Filed to story: Can’t Get Enough Of You
“Because I’m a cat,” I said, nodding. “I always land on my feet.”
“Right,” my friends agreed in unison.
I took a deep breath and let it out in a shudder.
It wasn’t that simple. I knew they would be there for me. I knew that I could figure this out, somehow. But I felt awful that I was going to have a baby that would grow up without a father.
Still, I was going to figure this out. I would have to. I had no other choice-I wasn’t going to be able to track Nolan down.
“I’m going to have a baby,” I said.
Saying the words out loud didn’t make me feel like it was a sudden reality. It still felt crazy, surreal, impossible.
But I’d slept with Nolan that night and we hadn’t used protection. We should have, but we hadn’t, and that was it.
Here I was.
I wasn’t sure how I was going to do this, but I was going to do it the way I did everything else I wasn’t sure about.
One day at a time, and eventually, I would figure it out.
I didn’t have any other options.
Nolan
Five Years Later
Being back in LA was a great change of scenery. After getting my master’s degree in business, I’d been running Appetite, the gourmet food company I’d started in honor of my late mother who’d always dreamed of doing something like this.
Now, with a lot of money in my accounts and a company that was growing by the day, I was back in California to oversee some things at the LA branch. I had loose plans to stay in town for a few weeks. The New York offices could manage without me for a while.
Austin was with me, and he looked pleased as fucking punch.
“I don’t know how you do this, man,” he said. “You have the Midas Touch when it comes to business. I can’t tell you how great it is to work together.”
We waited in the boardroom at the Appetite headquarters for a meeting to commence.
“You’re just inflating my ego,” I said with a laugh.
“And rightfully so! With this deal, Appetite is going to skyrocket to the next level. And we were already in a different league.”
I nodded. We were. The company had taken off better than expected when we started out, and we’d been seeing growth of more than two-hundred percent every year since we’d opened our doors.
Now, we were cementing a relationship with a group of investors who were willing to back our dreams of expanding across the country, turning Appetite into a franchise opportunity. Soon, there would be a branch in every major city, and once we pulled that off, we would be playing in the big leagues.
When the investors arrived, it was time to put on our business faces, and Austin and I got right into it. We discussed numbers, we were clear on what we were willing to bend on, and what not, and it didn’t take all of two hours to wrap up business and get a bunch of contracts signed.
By the time the meeting ended, Appetite was in an even better position than where it started.
When we walked out, Austin clapped me on the back.
“You, my friend, are the next Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, or Elon Musk.”
I laughed and shook my head. “Don’t compare me to giants. I’m just a humble millionaire, looking for a way to keep a dream alive.”
Austin burst out laughing. “A humble millionaire! A fucking comedian is more like it.” He laughed all the way out of the building, shaking his head. “What are we doing tonight?”
“Tonight?” I asked.
“Yeah, man. Don’t tell me you’re not going to celebrate this the way it deserves to be celebrated.”
The truth was, I’d planned to go back to my hotel room and sleep as much as I could. The past couple of months had been ridiculously busy, with me pulling late nights almost all week to get this ready so that we could catapult the business into the future.
I had to put effort in to get anything worth my while out, and I’d just about broken myself for this company.
I wanted to sleep and watch TV, before finally heading back to New York.
“I guess we could do something,” I said.
“We’re going to throw one hell of a party,” Austin said. “We should book the Glasshouse, invite everyone we know, and do this right.”
I groaned inwardly. It wasn’t what I was in the mood for. But Austin wasn’t wrong-a business deal this big did deserve to be celebrated.
“Okay,” I said. “The Glasshouse it is. I’ll get Beth to organize the whole thing, you just send invites to whoever you think should be there.”
Austin nodded. “Sure. You do the same.”
We agreed and parted ways. Austin had another business meeting to go to-he handled a lot of the PR side of my business, while I was more focused on the food and the finances. It worked well between us.
I called Beth and gave the instruction to book the Glasshouse, arrange caterers, the whole shebang. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy on such short notice, but if there was anyone who could pull strings, it was my PA, and the Glasshouse was a restaurant we’d done business with before. Beth only had to mention my name and the upscale place would take care of it.
I climbed into the car that would take me back to my hotel, then I started scrolling through my contacts list. I was going to have to find someone to invite to the party. I had a few friends I still stayed in touch with on the West Coast and I texted them, letting them know that something was going down tonight.
And then I started scrolling through the contacts of all the women I’d been with. I had most of their numbers, although I only vaguely remembered them. There had been so many of them, their faces and the nights we’d spent together started blurring into one mass of sex and women and alcohol.
Some people told me I was a womanizer for fucking around so much, for having one-night stands and never calling any of them again.