Chapter 3
I asked, "Were they..."
"I'm not sure," Patrick said. "But one time I came back to the dorm early, and they were sitting really close together. The moment they saw me, they jumped apart."
I tightened my grip on the cup, trying to steady myself.
"Anything else?" I asked.
"There was this one time Samantha got wasted and caused a scene outside the dorm, shouting, 'You can't treat me like this.' Aaron went down to get her. The next day, he told me not to mention it to you," Patrick said.
Aaron told Patrick not to let me know?
I couldn't help but laugh.
"Thanks, Patrick," I said.
I paid the bill and walked out of the restaurant.
The wind was blowing hard outside.
I stood by the curb, lost in thought for a long time.
First year, second semester.
That was right when I'd just paid for his second year of tuition.
It was six thousand dollars.
Including living expenses and random fees, I sent him eight thousand dollars that semester.
Eight thousand dollars.
It was money that I scraped together, working crazy hours from sunrise to midnight.
He was spending my money while hooking up with my best friend.
It turned out that it didn't start after he graduated.
It started way back in his first year of graduate school.
I thought they'd only been together for a month.
In fact, it was two whole years.
I bankrolled him for three years.
He hid it from me for two years.
My phone buzzed.
It was a message from Samantha.
[Bailey, what are you going to wear to the wedding? Do you want me to come shopping with you?]
I stared at the message.
There was that smiley face.
And that little squiggle at the end.
Her tone hadn't changed at all since three years ago.
It was the same Samantha who said she was accompanying Aaron at the library.
It was the same Samantha who always messaged me to keep going.
I locked my phone.
I didn't reply.
But this time, it wasn't because I didn't know what to say.
This time, I just didn't want her to realize I'd already figured everything out.
I was hanging laundry on the balcony when my dad called.
"Bailey, I need to talk to you about something," he said.
"What's up, Dad?" I asked.
"They're tearing down our old place," he said.
The hanger slipped from my hand and clattered to the floor.
"What?" I blurted out.
"We've been talking about it since the beginning of the year, and just signed the agreement this month. The compensation, plus the relocation fee, comes to..."
He paused for a moment.
"1.7 million dollars."
I stood on the balcony, and the wind felt chilly.
1.7 million dollars.
Dad was going on and on over the phone about the details of the compensation deal.
I wasn't really listening.
All I could think about was that figure.
1.7 million dollars.
A few days later, the money finally landed in my account.
Dad sent me 1.5 million dollars.
He messaged: [Your mom left us early, and you've been holding things down all by yourself for years. I'm getting old, so I won't need that much. Take it, and stop pushing yourself so hard.]
I sat there for ages, just staring at my phone screen.
My balance jumped from one thousand dollars to 1.6 million dollars.
It didn't feel real at all.
But the money was real.
Those numbers were totally real.
I couldn't sleep a wink that night.
And it wasn't excitement keeping me up.
It was because I suddenly remembered something.
Aaron didn't know.
Samantha didn't know either.
No one knew.
In their eyes, I was still just Bailey, the girl hustling three jobs and wearing that cheap 30-dollar down jacket.
I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling.
Suddenly, it was just quiet.
It was a kind of quiet I'd never felt before.
It wasn't that hollow silence.
It was the kind of quiet one got when one knew one was holding all the cards.
The next day, I made up my mind.
Luke Sanders, a college buddy, started his own new media company after graduation.
They focused on short-form videos and branding.
He reached out to me last month, saying his company wanted to expand and needed someone to buy in as a partner.
Back then, I didn't have any money, so I just let it slide.
But now, I had money.
I called up Luke and asked to meet.
"Is that investment deal still open?" I asked.
Luke looked at me, a bit taken aback.
"Yeah, it is," he said.
"How much?" I asked.
"0.5 million dollars for 35 percent," Luke replied.
I nodded.
"I'm in," I said.
Three days later, the shareholding agreement was signed.
Luke's company was called Spark Media Group.
They did brand strategy, short video marketing, and ad placements.
They had plenty of clients.
I didn't tell anyone about it.
The day I signed the agreement, I walked past the street where Aaron used to live.
The coffee shop was still there.
I worked there for two years straight, every single night, from seven to eleven.
My hands were always sticky with syrup and milk foam.
I stood there for a moment.
Then I turned and walked away.
I didn't tell anyone about the demolition.
But I started digging into things that I never wanted to look into before.
I used to think I should just let it go because it was in the past.
I logged into Aaron's email using his birthday as the password.
He still hadn't changed it.
It was the same old password, his birthday plus the initials of my name.
[19960315ba.]
I went through his emails.
Most of them were just work emails, nothing out of the ordinary.
But then I spotted one.
The sender was Samantha.
The date was two years ago.
Aaron and I hadn't broken up then.