by Ever Coming
Text copyright ©2017 by the Author.
This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by Melody Anne. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original Melody Anne's Billionaire Universe remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Melody Anne, or their affiliates or licensors.
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Mae
I’m a mapper. I map out my life, step by step, achieve the goals needed to get to the next step, repeat. It’s how I’ve always been, and it has never let me down. Until now. Now, I’m a hot mess, underemployed, moocher loserhead. And it made no sense. I followed the path to success to a T.
Get good grades and do all the activities in school to get a scholarship to college—check.
Earn a 4.0, 3.8 at a minimum, during my bachelor’s degree and get a TA position with a scholarship to get my MBA—check.
Get my MBA with a 4.0 and have all the jobs falling at my feet—big old fail. The 4.0 was easy peasy. The job, not so much.
Now I work at the grocery line in the podunk town my sister and her husband moved to, living in their spare room and applying to anything even close to my field anywhere in the country. It was supposed to be three months, just three, but two years later, I had nada on the horizon.
“You just needed to accept your life here,” my sister Lily kept saying. “Settle down with a nice guy, start a family.” And by nice guy she meant one of the plethora of undereducated guys in town who thought buying me a beer, one of their choice nonetheless, was the way to get into my pants. None of them wanted more, and none of them seemed worth it. Not when the entire town would hear about it in a nanosecond.
Nope. I needed to stick with my plan, not hers. I added a few specialty online classes to the plan, but the rest was the same, just… a different timeline. Fifteen applications went out this week. One of them had to stick. Or so I kept reassuring myself.
I grabbed my sweater and keys before sneaking out the back door like a teenager. Lily planned to tell her hubby, Ed, that she was ready to start making a baby, and if I were around, I’d just be in the way. She knew it. I knew it. And when given the proper information, Ed would know it. Unfortunately, they were both too nice and would want me to eat with them and such and that would be more kinds of awkward than I cared to imagine, so off I skulked to the local bar. The only bar, to be precise.
I purposely wore my ratty jeans and my blouse with a stain in the hopes of warding off the creepers. I wasn’t even what most people would consider hot. I had extra curves where they didn’t belong, I was far from the high maintenance model type, and flirting was not my thing. But in a town of so few, I was fresh meat. That was enough to warrant the unwanted attention.
My car was in the shop… again… so I walked the mile downtown. It was a gorgeous evening, and it gave me time to let go of the weight of all the rejection emails I got this week. I almost wished that they didn’t tell me I was rejected so I could be optimistically waiting for a call instead of the “we were lucky to find the perfect candidate internally” or “we have selected our candidate pool and regret to inform you that you were not part of it.” Besides, I could always snag a cab home. Well, the cab, if it happened to be running.
Being the ever nerd, I had my tablet with me so I could work on my latest course. It was a coding course that turned out to be far more practical than I thought when I signed up. If things didn’t pan out soon in the career world, I might just have to change my map and have my next destination be more tech oriented.
Dusk had barely started when I arrived at Nick’s, which was perfect. It meant that I could find a booth in the back to hole up in. If I ordered a beer and then later an appetizer and then another beer and such, they wouldn’t bother to ask me to move to the counter as it got busy either. At least not from my experience.
“Hi, Mae.” The waitress who had become my sort-of kind-of friend—partly based on the mutual understanding I’d over-tip her if she let me booth hog—met me as I skootched into my spot.
“Hi, Jackie.” I smiled up at her. She was a lifer in town, probably old enough to be my mother. She had a kind heart, but whoa nelly if you pissed her off. It was probably why I liked her so much.
“Hiding out for the night?” she teased.
“You know me too well,” I bantered back not wanting to think too hard on it. The sadness that crossed her eyes hurt. In some ways, she could see me better than most.
“You know if you got your own place, you could hide out at home.” By my own place she meant renting the apartment above her garage. I honestly didn’t think it was all for the money, either. I’m sure plenty of people would be interested in it if she even bothered to put up a flier.
“Yeah, but that would be giving up.” I fished out my tablet and keyboard, to hurry the conversation on. I didn’t want to get to the point where I was thinking about what it would mean if Lily and Ed did get pregnant right away. Sure, I’d be happy for them. Over the moon, even. They had been married six years, so it wasn’t like they were jumping into anything. It would, however, mean I needed to move out. I was in their only spare bedroom.
“True enough. Want the draft of the night?” As if she had to ask. I always had the sale draft. It forced me to try new beers and kept my wallet happy.
“Always.” I gave her a wink.
“I’ll get that right out to you. Still working on that fancy schmancy college stuff or working on applications?” She eyed my tablet, now set up on the table.
“Probably both. I have to figure out what I messed up on an assignment before I turn it in first.” It was killing me that I couldn’t figure out what I did wrong. It was so close to perfect, I could feel it, yet as is, it was rubbish.
“Sounds like a plan.” She stood there as if she had more to stay, and I threw her a subtle nod and smile in encouragement. “I may need to ask you to come up to the counter tonight.”
