Page 54 of The Grumpy Billionaire

“Still, I think I’d know about a pineapple allergy. Deathly!”

“I know!”

“No, wait…I could swear I’ve served him pineapple in recent years,” Mom says. “My god, I’d hate to have sickened him. Did he not want to be an imposition? Hugo never likes to be an imposition on us. WARREN!” Her yell nearly breaks my eardrum.

Mom has a screaming-bejesus-cross-house conversation with Dad, a back-and-forth about whether Hugo is allergic to pineapple. Dad remembers that they had Hugo over for BBQ last year on the Fourth, and Mom says there was pineapple there and Dad says there might not have been pineapple.

“Hugo was there this summer? He was barbecuing with you without Charlie there?”

“Sure, we always make a point to invite him over when he’s in town. We love hearing about his work and getting updates on his life. We couldn’t be prouder!”

Later that night, my phone pings with several texts from Mom.

The first is one word:Eureka!

The next is a picture. It’s Dad standing at the grill with a spatula standing next to Hugo seeming to eat pineapple.

I download the image and expand it, grateful that my mom doesn’t know how to take pictures with a reasonable data size.

There he is, Hugo, holding a giant triangle of pineapple as big as a pizza slice—with one telltale bite taken out of it. I love his expression—he’s been caught midchew, and there’s humor in his gaze, as if to say, I’m going to look dorky in this photo with a cheek full of pineapple.

I pull the picture back up a couple times more over the following night. I can’t help but smile. Hugo can be so harsh and remote, but now and then, his nerdy, socially awkward heart blazes through.

I try not to think about kissing him or how amazing his hand felt on my lady parts. I try not to wonder what would’ve happened. I try not to wish I hadn’t stopped it.

Hugo is off my menu—for good reason—but I will not stop loving him in this picture and loving that he invented an allergy—and knocking myself out wondering why he would ever do such a thing.

ChapterTwenty-Four

Hugo

I’m staring at my whiteboard, but what I’m seeing is Stella, up against the wall, eyes bright with pleasure.

Ten degrees, Roboto.

I’ve been replaying yesterday’s events nonstop in my mind. The way her eyes changed. The feeling of her coming apart in my hands. The bold, recklessness of her requests.

And I couldn’t not touch her.

So wrong. So deeply wrong.

Riding home, she’s all I saw. Beating off in the shower. Beating off after my workout. Falling asleep, waking up, it was all Stella, all the time.

This bright, strange feeling flows through my chest whenever I think about the way she responded—was that Stella being wild and reckless, or is she attracted to me? She really was into it…for a while.

And now I’ve wandered so far from my project, I feel like I might never find my way back.

I force my attention onto the whiteboard, and suddenly I stop.

Everything stops.

There’s a stumbling block I wasn’t seeing.

How did I not see it before?

It’s the remnants of a prior concept I was attempting to weave into a string of variables, but if I take it out, I can use an alternative path to accomplish the same thing and eliminate the obstacle it’s been creating.

How did I not see this?

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