Chapter Five
I’d deliberately resisted Internet stalking Bryan for the last few years. Sure, I knew his company was a generous supporter of the NYU business school and had endowed a new wing of the library last year. I also knew he’d started Made Here four years ago and had grown it quite nicely. But that was because I read business news, and you couldn’t miss his success story. Timing was everything and he’d capitalized at just the right moment with his product line. But more so, he knew the mood of the country shifted and that people wanted American-made goods, so he retrofitted former lugnut factories for cufflink manufacturing and then led the rapid growth along with his business partner. I hadn’t dug any deeper in the last few years. Nor had I tracked him on Facebook or hunted out anything else in recent months. The less I knew about him, the better off I was.
Besides, I’d had a boyfriend through most of college, Michael Preston. We were together for three years. Three tumultuous years. Michael was an actor at NYU and I first met him after a performance of A Streetcar Named Desire. He played Brando’s character and he was breathtaking on stage, all raw emotion and power and want. But that intensity he brought to the stage he brought to the relationship too in the form of rabid jealousy and insecurity. One evening our junior year, he showed up at my dorm, banged on the door, and collapsed on the floor in a heap. “I didn’t get the part,” he moaned. He’d been at a callback for the role of the youngest son in Long Day’s Journey Into Night.
“I’m so sorry, Michael,” I said and pet his hair.
He propped himself up on an elbow. “You don’t love me enough.”
“I do love you,” I told him.
“Then marry me. Marry me now. Let’s have a secret marriage. Prove you love me by marrying me.”
I was twenty. Even if I wanted to get married, I wasn’t going to do it secretly. But he looked at me so seriously, and with also something like anger in his eyes. I laughed nervously.
“You don’t love me enough,” he repeated.
Love me enough. What did that even mean? Maybe he was right. Maybe I didn’t love him enough. All I knew was when he showed up drunk at three in the morning the next night, it didn’t feel like love. It felt like stalking. He kept appearing in the middle of the night. Sometimes, I let him in just to shut him up so I could fall back asleep. He’d lie in bed with me and wake me up at three, four, five in the morning by poking his finger in my ear. “Stay up all night with me. To prove you love me.”
I couldn’t prove I loved him enough, nor did I want to, and given the unexpected and unwanted late-night visits, I was even more grateful when I was accepted into a study abroad program for my senior year. I had to get away from him, but I also wanted to be in France.
I took off for the city of lights and lived there for my senior year of school, immersing myself in the language, the food, and most of all the artisanal jewelry. My days were filled with cobblestoned streets and stone corridors of universities older than the United States, and my nights were rich with lamplights and a winding river and the occasional kiss with a young Frenchman. Once I returned to New York and started business school, there was even less room to think of Bryan.
Now, it was finally time to follow his Internet trail. But only because I needed to be armed with information so I could make my case in front of my professor. So I did the thing I hadn’t done for years. I sought out information about Bryan online. The very first result shocked me.
Made Here Business Partner Ousted by Board Following Affair
The link was to an article in a New York newspaper from a few months ago. I checked out the photo of Bryan’s ex-business partner, a standard sort of average-looking guy. As I read the article, several lines stood out. “At the board’s insistence, Kramer Wilco has stepped down as co-chief executive of Made Here, the high-flying manufacturing startup that’s been earning tidy profits in the last several quarters. Wilco admitted to being involved with an intern at the Made Here factory outside of Philadelphia. When it was discovered the intern was seventeen and a senior in high school, the board made it clear he needed to go. Wilco started Made Here with his business partner Bryan Leighton four years ago. Leighton did not return calls for comment, but a spokesperson said he will run the company solo now.”
I slumped back in my chair. I’d had no idea his firm had been touched by this sort of scandal. Was Bryan the one who discovered the affair? How had he handled it? Was he cool and clinical? Or pissed off and fuming like I would be? I Googled Wilco next and clicked on an interview he’d done with a business news channel a year ago after Made Here inked a new deal with a large retailer.
“What’s the biggest challenge your company faces in the quarter ahead?” the reporter asked at the end of the piece.
“Honestly, now’s not the time to talk about challenges. Now’s the time to just focus on our new partnership,” Wilco said, but there was a curtness to his answer and a snappish sort of tone in his voice. He wasn’t the most affable guy, that was for sure. Bryan would have done a much better job with the interview, coming across as warm and smart.
Then I shook my head as if I could rid myself of the thoughts. Why was I wasting any mental energy on how Bryan would have managed a cable news interview? Much less on how he felt when his business partner got caught canoodling? Bryan’s feelings didn’t matter to me anymore. I read a few more articles on Made Here’s business strategy, then researched the skatewear gal so I was prepped for tomorrow. I shifted gears and tended to some online orders, responded to some emails, and checked out a few of my favorite European design blogs. Then I worked on my other classwork, keeping a laser focus the whole time. It was nearly midnight when my roommate Jill, with her dark blond hair and deep blue eyes, threw open the door and announced she was home from an epic dress rehearsal in which the cast of Les Mis had kicked unholy musical ass. I laughed and listened to her report.
