She lets out a sigh. “A little warning would have been nice. You’re a frighteningly good liar. Media training again?”
“Media training,” I agree, even though that’s a lie. “You’d be astonished how well I can lie. The only question is if you can keep up with me for another hour.”
I turn into the garage and find my spot.
She sighs. “So what’s the story? Did we argue in the car on the ride over? We would totally have argued, if this were real. Your dad has probably realized I’m not the ‘shut up and simper’ type by now.”
“Sure.” I glance over at her. “We argued. But I brought you around. I always bring you around. I’m good at that.”
The half-height garage walls don’t quite shield a wide green sun-drenched lawn on the other side.
She still seems a little out of sorts. “So we’re going to play it like we’re still good?”
“We kind of have to. If you fake-break-up with me, there will be no prototypes, and then this whole thing will be wasted effort. Do you think you can manage a little flirting?”
“I suppose.” She shrugs. “But I’ve never had any media training. I can’t guarantee the results.”
“That’s okay. I can lie well enough for both of us.”
She casts me another look—this one a little darker—as if I’ve said something wrong.
But she doesn’t understand the truth. I open the car door and step out into the cool air of the garage. She doesn’t understand how much I’m going to have to lie.
My dad built this campus when I was twelve, and in some ways, it feels more like home than the house where I grew up. The sun is out, spilling over a lush green lawn where a handful of engineers are out playing a game of Ultimate. The buildings gleam, pristine white stone contrasting with smoke-dark windows. I could join the Frisbee game. I could walk into any building, any room, and find something I’ve worked on. This place is a part of me. It almost feels like my bones and veins extend into the surroundings. I’m rooted here.
It feels like a trap built of sunshine and nostalgia. Every muscle in my body itches. I want to move, to run. But no matter how fast I go, I’ll always take it with me.
Tina, I could say, I have a problem. That would be the truth.
Instead, my smile is a falsehood, denying those roots that run deep here. “If you think I was bad in the restaurant, you haven’t really seen me lie at all.”
It’s weird having her here, almost like I’m afraid that my memories will infect her. I straighten beside my car, and I make myself find that smile I need to wear. I try to erase every unfortunate memory I have. Watching Dad and Peter tromp over this land when it was nothing but weeds and aging strip malls. Pointing, sketching out the place it would be when their joint imagination gave rise to concrete and glass.
I push away the time when Dad told me that Asiv in interfaces was fucking with my design. I rushed over to that building, there, on the other side of the lawn, heart in my mouth, to find half the Cyclone campus lying in wait with Peter and a massive cake for my eighteenth birthday. I delete my memories of Peter altogether, one by one, until these are just buildings and I’m just here on an errand.
No matter how I try, he’s present, lodged under my skin like unshed tears.
I inhale and smile harder. “Come on,” I say. “Let’s go in and I’ll show you Fernanda.”
She takes my hand in hers. Here’s one thing that’s not a lie: Touching her makes me feel better. My smile comes a little more easily.
“Hey, Blake!” someone calls from the field as we pass.
I wave, smiling. “Looks like you’re getting creamed again, Steve.”
“What? We’re only down by two.”
“For now,” I call back with fake cheer.
Any further reply is lost in indistinct trash-talk. We walk to the main building side by side, and I can pretend that this is nothing more than a nice, sunny afternoon.
On my way to my dad’s office, I stop at every occupied cubicle. I smile. I greet. It’s been weeks since I last stopped by.
“When are you coming back?” everyone asks. Half of them add, with conspicuous glances down the hall in my dad’s direction, “It’s not the same without you.”
I don’t answer. Instead, I introduce Tina.
The door to my dad’s office is open by the time I get there.
“Hey.” He glances up at me and slides a stack of papers as thick as his thumb across the table. “Legal sent these over. Walk her through this, will you?”
“Sure thing.” I give him a cocky smile.
Maybe too cocky. Dad raises an eyebrow. “Don’t get frisky, kids,” he growls.
I’m not sure what he imagines we will get up to signing NDAs. But Tina smiles at him. “That’s what disinfectant spray is for,” she says.
