Page 29 of The Grumpy Billionaire

Was there something wicked about Hugo’s sexual appetite? An outrageous sexual proclivity? A voracious drive? Dark desires?

Needless to say, Charlie’s little warning only fired my interest.

A few weeks later, he did seem to elaborate—we were on the bench outside the high school—I’d walked up from middle school to catch a ride home with my dad, who was teaching at the local community college. Charlie was waiting, too.

“No Hugo-mobile?” I’d asked, plopping down next to him.

Hugo was mostly attending classes at the University of Chicago by then, driving the hour into the city, but he usually still managed to get back for robotics club with Charlie and then drive him home so they could do their games between bouts of eating like locusts.

“Hugo’s off with Norma,” Charlie said, and then this tidbit:“I don’t know why they like him; he gives them nothing.”

My antennas perked up at that, if not outright springing from my head like surface-to-air missiles, because what did thateven mean?

Gives them nothing.

“Nothing?” I’d asked nonchalantly.

“Trust me, you wouldn’t want a guy like that,” he’d said.

Of course Dad pulled up right then.

I turned that one over in my mind for days afterward like one of those impossible questions that Zen masters sit in caves and ponder.

What was the meaning of the wordgivesin that sentence?

What was the meaning of the wordnothingin that sentence?

Did he give nothing emotionally? Or was it more of a literal thing, like no birthday gifts? No box of chocolates on Valentine’s Day? Or was it nothing physically?

I ruled that option out. Hugo would give and give and give on a physical level. My infatuated teen imagination would accept nothing less.

From time to time I’d walk in on Hugo and my brother lifting weights in the basement—usually on my way to the downstairs freezer to get something that nobody actually needed.

Charlie and Hugo would be shirtless and sweaty, pointedly ignoring me, doing their reps, skin gleaming.

This vision of shirtless Hugo doing squats, a barbell hoisted on his shoulders, it’s burned into my mind.

Isn’t it a rule of the universe that brainiacs are supposed to be gangly and bespectacled with pimples and pocket protectors? How was it fair that Hugo got to be smartandgood-looking?

It was not fair.

Hugo’s good looks, intelligence, and standoffish attitude made him catnip to the girls of Percy Pines High School. He dated several of them, but those relationships never took.

Was it because of thenothinghe gave them? Would they know what thenothingwas if asked? By a kid from the lower grades, for example? I wished I could interview some of them. I considered trying to befriend them, but I was so much younger.

So I was left to wonder. And pine. And pine.

Hugo graduated from UChicago in record time. The finest grad schools fought over him, Roman-coliseum style, all swords and spiked clubs, and MIT won out. After he burned through MIT’s grad program, the finest business leaders fought over him, but he went with the controversial Wulfric Pierce, moving to New York City at the tender age of twenty-one.

I stayed back in the Midwest, following his brilliant career from afar, rife with desperate longing—longing that I tried to fill with a string of guys who were brilliant (though never so brilliant as Hugo), beautiful (though not even close to Hugo), and icy.

How many times did I have to burn my fingers on the icy-hot stove that was the Hugo sort of man, causing myself horrible pain, before I would swear off Hugo types forever?

Three.

* * *

Viola accostsme the next day as I’m hanging my coat on the pop-out hook on my cubicle wall, pink frosted lipstick accentuating her very large frown. “You’re not to bother Mr. Jones unless he’s made a specific research request,” Viola informs me the next day. “There will never be a case where Brenda can’t stamp for his signature. And if there were, Brenda would be the one to determine that. Not you.”

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