Page 114 of Rich and Bossy

“Where is this coming from? Since when do you care whether or not I’m happy?”

“Jesus.” He stares me down. “I’m your best friend. I care more about you being happy than anything else, as pussy as it sounds. Don’t be a bitch about it either. It’s too important to not be honest and hide behind macho bullshit.”

“That’s not how I meant it.” I hold up my hands in a sign of surrender. “What I mean is, we don’t sit around talking about fucking feelings.” I shudder a little when I say the last word.

“Stop being an asshole. You’re deflecting and we both know it.” He cranes his head around like I’m being ridiculous. “When you’re sitting here like fucking Howard Hughes or something, pissing into jars and leaving them lying around the place…”

“I don’t do that, just the workers at the warehouse.”

He dies laughing. “Jesus, bro.”

I shrug, trying not to laugh. “I still brush my teeth, you piece of shit.”

“Whatever, ho. You’re falling the fuck apart, and that’s not meant as an insult. It’s coming from a place of genuine concern—yes, I’m capable of that.”

“I know.” I glance over at him, trying to look grateful.

He falls back in the chair with a sigh, scrubbing a hand over his hair in a gesture I’ve seen countless times. “For what it’s worth, I’m not even talking about Hazel right now. I know it hurts, not being with her. Maybe she’ll never forgive you. I’m sorry about that, I really am. But I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the past few days, and now it’s obvious you haven’t been happy in a long time. It’s like the whole reason we started Rapid in the first place dissolved the minute we went public. That was the one moment where I look back to, where everything changed. We thought we were doing the right thing, but now, I’m not so sure.”

Maybe it’s the fact of needing something to think about besides the way I broke Hazel’s heart, but he’s got my attention. “You think so? I always thought it was the logical next step.”

“You remember the way it used to be?” There’s an edge of excitement in his voice, fresh energy. “When we first started, playing football and shit in the Minnie warehouse with the employees? How it was like a legit family. Everyone was in it together. They worked hard because they believed in what we were doing. The IPO has always felt like we sold them out.”

I smile a little thinking about it. “We just wanted to be our own boss, so nobody could tell us what to do.”

“More than that, too. We wanted to build a company we’d be proud of. We seriously said we didn’t want the shit to happen that has ended up happening.”

The more I think about it, the clearer the memory that comes—and the farther away it feels. “Yeah, man. Well, we had one shot and we wanted to grow. There was no way to do it without that IPO.”

“At least it felt like we believed in something back then.” He glances around. “Now, all we give a fuck about is stock prices and market share. Pretending to be the company we started out being with our pretty core values web page and commercials.”

“We have a responsibility?—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He rolls his eyes. “It’s all bullshit, though. We both know that.”

I glance over. “Yeah. I know.”

“Do you think that old version of us would be proud of us now?”

“You think younger us, us’s, I don’t know how to say it, but you think they’d be happy about what they see right now?”

“No. Not at all.”

“So? What are we going to do?”

It’s almost enough to make me laugh, that question. “We don’t really have any fucking options, man. We backed ourselves into a corner.”

“Bull. Fucking. Shit.”

“Want to resign? Sell our fucking shares? Burning it down is the only thing we could do that would make any difference. And that still might hurt the workers too, across the whole country. Not just this one warehouse.”

It’s his turn to stroke his jaw, only he’s doing it in a vain attempt to conceal a grin. “Kinda feels like the only thing to do, to me.”

For one brief, heart-stopping moment, I can see it play out in my head. Announcing my resignation, giving up ownership, throwing everyone under the bus. Doing tell-all interviews. Believe me, every single media outlet would damn sure want to talk to me about that. I imagine speaking out against the board’s tactics. No fucking way Hazel would lose her labor fight if I did it. I’m just worried itallmight collapse.

Hank and the board would lose billions, collectively. The stock would tank twenty percent, easy, in one day. I’d have to be careful and have lawyers look at it, to see if we even could unload our shares. We may have to wait until they take the hit, then sell, to avoid an investigation.

It’s suicide. It’d kill everything we built. “We can’t do that, man. It’d destroy the whole thing.”