Return Billionaire to Sender: A grumpy hero - opposites attract romantic comedy

by Annika Martin

  Why, upon learning upsetting news, would she go out and drink with the traveling team? Were my lips on her cheek and my fingers on her pussy just minutes before not sufficient demonstration of my interest in her?

  Is it not clear enough to her that I’m a fucking powerful billionaire who can solve most any problem with money? People love to say you can’t throw money at a problem, but in my experience, it works well. And where money doesn’t work, threats tend to come in handy, or perhaps a discreet application of foul play. Soulless corporate marauders such as myself really can be effective allies.

  Yet my country mouse decides that getting drunk with the traveling team is the superior solution?

  But I’ve learned over the years that you can’t bark these sorts of questions at a woman, and you’re not supposed to second-guess a woman’s problem-solving methods. You’re supposed to hold yourself back, much as you might want a crack at the problem.

  She just stands there looking weary. Can she stop being maddening for one instant?

  I grit my teeth. “Are you sure there’s nothing that I can do? I hope it’s not related to your tenure here as my coach.” I make a mental note to give another good report.

  “No, just, there’s a problematic person, but I’m dealing with him.”

  I stiffen. Him?

  “Does somebody need a visit from the fist of Malcolm Blackberg?” I say it as a joke, but it’s not. Long experience has taught me that it’s best to say the iffy things as jokes.

  She turns to me with the strangest look. “It’s under control,” she whispers fervently.

  “It’s not under control from the sounds of it,” I say lightly, studying her face. “Say the word.”

  “No, thanks,” she says. Naturally. She would never send me after a person.

  “Unless the problematic person is me,” I say. “I draw the line at punching myself.”

  She smiles, finally, and it swells something in my chest.

  At the corner I buy her an alkalizing green juice plus an orange juice. I hand her the green juice first.

  “Thank you,” she says politely, as if nothing but a client.

  “Drink it,” I command.

  She’s still staring at the drink.

  “Now,” I growl.

  She sips. Makes a face.

  I want to fix her, and I don’t know how. It makes me crazy. I felt so in tune with her during our dinner session, and I don’t get in tune with people all that much. I’d planned to ask her on a proper date, to that restaurant on the water, but now I’m not sure.

  “Drink. All of it. The whole thing,” I say.

  She gulps it down. I take the empty glass from her and give her the orange juice.

  “Thank you. So sweet—you really didn’t have to.”

  I let up on the interrogation on the way back, allowing her to point out features of buildings. She seems to be feeling better.

  The negotiation is unremarkable; it’s not uncommon to have a sleepy session after a breakthrough session like yesterday’s.

  Mostly this one is a what if session—we’re not at a deal, but we’re exploring it. We spend the two hours imagining what it might look like together. Gerrold wants things for his people he’ll never get, like job training and placement for fired workers. He needs to get the asking out of his system, though. He needs to be able to look at himself in the mirror and see the person he saw in the video that we made—the caring steward of the company, handing it off to another caring steward. He needs to be able to tell himself that I feel some kind of tribal allegiance that will lead me to sacrifice my own profitability.

  Is that what a good person does? Is that what the people in the 341 building do? No doubt. And they probably talk about it ad nauseum, too. Got your back!

  On the way back to the hotel, Elle makes it known to the group that she’s going to take a “nice nap.” And not with yours truly—that’s clear.

  “We have our afternoon session scheduled,” I say.

  “I’ll email your assignment,” she says. “You’re to use our time slot to do the assignment. It’ll be a work-at-your-own-pace session.”

  “Ah,” I say. Two weeks ago, I would’ve been elated for us to have a work-at-your-own-pace session, and I would’ve promptly turned it into a Malcolm’s-assistant-works-at-his-own-pace session.

  I go back to my own room to work on the Germantown proposal. Sure enough an email comes. She’s created a PDF worksheet with questions about the people in the building, and links to a few of the videos in case I need to brush up.

  As if.

  The questions are simple, mostly revolving around people’s professions and professional aspirations. Elle’s unorthodox training has given me a lot of knowledge about the people in the building, and while this hasn’t translated into any executive soft skills, it has definitely resulted in an unhealthy fascination with my executive soft skills coach.

  Did I move too fast? Did I scare her off?

  And then instead of being caring and tender, I made her drink a disgusting beverage. But what was I supposed to do? She wasn’t communicating with me. She was clearly upset. She gave me no other ways to fix the thing.

  My team is texting me about the proposal. I tell them to figure it out, and I go back to Elle’s worksheet, elaborating on my answers. I make a few observations on the power of Tabitha’s sunshiny attitude and Mia’s dogged determination. I praise Antonio’s ever-growing acting skills—Elle will enjoy that I noticed.

  Never have I put so much energy into winning over a woman. Usually it’s enough to just want them, but the harder ones require a dinner or maybe a diamond trinket.

  Elle would hate a diamond trinket, so here I am. But I do have a lot of opinions on the people, and I think it will be fun to discuss them later. I casually toss out that I have a theory about the identity of the dryer-lint-screen bandit. I don’t tell her my theory, only that I have it.

  Which is sure to drive her crazy.

