Page 100 of Boss Me

When the woman returned to the closet, Mamá stared me hard in the eye. “You’re a good man.”

I scuffed my dress shoe against the dingy linoleum tile. “Am I, though?” I ticked off items on my fingers. “I nearly hit my best friend. I sold my stock even though I’d promised Jay I wouldn’t, and that endangered my company and every one of my employees. And then, when things got difficult, I said Ben wasn’t my boyfriend. Even though I wanted him to be. I didn’t tell him I loved him until it was too late.” I squeezed my eyes shut so I couldn’t see the disgust on her face.

“Lito.” She reached up to tip my chin so I’d look her in the eye. “Everyone makes mistakes. Sometimes they make a lot of them, all in a row. But listen, you’re not like your father. I knew him at his best and at his worst. And even on your worst day, you’re better than he was on his best.”

“Really? Because when I smashed my desk, I felt a whole lot like him.”

“Really.” She put her work-roughened palm on my cheek. “You care about doing the right thing for other people. For your family. For people you love.”

“But I didn’t, Mamá. I fu—I screwed everything up.”

“But you’re working to make it better, aren’t you?”

I sighed. “I apologized to Jay. And I’m doing everything I can to save the company.”

“And Ben?”

“He’s better off without me.”

“From what you said, he doesn’t think so. He loves you. And who are you to make that decision for him?”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Stop being so wise.”

“Lito. I earned this wisdom. By making many, many mistakes.” She patted my cheek. “I want you to make better choices. Apologize to him. Show him you love him. If he still loves you, that’s all it will take. You deserve happiness.”

“Mamá. It’s not that easy.” According to Jackson and Jamila, I needed something more to win back Ben. Jackson’s grand gesture ideas were shit. And Jamila might be great at planning app development, but her get-back-Ben plan verged into stalking and kidnapping and was more likely to land me in jail than to soften Ben’s heart.

“For you? No, it’s not easy.” She patted my cheek. “You have to let down those walls of yours first. For you, that’s the hardest part.”

The ice-cold chill in my stomach told me she was right. “And then?”

She smiled. “Then you show him the kind of man you are. In here.” She laid a hand over my heart.

Show him sounded a lot like Jackson’s fucking grand gesture. And I knew the expert to guide me.

35

COOPER

Coffee sloshed over the rim of my cup and splashed onto the counter in the sixth-floor employee break room.

Jackson leaped to help with a wad of paper towels. “Stay back! You can’t walk into the board meeting with coffee on your suit.”

“Goddammit, I know that,” I growled, stepping away from the cascade of coffee over the counter while trying to hide how my hands shook. “More paper towels.”

“Guys! Back away from the spill,” Marlee barked from behind us. She sighed, the weight of the world in it. “I’ll clean that up. Here.” She handed me a green smoothie. “Drink this instead.”

“Thanks.” I gave her a weak smile.

“We can’t have our star player missing his antioxidants or whatever.” Her tone was joking, but her concern showed in the tightness in her mouth. Her job was riding on my performance in the boardroom this morning. If Gurusoft took over, Jay and I—and his assistant—would be the first to go.

“I’ll do my best.” I wished I could say I wouldn’t let them down, but I wasn’t sure we had the votes. Since I hadn’t followed Jamila’s win-back-Ben plan, she hadn’t committed to voting against the buyout. And at least one of Charles’s bloc of two voters would be swayed if she didn’t. Weston had three board members firmly on his side.

If only Jay were still on the board, I’d feel better. But Weston’s first power grab a few years ago had been to vote him out after Jackson had missed too many board meetings. Fine, he’d missed every single one, but I’d argued hard for my friend.

Jay clapped me on the shoulder. “I know you can do it. Now drink up and let’s go.”

I poked the straw into the lid and took a deep swallow of the green smoothie. Like the others Marlee had gotten me this week, it tasted like grass and dirt. Ben must have possessed some kind of smoothie magic mere mortals couldn’t replicate. Thinking of him widened the hole in my gut. I put my hand over it.

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