Page 105 of You, with a View

Theo’s silence extends, long and tight. Finally, he says, “They didn’t ambush me, Noelle.”

“What do you mean? The article I read said it was a surprise.”

“Sure, to the general public. Not to me.”

Unease drips into my veins. “I’m not really following.”

He stares off into the distance. “This exit has been in the works for weeks, and our arguments over the direction of the business for months longer than that. Like I told you, they want to take the company in a new direction. Our investors want it, Anton and Matias want it, everyone wants it but me because I can’t let go of the idea that it’s already what it should be. And I pushed so fucking hard—” Again, he wipes at his face with his hand. “The investors wanted me gone, and Anton and Matias ultimately agreed. When I decided to come on the trip, they’d just given me paperwork to buy me out of my equity. I knew what I was coming back to. It wasn’t a surprise. I mean, Jesus, even the psychic knew.”

A finger snaps in my mind and I’m back in that room. Sitting next to Theo with that painted eye gazing down at us. Remembering what Flor said:This is going to happen no matter what. It’shappening.

I remember him calling it bullshit after, then holding me when I cried over how real it felt to me.

I remember the way I confessed everything.

“Wait, did you know what you were walking into today?” I say quietly, as a hurt I can’t properly identify winds itself around me.

“I wasn’t positive it would be today, but...” He trails off, shaking his head. “No. Yeah. I knew it was over.”

Memories from the previous two days stretch between us in the ensuing silence—me at his door Saturday morning, the way his hands gripped me while he whispered that he’d missed me after less than twenty-four hours apart. The ebb and flow of our conversations, and the quiet we shared, where this informationwould have fit perfectly. How I talked his ear off about my anxiety over my Tahoe trip this week. The way he listened and reassured me, all while holding on to his own anxiety with tight fists.

I think back to what Flor told Theo, my heart starting to beat fast:You’ve been placed with resources in your life that will help you move on, but you have to allow that resource to help you.

I was there, not just on the road with him—when he was sitting on all of this, too—but in his house, his bed, his life. Hisreallife, and he didn’t tell me.

Something in my heart fractures. For him, and myself.

“Theo,” I breathe out. “Why didn’t you say something?”

He looks down at my hand, still curled around his arm. “I didn’t know what to say to you. I thought maybe I’d figure out how to break it to you before the statement went out, but that didn’t happen, obviously.”

How to break it to me? I shake my head, lost. “I mean before. All those times I asked if you were okay, all those times we talked about your work and what it meant to you? We spent the entire weekend together—”

He averts his eyes, setting his jaw stubbornly. “I didn’t want to mess it up with this.”

I stare at him, long enough that he finally looks at me. “It wouldn’t have messed anything up. Iwantto know things, including the things that hurt.”

“Even the things that show you I’m not the guy you think I am?” he says, a challenging glint in his eyes. They’re so dark I can’t make out the emotions lurking there. It makes him seem like a stranger.

I frown. “What does that mean? Who do I think you are?”

“Not the guy who got fired from his own company, that’s for fucking sure.”

There’s a beat of silence while I process exactly what he’s saying.“Hold on. You think I wouldjudgeyou for that?” Theo simply appraises me, and his silence sounds like aYESscreamed between us. My blood heats. “I don’t know if you remember, but I aired all of my dirty laundry to you. Now it feels like you were just patting me on the head—”

“I didn’t pat you on the head,” he snaps, straightening.

“Well, you sure didn’t share any of this in return, apparently because you thought I’d think you were a failure. So, not sure what that says about me,” I shoot back, my throat tightening. He opens his mouth, his brows flattening into that stern line, but I press on, averting my eyes. “I mean, clearly there’s no comparison between us. I lost a menial job I couldn’t stand, and you lost the company you founded and led to multimillion-dollar success, but—”

“That’swhy I didn’t tell you,” Theo bursts out, and when our eyes lock, something cracks inside my chest. “That right there. God, Noelle, can you blame me for not wanting to admit this to you? You hold me up as some paragon of success. You spent our entire trip talking about theForbesshit, about the great work I’d done and how you looked up to it. How would you have felt if I’d been like, ‘Hey, by the way, my entire life is blowing up and I’m about to be unemployed’?”

“I’d say, ‘Yeah, me too!’ I’d feel like you were telling me somethingreal.” I drop my hand from his arm. This conversation has shifted so quickly that I’m dizzy. “Are you kidding? You didn’t want to tell me because you think I’m some fangirl who couldn’t handle you not being perfect?”

“Our entire relationship, from the time we were fourteen, was about you thinking I was good enough based on what I’d achieved.” Theo stands up, pacing away from me. “Do you know what it was like to grow up with a dad who, every time you did something you thought would make him proud, decided that actually, he wantedmore than that? Who moved the goalpost every fucking time? He made me feel like a failure,always.”

“I don’t know what that’s like, and I’m sorry,” I say, tears springing to my eyes. My dad is waiting at home for me, confused and angry, but even through his disappointment he supports me unconditionally. I hate that Theo doesn’t have that.

His mouth twists. “Then there was you, who got pissed every time I did something, and it made me feel it was enough. Like it was actually toomuch. You had nothing to gain from acting that way, and that’s how I knew it was real. I fed off that, Noelle. I had your voice in my head long after high school ended.”

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