Page 71 of The Grumpy Billionaire

A magnifying glass comes out. They proceed to argue. Felix feels it’s nearly imperceptible, but Hugo finds it offensive, and he cannot imagine buying it. No, not for any price. This flawed little thing disgusts him.

Felix turns to me. “Only the best for Hugo. He’s my toughest customer.”

“Hugo craves perfection.” When I say it, it probably sounds like a compliment and not the most devastatingly true fact of the millennium. This whole incident—it’s like a sign from the universe done in flashing pink neon:Stella Woodward: what the hell are you thinking?I’m feeling queasy.

Hugo hates flaws, and he sees them all—eventually. And how they disgust him!

My heart pounds wildly, but not in that beautiful, Hugo-loving way anymore.

He’s right about one thing: I’m definitely reckless. Shopping with him, having sex with him, letting him buy me a gift.

It’s as fake as kissing the Zac Hanson poster, but so much worse, because instead of ending up with soggy paper bits on my lips and a poster with a hole in it, and then my friends come over and stare at Zac’s mangled lips and feel afraid to ask why I would tear a hole there, it’s my heart on the line!

I’m being reckless with my very own heart. I can’t be falling for him. I can’t do this again. I can’t go through it again.

“I have to go,” I say to him.

“But…your gift—”

“Don’t get it for me—you can’t get it. I won’t accept it.” I mumble something about getting air and head out of the store, out to the sidewalk.

It’s already dusk. The days are getting shorter. I button my jacket all the way up to the top and lean against the wall.

Deep breaths. In. Out.

I know better than to fall for Hugo, but then I get around him and I forget.

If only I could pin a picture of Jonathan to his shirt. It would be like a warning sign on a pack of cigarettes: Remember these rabid perfectionists? Remember what happened when they started fixating on your flaws? You really want to ten-x that feeling?

Or I could give him one of Jonathan’s sweaters that smells of his stupid signature cologne, Obsidian Valor, and whenever I was near Hugo, I would remember.

They say it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, but I don’t think that saying is meant for a situation like mine. I feel thatthose who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat itis more appropriate for me.

The door to the shopclunksopen. Footsteps approach my place of doleful leaning. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t want you to give me a present anymore.”

“But you’re going to love it.”

“You know who gives presents to each other? People who are dating. We are not dating.”

He comes and leans next to me. “Let me give you this thing, Sparky.”

Of course he uses my nickname. He pretends not to know people, not to know their hearts, but he’s playing mine like a banjo. “You giving me things is too much like dating.”

“What is so wrong with dating?”

“I’ll tell you what’s so wrong with it: I’m that orb. And it looks good to you at first, and you think you like it, but when you take a good hard look, the flaw is just too much.”

“The two situations are not at all analogous. This is us, Stella.”

“They’re totally analogous. You see me as reckless and unruly, and I get that you think you are liking those things for the moment—I’m a refreshing break from the stress of your data model equations. I’m an amusing honk in the middle of your perfect symphony, a distraction that deserves further exploration, and you got an amazing math idea after we banged, but you know deep down that we don’t fit. You can’t understand why I’d settle for a job with a shitty boss, or how I could like the art of Salvador Dali or leave my shoes untied or a million other things. I will never be thirty-six point whatever improvement in your life. I won’t even be one percent. I’ll be negative four.”

“I don’t care if you’re negative a hundred.”

“There’s a large chart in your office that says different.”

“To hell with the chart. We’re good together. I know you know it. I know you see it. I know you.”

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