Page 116 of The Grumpy Billionaire

“What?” Hugo says.

“I never said I loved you to him. But he knew I did. Did he know all along? But of course he did,” I say.

“He cares about you. He’s not seeing us right.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Also? Not a fan of the advance I-told-you-so. Is that even a thing?”

“We pushed his buttons with that photo, and he came out blazing.”

I slide my finger around the rim of my glass in the silence that follows. “As if you’re making lopsided circles into squares. I mean, right?” I say. “That’s not right…”

Hugo recognizes this as the question that it is. “Baby, Charlie put it that way because he knew it would bug you. He went out of his way to paint things like that. As if I’m enforcing some sort of uniformity.”

The next knock on the door is the food. Hugo goes to grab it.

“He was right about one thing,” Hugo says, dishing sweet-and-sour shrimp onto our plates while I take out the egg rolls. “The girls I hooked up with in high school—I was going through the motions. That’s what he’s basing his ideas on.”

“He once said you didn’t give them anything. He was like, ‘Hugo doesn’t give them anything.’ I always wondered what it meant. Like, I wondered a lot.”

Hugo grabs the rice. “I had very little to give them,” he says. “Between the energy I spent on my studies and the energy I spent burying my infatuation with you—” He looks up. “Under ten tons of granite.”

“The way you wouldn’t even look at me. I thought you hated me.”

“I definitely worked overtime to keep it hidden—even from myself. Hiding things even from yourself takes a lot of energy. Rigid compartmentalization.”

“You were very successful at it,” I say.

He shrugs.

I grin. “Mom says you’re a rigid and hard-driving boy.”

“I’d like to banish that idea from my head please.”

“You know, she used to worry about you. Oblivious as she could be, it was really important to her that you felt welcome in our home.”

“It meant a lot. You have no idea.”

We talk about the mathematical precision Mom would bring to balancing the food groups according to the food pyramid. Talking about the old times makes me soften on Charlie…a little bit.

“Are you going back for Thanksgiving?”

He leans back, stares at the ceiling. “Holidays are not my favorite with my parents. It’s better to go on an ordinary week. Less baggage.”

I ask about how they’re doing. He’s been paying their bills and giving them an allowance, and his parents don’t seem to thank him.

“They spent their allowance on booze this month and tried to go over my accountant’s head to ask me for more, but they know the rules. When they spend their allowance, my accountant has the power to arrange funds for rehab or a ride to a food shelf. Those are their only options.”

I imagine the boy he was, craving rules and some kind of order. Now he’s imposing it on them. “Do you think they’ll ever say anything like we’re sorry for…you know…”

“For being drunk and out of control most of the time?” Hugo supplies. “They have a disease, and a part of that disease is not taking responsibility for their actions. So, no.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say.

“I don’t think about it a lot, to be honest. My accountant manages their bills and their finances on a day-to-day basis just like she manages mine, and I don’t deal with it. I don’t have time.”

“Is this part of your one-percent-a-day improvement plan?”

“Yes, and money is boring.”

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