Offensive Behavior

But he wasn’t quiet anymore. He’d learned to speak up, to be loud, to insist on being heard, not to suffer fools and to champion his beliefs.

He wanted to kiss her, put his hands on her. Show her he wasn’t all bad. He wanted her to understand him more. “Do you know what a ziggurat is?”

“Sounds like it should be a nightclub for very sexy, highly compensated pole dancers.”

If she understood him, he had a chance, remote but possible, of holding her interest keeping her close. “They were temples. The nightclubs of the ancient Sumerians and Babylonians.” That was stretching things. Ziggurats were holy places. “They were like the Egyptian pyramids, but not tombs, constructed from stone bricks in layers with access ramps and lots of security. Usually a town was built around them.”

“You liked ziggurats when you were a kid.”

“I like them now. They’re complex and advanced architecturally but that’s not the point. The point is when I designed Plus it was unique. But by the time I worked out how to fund it there were others who’d locked onto the same concept. We had to prove its value over and over again to secure financing to build and market it. Most of those other competitors struck out, and that was good for us. But because we’ve been so successful, there’s a raft of new ones, looking to take a chunk of our installed base. I had a plan to rebuild the business so it was unassailable technically for at least another few years. The rebuild project is called Ziggurat.”

“You keep saying I and we and us.”

“Because I’m going to get it back.” Her hands came away. At some point during his ramble she’d leaned in closer, but now she’d put distance between them. “Customers and stockholders have all been promised Ziggurat, but Plus will screw it up without me.”

She didn’t look away but she wanted to, it was in the angle of her chin.

“Then they’ll be punished. They’ll lose customers, the value of the company will fall, it will be open to a takeover.”

Her eyes flickered over his face. “I never watched those Olympic games I missed. Couldn’t. I knew all the competitors, some were friends, but I couldn’t watch, it was too hard. It was everything I’d wanted and would never have. Thinking like this is making it much harder for yourself.”

“You didn’t watch because you had no recourse. It’s not like you could get back in the squad. I can. I should’ve thought of it sooner, I can turn the media, the stockholders. I can get the company back and then Ziggurat won’t fail.”

“Is that even possible?”

“Yes.”

“You’re so sure.”

“Yes.”

“And it’s what you want?”

“If you could’ve gotten back on the team. If the circumstances had been different, wouldn’t you have wanted that?”

“Yes.” She whispered it. She closed her eyes and lowered her face. “I’d have done almost anything for the chance.”

He dipped his head to watch her expression. “Then you get it.”

She took a step away. Out of reach of his arms. “I think it’s different for you. There is only one US Olympic gymnastics team. There is only one, maybe two chances, a female gymnast can represent her country in an eight-year stretch.”

“You think it was easy building Plus.” For Plus he’d put aside having a normal life.

“I think you have more opportunities. You can go forward. You don’t need to go back to get what you want.”

“They’ll get hurt in this.” Owen would lose his job. Sarina too. Dev would hate what happened when Ziggurat failed. Kuch’s reputation would be on the skids.

“If they can keep up with you, then they have to be smart enough to see that might happen.”

“You think I’m arrogant.”

She smiled. “I think you’re still the weird, loner type. I think you could do with a dash of modesty.”

He ground his teeth. “Modesty is pretending not to have skills, not to be good at whatever it is you’re good at. What’s the point in pretending?”

“It’s not pretending,” she scoffed. “It’s not tooting your own horn. It’s not assuming you’re better than someone else and hogging the spotlight.”

“But if you deserve the spotlight, then what’s the point not claiming it. Waste of everyone’s time.”