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“There he is,” Tommy said, as soon as Ezra stepped off the elevator into the hotel lobby.
Ezra’s steps faltered as he came face-to-face with his COO and Board of Directors and the relief in their eyes. They’d probably been terrified he wouldn’t show up today since he hadn’t returned their calls or emails until this morning. There was so much riding on this meeting and he never would have put them through that kind of uncertainty under normal circumstances. But seeing Candace on his flight was as far from normal circumstances as he could imagine.
He’d never put his emotional turmoil on their shoulders, however, so he smiled at them and pushed aside the bone-deep weariness he hadn’t been able to wash away or sleep off.
“Good morning, everyone. I’m sorry I was MIA yesterday.”
“Is everything okay?” Martina asked tentatively.
“Everything’s fine. I just had a... difficult flight and I was exhausted when I landed. But I’m here. You’re here,” he said, gesturing toward the assembled group, “and we’re gonna get this deal hammered out and signed. Alright?”
Martina and some of the rest of the Board smiled back at him, visibly relaxing, while others tensed a fraction more. He could understand both reactions.
“Did breakfast arrive?” Ezra asked, gesturing toward the boardroom. “Come on, let’s eat and get started.” He ushered them into the boardroom. He took a deep breath and closed the double doors behind them.
Just as the boardroom doors closed, Candace wheeled her suitcase into the hotel lobby. She’d barely slept the night before. She’d showered and re-packed her suitcase while the sky was dark and then sat on her bed, waiting for the sun to rise so she could leave. She left a message for Jorge with the address of her new hotel and then headed out into the city.
She could have taken a cab, but Candace needed the walk to clear her head. She’d always loved walking in the city early in the morning. She’d done it more times than she could count while a student here, meandering through the streets as she pored over her anxieties and fears and sometimes cried, passing off her tears as sweat in the perpetually warm climate.
As she headed toward the city center, she thought about all those walks before, trying to quantify how many of them had been about Ezra, losing herself in the past as the once familiar city came to life around her. There were hardly any tourists out besides herself, and that too felt familiar. She felt buffeted by the cars speeding past her on the sometimes narrow streets, the smells of cooking food, a baby crying somewhere in the distance and the melodic Spanish she could only understand in snatches. Mostly, she felt anonymous. Some people turned to her with a smile or a confused stare, but just as many went on with their morning routines, navigating around her and her suitcase deftly and with hopefully only minor annoyance.
The closer she got to her hotel, the more important it seemed for her to remind herself why she’d accepted this flight from Sarah. When she was twenty-one, Quito had seemed like a refuge. She’d originally applied for the study abroad to strengthen her Spanish and she’d thought it would look good on job applications. She’d imagined it as a semester-long break from reality as she prepared for the future. But Quito became like a warm blanket that she threw over herself as all of her plans back home fell apart.
Candace had decided against going home the day after Ezra’s one and only email and a month after being rejected from every job and internship she’d applied to. She met an itinerant bartender and hooked up with him, hoping to bury her heartbreak in a whirlwind romance that was more whirlwind than romantic, because all she’d really wanted was to run away from all her failures.
It was heartbreaking to be back and immediately confronted with all the ways very little had changed in her life. She was employed but still unsure what she wanted to do with her life. She still felt as if she hadn’t realized all the potential her parents had fought to cultivate in her and protect. And while she was still in love with Ezra Posner, she felt certain that whatever window of opportunity for them to get their relationship on the right track had long since closed. Candace felt like a failure in too many ways to count.
She arrived at her hotel with little to show for her walk besides a sore shoulder from steering her heavy suitcase down the street, a sweaty back and a vague triumph that while her Spanish comprehension wasn’t as strong as it used to be, it wasn’t so bad that Dr. Montero would think he’d failed her. And at the very least, that made her smile as she stepped up to the hotel’s front desk.
“Checking in?” the concierge asked in English.
“Yes,” she said, “but I’m early. I understand if my room isn’t available.”
“We can check. Name?”
Candace waited as he checked his computer. She looked around and her eyes latched onto someone in a uniform carrying a carafe of coffee into a room across the lobby.
“You’re in luck,” he said, pulling her attention back to the front desk. “Your room is ready and you’re welcome to check in early.”
Candace smiled. “Perfect. Thank you. Oh, do you have dry cleaning services?”
“We do. We can come pick it up for you or you can take it to housekeeping yourself.”
“I can bring it down after I get into my room. Where is it?”
He gestured. “It’s just across the lobby there. On the other side of the elevators.”
“Okay, thanks,” she said with a smile. And on its own volition, the smile stayed on her face as she handed over her passport and credit card and took the elevator up to the third floor — the highest floor she could afford — and pulled her dirty uniform from her bag.
As she headed back down to the lobby, Candace rode the wave of a few minutes of good news and accepted that if she really wanted to know what was next for her, she had make decisions she’d been avoiding for too long in the vain hope that the uniform would show her the way. She’d come to Quito the first time and waited; waited for Ezra to email her, waited for one of the jobs she’d applied for to pan out; waited for all of her hard work to pay off. It hadn’t. And while it had rocked her, it hadn’t killed her. And that was what mattered.
