Page 5 of The Relationship Clause

I level him with a cold look, and Shane cracks another smile. He knows as well as I do that canceling on Cynthia Burton isn’t only a bad idea, but also nearly impossible.

My mother isn’t exactly what you’d call warm and fuzzy. The best description I can give while still being polite would be to compare her to a hurricane: a powerful force to be reckoned with, equal parts scary and awe-inspiring. There’s a reason she was named one of Forbes’ Most Powerful Women. She was number thirty-five, to be exact, somewhere between Oprah Winfrey and Kathy J. Warden.

My dad’s not any better. He isn’t exactly a corporate giant like my mom, but he is top-tier in a big insurance company. They’ve been telling people how to spend their own money and run their own lives for over forty years, tearing empires down and building them up again.

Intimidating? Nah. Not at all.

“As much as I’d love to cancel,” I say, “we both know I’d need to be in the hospital for that to occur.”

“Hold on a second.” Shane grabs a decorative glass paperweight off my desk and starts throwing it up in the air like it’s a baseball. He knows I hate this, which is precisely why he’s doing it. “Didn’t you already have your quarterly meeting with Cynthia? Why is she back already?”

Shane’s only half-joking when he refers to my “quarterly meetings.”

On the first Saturday of every quarter, Mother flies into town from her penthouse in New York City to have dinner with my sister and me. She claims it’s to “connect” with us and “stay in the loop,” but we know better. It’s basically a board meeting where we get grilled on the objectives of our lives, judged when our progress doesn’t meet her standards, and then given new orders to accomplish before the next meeting.

I sigh, watching the paperweight as it floats up, almost touching the ceiling before gravity pulls it back down again. “I don’t know what’s going on. She called me yesterday, informing me that my presence is required at dinner.”

I look out my floor-to-ceiling window at my emptying office. Most of our employees have already gone home for the day with a few stragglers finishing up or socializing.

It still makes me proud knowing that it’s because of Shane and me that these people are able to put food on their tables and pay their bills. We built this business from the ground up, even though it’s not what either of our parents wanted for us. His parents were hoping to have an NFL Hall of Famer in the family, but a knee injury ended his career early. My parents wanted me to be…well, not doing this. They wanted me to go into business, just not for myself, and definitely not with Shane.

“Why don’t you see if Dan will go with you?” I say, going back to the previous conversation. I nod to where we can see him at his desk, logging out of his computer and packing up his bag. “Word around the water cooler is that he’s single.”

Just like you’re single.

I want to tack that last part on, but I don’t. Mostly because it doesn’t need to be said, but also because Shane’s relationship status is a sore spot for him.

He plays it off like he doesn’t care, but I know differently. He’s only ever had one long-term relationship. He dated Sally for over three years, but their breakup tore something apart, and he’s only been casually dating ever since.

Maybe I should be a good friend and try to talk to him about it, but we kind of have an unspoken agreement: I don’t ask him about Sally, and he doesn’t bug me about my lack of relationships ever since things with my parents went sideways.

It may not be healthy, but it’s working for us.

Shane nods and sets down the paperweight. “Yeah, fine, I’ll ask Dan if you insist on being anti-social.”

“Don’t I always?”

Shane stands and goes to the door. “What time is your dinner?”

“Six-thirty.”

“Good. At least something will get you out of this office before seven.”

Before he leaves, I ball up a sticky note and throw it at him.

When he’s gone, I turn back to my computer. The problem I’d been facing before he came in stares back at me.

Right. I’d almost forgotten.

The paranoia returns in full force, taking over every thought and seeping through my system until it nestles somewhere in my gut.

Someone is stealing our company’s secrets.

It’s not a claim I can prove. Heck, it’s not even a fully-formed accusation yet. It’s a worry. A culmination of little things that have been off for the last several months. Files left open on my computer that I swore I’d closed, a missing set of inventory, an unexplained stagnation in sales of our 3D printers, and now this: a rumor in the tech world that a newer, faster, more affordable printer will be hitting the market only weeks before our company is supposed to unveil our next set of products.

All of it has me feeling sick to my stomach.

I haven’t told Shane yet. I know I should. I trust him with everything, but I want to be sure before I go around making accusations, and right now, all I’ve got are some suspicions that look more like paranoia than anything else.

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