Page 1 of The World
One
~Taika~
“Just so you know,socializing works better if you smile,” Simone whispered.
I glanced down at the woman I considered my oldest and dearest friend… frankly, the only friend who hadn’t given up on me entirely in the last few crazy years. Her long-sleeved, red mini-dress sparkled under the bright lights of the club, her black hair hung in a sleek curtain down her back, and her grin looked cemented to her face as she waved at a group of vaguely familiar people across the crowded floor.
“Pretty sure you’re smiling enough for both of us, crazy-eyes,” I said, pitching my voice low and leaning close so she could hear me. “Chill out. Everything is going fine!”
“Fine?” She turned her head and blinked up at me. “It has to go better thanfine, Taika! It has to go super-well! Stupendously well! Like, the best charity fundraiser in the history of fundraisers! A publicist is only as good as her last event.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” I soothed, even though I had no idea what the fuck I was talking about, and the look she gave me said she knew it.
“Easy for you to say. Didn’t I read somewhere that Parata Enterprises launched a hot new networking app? Everything you touch turns to gold.”
I shrugged. “I can barely keep up with my own company’s product launches. I’m all about acquiring new stuff and once the deal’s done, I move on to the next.”
“That’s what you’re good at. You founded the company, you developed the app that got your initial round of funding, you hired the best people in the business to develop for you, and now you can kick back. Your job is to spend money and look pretty, unlike the rest of us who are forced to hustle for our daily bread.”
“Right,” I agreed wryly. “I’m purely decorative. Like a playboy prince.”
Sadly, though, Simone wasn’t too far off. When I’d founded my company six years ago, it had required hours and hours of relentless work developing, testing, and strategizing the launch for the highest return on investment. It hadn’t been easy, especially in the beginning, with my credit card balances maxed and my parents constantly reminding me I was taking a huge risk that might never pay off, but it had beenexhilarating. When we’d finally gone public and managed to raise a quarter of a billion dollars, the victory had been sweet.
Now I had more money in the bank than I ever could have imagined back when I was a kid. But I hadn’t anticipated that success would meanTaika Paratawas no longer a person — a tall, skinny Star Trek geek with a fondness for Kraft dinners — but a brand. My days of living off caffeine in my development cave were over. My job right now was pretty much endless travel: acquiring other people’s ideas, giving them financial backing, and posing for cheesy handshake pictures that would appear in Daily Investor Digest.
Simone snorted and surveyed the crowd again. “Prince, maybe. Playboy, no.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re uptight! You don’t know how to have fun.” She scanned the length of me, from my black shoes, up and over my perfectly-tailored black suit, to my hair, which I happened to know was too long, because it kept flopping in my eyes. “When was the last time you went out and met someone new? Honey, when was the last time you worejeans?”
“Wore jeans?” I scowled. “What the hell does that mean? I have jeans! I have, like, dozens of jeans. I wear them all the time.” This was a lie. I didn’t bother packing stuff I couldn’t wear to meetings or to sleep in, and those were pretty much the only things I ever did. But Simone didn’t know that, damn it. “Or is wearing jeans somehow a metaphor for having sex? Because I’ll have you know, guys on hookup apps enjoy the suitjust fine.” Also a lie. Or maybe it wasn’t; I hadn’t tried to find out.
“Okay, no,” she said, making the same face she used to make back in college when I’d eat an entire family-sized pack of bright-orange macaroni straight from the pot, like she wasn’t sure whether to be horrified or amused. “You’re like my brother. I don’t want to know about your sex life, Tai. I want to know how yourelax. What you do that’senjoyable. When was the last time you had a movie marathon with a guy you liked, or spent the day gaming?”
I blinked.
“Uh huh. Exactly.”
The trouble with having a friend like Simone was that she’d known me too long and saw too much. Way more than anyone I worked with. Definitely more than my family.
“Well, sometimes I go to my beautiful friend Simone’s publicity… bar-things!” I looked around the room for a sign, because fucked if I could remember what this event was called. “I mean, her Heart2Heart Charity Raffle and Fundraiser!”
She folded her arms over her chest.
“And I bring a big check?” I raised my eyebrows hopefully.
“I’ll take your check,” she allowed. “But if you’re so fun-loving, prove it. There are raffle baskets over there.” She nodded to a long table set up near the main entrance. “Sponsors and celebrities donated trips and meet-and-greets. Kind of a big deal, if I do say so myself.”
The pride in her voice made me happy, but a little jealous too. It’d been a while since I felt that way about anything in my own life. My company’s successes didn’t feel like they weremineanymore. “Yeah, and?”
“And, you got a bunch of raffle tickets included with your admission. Where are they?”
“These?” I pulled a strip of tear-off tickets, like the kind they used at carnivals, from the pocket where I’d shoved them earlier. “What do I do with them?” My plane had been delayed and I’d been too busy finding Simone in the crowd to pay attention.
She rolled her eyes and grabbed the tickets from my hand, ripping along the perforations down the center. “I can see how this would be really complicated for a captain of industry like yourself, so listen closely. You go look at the prizes on the front of each basket, figure out which ones sound fun, and then… this is the hard part, ready? You put this top half of the ticket in the basket with the prize you like.”
I snatched the top half of the tickets back and pursed my lips. “Was your snarky attitudealsoincluded with my admission?”