Chapter 282: I Didn’t Regret Anything

He had said that. About the debt operation. About girls who’d signed contracts and then felt like the situation was their fault.

"I’ll make sure the welfare referral includes a follow-up flag," he said. "Without involving me directly."

"Good," said Olivia. She looked back out the window. "I slapped her."

"You did," he said.

"I don’t regret it," she said. "But I’ve been thinking about it."

"What conclusion did you reach," he said.

"That I’d do it again," she said, "but that she was also someone who was in a worse situation than I understood at the time." She paused. "Those two things can both be true."

"They can," he said.

She nodded once, settling something internally, and went back to looking at the window.

James caught Sean’s eye in the rearview mirror briefly. Said nothing. Drove.

—----------

He bought coffee on the way back to the building Friday morning.

Stopped at the corner place two blocks east that had been his default since the semester started, the one run by a couple in their fifties who had apparently been arguing about whether the espresso machine needed replacing for at least three years based on the quality of the ongoing argument whenever Sean walked in.

The man was winning today. Sean could tell by the expression of the woman when she handed him his cup.

"He thinks a new machine is an admission that the old one was never good," she said, without being asked, when Sean paid.

"Is the old one good," said Sean.

"It’s fine," she said. "It was always fine. He just doesn’t want to spend the money."

"The coffee is excellent," said Sean.

She pointed at him. "Exactly what I said."

He paid and left while the argument resumed behind him.

[12 dollars spent]

[Balance: $68,751,303]

[24 dollars received — 2x baseline]

[New Balance: $68,751,315]

He sat on the bench outside the library and looked at his phone.

One message waiting from a number that wasn’t saved in his contacts but that he recognized.

Rebecca Torres.

Three words.

Thank you. Really.

He read it twice.

Then he put his phone in his pocket without replying.

Not because he had nothing to say. Because whatever he might say would pull a thread that had finished being pulled. The text existed and he’d received it and she’d sent it and those three things were complete and adding a fourth would be the wrong move.

The bench was cold in the morning air. Students passed with their coffee cups and their bags and their specific Monday energy of people starting the week without knowing what it would do with them.

He thought about Rebecca at eighteen in this timeline, dealing with the end of something she’d partly created and partly been pushed into. He thought about Anthony Ruiz fourteen months from now, standing on the other side of something that had been entirely his own making.

He thought about a first life he never spoke about. A train station on an evening he’d walked toward. An old woman who hadn’t been there when he turned around.

What he felt about today’s closure was complicated enough that he let it be complicated without pushing it into something simpler.

Some things you just sat with.

—------------

Marcus found him between eleven and twelve.

"The Vertex board confirmed the funding round parameters," said Marcus, sitting down with his laptop and his characteristic lack of preamble. "Derek ran the final model with the Fischer revision. The numbers hold."

"I saw Clara’s email," said Sean.

"She responded to Derek directly," said Marcus. "He’s been quietly euphoric since Tuesday. You wouldn’t know it because Derek’s version of euphoria looks exactly like Derek’s version of everything else, but I can tell."

"How can you tell," said Sean.

"He reorganized the shared folder structure," said Marcus. "He only does that when things are going well. When things are bad he leaves the folders alone like he’s scared to touch them." He paused. "I’ve been studying his system for six weeks. I’m fairly confident about the pattern."

Sean looked at him.

"You’ve been studying Derek’s organizational habits as an emotional indicator," he said.

"Investment club is about reading information correctly," said Marcus. "Derek communicates through folder structure. I read the folder structure." He opened his laptop. "It’s not weird."

"It’s a little weird," said Sean.

"It works," said Marcus, with the specific dignity of someone who had been told something was weird before and had decided they didn’t care. "The point is that the round is moving correctly and Fischer responded to the revised cap table this morning with two questions that Derek says are the kind of questions someone asks when they’re confirming rather than probing." He turned the laptop around. "Here."

Sean read Fischer’s questions.

They were indeed confirming questions. The specific quality of someone who had made a decision and was doing final verification rather than still evaluating.

"Tell Derek his read is correct," said Sean. "And that the folder structure methodology is actually useful even if it’s a bit much."

Marcus almost smiled. "I’ll relay that. He’ll file it under positive feedback, which in his folder system is." He stopped. "Actually never mind. You don’t need to know about the positive feedback folder."

"There’s a positive feedback folder," said Sean.

"There’s a positive feedback folder," Marcus confirmed. "Let’s move on."

—----------------------------

The text from Olivia came at two fifteen.

Something just happened.

What, he typed.

Yuna’s seanmillerappreciation account, she said. Someone in Anthony’s building followed it and then sent a message saying today’s news was because of you. Yuna has been trying to reach me for twenty minutes and I’ve been in rehearsal so I just saw all seventeen of her texts.

What did Yuna’s texts say, Sean asked.

In order: shock, then excitement, then a theory, then a longer theory, then three questions, then a statement that she knew you were powerful from the beginning because of the way you stood at the showcase, then a question about whether she should post about it, then me telling her absolutely not, then her agreeing, then her posting about it anyway but in a coded way that is so coded it literally just says "sometimes the right things happen" with a moon emoji.