Page 65 of Just Not That Into Billionaires

The strains of Dave Matthews go on. It blows my mind, because how can a band pack so much insipid annoyingness into one song? Teams of musicologists could work around the clock studying it and never figure it out.

“Dude, change it! Every fiber in your being is itching to change it!” she says.

“Maybe Sloan-Kettering can give me a lobotomy later,” I say.

She smiles and I feel this rush of affection for her that I quickly tamp down, because I know better. She pushes my hands from her knee and lifts her legs. “Grab your phone and change it already! It’s like you’re being boiled to death right before my eyes!”

I twist to the far side of the couch and lunge for my phone, stabbing a decisive thumbs-down.

I settle back in and she flops her legs back down onto my lap like it’s the most natural thing in the world. I carefully press the ice around her knee and we sit in companionable silence. It feels good to be with her.

“I still need to get those Dave Matthews Band tickets for us and Juliana,” she teases.

I give her a dark look.

She pets Spencer’s scruff. “So how’s the sale coming?”

“The negotiation of it is done. We’ve met each other. There are a few more details to handle, but the next step is to finalize the terms and then close the deal.”

“And that happens when?”

“In five days, supposedly.”

“Supposedly?” she echoes.

“Well, there’s the reality of working for somebody for a year,” I say. “It’s a year of my life.”

“Oh my god, are you rethinking that crazy plan?” She sits up. “Are you coming to your senses on that?”

“It’s not as simple as coming to my senses,” I say. “A lot of things would have to change if I nixed the sale. I started the business with a friend who had a similar vision, and that friend is gone.”

“Right,” she says softly.

“Being in the trenches with a best friend like that, solving problems, getting ideas, weathering defeats, having each other’s backs, it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”

She doesn’t rush to fill the silence that follows. I look up and she’s watching me, and I feel her kindness, her compassion.

“Six months,” I add, meaning, that’s how long he’s been gone. “People have moved on. Rented his home. Filled his chair. Closed his memberships. Like he’s erased.”

“Youremember. Spencer remembers.”

Of course she gets it. She sits there silent, a warm presence on my lap. Maybe I can’t trust this easy feeling between us, but I’m eating it up.

“Was he into robotics like you?”

I sniff. “Was he as big of a nerd as I am? Is that your question?” I ask.

“Maybe.”

“Yeah, though you wouldn’t have known it from the outside—he looked like he belonged in the Rocky Mountains more than subway cars, but he knew his way around a lab. We loved having freedom to pursue crazy ideas. Solutions to impossible problems. We gave each other a lot of shit. We played a lot of ping pong.”

“A friend like that is everything, Benny.”

I shift the pack. Her empathy feels real and I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t want things real with her. I don’t want to be unraveled. Those things belong in the past.

“To find a counterpart in that way,” she adds. “Will Juliana’s firm allow you to continue those pet projects at least?”

“No, they’re all in on the microrobotic cleaners.”

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