Maybe he’ll listen now. He has to, for his own good.
It’s been four long months. Four months and he’s still inviting me to seminars, saying nothing personal that might truly matter.
I see him on TV, helping others.
I see him interviewed, dispensing advice.
But the man doesn’t know himself.
“I …” He begins, lost. But he recovers quickly, deciding to face me without committing to any lies, and simply says, “Hi.”
“Hi,” I reply.
Awkward silence. Someone coughs.
“Thanks for coming.” But it’s strange, so the next thing he says has the lilt of a joke: “We’re all happy you’re joining us today.”
People chuckle. They don’t get it, but it seems like Anthony is playing.
“My name is Caitlin,” I say.
And Anthony, following my lead, pretends this is new information. “Hi, Caitlin.” But he’s clearly bothered. I see his face take on its usual seminar smile, but his eyes won’t leave mine. They’re … hurt? Longing? “Why did you come to Fate in Your Palm?”
“I’ve been having a problem with this guy I used to date.”
His face twitches when I say used to, but he hides it well. “What’s the problem?”
“He’s just not very self aware.”
“Is he … is something he’s doing bothering you in some way?”
I nod. Yes, of course it bothers me. Not because I’m bothered; more because it bothers me to know Anthony is still clinging to the past.
“Yes.”
“What’s he been doing?”
“He won’t let me go. We separated months ago, but he’s still calling. Still trying to get my attention.”
“And that bothers you.”
“Yes.”
I see a moment of indecision. He’s wondering if he should ask more questions that he might not want to hear the answers to. But he asks anyway, slanting the question toward sarcasm to deflect the audience’s attention.
“Does he make you want to get a restraining order or something?”
I allow a small smile. “Nothing like that.”
“What, then?”
“I just want what’s best for him.”
“Maybe what’s best for him is to be with you.”
The crowd’s heads turn toward their neighbors. This is the seminar’s second day, though it’s the first I’ve been here. It’s not like I paid to attend; I called the venue and was eventually put through to Amber, who suggested this confrontation — on the house, of course. I didn’t love the idea but she assured me it was a good one, given that I was already in town.
I know where Anthony’s head is at right now, Amber told me. He’s in denial. He can’t admit he made a mistake with you. I’m afraid, Caitlin, that confronting him in person is the only way to end it cleanly.
Now I’m wondering if Amber set me up. I bought her bullshit when she pitched it last night, but my heart is pounding. On paper, the idea of giving Anthony the facts as I see them using a vehicle he already understands, believes in, and accepts sounded perfect.
But this is already off-script. Everyone here has seen enough of Anthony Ross to know that the piece of advice he just gave me is strange. Anthony doesn’t suggest that women with boyfriend problems get back together with their beaus. He suggests they take out their fucking cell phones in front of everyone and handle the issue immediately, in front of everyone.
Had Amber been smiling sideways when she suggested this?
Had she been lying when she said, I know where Anthony’s head is at right now?
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I say over the murmuring crowd.
“Have you heard him out?”
“Well, sure.”
“Really heard him out? What if whatever went wrong between you is something he’s now willing to accept and move past?”
“I don’t know about—”
“Was it good? When you were with him, were things nice?”
“Sure, but—”
“Did he love you?”
“Yes, but—”
“Did you love him?”
I look back up at Anthony. He’s quiet. Waiting.
Fragile, anticipating my response.
And I say, so softly that the mic has trouble hearing me: “Of course I did.”
A small, bittersweet smile touches Anthony’s lips. My heart is hammering so hard, I’m sure my blouse must be leaping off my chest with every beat. My hand on the mic is sweaty. This isn’t going well — or at least not like Amber promised. I meant to give Anthony a story with characters reflecting each of us, showing him that my fictitious boyfriend could never be my man as long as he felt he was an island on his own, without any flaws.
