He let go of me, and we were back to the cliff. Except that my hand had slipped from Eli’s, and I was free-falling. Already broken, or soon to be.

“Isn’t this the most tragic story you’ve ever heard?”

I couldn’t find my words, but it didn’t matter. He left the conference room with a single nod that felt like the deepest of farewells, and I stood still for a long, long time, trying to convince my body to remember how to breathe.

37

THE FRIENDS WE MADE ALONG THE WAY

ELI

Minami found him sitting on one of the swinging chairs on the back porch, the ones Maya had bought at a yard sale and restored the previous summer, when she’d been between undergrad and her master’s and had wanted a relaxing craft project to free her mind. The sun was on the verge of setting, a blend of blue and gold and orange hues, and Eli thought it a fitting way to bookend this long, messy, poignant day in which so many things had come to a close.

“Isn’t it too disgustingly hot to be outside?” Minami asked.

He tipped his bottle at her and smiled. “Beer’s nice and cool.”

“God, I’m jealous.”

“Have one, too.”

“Can’t.”

“Yeah, you can. They’re in the fridge.”

“No, Eli. I can’t.”

He frowned, confused. Then it dawned on him all at once, and his eyes bugged out of his face. “Holy shit.”

“Yup.”

“Are you really—”

“Yup, yup.”

“When did you—shit. When you were sick, you weren’t really—”

“Nope. Well, I was puking my heart out. Just not for the reason you thought.”

He hadn’t thought it possible, not after the last few hours, but happy laughter burst out of him. He stood, enveloping Minami in a bear hug. “Jesus. Wow.”

“We’re so happy,” she said against his T-shirt.

“I bet.” He shook his head, amazed. “You’re going to be fantastic parents. Obnoxious, too.”

“I know. And you’re going to be a great uncle who constantly spoils her and undermines our authority.”

Her. Minami couldn’t possibly know yet, but he liked the idea. “I would settle for no less.” He drew back. Took in her smile and shining eyes. “We should celebrate. How about a cold beer?”

“Fuck off.” She plopped on his chair, sighing in pleasure as she sank into the soft cushions.

“I think Maya has root beer somewhere.”

“Oh. Do you have vanilla ice cream?”

“Maybe?”

“I would give my firstborn for a float.”

“Nah.” Eli waved her off. “Keep her.”

Five minutes later he came back with the first float he’d made in over two decades. Minami accepted it with a smile, and as he pulled up another chair, she asked, “Guess how pissed Hark is?”

“About the baby?”

“Oh, he doesn’t know about that yet.”

“Planning to put off telling him until you’re in labor in Harkness’s gender-neutral restrooms?”

“Only if he walks in while she’s crowning. Guess how pissed he is about the deal we made with Florence?”

Eli exhaled. “I’m assuming he’s sharpening his kitchen knives.”

“And you’d be correct.”

He took the first sip of a fresh beer. Work was going to be shit for a while.

“Unfortunately, he’s not showing it,” Minami continued. “I wish he raged at me a bit. Or called me names. Told me I’m a traitor, that I took away his one motivation in life, that I deserve what Florence took from me. You know, the kind of over-the-top dramatic shit he always spouts when he becomes angry and his accent gets unintelligible.”

“I’m familiar,” he said dryly.

“But he’s just sourpussing. Icily polite. Like when I told him Sul and I were going to get married? I was bracing for an explosion, and what I got was a four-hundred-dollar toaster.”

“What the fuck?” Eli lifted his eyebrow. “Is it encrusted with diamonds?”

“No. It looks like the twenty-five-dollar toaster I had in grad school.”

“Fuck capitalism, man.” He snorted. “Don’t worry, this time around it wasn’t your doing. I’m the one who put Rue before Kline. It’s me he’s pissed at.”

“I was the deciding vote, though. I sided with you.” She sucked an impressive amount of sludge through her straw. “How did you know that I would, by the way?”

The thing was, he hadn’t. Not before Hark had asked them to put the matter to a vote. What he had known was that Rue stood to lose something that meant the world to her, and he wasn’t willing to accept that without a fight. “You know what I think?” he said.

“What?”

“That what nearly happened to Rue was so similar to what Florence did to us, I’m not sure he’d have allowed it, either. He tries to play the part of the asshole, but . . . I can’t see him living with that.”

“You think he counted on us to overrule him?”

Eli shrugged.

“Wow. He’s such a shithead.”

“I can’t prove it.”

“Such an alleged shithead.”

Eli laughed, and a comfortable silence descended, filled by cicadas and slurping sounds. Until she asked quietly, “Do we have a deal?”

He nodded. “The lawyers are writing it up.”

“Do tell.”

“Florence won’t be selling the patent, or any other company asset. The patent will be Rue’s. In exchange, we’ll forgive the loan, and get a sixty percent equity in Kline. The other investors keep thirty-five.”

“And she gets . . . ?”

“Five percent. Which is five percent more than she deserves. We allow her to stay on as CEO. We get three of the five board seats and observer rights at board meetings. And, as a bonus, I threw in a little gift.”

“Which is?”

“I’m not going to key her car.”

“You’re very generous.”

“Am I?” He sighed, wondering at the empty ache in his chest, resisting the urge to massage his sternum, to think about Rue. He’d known what he needed from her for a while, but putting it into words had precipitated the feeling, amplified the way every single nerve in his body simply wanted her. “Maybe I’m just an idiot.”

“No maybes there. How was it, talking to Florence face-to-face?”

Eli remembered her flushed face as he let her know that they had the books. Her bitterness and resignation as they ironed out the kinks of their deal. “I’d tried to imagine it, you know? How it would happen. What I’d say when I finally spoke to her again.”

“Like, in the shower? When you have those forty-minute conversations with yourself ?”

He gave her a baffled look. “How long are your showers?”

“A normal length, shut up.”

“In my environmentally conscious, non-shower conversations, I was going to tell her how incredibly shitty my life had been after what she did. About my parents, and Maya. How I had to take two minimum-wage jobs literally three days after it all went down, and the absolute mortification of failing at the one thing I cared about. I was going to take every single moment of misery and anger and desperation the three of us had in the past ten years and throw them in her face and ask her . . .”

“‘Are you not entertained?’”

He laughed. “Something like that. Hark and I talked about this several times, mostly drunk. He always said that he wanted to make her pay. Make her feel like a fool for what she’d done to us. And part of me gets it, but the bigger part just . . .”

“You just wanted her to understand the hurt she caused. Maybe get a nice apology.”

“How did you know?”

“I just know you. A disgustingly unpetty person.” She rolled her eyes theatrically. “I swear you need classes.”

“I don’t know about that. Because when I was there, with Florence . . . I just pitied her. More than a little.” He looked at Minami’s dark eyes. Her familiar, beloved round face. The expectant tilt of her chin. “She’s alone in this mess she’s made for herself. She has always been her own personal endgame. Played shady games, won shady prizes. If I hadn’t been negotiating for Rue’s patent, we could have kicked her out of Kline altogether. No five percent, no CEO. But I’m not even sure that matters, because everything she owns was built on top of lies, and she hasn’t changed. We have, though. And we’ve stood by each other.”