“Ffucking hell,” he said, and he looked at Mike, dazed by the force of his own revelation.
“I hate golf.”
“I know that.”
“I also hate b-board meetings.”
“Everybody hates board meetings,” Mike said.
“I hate those long, expensive dinners we have to g-go to at all the tech c-conferences,” he confided. “And m-memos about marketing.”
“Sean? What the fuck is going on?”
He looked down at his fist, still clutching the pen. “I have to—the thing is, I have to resign. Effective immediately. I’ll—I think I have to do it in writing, don’t I? So I’ll do that, and that’ll be it. You guh-guys can sort out what I’m supposed to do with my shares in the c-company. Whatever’s best for Anderson Owens. You can buy me out, or you can sell them to the Syntek people or whatever makes the m-most sense. I just …”
Mike’s expression stopped him. Not because he looked shocked, but because he didn’t. A drooping acceptance settled in at the edges of his mouth and in his shoulders.
Guilt stabbed at Sean. He owed Mike an apology. He owed him a thousand apologies.
“I’m sorry, Mikey,” he said more quietly. “I let you down. And this—” He gestured behind him at the door to the boardroom. “This was n-not the way to do this. Until I got up there, I d-didn’t know I was going to … well, I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?”
Sean looked at Mike, surprised to notice how deeply the concern was etched in his face. He’d been close to Mike longer than anybody in his life—had lived with him or seen him practically every day since he started high school. Almost as long as he’d lived with his mother.
Mike had borne witness to his transformation from a stuttering outcast to a hacker to a successful businessman. He was the only person in Sean’s life other than Katie who had some idea what he was going through.
But Sean had left Mike out of this last transformation. Left him in the dark.
Those brackets on either side of Mike’s mouth, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes—Sean hated to think he’d been responsible for drawing them deeper. He hated to think he’d added to the burden on Mike’s shoulders, but there was really no denying it. He’d put his oldest friend in a bad position and left him there.
“I—I guess I ffigured some stuff out, finally. About my m-mom, and what I’m supposed to be d-doing with my life.”
“And what is that, exactly?”
Sean started to shrug, to say I don’t know, when he realized that he did know. “I’m ssupposed to be with Katie. I love her. And … and I’m not ssupposed to be doing this.” He w
aved his hand at the hallway, the suit he was wearing. “I don’t like being this b-big corporate guy. I like solving p-problems and fucking around on the c-computer. I think I’m going to ask Katie’s brother if I can buy into his ssecurity business. Be his tech support, and maybe help him with the celebrity security stuff we’ve been talking about, if you don’t sssue me for developing the idea for Anderson Owens and then trying to use it out there in C-camelot.”
“I wouldn’t do that to you,” Mike said.
“You probably should. I’ve been a dick.”
Mike nodded his acknowledgment and acceptance of this fact, as if it were no big deal. “So you’re going back to Camelot.”
“Ssorry,” Sean said again. “I’ll ffigure out how to make it up to yuh-you. I’ll g-give you my sh-shares. Most of them, anyway, or whatever I can do to m-make this easier.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I do, I think, because—”
“Shut up for a second, huh?”
Sean closed his mouth. Mike clapped him on the shoulder. “I can’t say I’m not disappointed, but dude, I saw this coming a long way off. Months ago. Your timing sucks, but I’ll deal with it.”
“Really?”
Mike squeezed his shoulder. “You always were kind of a moron when it came to Katie Clark.”