“That’s fine,” I boldly lied. It was far from okay, but what can a girl do? “Expecting a crowd?” I pried, wanting to be prepared for what the night was going to bring.
“Yeah. Old Woman Gracie passed away and after the funeral people are not gonna wanna go home.”
I never met Gracie, but the town seemed to adore her. I was surprised I hadn’t heard about her funeral. Although, I guess technically I had since people had been referring to “the funeral” as they meandered through work today. She’d moved to the nursing home long before I got into town, but the library had a Ms. Gracie story time room with her bio on the wall. Turned out, she fostered more than one hundred kids in her life time and loved them all as her own. That was dedication and purpose. I admired her, even not having ever met her.
“I understand that.” My unsettledness at maybe needing to move lessened as the reason why became clear. She was good people, and if those she touched wanted my little corner of the bar, so be it. “If it gets to the point you want my table, give me a nudge.”
“Will do. I’ll go get you that beer before things get busy.” She scampered off and I dove into my work. I was going to find the error if it near killed me.
Matt
I tugged at my necktie subconsciously. My Ferrari never looked shabby, but in my normal circles, it was nearly always the least flashy. Here, I couldn't have drawn more attention to it than if I'd stolen a set of cop lights and set them to flashing on top of it. I fe
lt that old uncertainty welling within me; that itchy, too big and yet too small feeling underneath my skin. I straightened, tugging my shirtsleeves down over my new Patek watch, an impulse buy to ease my nervousness over this event. Which was ridiculous. I was Matt Dahl now, the head of the top app development company in the US. CEOs practically begged at my feet for my mere attention. Not Montgomery Dale, the scrawny little foster boy no one wanted. Until Ms. Gracie.
I was here for Gracie, I reminded himself. And for my own sense of closure. I'd meant to visit her so many times before now, but there had always been some meeting, a banquet, an opportunity—everything else had seemed more important. And now she was gone. She'd let me send her a little money here and there, but only for the kids, never for herself. I wished I'd been a little more forceful. But no, she would have deflected. She would have done amazingly in the business world, if she'd set her mind to it.
It was dark out now, the neon "open" sign flashing annoyingly in Nick's window. I'd escaped town before I was old enough to get in there. Not that I hadn't tried. But in a town this small, everyone knew everyone, especially Ms. Gracie's kids.
I wondered if any of the others were still around. Jerry, who at two years older and fifty pounds heavier had bullied me to the point of running away before Ms. Gracie figured out what was going on and gave us both a talking to. Jerry for bullying, and me for not coming to her when it got so bad. Jerry hadn't stopped, but it had become manageable. No one had been kicked out of Ms. Gracie's before, and no one wanted to be the first.
I opened the bar door, struck by the contrast with this normal club in the city. It was just a normal door, no automatic close of any kind, and it hung open behind me for several moments before I realized I needed to pull it closed.
The bar was getting full. I had tried to make it to the funeral so I could get in and get out, but I'd forgotten how rough these roads could be and had gone slower than normal to avoid damaging my car. It was made for freeways, not these country back roads.
I could sense people side-eyeing me as I made my way to the bar. I recognized several of them, a few by name, but more by face. There was Gerald White, who had chased me and Kevin out of his yard when we were twelve, playing at archeology in his garden, uncovering "artifacts"—generally carrots and onions and a few rocks. Mrs. Hyatt, who had always followed me and any other foster kid around by about ten feet anytime they entered the grocery store, making sure they didn't steal anything. And Pastor Sellars, the mild voiced preacher at the church Ms. Gracie attended, who always put me to sleep. A few faces I thought might have been kids I'd grown up with in the system, but ten years had dulled mymemory, and they had changed. I had changed. And I hadn't particularly wanted to hang on to these memories, either.
Did any of them recognize me? I'd done my best to differentiate between foster-kid-Monty and successful-businessman-Matt. Partially, it was the stuff: the clothes, the watch, the car. But I'd invested in personal training, too. I'd hired a dictation coach to remove the odd country pronunciations from my speech, a personal trainer to help me bulk up, which in turn improved my posture, and a life coach, who basically was a paid best friend, but also pointed out those rough spots either in my personal life or in my business life that I was blind to.
"Can I get a dirty martini?" I asked the bartender. She eyed me warily, and I took time to survey the room a little closer. It didn't take but a moment for me to zero in on the woman in the booth in the corner. I'd trained himself to pick out the differences in a room, in a contract, in a person in microseconds. And this woman did not fit. Yeah, her clothes were just as tattered and torn as most of the locals, but there was a hopefulness to her face that people who grew up here had quickly beaten out of them by life. The bartender placed my drink on the bar and I slid a bill across to her, not paying attention to what it was as I sipped the drink. I couldn't help but grimace. Damn, that was awful! And vodka, which was not how a martini was supposed to be made.
"Let me get your change," the bartender said.