  I wish I could buy her a little something and have it sent to the room.

  Maybe fresh-squeezed juice and fresh flowers, but that’s something she could get for herself. Well, I know what she would most want––the building saved. Documents converting it into a co-op. I imagine her pretty lips parted in shock, her green eyes wide. There’s something irresistible about the idea of giving her what she wants.

  I’d put it under John and Maisey’s joint management—that would be the icing on the cake. It would almost be worth it, just to see the shock on her face.

  Almost.

  Even if I were willing to go that far, which I’m not, I don’t see how saving this random Manhattan building would be specifically important to a pretty young executive coach from New Jersey, aside from the fact that it’s some sort of stretch goal that she seems to have chosen for herself, connected to this video that found its way into her hands by whatever means.

  I frequently set my own stretch goals—a certain acquisition, presence in a specific city, running so many miles in a certain amount of time. It’s always more about hitting the goal than the goal itself. Goals on their own don’t make people happy.

  Also, why would I want to end our sessions?

  A dark thought hits me––does she want our sessions to end? She wasn’t at all affectionate today; I chalked it up to the hangover and that mysterious bad news, but what if it’s something else? Did I push her too fast?

  I think back to the way her eyes fluttered with pleasure, the breathy yes she repeated as I moved my hand toward her pussy. The way she asked me to unzip her pants.

  Is she rethinking the whole thing? Regretting it?

  Is there something I should be doing now that I’m not doing? If I want to keep our interactions going—and I find that I very much do—I need to at least make a gesture toward something that looks vaguely healthy-relationship-ish.

  I’m not entirely sure how one works, and I’m hardly capable of developing any such thing, considering my role model, but some gesture
…

  It’s here that I find myself thinking about my old friend Howie. His family lived next to ours growing up, and he was my main source of information on normalcy before I went off to boarding school. I returned to California on and off in the years that followed, but we were never especially close—he was always a Boy Scout type, more likely to be serving omelets at shelter kitchens than throwing eggs at cars with me. These days he’s a wholesome family man with a cabinetry business, but we’ve kept in touch.

  WWHD: What would Howie do? Would he try to get her on a nice date? But what if she won’t go on a nice date? Then what would Howie do?

  I give Howie a call.

  “Malcolm!” Howie sounds happy to hear from me. “What’s new? Are you in town?”

  “I’m in town and I thought we could get together,” I say. “Let me take you out tonight.”

  “We’re grilling,” he says. “The kids are excited for it. But you’re welcome to come by for a steak.”

  “Hmmm,” I say, not loving the sound of this. I was hoping to get him drunk and soak up some of his secrets, and you can’t exactly do that with kids around demanding attention.

  “You can finally meet the rug rats, and you haven’t seen Clare since the wedding. It’s a nice evening—what do you say?”

  Reluctantly I agree—I suppose it’s a bit much that I haven’t seen his home or met his kids in all these years. I’m assuming he’s invited me over before this—my New York assistant is responsible for filtering and turning down social invitations. I get her on the line and I learn that Howie has twin girls, both ten years old.

  I arrive at Howie’s place at seven sharp with a nice bottle of red, per my assistant’s suggestion. The girls are cute, though their presence makes for underwhelming dinner conversation, to say the least.

  Clare and Howie seem delighted with them, and with each other. Clare sometimes watches Howie with adoration, even when he talks about something as simplistic as his predictions for the Giants and his failure to get the girls interested in baseball. The girls tell what they don’t like about baseball, Howie tells the girls to ask me what I call an elevator, a car trunk, a truck, and I dutifully play the Brit, though I’ve long since adopted the American words for those things. I learn many fascinating things like, they can only feed the dog at its bowl, and he howls at fire trucks.

  It’s as if they’re this enclosed little social unit with their own little rituals and stories. They even have their own language; the entire family is endlessly entertained, for example, when one of the girls asks me to pass the bloop-bloop and I just sit there mystified. In Howie’s family, bloop-bloop means the ketchup.

  Endlessly entertained. I stare down at my plate pushing around bits of corn with the tines of my fork. Everybody could fall off the face of the earth and Howie’s family would be content, just with each other.

  It’s strange to see children actually wanting to be with their parents and vice versa, and it’s not an act for company.

  My own family, which is to say, my drunk of a father, would have been happy if I’d fallen off the face of the earth. Especially after my mother made her escape to Australia.

  Clare brings out cookies on a vintage platter. There are carvings around the edges of tall ships. Howie always loved tall ships. Clare’s smiling at me expectantly now, as if she’s waiting for me to break into song.

  “Anything look familiar?” she asks.

  I look down at the cookies. Am I supposed to recognize the cookies? “Familiar?” I say playfully, adopting her tone.

  “Yes!” She grins, still with that air of happy expectancy. “Really so thoughtful. We love it—it’s a prize piece in this house.”

  What?

  “Well,” I say. “Excellent…” I stuff a cookie into my mouth as Howie looks on, amused.

  Clare looks confused. “I’m not just saying that, you know.”

  Howie grins, like something is suddenly hilarious. “How did you ever come up with it, Malcolm?”

  “Come up with it?” I ask.

  Howie’s laughing.

