Taking the Leap (River Rain 3)

I knew it already.

But there was nothing for it.

I was also going to have to wear those shoes, repeatedly, and for long periods of time, to break them in and get used to them before the wedding.

I hated being a hater.

But I knew I was going to hate that process too.

Incidentally, Katie’s take on the shoes was, I wish we shared the same size and Gal’s was, Is this a wedding or the torture portion of an inquisition?

An important aside: my friends were the greatest.

This all brought me to now, Thursday morning, no texts, no coffee, no donuts from Rix, but we were heading into a ten o’clock meeting at the folding table that was now in the center of the vast open space, and it had some chairs around it.

There, we were all going to pitch what we thought should be the focal programs of the abundantly funded Trail Blazer mutual aid organization.

And I was determined to speak my piece.

Hale Wheeler, the Hale Wheeler, son and heir of the sadly deceased brilliant tech maestro, Corey Szabo, and simply Hale Wheeler, tall, slim, broad, movie-star gorgeous, jet-setting billionaire was going to be sitting at that folding table with us next Thursday, and we had to have ourselves together, not shoving leaves and rocks down every kid on the planet’s throat while shouting at them, “You need to behave at the same time care about the earth!”

And I had to speak that piece in front of Rix.

I’d spent the first two hours of that morning polishing the presentation I was going to give about how I felt we should refine our mission, specifically, concentrate on camps for all kinds of kids, not just ones who needed a few humans to demonstrate they gave a crap (but those kids too). At the same time, I’d silently pep-talked myself that I’d spoken with Rix, I’d flirted with Rix, I’d texted with Rix, and I’d selected a donut with Rix watching. Therefore, I could talk about something I knew, and it meant a lot to me, in front of Rix.

I fancied myself in the zone when I finally sat down at the table with the team, only to have my zone obliterated when Rix declared, “I think you all missed my unwritten memo about someone picking up coffee and/or donuts every day. And by someone, I mean, that someone is not always gonna be me.”

Judge and Kevin burst out laughing.

But I felt my heart twist.

Of course, he didn’t just buy me coffee and donuts.

He got them for everyone.

Of course.

What was I thinking?

“I’ll grab tomorrow’s,” Judge offered. “Going to Wild Iris. Text me your orders before seven-thirty.”

“I’ll get Monday,” Kevin said. “Hitting Bosa like Rix did yesterday. Same with the texts.” He looked to me. “Alex, you have my number?”

“No,” I mumbled.

“I’ll email you,” he said.

I nodded and chimed in, “I’ll do Tuesday. I’ll let you know where I’m going.”

“And maybe I can free some funds up to create a makeshift break area, before the official one is put in place, so we can make our own coffees when we get here,” Kevin suggested.

“Works for me,” Judge agreed.

“Finally, we have at least one coherent plan,” Rix muttered.

I reached to my can of watermelon-lime AHA, thinking I should probably have brought in a ten-pack so everyone could have one (though we didn’t have a fridge yet), as Judge pointed out, “We’ve been kinda busy hashing out job roles and space, so we’re sitting here to get down to the business of building a coherent plan, Rix.”

Rix looked right at Judge and said, straight out, “I get it’s important we have computers and phones and desks and a place to do our business, but that’s getting finalized. And we’ve discussed this. Now, we got a half a billion dollars, and because we do, we got stars in our eyes. We could have twenty billion dollars, and we couldn’t heal this earth. We couldn’t take care of every kid that’s been let down by the schools or their parents or the system. We know we have to rein it in, but we got more money than most startups probably ever had, so it feels like we can do anything, when we can’t.”

“Which is why I asked all of you to come to this meeting prepared to share where you think we should focus,” Judge returned.

“Right, so gotta say, you’ve been doing this job, and I’ve been involved,” Rix replied. “But I haven’t been doing the job. I’m Director of Programs and I could dream up fifty programs to pitch to Wheeler, but I’d be winging it based on the fact I have absolutely no clue what some inner-city kid needs seeing as I was raised by two loving parents in the pines and scrub and rock of Flagstaff. I’m also a white guy who lost his legs two years ago, but I had an undeniably great run of it until that time.”