"No need," I said, waving her away. I needed something to do. I didn't like to sit still even at the best of times, and this was hardly the best of times. I knew Ms. Gracie would be fussing at me. She'd told me more than once that people wouldn't change the way they thought of me if they didn't interact with me. But I had no interest in interacting with the people I'd left far behind me in this town. And first thing tomorrow, I'd leave them behind again, this time for good. But in the meantime, I wanted to see what made this woman tick, with her bright face and her fierce concentration on the tablet in front of her. She clearly wasn't from around here, and she clearly wasn't here for Ms. Gracie. She showed even less interest in the rest of the bar than I did. I wanted, no, needed to know her story. What could have possibly brought such a woman to such a town as this?
Mae
Try number five got me far closer than my first four, but close enough wasn’t going to get me an A or even a passing grade on my assignment. More importantly, it wouldn’t get me the skills I needed to get out of here and start living the life I wanted.
“Is this seat taken?”
I knew the room was filling and seats were scarce, but I didn’t have to look up to know that the man behind the voice wanted more than a seat. I just needed to focus on my task at hand and call it good. If it had been one of the locals I was constantly pestered by, I probably would have let out the growl building in me, but the voice was new and sounded very unlike the people from around here. If I were to guess, the voice belonged to someone from back east.
“Not interested.” I kept my tone calm and nonchalant. I didn’t want to be rude, especially if he was one of the people who were here for Ms. Gracie.
“I’m Matt.” A hand reached in front of me, pointing to a line of code on my screen. Left hand – no ring. Why was I even looking? I wasn’t interested, except that motion caught my attention and I kind of was. ”It looks like this is the line you need to change. You’re just reassigning the original value instead of passing the new one back.”
Crap on a cracker, how had I not seen that? Of course it was. So simple, and yet hours of my time had been sucked away looking for it, yet he came out of nowhere and with one quick glance solved my problem.
I peered up, catching his green eyes with mine. He was definitely not from around here.
“Thanks. I had been working on that for far too long, and it was so simple.”
“Sometimes you need another set of eyes.” He shrugged, breaking our eye contact, for the first time allowing me to take in the entire person before me. His face was clean shaven, probably due to the funeral, but it highlighted his dimples. I was normally a stubble beard gal, but dimples were my Achilles’ heel. A smile spread across his face as he saw me ogling him. Oh well. It wasn’t like I’d ever see him again. “I’m Matt,” he offered again.
“Sorry I was so rude before.” Truth be told, if he hadn’t looked over my shoulder, I’d have been staring at that screen unsuccessfully for hours. My superhero. “I was trying to get this done and… I just was rude.” There was no excuse for it. Might as well be blunt. He smirked, his hand still reached out, ready for a shake because, being socially awesome, I forgot to actually give him my name. “I’m Mae.”
“No need to apologize.” He shook my hand, warmth spreading up my fingers, his hand slowly lowering to the table. “May I?” He glanced down at our joined hands as if his question were too vague for me to piece together. A slight reddening of his cheeks had me hopeful I had put it there. That I somehow was affecting him as much as he was affecting me. There was just… something about him.
It wasn’t even his flashy clothes or muscular shoulders that even his suit couldn’t hide. It was something more. There was a kindness in his eyes, as well as a strong spirit. Part of me wished he was here permanently so I could get to know him. Of course that would mean saying goodbye once my job prospects increased, so neither was ideal. Maybe a one and done was the way to go. It wasn’t like I could
get too attached to him in one night. Right? My heart knew the answer was in the negative, but at that point I could hardly care. His thumb was tracing small circles on my hand, and that had far more than my hand responding.
“Since you’re my knight in white armor for the evening, I insist.”
He smiled at my response.
“Are you here for Ms. Gracie?”
“I am.” His eyes fell. I should’ve known better than to bring up sadness. “You’re not.” He wasn’t asking. Probably because I was dressed in my comfy clothes, something no one would wear to a funeral.
“I never had the pleasure of meeting her. I’m pretty new here,” I offered lamely.
“I thought people only left,” he mused with a slight hand squeeze. Not that I needed a squeeze. Every subtle movement by one of his fingers or his wrist drew my attention away from all else.
“That would be my goal as well.” I tried to keep a teasing intonation to avoid sounding like a whiner. It must have worked because he gave a nod of understanding paired with a smile that could charm just about anyone.
“That explains the coding in a bar on a Friday night.”
“That would be more my sister and her husband are having a date night at home and I didn’t want to be in the way.” And that was the sad state of my life in a nutshell. Hiding in a bar because I had no place to truly call mine.
“I’m glad they did.” He winked. It should have been cheesy and over the top in this day and age, but on him? On him, it worked.
“I kind of am too.” Or was more than anything. Potato, potahto.
“Ready to put your order in?” Jackie appeared out of nowhere. Probably to glean tips, but that was fine. I was hungry.
“Sure.” I didn’t need to tell her what I wanted. My order was always the same. “You want anything Matt?” I tilted my head his way. Jackie had been talking directly to me but staring at him, probably more interested in what was in his wallet than his looks. But given his hotness, his looks certainly didn’t hurt.
