Page 20 of My CEO Neighbor
"What if it's important?"
"What if it's not?"
Ted felt his chest tighten again, the calm he'd briefly achieved evaporating like morning fog."You don't understand.I can't afford to miss anything.Not today."
"Why not?"
"Because—" Ted stopped, frustrated by the simple question that somehow felt impossible to answer."Because that's not how business works.Because opportunities don't wait for convenient timing.Because if I'm not constantly vigilant, everything falls apart."
"Has everything fallen apart before when you checked your phone five minutes late?"
"That's not the point."
"What is the point?"
Ted wanted to explain about competitive advantage and market windows and the razor-thin margins that separated success from failure in the startup world.Instead, he heard himself saying, "I don't know how to stop."
The admission hung in the darkness between them, more revealing than he'd intended.Monica was quiet for a long moment, and Ted wondered if he'd just confirmed every negative assumption she'd ever made about corporate workaholics.
"When did it start?"Monica asked finally."The not being able to stop?"
Ted considered lying, deflecting, changing the subject.But the darkness made honesty feel safer than usual.
"College, maybe.I was studying business, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was always behind, always missing something that everyone else inherently understood."Ted shifted position, his knee bumping against Monica's."My dad built his company from nothing, made it look easy.My siblings excelled at everything they touched.I was smart enough, but smart enough felt like failure."
"So you worked harder."
"So I worked all the time.Studied when other people partied, took extra classes.It worked—I got into a good MBA program, landed internships that people would kill for."
"But it still didn't feel like enough."
"Nothing felt like enough.I met Gwynne during my first year of business school.She was brilliant, driven, everything I thought I wanted in a partner.We were both so busy that we scheduled our dates in our calendars and called it romantic."
"What happened?"
"I dropped out to start CloudSync.She thought I was making a huge mistake, throwing away everything I'd worked for on some fantasy about being an entrepreneur."Ted remembered the fight, Gwynne's incredulous expression when he'd tried to explain his vision for the company."She wasn't wrong.The first two years nearly killed me.Eighteen-hour days, living on ramen and credit cards, watching more qualified people tell me my idea would never work."
"But you made it work."
"I made something work.Whether it's the right something remains to be seen."Ted rubbed his temple, where a familiar headache was starting to build."Gwynne stayed with me through the worst of it, even though I was barely present in the relationship.I'd fall asleep during dinner, forget anniversaries, cancel trips because of some crisis that couldn't wait."
"She sounds patient."
"She was.Too patient."Ted's chest felt tight again, but this time it wasn't about the elevator."The night she left, she told me that she felt like she was dating my voicemail.Said I was more intimate with my laptop than I'd ever been with her."
"Was she right?"
The question hit harder than it should have."Yeah.She was right."
Monica was quiet for several heartbeats."Do you miss her?"
"I miss the idea of her.I miss having someone who understood the work, who didn't think I was crazy for caring so much about something that didn't exist yet."Ted paused."But I don't think I ever really knew her.How can you miss someone you never actually paid attention to?"
"That's..."Monica's voice was softer now."That's really sad, Ted."
"It's practical.Relationships require time and energy I don't have."
"Everyone has time and energy.You're just choosing to spend yours on other things."
