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It was...him. And perhaps it was that lack of veneer that had finally gotten beneath her protections.
“I don’t think it’s so strange,” she said softly. “And anyway, why would you make your child feel like they were strange?”
“He didn’t want me to be. He was quite a successful man, my father. Relatively, I mean. He wanted me to be like him. But in order to do that, he felt that I would need to behave differently. He was a salesman. Everything he did was about connections. I was bad at them. But, I found success my own way. I don’t need to learn the things that he thought were so important. I simply need to lean into my own strengths.” He looked down at his notebooks, and then back at her. “That does mean filling in three physical notebooks on a long-haul flight.”
She sighed. “I suppose I can’t argue with you.”
“You could,” he pointed out.
She could, but it would be like flailing at a brick wall.
“I don’t need to,” she said.
She decided to take another nap. And by the time they landed, she was well-rested.
A car met them at the jet and whisked them away, and she did her best not to marinate on the conversation they’d had earlier. Did her best to not sink into sentimentality.
Why had she ever asked him these things about his life before? She could imagine him, a small boy, left with the one parent that didn’t understand him, and it made her chest get tight.
Of course, now Luca was a genius billionaire, so when people didn’t understand him they mostly said nothing.
But it was still a function of his life. A feature of who he was.
It was still a thing he had to cope with.
He was a terrible boss. He was inflexible, and completely one-track-minded. And yet, he was nothing like her parents. And perhaps that was why, in spite of herself, she felt affection for him. Or something adjacent to affection.
The realization made her heart jump, and she began to catalog the details around them. The beautiful buildings, the pristine cleanliness that was normally absent in major cities.
It was genuinely one of the most spectacular places she had ever seen in her life, natural splendor colliding with man-made innovations.
She could see why he had chosen this place as the site where they would learn about new advancements in medicine.
This place felt like the future. Luca was brilliant when it came to anything that had to do with his work.
And something else entirely when it came to other details about life.
But he was honest. And there were no guessing games with him.
Maybe that was why she wasn’t afraid of him. Maybe it was why she didn’t find him intimidating in the way that many people did.
Because she would rather know where she stood. Even if the ground was precarious.
When they arrived at the hotel she was momentarily distracted by the glory of it. Traveling with Luca meant she had been exposed to a heavy amount of luxury over the past few years, but this was beyond her expectations.
The hotel was a square column with great open sections that spanned several floors, held up by lit pillars covered in twining vines. A resplendent representation of nature in the middle of the city.
The lobby was modern and sleek, with a great glass pillar at the center, almost like a greenhouse, containing a veritable jungle while all around them were modern amenities and clean lines.
Luca barely gave their surroundings a second glance. Instead he went directly to his room and left Polly to see to the details. Both of the summit itself and their star.
She didn’t mind. This would help her get out of her own head.
Because there was no time to think. Everything was moving at a rapid pace. She had to ensure that all of the details were in order.
These sorts of events were the part of her job she loved the most.
There was a certain amount of smoothing over his interpersonal relations that she did, and she enjoyed that.