Trade Me (6 page)

I do mind, actually. Next comes duck emoji and, according to my mental progression, the zombie holocaust. I wrestle with myself for a few moments before I decide that it’s better not to admit that I care.

I shrug. “Go ahead.”

He sits.

There aren’t many students in the very back row. Blake sits immediately next to me, not leaving an empty seat between us, and that feels weird. It’s a violation of the rules of personal space. When there’s only one other person on the bus, you don’t sit right next to her. Not unless you know her.

And it feels like Blake takes up a lot of room. Even though I can’t point to a single physical point of contact, I can sense him next to me. He doesn’t touch me. He doesn’t look at me. I can’t even smell him. He’s just…there, being Blake Reynolds, taking up a lecture hall’s worth of personal space in one single seat.

When the professor begins, I have every excuse to ignore Blake. I try to do so. But he’s not ignoring me, and I can’t help but notice him noticing me.

He takes desultory notes on a tablet, but mostly he listens. His head tilts in my direction occasionally.

Nope. I’m not going to care. I ignore him harder, concentrating on the professor at the lectern below.

I’m trying so hard
not
to pay attention to him that I jump when he slips a folded piece of bright yellow paper under my arm.

It’s a flyer for some meeting. On the back, he’s scrawled a single sentence.

After considerable thought, I have decided to take back my apology from the other day.

My heart begins to beat a little more quickly. I’m not sure what he means by that. By the way he glances at me, he wants me to ask for an explanation.

Still a nope. Not going to let Blake distract me. Especially if he’s decided to be a jerk. As soon as class is over, I’m going to click “ignore” on that damned friend request. And I’m not going to be distracted by him ever,
ever
again.

I stare at the professor for five more minutes, not hearing a word of the lecture, until finally I give up.

Are we nine,
I scrawl in return,
and passing notes in class?
Apparently we are.

Instead of frowning when I hand this to him, the corner of his mouth lifts in appreciation.

Don’t blame me,
he writes back
. If I had your number, I would have just texted you.

He catches my eye as I look up from the paper. He holds my gaze, and a hint of electricity arcs between us.

I swallow and scribble out a response.
I can’t tell if that’s a hint that you want it or a statement of fact.

He ducks his head.
Cut me some slack. My media training didn’t cover the old-fashioned art of paper-based flirtation.

That last word hits me first—
flirtation.
I feel a wave of heat. Is that what he’s doing?

Maybe. I look over at him, look back at the paper, and feel that stupid, illogical flutter.

Okay, definitely.

And that’s when the first part hits me. Media training?

If I needed proof that we are totally different animals, this is it. I’m not sure what
media training
entails. Thousands of dollars, I suspect. At least. And I can’t even afford a smartphone.

I remind myself of all of this, and still I find myself responding—not just to his words, but his tone.
Poor Blake,
I write back, a little more slowly.
Was that not age inappropriate enough for your dad?

He presses the back of his fist into his mouth as if biting back a laugh. But he writes back immediately.

See? If I weren’t me, we would totally be friends.

I glance over at him. This,
this,
is exactly why I haven’t accepted that damned friend request. Because he
is
him. He’s the same guy who opines about the social safety net when he’s never, ever needed it. His father owns a company that has an annual revenue larger than the GDP of most countries. We’ve barely spoken. We’re not friends. I’m just fighting my stupid, social programming, and he’s…

I tilt my head and glance at him. He’s smiling at me. Making my social programming act up. It’s hitting me on the head and saying,
see? I told you so.

I shake my head.
If
I
weren’t
me, I write back,
we would be. I’ll accept your apology, but that’s all that’s happening.

He frowns when he reads this.
Too bad,
he writes in response.
Apology already withdrawn; it’s too late to accept it now. I, on the other hand, have magnanimously decided to accept the offer you made on Monday.

I consider this.

1. You spelled
magnanimously
correctly without autocorrect. That paper-based media training must be good for something.

2. WTF? What offer?

He looks over at me and raises an eyebrow. When he passes the paper back, I get:
You said that I wouldn’t make it two weeks if I had to live your life. I don’t want two weeks. I want the rest of the semester.

I look over at him. He’s watching me intently, his eyes narrowing on mine. I look down at the paper. I don’t want to be intrigued. I don’t want to be interested. I don’t want to wonder what he means, what this entails. I don’t want to know about him.

My pen moves up the page and slowly, very slowly, circles the WTF I wrote earlier. I draw a few arrows pointing to it and add a smattering of exclamation marks around it, just in case he misses it. In case he’s not watching over my shoulder. I pass this over to him.

Come to lunch with me,
he writes back.
I’ll explain everything.

4.

TINA

Blake stops by his car on the way to lunch. “I have to put on my disguise,” he explains.

“Your disguise?”

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he walks to the car. He doesn’t take out a key. He doesn’t need to. As he approaches, the silver handles—which used to lie flush against the door—extend toward him. He opens the back door, revealing a surprising jumble of stuff: bright red running shoes, a crumpled towel, a handful of books, and myriad old receipts.

“Apparently,” I say dryly, “your media training also failed to include the old-fashioned art of cleaning up after yourself.”

He just laughs. “You sound like my dad. He’s a neat freak. I drive him crazy.” He pulls off his coat and then, as I’m watching, takes off his tie and unbuttons his blue-collared shirt. He removes this all in front of me. I catch a glimpse of a silver watch at his wrist.