But I see plenty in Anthony now. The flaws are impossible to miss, in everything from the way he looks at me to the way he holds his shoulders and hands to the tone and timbre of his voice.
Even the crowd is starting to wonder if there’s more to this encounter than they’ve been told.
“It just didn’t work out,” I say. “We made sense for a while, but he hurt me.”
“I’m sure he’s sorry. Sorry with every fiber of his being.”
“Sorry isn’t enough. The real problem is acceptance of the problem behind the problem … or lack thereof.”
“Maybe he’s changed since you broke up,” Anthony offers.
I shake my head. With my eyes on his, a tear rolls down my cheek.
And I repeat: “Sorry isn’t enough.”
Anthony approaches me. I make myself strong. I knew this would be hard, but I won’t allow a moment of emotion to sway me. It’s been hard to get back on my feet, but I’m on them now. Everything is good, other than this. Everything will be good, once I’m past it.
Don’t backslide, Caitlin. Anthony belongs to the world, but you need someone who belongs at least partly to you. Anthony’s a force of nature. He’s larger than life. An icon and an idol, but you need a MAN.
He takes my hand. Still playing our farce, he pulls me toward the aisle, pretending we’ve only just met.
We’re heading toward the raised stage. Commotion among Anthony’s staffers boils around us. Amber assured me that all would be fine, that everyone who needed to know the truth about me and Anthony for this encounter knew it already, and would be prepared. But nobody seems to have expected me to be taken to the stage. Nobody expected anyone, right now, to be taken to the stage.
Up the stairs. Somewhere along the way I must have dropped the mic because my free hand is empty. Anthony motions to a stagehand, who shuffles but then immediately complies, intuiting Anthony’s gesture to be a request for two chairs. When the stagehand brings them to us, more commotion stirs. Anthony is wearing a small earbud and I can hear chaos in it: everyone behind the scenes scrambling to make the unexpected happen.
The crowd is looking from one neighbor to the other. The onstage lights adjust, having to punt after assuming Anthony would remain offstage for a while. This is all improv. Only Anthony knows what’s about to happen.
Someone rushes up to me. I think they’re going to save me, but a few seconds later they’re gone and I find myself looking down, noting a lavaliere microphone now pinned to my blouse, its transmitter clipped to my waist, its black wire sloppily dangling in full view.
All at once I realize what’s happening.
Anthony speaks.
I can barely hear him, my head is swimming so hard. He sits, meets my eyes, stands, every moment careful and precise. He asks me questions. He recites Ross Institute rhetoric that I’ve heard so many times that I know it by heart.
Then he sits again, across from me, my hands on my knees, his big hands atop mine. The house lights are dim. The spotlights on us are bright but soft. If not for the occasional shuffle below us, it might almost seem like we’re alone.
“Do you trust me?” he says.
“I …”
But I look up. I see his eyes. A
nd I know the answer.
“Please, Caitlin.”
I nod. I swallow.
And he says, “Close your eyes.”
Now there’s nothing. Only the muted orange stage lights glowing through my eyelids.
I wait, expecting his standard volunteer performance. He’ll tell me about sensory triggers. He’ll talk about how what’s bothering me is deep down, and that my symptoms on the surface aren’t actually the disease. Maybe he’ll ask me about my father again, or about my mother. He knows my story; prospecting inside my head will be easy.
But I have to wonder: Why?
Why would he bother?
Does he think his onstage presence will impress me? Does he think that dissecting my problems in front of a crowd will make me forget what went wrong between us?
In just a few seconds, Anthony will ask me if I’m nervous. He’ll make a joke to soothe me. And then he’ll start his analysis in front of all these people.
Instead, softly, he says, “I’m nervous.”
I look up.
And Anthony whispers, “Please. Close your eyes.”
I close them again.
“If I were to describe my thoughts a few months ago,” he says in the dark theater of my shut lids, “I would say they were black and white, not in color.”
The crowd, not understanding, isn’t as quiet as it should be. Normally, Anthony should be asking me about my thoughts, not describing his.
