Trade Me (7 page)

My mind goes totally blank, trying to imagine how someone who thinks he’s not a huge spender manages to spend fifteen thousand dollars a month. What does he
do
with all of that? Put gold nuggets on his cereal? Fund a small army?
Oh, no,
I imagine him saying.
I’m not a huge spender. We only go through a kilo or two of weapons-grade plutonium every year—scarcely enough to destroy the city of San Francisco. You should see what the other megalomaniacal billionaires can do when they’re feeling tetchy!

“You could buy four thousand pounds of oatmeal every month,” I say instead. “Probably more if you buy in bulk.”

He gives me a puzzled look. “Why would I do that?”

“I’m just saying. That’s a lot of oatmeal.”

The waiter brings steaming bowls of pho and plates of greens and sprouts. I take the opportunity to strip basil leaves methodically into my soup. I can’t imagine what a billion dollars looks like. It’s too big a number. It’s like showing someone a teaspoon of sand and asking her to envision the Sahara.

But fifteen thousand? That is within my capacity to understand. Fifteen thousand times three months left in the semester means I could quit my job. For good. I wouldn’t have to work at all through graduation. It would mean being able to pay my way if friends invited me out. I can stop deleting those emails advertising prestigious but unpaid summer internships.

Forty-five thousand dollars means no more bitterness when my mom asks for money. I can just give it to her and feel good about it. I could pay off Dad’s medical debt instead of watching it bleed my parents dry, month after month. Hope flutters inside me on breathless anticipation.

I squash it dead.

Because forty-five thousand dollars is just too much money.

“I have a question,” I say. “Just a little one.”

He desultorily throws a bean sprout in his broth. “Go for it.”

“Most people don’t need to pay forty-five thousand dollars in order to work at a crappy job. Or to live in a crappy apartment. Most people do it for free.”

He stops in the midst of fishing out his sprout and puts down his chopsticks. “Yes,” he says, a little more quietly. “I could do that. But I don’t want to explain what I’m doing to my dad. That means I need to keep up with my duties at Cyclone. And that means I need someone smart enough to handle them. Someone who can think independently. Someone I can work with. That’s you.”

I know I’m smart. But Blake? We’ve exchanged a tiny handful of sentences. Out of all the people in the world, he picks me? I don’t believe that.

I consider him. “That fifteen thousand a month is post-tax for you,” I say. “I have to pay taxes on it. I want it adjusted up accordingly.”

He doesn’t blink. “Fair enough.”

“And you’ll earn stock options on the work I do, right? I should get them.”

This has him wrinkling his nose in contemplation. “That’s…a little harder to do as a straight transfer, but I can sign over an equivalent number of shares that I already own outright. But that isn’t all that much right now, though, not with me on partial hiatus. It’s worth maybe another ten or fifteen grand.”

Yep. That just about proves my point. I stand up, take out my wallet, and carefully, painfully, count out nine dollars. I set this next to my bowl.

“This is too much,” I say. “You’re too eager to agree. There’s something else going on here. It’s like those emails where some government official offers an obscene amount of money in exchange for transferring funds from their accounts in Burkina Faso to the United States. I don’t know what your scam is or how you’re running it, but when something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. I’m out.”

I set the money down and start toward the stairs.

“Tina.” I hear his chair scrape the floor behind me. “Wait. Tina.”

He takes hold of my wrist as I’m leaving, turning me to him.

I snatch my hand away. “Don’t touch me.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He looks at me; I look at him. For a second, the casual, smiling façade he usually wears is wiped away. There’s something wild about him, something that scares me more than the offer he just made. “I’m sorry,” he says again, and this time, I feel like he’s apologizing for something else entirely.

“What’s really going on here?”

He runs one hand through his hair. “I’m sorry,” he says for a fourth time. “It’s just… Look. I don’t know how to explain this to you. Maybe that sounded like a lot of money to you. But over the course of this conversation, random stock market fluctuations have changed my net worth by a lot more than sixty thousand dollars. We’re talking about a heartbeat’s amount of money for me. I don’t need money. I gave up—easily—several million dollars in compensation when I went to school. That’s how much I’ve already paid to get away.”

He almost shivers as he speaks, like he’s being blown by a wind I can’t feel.

It’s strange. For the first time since we sat down to lunch together, I believe him. I don’t know
why
he’s so desperate to get away—but I believe that he is. And that scares me, seduces me, and pisses me off, all at once.

“I understand where you’re coming from,” he says. “This is a little unusual. But my father always says that the person who can walk away from a deal is the one who is in control. That’s where you are. You’re in control. You tell me the terms you need to make this work.”

“All right,” I say slowly. “But that only answers half my question. Why can’t you let me walk away? Why me?”

“I need someone to come up with a script for our newest product launch,” he says. “And—I don’t know if you’ve ever watched Cyclone product launches?”

I shake my head. It’s not like I could afford their products anyway.

“You’ll see, then. They’re…personal. The launches. Whoever it is that I ask to help me will have access to our old scripts, complete with the change logs, and those will let you know a lot about me and my father.”

I think of that commercial—of Blake running away from his home, of his father sending him a
sorry.
I wonder if his entire life has been turned into publicity for products.

“There aren’t that many people I’m willing to let that close,” he says, “and most of them work at Cyclone and would tell my father. My options are limited.”

But you don’t even know me.

He takes a deep breath. “Also, if you’re going to write the launch script, you’ll need to get Cyclone prototypes. It’s not like you can write a launch for a product you’ve never held. And there’s only one way for a non-Cyclone employee to get a prototype. You’ll have to meet my dad. Which is bad enough in and of itself. But. Um. He’s pretty protective of our new tech, and that’s a huge understatement. It’s not like he just hands out prototypes at my request.” He glances down. “When you meet him, you’ll have to pretend to be my girlfriend.”