Now that he’s stripped to nothing but a white undershirt, I can see his upper body. Blake is all lean muscles. That tattoo I glimpsed before is a complicated computer circuit board. The artist who did it has imbued the tat with a sense of a subtle glow, making it seem like those are real circuits embedded just below his skin. Despite myself, my fingers itch to touch it, to make sure that’s all real muscle and not actual metal. The art climbs from his wrist all the way to his shoulder; from this angle, it makes him look like he’s a cyborg in some science fiction film.

It’s freaking brilliant.

He rescues a dark blue Cal sweatshirt from the pile of crap and pulls it on. The shirt is overlarge; it completely swallows his wrists.

He kicks off his dark dress shoes, pulls out a case, and removes his contacts. Then he puts on the running shoes, dons thick-rimmed glasses, and as a finishing touch, rubs a pump of hair gel between his palms and rumples his hair. Like this, his khaki dress slacks could pass for cargo pants.

He turns to me. “What do you think?”

I think a lot of things.

I’m not sure what game he’s playing, but I’m already berating myself for coming along. I can’t afford to go to lunch with him. I can’t afford the meal. And—I do have my pride—I won’t let him pay. I definitely can’t afford to remember his biceps.

But despite my better judgment, that part of me that is swayed by classical standards of masculine appeal thinks he’s pretty freaking hot. I think I looked more than I should have when he took off his shirt, and I think he knows that.

I give him a critical once-over. “Good disguise,” I tell him. “But it needs a fake mustache.”

He cracks up.

“True story,” he says. “The only time I ever wore dress shirts before I started here was for events—interviews or products launches. Shit like that. Now I wear them all the time. People see the outfit and they think it’s me.” He shrugs. “This way, I get a little privacy.”

It would be so easy to let myself pretend I’m friends with Blake. He’s funny, and more down to earth than I expected. But it’s bad enough being attracted to him because of basic social programming. I can only imagine how much worse this would be if I legitimately liked him as an individual.

“That is awesome,” I say. “I can sell that story to some enterprising reporter for at least a hundred bucks.”

He gives me a patient smile. “Yes, but you won’t.”

“Because I’m going to be so blown away by your amazing charisma that I forget how much I need the money?” I wrinkle my nose to signify how likely this is.

“No. Because by the time lunch is over, you and I are going to be on the same page. Business-wise.”

“Oh, yes.” I frown at him. “That. What is this all about?”

He smiles enigmatically, but doesn’t say anything more until we’re settled into the half-empty top floor of a Vietnamese restaurant. We place our order and the waiter leaves us in peace.

Blake takes a paper napkin from the holder and unfolds it into a wisp of translucent whiteness, before rolling it up and setting it on the table between us. When he looks up, though, his eyes seem like flint—hard and impossible.

“So,” he says. “Are you going to trade me?”

I look over into his clear, blue eyes. I think he may actually be serious. There’s not a hint of a smile on his face. He picks up the napkin again and starts methodically ripping it to shreds.

“You’re going to have to be a lot more specific,” I tell him. “Because that could mean anything.”

“You were right the other day,” he says smoothly. “I’m clueless. I don’t know what it’s like to be you, or anyone like you, and I want to fix that. I offer a trade. I work your hours. I pay your rent. I live in your apartment.”

“It’s so cute that you think I live in an apartment,” I interject.

“You get my house, my car, my allowance. You take over my duties at Cyclone, too—to the extent that’s possible. We’ll have to talk about that. There are details to work out. But that’s the gist of it.”

He shrugs, like what he has set forth is no big deal, and I’m left to boggle at him. There are so many things wrong with this that I don’t even know where to start.

I pick apart the one thing that’s simple. “An allowance? Please don’t tell me you’re getting an allowance from your dad on top of everything else.”

“Ha. No.” He has amassed an arsenal of napkin shreds in front of him. “I thought about offering you my salary instead, but…that’s a dollar a year, so probably that wouldn’t work for you. I asked my accountant to figure out how much I usually spend instead.” He shoots me a look. “I’ll give you that and we’ll call it an allowance. It’s probably not as much as you think.”

I shake my head. “Is that how rich people think? ‘I will impress everyone by taking an extremely tiny salary to show how meaningless money is.’”

“It’s more like, ‘Wow, who wants to pay taxes on ordinary income? Let’s shift my compensation to capital gains tax at every possible opportunity.’”

Oh, thank God he said that. I had just been thinking we might have something in common. I wave my hand with more airiness than I feel. “Ah, tax evasion. As one does.”

He gives me a self-deprecating shrug. “Legal tax evasion. It’s the best kind.”

“You asked me to trade,” I say. “I’m just trying to understand your perspective. After all, you can’t be blowing all your billions on something as gauche as a functioning government.”

The tips of his ears turn slightly pink. “Billion.” He coughs. “Really. It’s just one billion. Not multiple billions.”

I choke. I’d been trying for over-the-top hyperbole. What comes out, though is, “And here I thought you were actually wealthy.”

“A billion point four, depending on how you count stock options that haven’t completely vested,” he mutters. “It’s not that much, not compared to my father.”

That number is so vast, it takes me a minute to get my mind around it. He’s worth ten figures. I’m worth…well, after I pay for this meal? One.

The balance of my checking account is less than a millionth of his
rounding
errors. We’re not even in the same solar system. I feel like this conversation is careening off a cliff into a universe where gravity and ordinary income tax do not apply.

“That’s good.” I feel almost light-headed. “As long as you’re only a billion-point-four-aire, this isn’t awkward at all. How much does a billion-point-four-aire spend anyway?”

“Probably not as much as you’re imagining. Fifteen thousand.”

“A
semester?”

“A month.” He shrugs. “I told you. I’m not a huge spender.”