“With all due respect, I don’t see how having someone to share a bathroom with makes you a better venture capitalist.”
Xavier steeples his fingers. “Having a partner at home is as important as having a partner in the office. It’s less about your day-to-day capabilities and one-off decisions. You need someone to trust, to confide in. Someone to seek counsel from.”
I don’t know where he’s going with this, so I listen steadily as he continues.
“It’s easy to wear the clothes and pretend to be the kind of man who can lead a company like this. It’s harder to do it for real. At a certain level, being well-rounded, having support, it matters.”
“Does it?” I shift back in my chair, looking at one of the pictures of Xavier with his family. “When I was a kid—old enough to behave, of course—I used to go to dinner parties in LA with my mom. One of the TV studio execs in particular indulged me. My mom said he didn’t work in Hollywood anymore but liked to be around the people. Anyway, he let me play with the statues in his office. One night, I noticed the most recent award was five years before. When I asked him why there wasn’t anything newer, he said his partner had died and he couldn’t bear to keep creating.”
Xavier doesn’t blink. “One man’s view, Benjamin.”
I could give him more personal examples, but I won’t. Besides, I can see he won’t relent on this, so… I lie. “I have been seeing someone.”
“Really? Someone serious?"
I force myself to nod even though the idea feels ludicrous. “I’ll bring her to the awards gala."
His eyes brighten. “Make it sooner. I’d like very much to meet her.”
And that’s how I take what should have been a perfectly good weekend and fuck it up before I’ve even had a coffee.
I’m late to brunch. It’s not a cardinal sin—in fact, it’s practically a virtue—but my friends are already squeezed at a round table, elbow to elbow as if the restaurant couldn’t accommodate the entire crew.
Logan Hunter—known just as Hunter to everyone except his girlfriend and his mom—Jake, and I went to Columbia together. Hunter's girlfriend, Kendall, works with Daisy and Serena, whom I know from the private high school I transferred to after moving from LA. Serena's boyfriend, Wes, is a top-rate geneticist, and his DNA dating app is one of the diamond-in-the-rough discoveries that's helping cement my reputation in the VC world.
But one person’s missing.
“Where’s Daisy?” I ask.
“She’s running late," Rena supplies. "Something to do with her sister.”
“Lil was out all night.”
Tris cocks his head as I take a seat, my chair bumping against the empty one. My brother is two years younger, but once he started college, he wound up hanging with my friends—a fact I occasionally find myself regretting.
He’s waiting for an explanation as to how I know anything about Lily’s night, so I say, “Daisy tells me everything."
"Doubtful. There are some things a woman doesn't tell someone who hasn't shared her bed. And she's way too ambitious and dedicated for you.”
I frown. “I’m ambitious and dedicated.”
“Exactly. You’d make magnificent bookends and terrible lovers.”
Tris says I have a problem letting people in, but that’s not accurate. Rather, there are few people I want to invite in.
“Have you heard from Mom?” I ask. “Been trying to track her down all week.”
“No, but I’m sure she’s fine. Probably drinking too many martinis and delighting over the fact that you’ve got your panties in a knot over her whereabouts.”
Irritation chafes at me. “She put you through law school. Don’t be a dick.”
“She manipulated both of us for years. You’re still playing along.”
When Daisy strides in, my retort is forgotten. She’s wearing cherry-red shorts and a crisp white T-shirt. Her dark hair, cut blunt at the ends, swings in a curtain around her shoulders. Her sandals make her taller and display curvy legs that come from walking everywhere in this city.
“Afternoon in the Hamptons?” I murmur as she shifts into the seat next to me, struggling because of the close quarters.
“You weren’t invited,” she tosses back, her dark eyes locking on mine.
We always made fun of the rich New Yorkers, but now we work with them every day.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
“Yeah. Lily came home this morning panicked because she got a B on an essay. I sat her down and reminded her the sum of her life experience won’t be determined by an economics paper.”
“Way to go handing out life lessons before coffee.”
She threads her fingers through my hair. “Speaking of… you need a haircut. I felt like an asshole pointing it out when you’d just spent an extra thousand dollars and hours at LAX to get back to see me.”
“Justified.” A grin pulls at my lips, and hers curve to match.
Daisy’s been my friend since undergrad. Our friends were friends. She was down to earth and self-possessed as hell. The night we met, I mentioned that girls always seemed to be tripping around me, and she informed me any collisions were due to the fact that my hair was too long for me to see straight.
I liked her immediately.
I thought the feeling was mutual, but after her twin sister, Vi, dropped out of school, Daisy all but ghosted me. It wasn’t until almost a year later, after a spring break trip, that we started hanging out again.
Hunter clears his throat. “Kendall couldn’t be here because Rory’s sailing boats at the park," he says, referring to his girlfriend and her son. "But I wanted you to know I’m planning to propose.”
The girls gasp, and the guys groan.
"Incredible,” Rena murmurs as if Hunter just showed her a video of a dog riding a motorcycle.
"Never thought I'd settle down?" he asks.
"Never thought I'd see you plan something," Daisy teases, and he shoots her a withering look.
We might all be friends, but we’re very different people.
I’m a big-picture guy, but Daisy spots what’s running under the surface. Sometimes she misses things she needs to think about, and I have to step in—like how she was so fastidious going over the lease agreements for her company’s first home that she forgot to question whether they needed one in the first place.
I’m glad she has some weaknesses. It means she’s human and that I can help her.
Which I like doing.
“She’s been proposed to before, you know," Rena comments.
Hunter’s ruddy face goes pale. “Come on. Give me some credit.”
“I’m offended I haven’t seen you in my office yet,” Jake, who runs a gem company, weighs in. “How many carats?”
“Wait. You guys have been dating less than a year,” Rena says.
“When you know, you know. Plus Rory’s the cutest kid ever.”
Daisy and Rena beam, and Wes shakes his head.
“So, a lot of carats,” Jake says dryly.
We all catch up, but as we order coffees and mimosas and pancakes and French toast, my mind drifts back to the bigger problem at hand.