Page 17 of Seven Percent of Ro Devereux
After years of resolute silence I assume he’ll make me wait for an answer, so I force myself out of bed and head to the kitchen for a bagel. But it’s only minutes later, as I’m popping the tab on the toaster, that his reply comes through. It’s quick and brutal:I did. I’m not interested.
I look at the window over the sink, stare out at the trees in ourbackyard. They shiver in the wind, moving to music I can’t hear.I’m not interested either, I want to scream. My body’s gone hot and angry.I’m interested in you staying the hell away from me, you selfish, silent asshat.
He didn’t even take a full five minutes to reject me. He didn’t even have to think about it. I want to break something, but instead I smash out the words:I know you don’t owe me anything, but this is really important to me. Would you consider taking the meeting? No obligations, just hear them out.
It’s painful, but I send the next text anyway:Please.
Hours go by. I eat my bagel, label my binders for the new school year, give Esther a brushing she does not want.
The sun is low in the sky when his text finally comes through. Six characters total.
Ok. 3pm
10
I tell Dad about the meeting, but he has no one to cover for him at Beans, so I go alone.
Call me immediately after,Maren says.Better yet, livestream it for me.
I have a feeling it will be a thing like that: the kind of train wreck you want to watch in real time, something you can’t rip your gaze from. I haven’t been able to bring myself to explain the situation to Sawyer, and her texts are growing more frantic by the hour. It would make absolute sense for Miller and me to carpool the forty-minute drive from our blocks-apart houses into Denver, but of course we do not.
I get there half an hour early, anxiety-chug an entire glass of kombucha, and spend fifteen minutes breathing in the bathroom with my eyes closed. The office is quiet on a Sunday, dust motes catching the light between empty desks and a few people puttering from the kitchen to the conference room where This Will GoDown. Evelyn’s here, plus Jazz from marketing. There’s a third person I haven’t met, a skinny guy in a short-sleeved, palm-tree-printed button-down who introduces himself as Felix. They have all that infused water set out, just like before.
I take a seat in the conference room and try to still my trembling hands. Once he’s here, I know, it’ll be okay. Once I can see the shape of this, all I have to do is run with it. But now, not knowing—the anticipation feels like a triple-shot espresso right to the veins. I’m jittery as hell.
“You good, Ro?” Jazz’s braids are piled in a knot on top of her head. “Need some water?”
“I’m good,” I say, and then Evelyn walks in with Miller and Willow.
Of course she would be here. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before. Miller doesn’t look at me, but her eyes find mine immediately.
“Hi, honey,” she says. She smiles, and I manage something smile-adjacent in return. Seeing her face is half a relief and half harrowing, a nauseating blend of muscle memory from all the time I spent growing up in her house and all the shame that floods me knowing that she must know, that Miller must have told her all of it.
It was Willow who’d finally called me after Declan’s party, when two weeks had passed and Miller still wouldn’t answer the phone. The voice mail she left wrapped right around my heart and wrung me out completely.I don’t know what happened, she’d said.But I want you to know I’m always going to be here if you need me.
I knew, though, that Willow was Miller’s before she was mine—and that in losing him I’d lost my right to both of them. I didn’t reply, and she didn’t call again.
“Please have a seat,” Evelyn says, gesturing them into chairs across from mine. I’m next to Jazz, with Miller, Willow, and Felix facing me. Evelyn takes the head of the table, same as always. “We’re so grateful for your time.”
Everyone’s murmuring introductions, but I can’t rip my eyes off Miller. I half expected him to show up in that stupid tux again, but he’s in jeans and canvas sneakers and a threadbare black T-shirt. His new haircut makes his cheekbones look sharper, more raised in his face. I haven’t looked at him for this long in years, but if he can feel me staring, he doesn’t give in. He looks at me not even once.
“Before I launch into the full spiel,” Evelyn says, “how familiar are you with MASH? I don’t want to waste any of our time if you’re already up to speed.”
“I’m familiar,” Miller says. His voice is even and steady, the Miller special. Classic freaking Miller, calmer and more in control than anyone else around him. I have a sudden, desperate urge to know the rest of his MASH results.
“Great,” Evelyn says, swiveling in her chair to face the presentation on the wall. She skips past her intro slides, wireframes of the MASH interface, and lands on a slide titledThe Road to Celeritas: How We Get There. “Then we’ll cut to the chase. This is where you come in, Alistair.”
“Just ‘Miller’ is fine,” he says, and Evelyn nods.
“Miller, we’re targeting a February pitch with Celeritas, a venture capital firm in California.” She glances at him to make sure he’s following, but his eyes are on the presentation, not on her. He’s already reading. “For all its exciting facets,” Evelyn continues, “we know the most marketable component of MASH is its partner-matching functionality. That’s where the money is. And while anyone can make a dating app, Ro is the only person who’s made one that’s foolproof.”
I feel a swell of pride, and hop the fence firmly into Evelyn Cross fan club territory. A not-so-small part of me is thrilled to have her talk me up in front of him.
“Almost foolproof,” I say, and Evelyn’s eyes dart to mine. “Ninety-three percent.”
“A detail,” she says, looking away from me. “Ninety-three percent may as well be a hundred, and we’ll market the app as entirely foolproof.”
I think of Vera—It’s an imperfect science—but Evelyn’s still talking, leaving no room for me to object.
