie has said anything about the source of my agitation, so who knows — maybe nobody’s aware.

  Why would they be? Inferno isn’t the tiny little town it used to be, despite Old Town and its residents still feeling that way.

  Old Town … where I live. The one where we still have a small-town vibe, and everyone probably does know.

  Because they saw me and Onyx having sex right there on the bench.

  I suffer a full-on moment of panic — just enough to get my heart pumping faster. I jump a little and my hand clutches the sheets. It passes, but even in the seconds that follow, when every fiber of my rational being knows it was only a dream, some primitive part of me is still afraid. That part feels like it actually happened, and was recorded by the crowd.

  Something else is bothering me: I remember enjoying the dream, right up until the end.

  I liked that I denied Onyx, but he could see through me. I wasn’t even aware I wanted his tongue between my legs, but oh. My. God, the feeling when he yanked my panties down right there on Main Street and licked me …

  I know it was only a dream, but I swear I can still feel it. All the agitation I’ve felt about Onyx’s return has built up stress, and it’s settled below my waist as well as above it.

  How long has it been since I’ve had sex? I’ve been so worked up, I haven’t even touched myself.

  I wonder if I came in my sleep. That must happen, right? I know they talk about teen boys having wet dreams, but girls probably have the same thing, right? I came in the dream, did I also come for real? My panties suggest that I did.

  I catch myself thinking these thoughts, and I’m immediately embarrassed — or maybe “ashamed” is a better word. No one is here to see my embarrassment and shame, but I feel it anyway. Onyx isn’t someone I want in my dreams — and if he is, I want fantasies of kicking him in the balls. I want revenge. If I’m going to be fucking someone in a dream involving Onyx, I want it to be some other guy, and I can fuck him while Onyx watches and squirms.

  Or, hell … we’re talking fantasy, right? We’re talking dreams? Then I want like ten guys all around me, and Onyx can sit in the corner stewing like a loser while ten hot studs do their worst.

  My pussy’s still tingling. It’s so tempting to heed its call. But if I go there, it’ll be because I’m hot on the memory of Onyx from my dream — which, let’s face it, isn’t far from memories of him in real life. He was a king at eating pussy. Nobody since has been able to hold a candle to him. I never faked it with Onyx. I didn’t have to … and the few times something was bothering me and I couldn’t climax, he always wanted to know.

  I want to know when you don’t come, he’d say, because that makes it so much hotter for me when you do.

  I shake the thoughts away. But they don’t want to go. They’re persistent, sticking to me as I wake up and get ready, like cobwebs clinging to my fingertips. Onyx is the last thing I want in my head, but the more I tell myself not to think about him and what his body used to do to mine, the more I’m unable to bar him from my mind.

  I quickly shower, so I’m not naked with my thoughts for long, then put on old underwear, ratty jeans, and a faded T-shirt with too many holes — all decidedly unsexy because they’re left-behind items from my teen years, when I flirted with grunge. But even at my least feminine, with my hair pulled back and no makeup — with a pair of unraveling cotton panties doing unpleasant things where the seam is splitting — I’m still getting turned on.

  Goddamn you, Onyx. Stop turning me on. I fucking hate you.

  The dream has ruined yesterday. I left that encounter feeling powerful, like I’d finally found my revenge. Onyx thought he could bring me flowers and make it all better, with his fucking stupid-ass grin? Well, screw that. And that’s how I felt, pride held high and my righteousness wearing an exponent, when I stomped off with Jamie running gobsmacked behind me.

  But now I have this alternate version in my head — the one from my dream.

  Onyx still comes to me with his dumbass flowers. Except now, when I push him away, he shoves me down to sitting, opens my legs, drops my panties, and licks my pussy.

  He makes me come, and then he fucks me.

  He doesn’t ask. He takes. It’s how he used to be — kind outside the bedroom, but bossy in it. Nobody’s been precisely like that to me since, either.

  Stay away from me, my dream self told him. Stay away and don’t tempt me.

  And Dream Onyx said, No, Mia. We’re over when I say we’re over.

  That’s not how it is, though, I tell myself. There’s fantasy … and then there’s reality. There are dreams … and then there’s the way things really are.

  In real life, I beat his ego into the ditch and walked away proud. That’s the version playing out now, and nobody has to know that he just fucked me in my sleep. Or that, honestly, I sort of hope he does the same thing again tonight.

  No I don’t. I hate him.

  But I’m lying.

  I don’t trust myself to be alone with my thoughts. I need a counterbalance. Something to distract me. And I need a real-world anchor to show me the difference between what I actually do and have and want in the real world, and the horrible things I shouldn’t think even in the privacy of my deepest thoughts.