I think back to when I saw him onstage helping Rena. He asked whether her thoughts were black and white. And then he asked—
“My thoughts, about a woman I loved, were far away,” Anthony continues. “Stationary, like photos. And I was looking at them as a viewer, the way you browse a photo album.”
His hands shift. They’re no longer on mine. I hear him move. The crowd shuffles. They’re beginning to understand; I can feel it.
“The terrible thing,” Anthony says, “is that I didn’t know my thoughts were in black and white. I didn’t know I’d pushed them far away. I didn’t know they weren’t moving, and that I was seeing them from outside. Of course I should have known.” There’s a pause. “But I didn’t. Because like so many people I know, I’m a little bit broken.”
There’s a hand on my shoulder. My eyes are still closed, but I know the audience is now watching us with new knowledge on their faces.
It was never public that Anthony Ross was dating. Now, suddenly, it is.
“Just recently, I pulled all those thoughts closer,” Anthony says. “I stepped right into them, like I was a participant instead of an observer. I made them color. I made them move. And the second I did, I realized how many other things I’ve pushed away. Most of my mental life, which I thought I was so in-tune with, has been lived at a distance. It was terrifying to step into it all — honestly for the first time. But I did it. Because someone once told me, ‘Guru, know thyself.’”
Anthony shifts in his chair. I can sense him without sight. I know he’s close. Very close. Maybe not even sitting. He could be squatting before me. Or kneeling.
A hand touches mine. He speaks, close enough to feel the warmth of his breath.
“We all have triggers that comfort us.” My heart is hammering, my head is dizzy. “Are you nervous, Caitlin?”
Of course I am. I think I might faint. I think I might die.
I manage a small nod, but want to say, That’s not my trigger, you fool. A touch on the hand doesn’t comfort me.
Then he shifts again. I sense his presence even nearer, closing the gap. And I feel the warm, soft press of his lips on mine.
The kiss begins slowly, ever so carefully, as if it might shatter. Then it firms. Deepens. Deems to spill into the void of forever.
My eyes open as he pulls slowly away. Beyond him, I see countless faces at the foot of the stage, smiling at us both.
And Anthony says, “How about now?”
I smile. I can’t help it.
The crowd erupts in applause, all on their feet. Seeing me nod, seeing Anthony and me embrace, they applaud harder. They jump. They shout. They cheer for us, lost in the ecstasy of an Anthony Ross experience.
Confetti falls onto both of us. Anthony is shocked; this wasn’t his idea. He’s told me before that he hates to get confetti on himself. It’s for the crowd, not him. They did the difficult work and had their amazing breakthroughs — not the guru, who was already whole.
Except that today, the confetti is for Anthony, who did difficult work and had a breakthrough. Today is for us both.
We both look around, blinking. Because something is off. What’s falling from the rafters like confetti isn’t confetti at all.
It’s millions and millions of tiny little green leaves.
And as they land, they line up on my legs and Anthony’s sleeves like little soldiers.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
ANTHONY
I’M OUT ON MY DECK when the phone rings. Caitlin is inside. Good. I knew this call would be coming, and I’d rather she weren’t a part of it. Given what I’ve done, there will soon be a lot of unhappy people. It’s not like I think I’ll have to go into hiding, but I can imagine a future when I’d choose to. My world is complex. I’ve made one decision to simplify it, and the way I am, I can imagine making another. And another. I won’t want to hear those unhappy people’s bullshit. I won’t want to be pestered.
I’m tired of And.
I’m ready to start saying Or instead.
“It’s done,” says the voice. There is no hello.
“How did she take it?”
“Not well. But you know Alexa. She’ll get over it. She’s scrappy. Give her a year, and she’ll have found a new project. A new way to gather the world’s data and fashion her avatar.”