Dad chokes. My imagination jumps instantly to all the many ways that might work out. Dad stares at her for a moment in disbelief, and then realizes that she’s joking. He bursts into laughter. “Get out of here. And no, Blake, don’t you dare. There are interior windows. I can see into your office. There are some things I don’t ever want to know. Ever.”
We go three doors down to my office. Someone must come in here to clean regularly. There’s no dust on the glassed picture on my desk. The plants are lush and green, newly watered. There are fresh pens in the holder.
I don’t close the door. I can see my father across the way, and even though his attention has wandered elsewhere, I still feel like I’m on display.
Look, Dad. I’m okay. I like this girl. Everything’s normal.
“Only my father,” I say to Tina, “would imagine that anyone could find paperwork arousing.”
“What?” Her smile is a touch too wide, a little too faked. “Don’t tell me your media training didn’t cover this, either.”
I set the stack of papers on the flat surface of my desk and gesture Tina to sit in the leather-bound executive chair.
“What am I supposed to say, then? Come on, baby. It’s a nondisclosure agreement. You’ll like it. I promise.”
She gives me an unimpressed look. “God,” she says. “And I thought you were supposed to be a good liar. That’s not how you do it.” She bites her lip and then she leans toward me. Her eyelashes sweep down, and when she talks, she lowers her voice toward sultry.
“I don’t know, Blake.” She bites her lip and reaches gingerly for the papers, stroking her thumb along the edge. “It’s so…big. I’m not sure it will fit.”
I almost choke. She looks up with a touch of a smile.
Fuck. I started this.
“We’ll go nice and slow.” I pull a chair beside her and sit down, and very slowly take a pen from the holder. “Tell me if it hurts and I can stop anytime. I promise.”
“Be gentle.”
I know we’re just joking. I know this doesn’t mean anything. Still, my body doesn’t know this is a show when I lean toward her. I don’t feel like I’m lying when I inhale the sent of her hair. It goes straight to my groin, a stab of lust. “Trust me,” I murmur.
She’s sitting in my chair. She’s smaller than me and all that dark leather surrounds her, blending in with her hair. But when she looks up, tilting her head toward me, she doesn’t seem tiny. She pulls the first paper-clipped section of pages to her, glances at the first paragraph, and wrinkles her nose.
“Ouch,” she says in a much less sensual tone of voice. “It hurts already.”
“It basically says that if you tell anyone anything about Cyclone business, we get one of your kidneys,” I translate helpfully.
“How sweet.” She hasn’t looked up from the document. “Do your lawyers know you summarize their forms like that?”
“Disclose two things,” I say, “and we get two kidneys.”
“Mmm. Playing rough. What happens if I disclose three? You shut down my dialysis machine?”
“You get a commemorative Cyclone pen,” I say mock-seriously. “Come on. We’re not monsters.”
She cracks a smile at that. She’s not one of those girls who always smiles, and that means that when she does smile, it means something. Her whole face lights up and my breath catches at the sight. I lean in, as if I could breathe in her amusement. But then she drops her head and goes back to reading. When she finishes, she signs with a flourish.
“What’s next?” she says. “Bring it on.”
I hand over the next few pages.
WARNING, the cover sheet states in big, red block letters. YOUR CONDUCT IS GOVERNED BY THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT AND REGULATIONS OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE COMMISSION. FAILURE TO COMPLY MAY RESULT IN CRIMINAL SANCTIONS AND SENTENCES OF UP TO TWENTY YEARS IN PRISON.
She holds it up and looks at me. “Don’t lie to me, baby. I bet you make all the girls you bring in here sign this.”
You know what? I have never before found SEC regulations this sexy. I lean close to her.
“No way,” I murmur. “This is just for you.”
“Really?” She manages that look of hurt skepticism so well. I reach out, almost touching her cheek—until I remember that this isn’t real.
“No,” I whisper back. “Not really. Everyone does sign it; it’s company policy.”
“Oh, too bad.” She’s still reading the page. “I was hoping you had a selective disclosure just for me.”
Selective, I realize, is a sexy word when drawn out the way she does it, her tongue touching her lips on the l sound. So is disclosure.
“I can disclose,” I hear myself saying. “Selectively.”
“Maybe you can give it to me in a material and nonpublic place.”