  I glance in the mirror. I look, in a word, practical. This is a look that says, “Here’s a human being” and nothing more. I’m not sexy. I don’t need or want to be sexy, or to think about sex, or to admit to myself that motherfucker, Onyx actually did look damn fine yesterday in his dark suit and camel-hair coat.

  I leave the room, in search of my mother.

  I tell myself to stop thinking of Onyx.

  Of course that’s impossible.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  MIA

  And Mom is no help at all. I guess Jamie’s sister’s cousin’s hairdresser’s dog-walker’s boyfriend’s grocery-bagger knows a similarly distant acquaintance to my mother, because somehow Jamie got Mom’s number and called last night to ask about me. She swore Mom to secrecy, but of course Jamie doesn’t know Sarah Stover. She has the best of intentions, but it’s like my mother doesn’t know what secrecy is. Same for privacy.

  When I enter the kitchen, the first thing she says is, “Good morning. Your friend Jamie called last night.”

  “She did?”

  “She told me not to tell you.”


  I give my eyes the exaggerated roll I used in high school — the one that’s meant to be overtly seen, aimed right at her. The coffee is already brewed, so I grab a mug from the same cupboard the mugs have always been in. Things don’t change here.

  “So,” Mom says, “you want to talk about it?”

  “About you not understanding what ‘Don’t tell Mia I called’ means?”

  Mom shuffles on her stool. She’s always at least somewhat animated — the kind of person who’s always saying the wrong thing because she’s always saying something, even if it’s really inappropriate. She’ll go to a funeral, hear a chair squeak, and ask someone nearby if the corpse just farted.

  “Come on,” she says. “You came to me all bummed out last night. Obviously something went wrong. I didn’t want to pry.”

  “You did want to pry.” I pour my coffee. It smells delicious. The ebony liquid reminds me of Onyx. So does the heat.

  “Yes, but I held it in check because I’m a good mom who knows how to pretend that she’s giving her daughter space. But we also know that kind of thing only lasts so long, and eventually I’m going to start picking at scabs.”

  “I’m so glad you’re the person I turn to for comfort.”

  “You like me because I’m insightful, persistent, and have an adventurous fashion sense. I don’t like to brag, but I’m kind of the ideal mother.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “So do you want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “Jamie said it was something with he-who-shall-not-be-named. What, was he profiled on TV or something?”

  “Are my words not working again? Dammit. I’d swear I just said no.”

  “Or did he call you? He wouldn’t call you, would he? He knows better than that.”

  “Mom —”

  “She wouldn’t give me details. She told me not to even tell you that much.”

  “Mom, you’re a wonder.” I sit beside her, idly stirring my coffee. “I don’t know which role suits you better: secret-keeper or confidant.”

  “Aren’t they the same thing?”

  “A confidant is also around to support the secret. A secret-keeper only keeps them.”

  “Well, then, I’d rather be a confidant.”

  “You’re more of a broadcast center. Or an open box. Yes, that’s it. If I had some information I just wanted to leave lying around like a lost-and-found for secrets, you’d be that box.”

  “I’m flattered. Anyway. What happened?”

  I could keep playing this game and dodging her questions, but we both know that’s spinning wheels. I knew I’d have to face Mom’s aggressive girl talk in the morning.

  I sigh. I really, really don’t want to discuss this. It’s not that I’ve done anything wrong or even that I don’t want to think about it; it’s more that I know how Mom will react. Right now, I don’t know how much she knows or what Jamie told her, but it can’t be much. She guessed if I got upset because I saw him on TV, for shit’s sake.

  “I ran into him yesterday.”

  Mom does a variant on the classic double-take and almost spills her coffee. “Wait. Who? Not …”

  I nod. “Onyx.”

  “Doesn’t he live in California or something?”

  “Seattle, I assume, That’s where Forage is headquartered.” But then I think: Should I know that? Do most people know off the top of their heads where the world’s largest Internet company is based? Or do I know because I’ve poked around — almost as if I have (or once had) a vested interest?

  “And he was here?”

  I sip my coffee. “Yes.”

  “In Inferno Falls?”

  I look around as if just realizing something. “Wait. This isn’t Boca?”

  “I’m trying to digest this. You’re telling me your ex-boyfriend Onyx —”

  “Yes.”

  “— who, whenever I see his face, I make the sign of the cross —”

  “Just like Dracula.”

  “— is here. In town. Now.”

  “Seems that way.” I say it casually, but that’s because I can already sense Mom ramping up.

  In high school, back when I actually liked Onyx, I had to constantly defend him. Mom saw through the guy from day one, and the first time he cheated on me that was it — done, goodbye Onyx for good as far as she was concerned.

  Mom gives most people second chances, but not the guy who hurt her little girl. I forgave him, and forgave him the second time, and forgave him through all his many betrayals and lies. But all it took for Mom was the first time.