When she was done, I clasped my hands together. “You will never believe what happened today.”
“Tell me.”
I proceeded to share every single detail of my afternoon. “Isn’t that the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard? I’m marching into my professor’s office and requesting a new mentor tomorrow.”
Jill smirked.
“What?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Okay, what now?”
Then came a shrug and a knowing look. “I’m just saying, it doesn’t sound like you hated the kiss as much as you’re making it sound like you hated the kiss.”
“I hated every second of it,” I said through tight lips.
“Yeah, keep telling yourself that, my kitty cat.”
*****
The next morning Jill woke me up bright and early by throwing a sports bra on my face. “Rise and burn, sunshine. Rise and burn.”
I rolled over in bed and shielded my eyes. “Go away.”
That made Jill jump onto my bed and bounce up and down.
“How is it you can rehearse til midnight and have the energy to go for a run at seven in the morning?”
“I’m a vampire. I don’t need sleep. I survive off the nectar of my Broadway ambitions. And let’s not forget I was actually up til past midnight listening to you tell me all about Mr. Hottie McCufflinks.”
I swatted Jill with a pillow, then sat up in bed.
Jill clapped. “I won. Let’s go run.”
She was already in her leggings, sports bra and a tight tee-shirt, with her long blond hair looped in a hair tie.
“Fine,” I said, then brushed my teeth, yanked my hair into a ponytail and pulled on workout clothes. We ran when we hit the sidewalk of Twenty-Second Street heading for the West Side Bike Path. The sun was rising, and it promised a warm September day, free of rain.
“So what’s your plan? How are you going to resist him during your mentorship?” Jill started, arms tucked properly by her body, feet hitting the ground in perfect runner’s stride. Back in high school, when Jill wasn’t nabbing starring roles in musical theater productions, she was a runner for her cross-country team. Oh, have I mentioned she’s also finished five marathons? I must have been crazy to run with her because when it comes to sports I specialized in walking, just walking, and only walking. That’s why I only ran with her once a week and even then I spent most of the thirty minutes consumed by one singular, solitary, painful thought: Please let this be over as soon as humanly possible.
“I’m asking for a transfer. But even if I can’t get one, I don’t like Bryan, so it’ll be fine.”
“Ha.”
“Besides, he doesn’t like me either,” I said in between breaths.
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Jill, he didn’t like me five years ago. Why would he like me now?”
She gave me a sideways glance. “He did like you then. He just freaked out. Got scared or something. That’s what I’ve always believed and you know it. As for why he likes you now – duh. You’re you and you’re hot.” Jill slowed down her running. Delighted, I followed her lead into a more comfortable jog. “Besides. He. Kissed. You.”
I scoffed. “He kissed my forehead.”
“For. Ten. Seconds.”
“Anyway, it was nothing. I hit my head, and he was just being nice. Nothing more will happen. Because there is nothing going on.”
Jill cackled.
“What?”
“Kat. Seriously. You always fall for the hot ones.”
“Who doesn’t fall for the hot ones?”
“True.” We jogged past a pair of twentysomething guys running shirt-free. “Nice abs,” Jill called out, and the guys gave her a thumbs up. Jill was such an actress — she never had a problem speaking her mind or standing out in a crowd.
“Besides, how do you know he’s hot?”
“I looked up his picture. I looked him up too because I know you’re all Miss Resistance when it comes to Internet stalking, but I’m not. You know he’s single, right?”
“He’s twenty-eight. I’m not surprised he’s not married yet.”
“No, I mean he’s really single. Broke up with some publicist type he was dating on and off for a few years.”
“It if was on and off, it’ll probably be on again. Plus, allow me to remind you that – “ I slowed down and made a megaphone with my hands “– He. Doesn’t. Like. Me. Hello? Don’t you remember why I started My Favorite Mistakes?”
“Of course. But people change. And he’s clearly realized the error of his ways.”
“Look, I can’t mess up this mentorship. I know this makes me a freak, but I actually like my parents and want to help them. So I’m all-work-and-no-play-Kat for the fall.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” she said playfully. “And don’t worry. I like your parents too.”
“Good. That’s why I can’t even go there,” I said, in between heavy breaths from running.
“No. That’s why you have to be smart about it. Strategic. So whatever happens will have to be a secret. Between you, him, and me. And when you kiss him again, just make sure no one sees you,” Jill said, then gave me a big wink.
I shook my head, but I was smiling at her persistence, even though I knew I couldn’t take chances, whether anyone was looking or not. I had too much at stake, most of all my own bruised heart.