Page 10 of The Refusal

“Once a month a team …” I tail off, wincing at the word. “… Come and do my hair, nails …” Jo’s eyes shoot down to my fingers. I raise my eyes to the ceiling. “God, I sound like the vainest man on the planet. You’ve no idea what grief my best buds from college would give me if they knew about this.”

“And is this appreciated by all these women that you go out with?”

I shake my head at her, grinning. I’m struck by how odd this conversation is: We’ve only known each other a matter of hours, and we’re already diving into such personal stuff. I don’t have conversations like this with anybody else. Surely we should be chatting about tech?

“I think it just sort of happens when there’s a lot of scrutiny. People start commenting on all sorts of stuff you wished they didn’t notice,” I say.

She stares at me, nodding, before taking a bite and chewing on it contemplatively. “What do your friends do?”

“Fabian is a hacker, and Adam also has his own startup. Both techies. We got into this sort of pact at college—”

“Like the Unbreakable Vow?”

Why am I not surprised she’s a Harry Potter fan?

“More like the three musketeers. We agreed to be friends for life, that kind of thing. That sounds incredibly cheesy when I say it out loud.” I stare down at my plate, suddenly not hungry at all. What with this and the comments about clothes she must think I’m the biggest douchebag alive.

“That strikes me as pretty cool actually. Do they live here in the city?”

I nod, unwinding a little.

“Yes. Fabian lives in Brooklyn, and I go and hang with him from time to time.” I stretch my neck to the side. Fabian is something of a mess, and I don’t see him anywhere near as much as I should.

“What about Adam?”

And now something cold slithers through me. I’m not sure what’s happened to my relationship with Adam over the last few years; I can’t even remember when I last saw him. Shit. I should give him a call. But how often have I had that thought and not done anything about it? I’ve been running scared with the business, terrified that the success will slip through my fingers like sand.

Before I can answer, Jo says, “Fabian’s a hacker? Why didn’t you ask him to help with the company?”

Why didn’t I? It’s a good question, and I have no answer to it.

6

Jo

The office is cool and relatively quiet when my phone starts vibrating on my desk, and I glance down at the screen. Dad. He’s a lovely man but hard to chat to when I’m swamped and a bit wound up. I watch it thrum against the wood. Damn. He’s on his own and I should talk to him.

“Hi, Peach,” he says when I pick up.

“Hey, PJ.”

A delighted snort fills my ear. I started calling my dad (aka Peter James Williams) this at thirteen when I felt too old and sophisticated to call him Dad. I haven’t been able to call him anything else since.

“How’s my beautiful girl? Not too busy to chat with your old man?”

“Not sure about the beautiful bit, Dad, but definitely a girl.”

“Come on now, with that red hair, how could you be anything but beautiful? How are things in the Big Apple? Proud of you, you know.”

Oh dear. He’s in a sentimental mood.

And something soft and warm seeps through me. I was desperate to escape the small South Carolina town I grew up in when I went to college. I love and miss my dad, but I was buried there. Buried by girls that taunted me every day and followed me home. The red hair that just acted like a siren call to every narrow-minded asshole in the place.

I remember the last time Darcy and her crew set on me. The way they grabbed the woolen hat off my head, came at me from behind,because that day I hadn’t done enough checking. Darcy called me “carrot top” and her whole posse snickered. She ruffled my hair as she stopped in front of me, tight, mean eyes scanning my head. I remember seeing school just around the corner as everyone hurried past, heads down, ignoring us, and I didn’t blame them. No one ever wants to get on the bully’s radar. Then Darcy narrowed her eyes and declared that they should cut off all my hair for the warmer weather. I tried to push past then, tried to escape. But she just snapped her fingers, and before I knew what was happening someone had produced scissors. I started really fighting then, catching Darcy on the chin, hitting anyone, anything. As I kicked and scratched, she told her posse to hold me down.

My dad clears his throat, and I blink at the damp patch on the wall of the office. What the hell were we talking about?

“I’m proud of you, too,” I say, and goddamn it, I am. He’s a quiet man, living a quiet life in a quiet town. Because the other thing I know is how he fought for me. Fought the bullying girls, the school, the press, everyone who thought we were pariahs. I carry his silent strength around with me every day. Cut me through the middle like a tree and my rings would be made up of pieces of him.

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