A wash of heat goes through me. For a second, I imagine what that would be like. And even that second’s imagination—of Blake touching me, holding me,
kissing
me—is too much.

“Whatever you’re imagining,” Blake says, “it won’t be like that. Just one afternoon. And Dad thinks PDA is gross, so no kissing even. Just holding hands. Nothing else; I promise.”

I swallow. “You still haven’t answered my question,” I say. “Why me? I doubt I’m the only person in the world who could pretend to be your girlfriend.”

Blake looks me over. It’s the kind of look that makes me think of lottery tickets and unicorns, of things that don’t happen in my world. I can feel his gaze like a caress.

“I’m shit at lying to my dad,” he says. “I can only pretend so far. It needs to be someone I have reasonable chemistry with.”

Reasonable chemistry. That’s what this is for him?

“As for the rest…Tina, when do you think we first ran into each other?”

I swallow. “In class? A few weeks ago?”

“Last September. In the library. You helped me find a book.” He looks over at me. “Like I said. I’ve been seeing you for longer than you’ve been seeing me.”

I don’t know if I believe him because I
want
to believe him, or because he’s so genuinely sincere that I can’t help myself. All I know is that if there is a chance in hell that this is legitimate, I can’t say no. I can’t afford to.

“If I do this,” I say slowly, “I’ll have to quit my job. I need a written guarantee that I’ll get the money you’ve promised me for the entire semester, even if you can’t hack it and quit after the first week.”

“Done. Anything else?”

This still feels incomplete. Dangerous. I bite my lip and consider.

“You offered me a trade,” I say next. “Not a purchase. You’re not hiring me. You just told me that the thing I want is worth millions to you.” I still don’t understand how that can be true, but I know that if I don’t insist on it now, it will never be recognized. “That means that what I put in has value.”

He nods.

“So we come into this thing equally. I’m not going to spend three months listening to you bitch about how pitiful my life is. The things I care about, the things I have to worry about—for the rest of this…thing, whatever it is, they’re as important as anything you have going on. I’m important, too.”

“Agreed,” he says. “You’re important.”

He’s standing close to me, his gaze so intent on mine that it almost feels like the next step is for him to lean down and brush his lips against mine. He hasn’t touched me since I told him not to, but I’m so physically aware of him right now that my skin prickles. It itches for what could come next.

I don’t buy lottery tickets. I can do math, and I know the only thing you’re purchasing is the right to scrape false hopes off a card with a nickel. You fool yourself into believing that the universe is on your side, that even though everything else is going down in flames, help will come like magic.

Spending time with Blake is dangerous. It’s irresponsible. And I know that the more time I spend with him, the more I’ll want to believe in the impossible.

But this time, the irresponsible choice has a hell of a lot of dollar signs attached to it.

I let out a breath. If you’re ever forced to buy a lottery ticket, you have to set rules. You can only purchase one. You can’t tell yourself that you’ll spend anything you win on more. If you lose, you can’t say you’ll get one more, just one more. It’s the
one more
that will do you in every time—never the single ticket itself. And so before this starts, I know I need to make sure that I never let myself believe in
one more.

“One last thing.” I swallow. “When this is over, it’s over. No strings. No entanglements. We’re not friends. We’re not Facebook friends. We’re not anything.”

I watch his eyes as I speak. They don’t flicker, not one bit. Not with disappointment, not with hope.

“Subject to reevaluation,” he says finally, “if—”

I can’t let myself leave that door open. Through it will come hope, fear, and worry. But there is no hope. None. “Subject to nothing.” I stare up at him and set my hands on my hips.

“What if—”

“I can’t afford ifs.” I look at him. “It’s that or I walk.”

For a while, he watches me. Then he rubs his forehead.

“Fine,” he says quietly. “You have your conditions. When this is done, it’s done.”

5.

BLAKE

The light next to my dad’s icon in the video chat app on my watch is green. This means he’s not on the phone or in another chat. It doesn’t mean he’s not busy. He’s always busy.

I tap to call him anyway.

And here’s the thing about my dad: If he can conceivably answer when I call, he will. Every time, no matter what time it is. Seven months ago, when I was trying to prove I was a bad ass, I entered a fifty-two-mile long race in Spain. I ended up dropping halfway through with a stress fracture. When I called my dad, he heard the word “fracture” and was on a jet as soon as he could get FAA clearance to take off.

So it’s not a surprise when he picks up as soon as I ring. There’s a flurry of gray and green pixels on my watch, resolving themselves swiftly into my dad’s face. His eyebrows, thick and bushy, draw down.

“Blake,” he says.

“Hey.”

“Everything okay?”

“Great,” I say. It’s not a lie for once. Even though the rest of this conversation will be nothing but a string of falsehoods, that at least is not a lie. It’s weird, but he’s not just my father. He’s also one of my best friends. I don’t like lying to him, and I hate feeling like I have no other option.

We look at each other, our last conversation still separating us. I don’t think that grim line will leave his forehead until I tell him I’m leaving school and coming back for good.

I’m going to make it all better. I just have to get outside my head, get a rest from Cyclone, and put myself back together again.
I’m going to fix everything,
I promise him silently.

I almost believe it this time.

“Do you have time for lunch this weekend?” I ask.

He tilts his head to the side. “Late. 2:30 at Sakshi’s work for you?”

“Sure.”

He looks away, tapping, no doubt inputting this into his calendar.