  The coming roles feel familiar. She’s toning up and I’m toning down to balance her. When I saw Onyx yesterday, it was one hell of a big deal to me, so it’s funny that right now I’m trying to make like it was barely anything, just to hold her temper.

  Tentatively, as if she’s trying to give the benefit of the doubt, she says, “Why would he be here?”

  “Business,” I say.

  Last night before bed, Jamie called and we talked a little. After her dad died, their family friend Anthony sort of became her surrogate father. He didn’t open doors for her so much as coach her — helping Jamie to find her “one true path.” Back then, hearing the man who would become the one and only Anthony Ross say “one true path” and other self-help absurdities was sort of funny, but today it’s a whole other thing.

  Today, thousands of people at a time pay him thousands of dollars to hear him say words like that. I can’t even guess at what he’s worth, but everyone knows his face, his voice, his famous self-help-guru brand of aggressive personal development.

  It’s kind of funny that people say Anthony Ross has more influence than the Pope or the President now, when to me he’s just someone I knew growing up — my best friend’s second daddy.

  So Jamie talked to Anthony again, keeping the most embarrassing parts of my encounter to herself. She asked why Onyx is back — something Anthony had been cagey about when he let something slip before, apparently as part of some rich guys’ code of silence.

  This time, Anthony told her. Then Jamie told me.

  Now I tell my mom: “They’re apparently building some new Forage office here.”

  “In Inferno Falls?” Mom says it with intense disbelief, as if I said he was building a Forage office at the top of an extremely tall pole.

  “Hey, this is a happening little city now. You’d know that if you ever left Old Town.”

  “The traffic is terrible out there. I don’t want to leave.”

  “Well, it’s hipping up. You’d be surprised who’s looking here for their creative talent. I’ll bet you don’t even know how top-tier Urban Design is considered to be. I work at one of the world’s most respected architecture firms. You should be way more proud of me than you are.”

  “I’m so proud.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re so smart.”

  “I really am.”

  “But not as snappy a dresser as your mother.”

  “Okay. Great. Thanks.”

  Mom sips again. “So that’s it? He’s in town on business, and it’s all perfectly logical and just a big coincidence?”

  I take too long to reply. Yes, that could be partially possible. But I didn’t accidentally brush shoulders with Onyx at Hill of Beans; he showed up right outside my house, holding a big bouquet of flowers. And now, whatever I say, Mom will refute the coincidence.

  “Okay,” she says. “There’s more to this than you’re telling me. You may as well spill. I’m a relentless interrogator.”

  I cave. I tell her everything, down to the last slap. It’s hard to tell the story, though, because part of me is confused; I don’t really know which parts of which version are true. I know we didn’t have sex on a bench, but smaller differences escape me. Did Onyx grab me in real life? Did he touch me at all? Did he say I was his, and that we were only over when he said we were?

  Mom is nodding, trying to take it in and see how she feels. “He obviously
wants you back.”

  “I think he just wanted to apologize.” A strange thing happens as I say it: I start to think maybe I overreacted. The guy’s been out of my life for years, and he might have been coming back to give me the sorry I couldn’t hear.

  Did he deserve an assault? I thought so yesterday … but what about today?

  “He brought flowers,” she says.

  “Maybe he brought them to apologize.”

  Mom stands, like the news is too large to process while sitting. She paces, then says, “You aren’t thinking of seeing him again, are you?”

  “What? No! Of course not.”

  Mom squints down at me, assessing. “What was that just now? That little look?”

  “Nothing!” Then, calmer: “Nothing, Mom. It’s just … why would you even think I wanted to see him again?”

  She shrugs. “You always used to.”

  “Mom!”

  “I’m only going off past experience. He’s a magnet, you’re metal. He’s donuts, you’re your Uncle Rog.”

  “Rog does really like donuts.”

  “You’re changing the subject.”

  “I’m playing along!” Now I stand, too. “Why are you giving me crap about this? I didn’t do anything. He came to me. I shut him down, and now it’s over. End of story.”

  “Mia. Honey.” A condescending tilt of her head. “No offense, but I’ve heard that before.”

  “What the hell?” I throw my palms into the air. “I’m not eighteen anymore, Mom!”

  “Don’t be mad. I just …” Sigh. “You don’t know how hard it was, putting you back together every time he crushed you. And you can’t possibly know what it was like to see where things were headed whenever you went back to him and never being able to stop it. You would always tell me that he was truly sorry this time. ‘He’s changed, Mom. He loves me, Mom.’ And then he’d go and screw around. He’d lie right to your face.”

  “He was a teenager. He’s a grown man now.”

  “Mmm-hmm. I’ve heard that before, too. Like when he went off to college. Remember that girl he got pregnant? He knew she was pregnant when he came home to slip between your sheets.”