Page 134 of The Grumpy Billionaire

“You don’t owe me an apology. Kids do what they have to do to get love.”

He gives me a look. “How did you get so smart?”

My heart skips a beat. Charlie’s called me a lot of things in my life, but never smart. “Stop…”

“It’s true,” he says. “You’re smart about a ton of things, and I felt like an outsider. Not quite making the grade.”

My pulse races. The sky seems too bright. “Is that why you moved to Japan?”

“Partly.”

“I didn’t know,” I say.

“And when you two sent me that picture of you together, I was blindsided. I went ballistic. I suppose deep down I sensed he was in love with you, and I was jealous. And I kept you apart, acting like I was being protective, but it wasn’t entirely about protection. It was about not wanting to lose my friend. And then this image of you and Hugo and Mom and Dad. The perfect family.”

“No!”

“It’s how it felt. It’s not rational, I know.”

“I shouldn’t have told you that way,” I say.

“A normal brother would be happy. His best friend and his kid sister? Two people he supposedly loves? Together? But I couldn’t see straight.” He turns to me here, serious. “Growing up, I couldn’t see my own worth, and I turned on you, made you not see your own worth, but you know who does see your worth? Hugo. He always has.”

“Charlie.” I wrap my arms around him right there on the seawall with people streaming by. “You are my family. Always, always, always.” I hold on to him tight. All this time, feeling like not enough. I never thought Charlie felt that way, too.

“We’re good,” I say as I let him go.

“I owe an apology to Hugo as well. I’m not going to stand in the way of you two.”

“Come on.” I buy him a pretzel at a streetside stand and we settle on a bench overlooking the water. A giant barge moves lazily down the river.

He says, “You two being together, it’s so obvious. So perfect.”

“Maybe.” I dip my pretzel in the little cup of mustard sauce.

“Whadya mean,maybe?”

“I mean I don’t know that it’s going to work out. You weren’t wrong in what you said about his impossible standards. His love being math and data and perfection and all of that.”

“I said it because I knew it would do damage.”

“It only hurts if there’s truth in it. You know how Hugo is. He has these standards of perfection, this drive to measure up to some ideal in his mind. I’m gonna tell you right now, I love him—I really do—but I don’t know if I’m willing to submit myself to the Hugo Jones mania for perfection.”

“Stella—”

“I’m not a perfect person with every hair in place and all of that. I don’t know where my keys are half the time. I’m challenged in four out of five adulting areas, some of which I’m working on, but I’ll never measure up to pie-in-the-sky ideals, and that is not gonna work for him on a long-term basis.”

He wipes his fingers and folds up his checkerboard carton, seeming lost in thought.

“I’m a barrel of flaws. I need to be with somebody who can roll with that.”

“You want Hugo to roll with your quirks and flaws. Can’t you roll with his?”

“He has none. He’s hammered every flaw out of his life, and he gets 37% better every year. No, excuse me—37.78%. Sometimes we joke that I’m making him lose a percentage here and there, but I think I kind of am, and I think he knows it.”

“Don’t you see, Stella? That is his flaw. Brutal, isolating, relentless perfectionism.”

“Hold on…” I narrow my eyes at the barge, turning this over in my mind. “The quest to be perfectishis imperfection? Charlie, is that one of those questions designed to short-circuit a robot? And then smoke billows out its ears and it falls over?”

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