Page 140 of The Grumpy Billionaire

She grins and lowers her voice. “Am I gonna walk around with my shoes untied more often now? Maybe.”

“Well, Stella, am I gonna haul you up over my shoulder when you lose your keys or your shoes?”

“Hugo!” She grabs my lapels. “Are we gonna talk about the fact that you ate pineapple in front of Wulfric? Because I really need to talk about that.”

“He wasn’t happy.”

“Umm…did you see his face? Mur-der.”

“I know.”

“Not a fan of your presentation,” she points out. “The eating of the deadly pineapple.”

“It had to be done.”

“It looked like an elaborate way of quitting to me.”

I tell her about my experience at the card game, how busting free from my usual play led to unexpected gifts. “My friend Leon said that you need to break things in order to level up. To disrupt things. He was right.”

“I don’t understand. Eating pineapple in front of Wulfric…it felt more like career detonation than disruption.”

“It was a little of both. The data model was wrong. The data model approach needs to be disrupted—I know that’s true, and I feel like the presentation suggested that. But Wulfric—I don’t know if he and I can come back around.”

She takes my hand. “You love working with Wulfric.”

“I do. But things needed to change,” I say.

“So…like, are you going to be a baker or something now?”

“Hell no. I still love the work, but I need a radical new framework. Our progress was being limited by that framework—I can’t say exactly how, but it’s something that I know. I’m going in a new direction, and it’ll happen with or without Wulfric. Probably without, but that’s definitely not my preference.”

“And…will your new direction still have math?”

“So much math,” I say.

“And what if I untie my shoe? What then?”

“We would go somewhere, and I would tie it for you.”

“In the most tawdry way?”

I lower my voice to a rumble. “You have no idea.”

Wulfric texts me an hour later requesting a meeting first thing the next morning.

“What do you think he’s going to do?” Stella asks.

“No way of knowing,” I say.

“You want me to text Lola and ask about his state of mind?”

“His state of mind now might not be his state of mind tomorrow,” I say.

“Maybe he’ll have calmed down,” she tries.

I kiss her on the head. “Maybe.”

“Or not,” she whispers.

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