Page 20 of The Grumpy Billionaire

She grunts, annoyed.

I grin. I know she has one, and I know she’ll answer. I didn’t grow up with nerds for nothing.

“Tau is my favorite number, if you must know.” She looks up. “Chia is my favorite vegetable. Gallium is my favorite element, and my favorite color is blue.”

“Chia’s not a vegetable, it’s a seed,” I tease, even though it probablyisa veggie. Somebody like Brenda would get that right.

Brenda glares. “Chia’s a vegetable.”

I can see why Hugo likes working with this woman. “Why blue?”

“Because of its position on the spectrum.”

“Uh-huh. I like the color pink.”

“I’m sure you do,” she says.

“What’s wrong with pink?”

“It’s your criteria that I take issue with.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? You don’t know my criteria for liking pink.”

“Fine. Why do you like pink? Tell me your criteria.”

“Pink makes me happy.” I know this answer will annoy her, but I can’t help it. Something about how stern she is transports me back in time to my teen self, saying annoying things to my brother. But it’s true—pink makes me happy!

Brenda is disgusted. “Not to be rude, but can you wait in the chair outside the door?”

I snort. “Not to be rude?”

Brenda points to the door I came in through.

I go out and heave myself down onto one of the chairs at the far end of the hall. It’s a ways down, but I can still see who goes in and out of Brenda’s office.

There was a time when I would’ve sold my soul for Hugo to give me the perfect gift. The fantasy wasn’t getting the gift itself, but that Hugo would have taken the time to figure out what I would most want in life, which would require him understanding me, caring about me, pondering my deepest desires.

My favorite iteration of this fantasy had Hugo coming into my bedroom at night via a secret door he’d created himself. I would be startled, of course. And he’d sit next to me in bed, and the gift would be beautifully wrapped. He’d tell me that he didn’t want the others to see because of how special the gift was, and how much it would reveal about his feelings.

I always let the gift be a mystery in my fantasy—it felt more magical not to have any idea what it could be; I only knew it would be perfect, the result of his vast love and attention all zeroed in on me.

A more public version of the fantasy was him walking up to my middle school lunch table to give me a gift in front of my girlfriends—who all agreed he was hot and utterly unattainable due to his antisocial ways and the fact that he was in high school. He would beg me to stop ignoring him, and he didn’t care who heard. And I’d open the gift, and everyone would be in awe.

In other versions, he’d come to me when I was sitting on the outdoor couch—an orange plaid thing Mom and Dad had dragged out the front door of our ramshackle split-level in Percy Groves. It wasn’t proper porch furniture, but they were nerdy high school teachers who lived the life of the mind, not to mention the life of deep debt.

This couch was a favorite phone-scrolling spot of mine, and that’s what I was up to in this scenario. Hugo would lean over me, hands on the couch back, caging me with all that stormy intensity, staring into my soul with those killer gray eyes, and he’d kiss me fiercely, like his life depended on it, confessing his love in breathless whispers between kisses. And the gift would be so amazing.

I liked this fantasy because it had the highest probability of coming true. I spent a lot of time on that couch, and Hugo really could’ve come out at any moment with the perfect gift and a heartfelt declaration.

Ding.

I sit up. There he is, storming out of the elevator at the far end of the hallway. He makes a beeline into Brenda’s office, seemingly lost in thought.

I spring up and head back in. He’s standing in front of Brenda’s desk.

“Excuse me, uh…Mr. Jones?” I say.

He whirls around to face me.

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