  “What?” Clare looks back and forth between us. “Are you giving him guff, Howie? Stop giving him guff. It was thoughtful.”

  “He doesn’t know,” Howie says. “He doesn’t know what we’re talking about.”

  “Oh.” The fun expectancy is off her face. “Well, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t thoughtful.”

  Howie’s laughing outright now. “It’s exactly what it means.”

  “Howie,” she says, catching his hand, giving him a look of fond warning. He gives her a look back. Just that small, wordless exchange contains worlds—she loves him, and she’s scolding him, and he’s showing her something back. Love and interest. He’s saying, I know, I hear you, it’s all good. And she squeezes his hand harder, widens her eyes. She’s coming to my defense—this I realize with a distinctly unpleasant feeling.

  Clare thinks I need defending.

  I swallow. Before I can say anything, Howie speaks. “I’m his oldest friend,” he says. “If I don’t give him guff, nobody else will.” He pins me with a look. “The platter that you gave us as a wedding gift?” He angles his eyes down at it.

  “Oh,” I say. “I’m so glad,” I say. It’s exquisite, and probably worth four figures, and I have no knowledge of it. That’s my assistant for you.

  “We love it,” Claire says. “It’s our family’s favorite serving dish. And your clever little response to our thank-you note?” Her smile falters.

  Howie smiles. “Mal’s got good people.”

  “Well,” Clare says. “Either way, we love it.” Another warning look at Howie. But it’s not shaming, it’s full of love. She’s on Howie’s team. She doesn’t want him to be hard on his friend. She lifts him, and he lifts her.

  “My assistant really is good,” I say. “She’s not to bother me with anything that’s not a death.” A confession. I don’t know why I make it.

  “You must’ve provided some input,” Clare says, “or how would she have known about the tall ships?”

  “She would’ve looked at Howie’s Facebook page and figured it out,” I say.

  “So I’m assuming that wasn’t you congratulating me on the pennant win,” Howie says.

  I wince.

  Howie just laughs. “Only you would outsource your friendships,” he says.

  It’s situations like this where I’ll usually say something like, oh I’ll be sure to dry my tears on the monogrammed towels I had made for my superyacht—hashtag priorities. But that’s not something I say to Howie.

  “Well, if it works for you,” Clare says brightly.

  But it would’ve meant so much if I’d picked it out myself. It’s the thought that counts, they say, but this gift is everything but the thought.

  And then one of the twins, Vivian, comes and sits on Howie’s lap and eats a cookie and traces an outline of the ship. “This one’s mine,” she says.

  “The green one’s her favorite,” Howie says. “What do we do, Viv? What’s our dessert game?”

  “Where are they going today?”

  It turns out that they made a whole game out of the tray that I couldn’t be bothered to know about. They’re all on each other’s sides, imagining journeys together.

  Howie and I have cigars on his deck after dinner. I want to ask him how to do what he does, but honestly, I can’t think how to form the question.

  “It’s nice,” I say. “You have a nice family.”

  “Is everything okay?” he asks.

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” I ask.

  “Showing up here. Not that you’re not welcome.”

  “Maybe I’ve come to plunder the secret to your relationship success,” I say.

  He gives me a look and I think that he realizes that is my question. “A relationship is just about showing up,” he says. “It’s all you can really do. Show up. Say things. Hang in there. Do your best.”

  As advice goes, it’s fucking vague. “That’s it? Don’t go i
nto relationship coaching, my friend. Showing up is what gets people into trouble.”

  “No, showing up emotionally,” he says, as if I’d know what the fuck that means.

  In the back of the car on the way home, I think a lot about that platter, and the game that the girls made out of it. It meant something to them and it made them feel closer to me—or it would have if I had known I’d given it to them.

  I call my personal shopper on the way home in the car. It’s late, but I don’t care. She makes a mint upcharging me for the shit she finds. “I need a gift,” I say. “I need it tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” she says. I can hear rustling. “I just need the occasion, price range and social media leads on the recipient.”

  “It’s a thank-you gift, but I want to be involved. It’s for a woman.”

  “Great! Okay…” she says.

  I’m never involved in the gifts, and I doubt she thinks it’s great. “Let’s brainstorm something. Where do we start?”

  “Usually I do some research to see what the woman is into.”

  “She loves people. She has a quirky fashion sense,” I say. “Hedgehogs. She’d go for homemade over designer labels. Anything having to do with the US Postal Service. Earth tones. Nothing showy.”

  “How personal? If it’s jewelry, I need to study her style on social media.”

  “No jewelry.” I think about Elle’s bag. She once called it boring. Not really her style. What if I got her a bag that was her style? “She needs a new bag for her notebooks and iPad and things.”

  “Purses and bags are hard,” she says. “High risk for women.”

  “Can we get some kind of postal-themed bag? But it can’t be cheap or…inauthentic.”

  “What do you think about a vintage postal carrier bag? There is a market for those out there. Hold on.” She starts sending me links to images. None are right. “I’m confined to vendors who can deliver overnight,” she says.

  “Money is not an object,” I say. “Everybody delivers overnight for a price.”

  “Shit,” she says. “Homemade?”