She didn’t know where Ezra was and she couldn’t worry about that. She’d spent almost twenty years putting her life on hold or veering wildly off-track because of him. Not anymore. That relationship had broken her heart so many times before that there was nothing left to break. She might always love Ezra, but that wasn’t enough. Love hadn’t been enough for Mei and Miles; she’d been a fool to imagine that it could be different for her and Ezra.
As she pulled the door open to housekeeping, Candace made her first New Year’s Eve resolution ever. In the future she just wanted to be less of a fool for love. Baby steps, she thought to herself with a smile.
***
“Alright, now your pensions,” Ezra said. “This is the biggest issue for me.”
“I agree,” Martina said.
“If this goes wrong, I don’t want anyone to lose their retirement.”
“No one wants that,” Tommy interjected. “But the pensions are our collateral. We can’t afford the company without it.”
“You can if you buy five per cent less of the company,” Ezra said as he made deliberate eye contact with every member of the Board.
This had been the sticking point in their negotiations for months. They might have been able to close the deal a full four months ago but for the issue of how to protect his employees’ retirement funds. Ezra had built his company from the ground up. He’d personally hired every person in this room. He believed in them and they’d believed in his vision. This company meant so much to him because of these people and he only wanted to do what was right. The buyout they were negotiating would make him richer certainly, but would also give his employees a share of the profits their collective labor had created. This move was the only reason he’d taken the company public; maximizing their worth so he could transfer a controlling stake to his employees.
It wasn’t a benevolent decision, even though he knew that’s how tech magazines would spin it as soon as the sale went public. But as far as Ezra was concerned, this was fair. This was right. And his old hippy parents would appreciate it.
But however important this sale was, and however unsure the future, he wasn’t comfortable risking his employees’ retirements in the process. Unfortunately, the only way to underwrite the offer without asking them to raise more money was to use their pensions as collateral. But if they bought fifty two percent, they wouldn’t be gambling their entire futures on the company not collapsing in the foreseeable future.
Ezra would never be able to live with himself if their company failed and his employees were left destitute because he hadn’t been vigilant on this point.
“You’ll still have controlling interest,” he said carefully and not for the first time.
“But there are more of us than you,” Tommy said.
“True. And I understand you want to give each other the short-term benefit of more profits, but I want to make sure you’re set long after this deal and long after one of our rivals improves on our ideas.
You know how this industry works. Once we unveil the new engine, it’s out there. Soon enough, someone is going to think of something we didn’t and find a way to make it work better.” Everyone at the table squirmed in their seats. “Look, I’m not saying we can’t weather that storm. I’m just saying that right now we have the opportunity to make this deal happen and prepare for the worst-case scenario. That’s all I want.”
The room was silent and he wanted to keep explaining himself, but he’d been harping on this point for so long that they all knew his stance. Everyone around the table, representing every area of the company from R&D to maintenance, knew his position. Some agreed with him, some didn’t, and he couldn’t browbeat the latter into becoming the former. He knew that and he hated it. He reached for the cup of coffee on the table in front of him and brought it to his lips to give them time to think.
He wasn’t sure if it was the jetlag, the tension in the room or the lingering emotional turmoil of the past day, but he missed his mouth and poured black coffee onto his button-down shirt instead of into his mouth.
“Shit,” he said, jumping from his seat.
Nearly everyone at the table either pushed their napkins toward him frantically.
“It’s okay,” Ezra said with a laugh. He lifted a calming hand and dabbed at the stain on his chest. “Remember this is why I shouldn’t be your boss. Who knows what I’ll spill on our next prototype?”
The joke seemed to release some of the tension between them.
“Look, I’m going to go change. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Eat some more breakfast and talk. And make a decision.” He smiled. “But whatever you decide, I’ll go along with it. You don’t have to agree with me just because I’m the boss. And soon enough I won’t even be that.” They all smiled at him as he walked from the room.
Ezra rushed up to the penthouse to change his shirt. But he didn’t hurry back, wanting to give the Board as much time as possible to come to a decision. He took his time checking his email and his phone, hoping for a text from Miles or Mei, or even — the saddest, most pathetic part of his heart hoped — Candace. He was disappointed three times. Just before he walked out of his room, he grabbed his shirt, deciding to take it to housekeeping while he was stalling.
Back in the lobby, he marched to the front desk and was immediately directed to housekeeping.
His eyes darted to the boardroom doors as he passed, his shirt clutched in his hand. He ran his other hand through his hair and took a deep breath as he walked around the elevators, pushed the door open and froze.
“How long will it take?” Candace asked the woman behind the counter.
“We can have it ready later today,” the woman responded in accented English.
“Oh, there’s no rush, I’m here for a few days,” Candace said, shaking her head.
“Okay. We can bring it to your room when we clean tomorrow, if you like.”
“Oh, that’s perfect,” Candace said. “Gracias.”
“Si,” the woman responded.
Candace turned from the desk and froze. Ezra heard the sharp intake of breath when she saw him.
“What are you doing here?” she asked in a whisper.
“This is my hotel,” Ezra said in shock. “What are you doing here?”
“You own hotels now?” she asked, as if that was the most pressing issue. As if any of his material possessions mattered more than the fact that for the second time in two days, he and Candace were in the same place at the same time by accident.
That couldn’t be a coincidence and Ezra refused to let this moment pass without fighting for Candace; something he should have done long ago.