Page 61 of Tempt Me

She shrugged. “I had to give up a lot of things. It was worth it. I have my own company, and not even Pavel Thakor can stop me. We’re going to kick Moo-Lah’s ass with this new app. I’m about to shove it in his condescending face. Unless we haven’t stopped the leak, and he’s about to shove it in mine.” She frowned and set down her plate.

“You think they might beat you to market?”

“We’re so close, but these bugs keep setting us back. I wish I knew how close they were to launch.”

“You don’t think there’s room for both of you in the market?”

“I don’t know. If they beat us by a few days, it’s probably no big deal, though I’d hate for him to scoop up all the press coverage and make us look like a copycat. If it’s weeks…” She held up her hands. “They might get entrenched. It’d be tough to win back market share.”

“Why did you decide to launch an app in life coaching?”

She shrugged. “It was my dream.”

I snorted. “You dreamed about building an app for people to figure out what percentage of their salary to put into a 401(k)?”

“No.” She traced a pattern on the beach blanket. “Growing up, all I wanted was a home where I felt welcome.”

My body went cold. “You didn’t feel welcome at home?”

“Nana didn’t want us. She made that clear. I mean, she loved us, but I was always in the way. And my brothers?” She chuckled darkly. “They were always in trouble, you know?”

“Yeah.” Jackson had been a troublemaker. I could only imagine the catastrophes a pair of him would have gotten into.

“So I dreamed up ways to get out on my own. Nana was always talking about college, and I knew that was the way. But things were a lot different from how they’d been when she went. My junior high teachers weren’t much better. They’d gone to local colleges. Me? I wanted something bigger.”

“Of course you did.” I wanted to touch her and take away the bitterness that curled her lip.

“I worked my ass off to get good grades and took the hardest classes I could. My guidance counselor noticed. He told me about Stanford, but no one from my school had ever gone. He said I had a better chance of getting in if I went to the private high school downtown. They offered advanced placement classes, and some of the kids had even been accepted into Ivy League schools.

“But Nana couldn’t afford private tuition. So I made an appointment with the deacon at my church. He was a friend of Nana’s and, I thought, a friend of mine. The church was always collecting for communities in Africa. I figured they would help a kid in their own community. I went to his office and asked if he could get me a scholarship.” She gazed out over the water like the deacon was standing there in the surf.

I waited for her to continue, but she didn’t. She simply stared out at the ocean. Lightly, I touched her foot. “What did the deacon say?”

She startled like she’d forgotten I was there. “You don’t want to hear me yammer on about what happened when I was fifteen.”

“Yes, I do. I care about you, and I want to know what brought you here to this beach all the way from Texas.”

She set her jaw. “He said, sure he could help. Then he asked what I’d give him in return. I started telling him about how I’d pay the church back when I got a job, but that wasn’t what he wanted. When he touched me, I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t until he slipped his hand inside my shirt that I slapped it away and ran out of his office.” She shook herself and rolled her shoulders. “You do realize how much therapy it’s taken for me to tell this story, right?”

I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “Oh my god, Jamila. I’m so sorry. What did your nana say?”

“She…she didn’t believe me. She said the deacon would never do that, and I must have been mistaken.”

I gasped. “No!”

“Yeah. She and I didn’t talk much after that. And I never told anyone else. Not my brothers or my guidance counselor. No one at church. I thought I could trust the deacon, or at least Nana, but I couldn’t. The only person I ever told was my therapist. And now you.”

I sat for a moment with the gift of her confidence. I’d never tell a soul, not even Jackson, who’d probably go beat up that deacon, or at least ensure his personal data leaked onto the dark web.

“Did you find a way to go to the private high school?”

“No. I stayed where I was, working my ass off at school, and when I was old enough, at an after-school job at one of those tech places, you know, where they fix your phone when you break the screen? I loved being the badass in the back room who could solve the hard problems.”

“But that’s hardware. How’d you get into software?”

“Remember, I’m a bit older than you, and apps weren’t even a thing, really, back when I was in high school. I got my hands on an early smart phone in the repair shop and saw the possibilities. I programmed a game for it to amuse my brothers, and they liked it, so I uploaded it to the app store. It took off, and when I put that on my Stanford application, I got noticed.”

All it had taken for me to get into college was my family’s name and decent grades. And then I’d discarded the opportunity. Along with so many others I’d been given. I set down my plate. My voice wobbled when I asked, “Was Stanford everything you’d hoped for?”

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