Page 4 of Stuck With the Billionaire Grump

Mermaid Shores sounds like the name of a corny tourist trap full of rickety carnival rides, shady locals, and broken dreams. Or like the title of a terrible soap opera with twenty-three seasons and a cast full of D-list actors.

In our years together at Caltech, Elijah never really talked about his hometown, so I had to draw my own conclusions. And maybe it’s a sign of my own bad attitude that I pictured it as the tackiest place on earth just from the name alone, but I’m no stranger to my own pessimism. I’m well aware of the fact that I’m not exactly a ray of sunshine.

Speaking of sunshine… I readjust my shades, but I still have to squint through the staggering brightness of the light glaring off the Atlantic to see where I’m going.

You can’t miss it, Elijah texted me when he asked me to meet him for coffee at a place called Lazy Joe’s.Everything you need is right on Main Street.

Technically, he’s correct. Main Street in Mermaid Shores does, indeed, seem to be the main hub of activity. The problem is thatthere isso muchactivity that it’s difficult to pick out one specific point of interest among the summery chaos.

It’s not that it’s too busy. Yes, there are tourists everywhere, but the sidewalks and beach boardwalk aren’t crowded shoulder-to-shoulder with people. The sand itself, sloping downward from grassy dunes, isn’t unbearably congested, either. It seems that Mermaid Shores is genuinely the hidden gem that it claims to be. Only those who are in on the secret of its existence make themselves home here for the summer.

Despite that, there’s more people here than I’m ever in the mood to deal with. Worse yet, I’ve definitely spied dozens of VIPs in the throng. Celebrities and musicians and actors and producers. The kind of people who are too dignified to spend their summer in Malibu or the Hills.

The kind of people who know who my mother is, and who would recognize me almost instantly thanks to the fact that, despite being a man, I look so much like her.

Daphne Shay, America’s most beloved Hollywood starlet and my mother, has been gracing the silver screen for over fifty years. Her career started when she was a child, a mere eleven years old, in her role in what is now considered a cult classic. She’s a household name. One of the most famous actresses of her generation.

I’m happy for her, of course, and I’d never be spiteful of the financial privilege her fame has afforded me throughout my life, but sometimes I really wish I didn’t belong to such an influential family. I loathe the spotlight.

Most of the time, all I want is to blend into the shadows.

I pull my baseball cap lower as an older woman with long silver hair gazes at me curiously. I’m not even an actor, but I’ve been asked to sign autographs before just because I’m Daphne Shay’s son.

Ducking underneath a royal blue awning, I renew my search for Lazy Joe’s.

If I’m being completely honest, Mermaid Shores isn’t corny at all. If the sun wasn’t trying to blind me, and if I hadn’t just got off a cross-country flight and then dealt with the harrowing traffic flowing from Boston to Cape Cod, I would actually be in a good enough mood to admit that this place is actually pretty charming.

The awning I’m standing under belongs to an old-school eatery called Judy’s Diner. The shop next to it is dedicated to saltwater taffy, complete with a display in the window of the taffy-pulling machine, which has drawn several curious children. I pass by a store that sells nothing but popcorn in what seems like every flavor imaginable, including dill pickle and blue raspberry. After that is a tiny used bookstore that’s so narrow it barely allows for two people to stand side-by-side in the single aisle that spans far into the back of the building. Up ahead, there’s an eclectic New Age-y type of store with a statue of a hunched hag by the door grinning eerily at passersby. On the corner some distance behind me, I passed a restaurant-bar called the Siren & Sword that had a line of patrons spilling out onto the sidewalk.

All in all, it’s an interesting mix of businesses. I’m assuming most of them are boarded up during the off season, but they all seem to be flooded with customers for now. In fact, this entire town probably survives well enough on the tourism that occurs from May to September each year.

I wonder what it looks like during the winter when this Main Street is asleep. It must be a lot more peaceful.

Finally, I locate the café known as Lazy Joe’s, which looks exactly like the sort of place someone might want to laze around. It boasts leather beanbag chairs and low lighting. When I step inside, I can hear the soft jazz music playing through the soundsystem. It’s exactly the sort of place that would be lame and cliché back home in Los Angeles, but actually kind of works in a town like this.

I see Elijah right away, leaning back in a chair at a low table in the corner. Harry, also known as Elijah’s former assistant and current best man for the wedding that’s happening in a matter of days, is here, too. Harry now runs Elijah’s startup in San Francisco, having inherited it based on the virtue of his own work ethic.

Elijah’s story is odd, to say the least. He’s undeniably a genius, not just because he went to Caltech, but because he’s got a natural skill with coding and software development.You boys have got the minds for it, our favorite professor always praised us. I knew he was really just praising Elijah, but I took the leftover compliment anyway.

Before we even graduated, Elijah achieved impressive success. He designed an app and sold it for several million dollars, then made another one and sold that for even more. After that, he moved to Silicon Valley and founded his startup, raking in millions and billions more as a result.

Then, last year, he went back to his hometown, and… I don’t know. Something changed. He transferred his company to Harry, moved back to Massachusetts, and now he’s getting married.

Or rather, remarried.

My story is a lot less exciting than that. When I graduated from Caltech, I wrote some security software that sold for a decent amount and have been doing some white-hat hacking for various industries since then. I stayed in Los Angeles, where I was born. Never married. Rarely dated, in fact.

And now I’m here. In a week, I’ll go home and continue on as normal.

The end.

“Hey, man!” Elijah calls out, waving me over.

I paste a smile on my face, going through the correct social motions.

“Good to see you guys,” I tell them, hoping I seem natural and normal.

No matter how much I genuinely like certain people, socializing has never come easily to me. I always feel like I’m following a script I’ve been forced to memorize.

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