Page 3 of The Ex Factor

I’d started the company in a shed in Brooklyn, but moved into this uppity building at the insistence of my angel investor. Over the years, I had leased a total of four floors in the building, Walter’s reasonable rents being one of the incentives. Walt had held on to this property because it was his father’s choicest possession, but as his age advanced, the kind man saw no other option but to sell it off to someone who had a more proficient management team. He was getting ready to retire to Florida and had sold the building to a real estate company whose headquarters were in Dallas.

I hadn’t shown Devi the bitter bile-like taste that erupted in my mouth when I first read that, but I knew she knew. I was grateful she was kind enough to underplay it.

Back in my chair, I finally succumbed to the temptation and pulled open my desk drawer to retrieve the wedding invitation. I allowed my fingers to glide over the embossed gold paisleys and the gold leaf motif adorning the border of the card.

Mrs. Rekha Kadam and Mrs. and Mr. Pavan Rehani

request the honor of your presence

at the wedding of their children

Tara

And

Sameer

I dropped the card back in the open drawer with haste and banged it shut.

About six months ago, my then-girlfriend Tara went to Dallas for a consulting job and reconnected with her ex, Sameer. Tara was the art consultant I’d hired to help decorate my expansive upstate vacation home. I found myself taken with her since our first formal meeting. She was smart, beautiful, humble, gracious, and kind. Everything good rolled into one, and I thought I was in love. Until she returned halfway into her assignment to tell me, she still had feelings for Sameer and wanted to see if things could work out between them. This was after I’d introduced her to my family at a surprise birthday party I’d planned for her. She’d been the first woman to meet my family, and by that evening, we were broken up.

So, yes, whenever I heard the wordDallas, my recoil was involuntary.

It wasn’t that I hated Tara. On the contrary, some part of my heart still belonged to her. It would have been so much easier to deal with the heartbreak if Tara was a horrible, conniving liar. But she wasn’t. The only hitch in our relationship had been that she didn’t love me enough. At least not more than she loved her ex. To her credit, she’d been honest about her feelings, forthcoming about her dilemma and guilt.

At our final meeting, I’d magnanimously declared, despite the gaping hole in my heart, that I was reverting our status back to friendship. The jubilant card in my desk drawer was a testament to this changed status quo.

My eyes darted to the papers on my desk, and I released a sigh as the office phone lit up.

“The Congressman is returning your call,” Devi said from her desk outside my office. “And Mr. Roth from Direct Solutions is here for the next meeting.”

I put the papers in a drawer and waited for Devi to connect me to the Congressman.

SUJIT

That evening, I was on my way to the Baccarat with the re-leasing information resting on the seat beside me. My driver battled against the busy evening traffic, his impatience rising high with every passing minute. His hand was steady on the horn, but he resisted honking because I disapproved of the impolite act.

“Let it go, Imran, take a breath,” I consoled as I caught him looking at me in the rearview mirror.

“I am breathing. I am calm,” he said with a grin.

“Of course you are.”

“You’ll be late.”

“I’ll apologize. No use stressing about things we have no control over.”

Imran didn’t curse on principle, but that didn’t prevent him from honking. He jammed down the noisemaker on the steering, unleashing his anger in his preferred way.

When I looked at him from above the rim of my glasses, he argued, “Did you see that? That foolish delivery guy on the scooter!”

“Breathe, Imran.”

“Breathing…breathing…breathing.” He was a spirited guy driven by youthful impulses.

Imran was not just a trusted employee who wouldn’t peek at my business papers if I left them in the car or sell that information to my competitors. He was a close confidant, and our relationship was more familial than formal.

I’d never been sold on the idea of the successful lone wolf. Even when I had taken the riskiest of decisions, I had at least one person who believed in the risk. Someone who believed in me. I was surrounded by a tight group of trusted friends and allies. It was an ecosystem that was often informed by mutual benefit, but sometimes by pure, unadulterated human connection.

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