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“Is that flattery?” He wrinkled his forehead. “Because I feel like it could be a little better.”
“You’re insulting my flattery?”
“Absolutely not. Best flattery ever. How do you do it?”
She laughed at him and he felt giddy for a moment. Making Kendra laugh wasn’t like making other people laugh. It gave him a charge, like he could do anything in the whole goddamn world. “I’ll do it. I’ll be your spy.”
“Thanks, Jason. I really appreciate it.” She started to get up, but he touched her hand. She looked back at him curiously.
The contact—eye and hand—was like a punch to the gut, or a shot of adrenaline. Like that moment when a call came in and he ran to don his gear.
“I’m curious about something. You said you don’t usually fail. What do you mean by that?”
Four
Kendra hadn’t intended to tell Jason about the fiasco with Dominic. She hadn’t planned to tell anyone. It was too humiliating on every level. But there was something about Jason that, quietly and steadily, drew the story from her.
She began with the short version. “Long story short, my boyfriend of two years broke up with me. Since he was also my business partner, he left me hanging professionally too.”
“Damn.” He waited for her to say more. She didn’t want to, but those steady eyes of his refused to turn away, and somehow the words kept coming.
“We met in Minneapolis, in business school. I’ve always wanted to run my own business. I don’t have the personality to be an employee, I want to be the boss.”
“Fair enough. Was that a problem for your ex?”
“No. Maybe.” She frowned, thinking it over. “Probably,” she admitted. “Remember how furious I was in our environmental sciences class when I learned that hardly any plastic actually gets recycled? I’m not a scientist, but I can help get the information out. I came up with this idea for an app that would let people know about all recycling options in their area, along with facts about what local businesses were doing in that space, simple steps to use less plastic, alternative plastic-free products, petitions to sign, just everything related to plastic recycling.”
“Great idea. What’s the name, I’ll download it.”
“It’s still in beta form. We hadn’t even named the app, but the company name is Explastica. Dominic—that’s my ex—came up with it. He had more experience with app launches, so I met with him to pick his brain. We had dinner and by the end he wanted in. We became partners.”
That night had been magical. She’d seen the rest of her life unfurl before her. Kendra and Dominic, conquering the world, together forever. She’d believed in that vision with every cell in her body.
“We were joined at the hip after that. We were the perfect business partners because we have similar work ethics. We both go hard, nonstop. And then we fell in love, and that made it even better. I assumed we’d be together forever.”
She caught his expression, and knew that he got it.
“I heard about Gretchen. I’m sorry. Breakups are the worst.”
He looked down at the table. “I just saw her on the lake. She’s really happy now. She deserves it. I wasn’t giving her what she wanted, so that’s on me.”
“She wanted to get married?” Kendra didn’t remember much about Gretchen other than freckles and a sunny smile; they’d never been in the same friend groups.
“Sure.” He shrugged. “I have nothing against marriage. I guess I just…I was waiting for something, I don’t know what. Something that would tell me it’s time to get married.”
Men. Kendra didn’t say it out loud, but good lord, did they need everything mapped out for them?
“If it was me, I would have just proposed,” she told him. “Not to you, obviously. To my man.”
“Did you? With Dominic?”
“No, because we were focusing on the business first. We had this unspoken agreement that once we got the app underway, we’d deal with our personal relationship.”
“Unspoken agreement,” he repeated, and she could hear for herself how sketchy that sounded. “I hope the business end of things was more official.”
Warmth flooded her face. She’d been so freaking blind. “That’s the problem. We have a contract, but the exit clause is too loose. Technically, he’s still an equal partner, but he slow-rolls everything. It takes him weeks to answer a single email. He wants me to buy him out, but I don’t have the money. In the meantime, anything I do for the business makes it more valuable and therefore more pricey to buy him out. He left me in limbo.”
Jason shook his head, nothing but sympathy in those dark blue eyes. No judgement. Jason didn’t judge, she realized. Maybe because he’d had struggles of his own.