“Is that what she wants? Some sort of a … a digital plaything? A pet AI?” I’m thinking of the HALO algorithm that Alexa and Parker Barnes had such hopes for — the one that Daniel Rice shut down before we all resurrected its bones, the way I’m shutting this down.
Alexa’s an odd bird. She’s always pursued money and power, but there’s something deeper behind it. She talks about market data the way most people talk about a whispering wind. She talks about customer avatars like most people talk about ghosts. She talks about the future as if it’s already written in stone — as if all she needs to do is await its arrival. And the way she put all her eggs in the Ross app’s rather elaborate and far-reaching basket?
Sometimes I swear she was looking to the Internet to find her God.
“She just said that you’re making a big mistake. I heard that three or four times.”
I sigh, nodding, looking out toward the bay. Evan probably thinks I made a mistake, too, but he trusts me enough to believe I’m somehow making a wise decision that he can’t see. Evan can afford faith; LiveLyfe stood to benefit from the app’s rollout, but won’t suffer now that I’m burning the project.
The same can’t be said for Eros. The same can’t really even be said of Forage, which is why I asked Evan to axe the deal instead of Aiden or Onyx.
Part of me wants to give Evan an accounting of how this will all shake out, to help justify my actions. Forage will take a hit; LiveLyfe will take a hit, Eros will definitely take a hit. But even Alexa has more money and business than she’d ever know what to do with. The worst that will happen to the most affected partner will be the inability to buy one more gold-plated back-scratcher — and, of course, the huge loss of potential.
“Look,” Evan says. “If you’re worried about her feelings—”
I laugh at that. Does Alexa have feelings? “I’m not worried about her feelings, Evan. I’d have handled it myself if you hadn’t insisted on playing middleman.”
Evan sort of coughs, and that’s when I realize what’s happening here — why Evan insisted that he kill the deal instead of letting me do it like I should have. I’m the “Ross” in “Ross app”; it was my deal to make and hence mine to break. But that little throat-clearing sound on Evan�
�s end tells me that he, like most of the Syndicate, has been making side deals.
We always figured that his company, LiveLyfe, would be a big part of the $100B social change initiative meant to make the Ross data-gathering app actually work — but now I’m sure he had something else in the works as well. Everyone’s a hustler. Evan probably volunteered to be the axe man so he could clean up his side deal privately, before we all discovered what he was up to. Probably something exploitative with Caspian White, if I had to guess.
Yes. I really did make the right choice in killing the deal. I told Alexa that I believed this wasn’t a zero-sum game, that we could all win at once. It was true when the only players were me, Eros, Forage, and the Syndicate’s pool of cash. But as this house of cards crumbles, I’m already seeing that there were a thousand other crooked dealings in the mix.
“I want to know how Alexa is taking this, because I know she won’t give up. She’ll find another deal — someone else to give her what she wants. And when she does, I need to know if I should watch my back.”
At first Evan says nothing. I wait, understanding his silence to carry as much meaning as his words. He knows something. If Evan tells me what it is, he’ll be doing it out of spite — if Alexa’s next steps don’t include him.
And … bingo.
Evan says, “She said something about Clive Spooner.”
“What about him?”
“I wouldn’t know. Clive doesn’t seem to like me.”
Ah. So that’s it right there. Alexa is brewing something with Clive and they’re cutting everyone else out — or at least the young billionaire Evan Cohen, with his wounded pride.
“Is it something to do with his privacy chip? The Microdyne chip that’s coming standard in pretty much every new mobile device starting with this next generation?”
“If you ask me,” Evan mumbles, “Clive probably put in a backdoor.”
And I think: Yep, that’s it.
Clive made his money with a chip that promised to keep mobile users’ privacy. Just because he’s moved on to building a base on the moon doesn’t mean he’s not still benefiting from all that “privacy” — or, as is probably actually the case, stolen data he’ll sell to Alexa so she can keep searching for her digital savior.
The Guru (Trillionaire Boys' Club Book 6) Page 20
