Page 29 of Interning For A Billionaire

We dropped anchor after a few hours, Nathan handing me another beer and we sat back in the sun, listening only to the sound of the water and the squawking of an occasional sea gull.

“How’re you feeling?” Nathan asked.

“Give me another beer,” I responded.

He laughed. “Thatta boy.”

“So, how’s work?” I asked him.

Nathan worked as a senior accountant for a large auditing firm in the city. He’d studied chartered accounting and was always considered the smarter one of the two of us. When I’d designed the dating app and sold it for several million dollars, I for the first time had the feeling I was my brother’s equal, at least financially. But, of course, Nathan had the beautiful wife, the 1.5 kids and a dog with a glossy coat.

I got up.

“I think I’ll go for a swim,” I said.

I pulled my clothes off and plunged into the water.

It was freezing. The shock of the cold water took my breath away. For a few seconds, I treaded water, getting used to the temperature and then I swam away from the boat for a bit. The huge expanse of open water was overwhelming. I could see nothing but sun and sky. Suddenly, there was an explosion of water next to me as Nathan came crashing into the water next to me.

For a few minutes, we were like little boys again, splashing each other with water, holding down the other’s head, trying to grip each other and force the other under water.

After a while, we made our way back to the boat, pulling ourselves up onto the deck and lying shivering on the deck, drying in the sun.

I looked over to where my brother was lying in the sun, and it struck me suddenly that he’d lost a lot of weight. I had never seen him this skinny. His board shorts were hanging off of him.

“Hey, Nathan? You all right?”

He looked up at me from behind his Ray-Bans.

“Sure.”

“It’s just…” I kicked his leg. “How come you’re so thin? You sick or something?”

He took off his sunglasses and nodded slowly.

“I wasn’t going to say anything…” he began slowly, and I felt my heart sink. “But now that you’ve noticed it, I guess I should…”

I waited for him to finish his sentence but then he burst out laughing, “Oh man, you should see your face! You thought I was going to tell you I had cancer or something, right?!”

“What the fuck, man?” I sat up, pissed off with him.

“No, sorry, that was uncool,” he tried to stop laughing, unsuccessfully.

“But, yeah, I’ve actually lost a lot of weight. I’m doing this intermittent fasting thing? Emma got me onto it, she was doing it and is looking really great.”

“You wanted to lose weight?”

He shrugged. “Not really. But I read about it and learned that it was really good for your mind too, sharpens your focus, clears your thinking.”

“Yeah, well, you could definitely do with some clearer thinking.”

“Ha-ha.”

“Actually, I was a bit overweight. It was piling on ever since the kids. And I stopped cycling because of my back acting up and then with all the junk food at work… Emma was looking really fit and you know, I see the guys looking at her. She’s still in pretty good shape and all.”

I looked at my brother, surprised to hear that he had insecurities about his looks and his wife. My brother had always struck me as so confident and self-assured.

“You need more muscle,” I said to him. “You should come rock climbing with me.”

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