I Want Five Minutes

RECOMMENDED TRACK: Royal Blood – Figure It Out

The day after graduation.

Emma and I stared at it for what felt like forever.

She recovered first. “Maybe he hasn’t seen—”

“He’s seen,” I said. “That’s why he says this bit, about my obligations to my friends.” I swore under my breath, grabbing the phone from her and barely resisting the urge to throw it out the window into the street. “He is saying, ‘I see what you have done, I know who you have done it with, and you are still coming home.’“

I had known the odds were long. A few successes, however proud I was of them, would not undo years of deliberately making myself unreliable to him. And he was not a man who changed his mind easily, even at the best of times.

The only thing that kept me from crumbling was Emma massaging my shoulders with a miserable expression she probably did not realize she wore, taking care of me first even as she was visibly trying to staunch the bleeding of her own hopes.

“We’ll figure something out,” I said instead, and pulled her to me, both of us turning to the easiest comfort we had at hand: each other.

Emma and I have made love in many ways, in many moods, but that day my movements were heavy, carrying the weight of a sort of desperation that demanded satisfaction but felt none. When those deep-rooted urges seized me at the end—I did not even try to shake them off. I came hard and deep and imagined seeding something real, IUD be damned. A bond even my father couldn’t break so easily. It was a fantasy that tasted like cotton candy and melted just as fast.

As Emma lay asleep in my arms, I remained awake, unable to set aside the gloom long enough to drift off. At one point, I pulled her closer to me without meaning to and she murmured in her sleep, some nonsense sound I’d never heard from her before, almost like a hiccup. It was a silly little chirp, but it made my chest squeeze tight at the thought that there was so much of her I had yet to see, might not ever see. I needed more time. If not forever, then at least enough to memorize her, to stockpile the sights and scents and sensations of her to carry me through a future that now looked not just like a burden, but barren.

We had not just made something I would miss. We’d made something I knew, now, that I needed.

I still could not abandon Dasha. And Emma would never ask me to. But…there was something more I could do. One more card I could try to play.

Three days later, three spring break days I had spent staring at a laptop instead of staring at Emma, I knocked on Adrian Calloway’s door.

He opened it, appraised me coolly, and folded his arms. “Sokolov.”

I took a deep breath. “Calloway, I heard you wanted to apologize to me.” He stiffened and a tiny flash of something crossed his face, recognition maybe, or regret. He opened his mouth, but I held up a hand, spreading my fingers. “But I don’t want an apology. I want five minutes.”

When I talked to Elliott, Marcus, and Jacob, I had simply opened the door and listened to their needs, let them guide me to an entry point. That was part of why I had not bothered to try Adrian. Even if he had been open to getting involved, I could not imagine he would be open to discussing his family’s business with me like that.

This time, I took a different approach. I would not ask him for an opening, I would make one.

He stared at me, at the laptop in my hands, at the expression on my face. I was aiming for confidence and determination. But it would not surprise me if Calloway could see the desperation beneath it.

Either way, he stepped back and let me into his room.

It was tidy, organized, like him. Everything in its place. I felt vaguely like…what’s the expression? Bull in a china shop?

I did not let that stop me as I strode to his desk and opened the laptop. He followed and, to his credit, paid close attention as I walked him through my charts and citations, information from Calloway Global annual reports linked tightly to economic reports on my homeland, from our government and from other public sources. I supplemented it with my own knowledge, offering context I knew better than to put in writing—my sense of what was real and what was smoke and mirrors.

“I would like you to let me present this to Calloway Global’s European leadership,” I concluded, stepping back and leaning against the desk. “Or whatever group in the company that would be most interested.”

He was silent for a second before gesturing for me to give him the laptop so he could flip back through the slides. He reviewed them at length, and I was starting to think he was just letting me sweat when he finally closed the laptop and turned to me.

“Why does this matter now?” He cocked his head at me, that insufferably neutral expression on his face, the one I had only seen him break for Emma. “I know you’ve been scrambling around with Elliott. With Jacob. And you know I know Emma’s nervous.” His eyebrow twitched dangerously. “I know you need to impress your father. Why?”

I’d prepared a lie to answer this question, and it could have fallen easily from my lips. That I wanted to go to graduate school with Emma, and needed my father’s support. It was plausible, and if I told him the truth, I would have been shooting myself in both feet with one bullet, right? Why would he help me if he knew all he had to do was sit back and do nothing, and my father would yank me away from Emma? That like everything else in Calloway’s life, he could just sit back and let his obstacles disappear? Surely he could not resist that temptation.

But in the moment, I froze. It was a generic excuse, one that did not explain the urgency. The stakes. If he did not believe it, it would be no different than if I told him the truth and he refused to help.

So I was honest.

“My father…expects me to go back to Moscow,” I said finally. Given his own family background, I had a feeling Calloway would understand the sharp edge of such expectations. “Right after graduation.”

He narrowed his eyes in calculation. I did not doubt for one second he saw both that sharp edge, and the opportunity it could offer him. “And I assume he has some means to make sure you do?”

I gritted my teeth. “Yes.”

“Does Emma know? Does she know all of it?”

That question surprised me, but only for a moment. I had never talked to my fraternity brothers about plans after college, had deliberately avoided it. And I had not always been as forthcoming to Emma as I should have, either. Calloway knew both of those things.

“She knows everything,” I said firmly, leaving no room for doubt.

His eyes flickered with something I couldn’t read, and then he sat back in his seat, tapping one finger on his desk as he stared at me. This time he was letting me sweat. Surely.

Finally, he snatched up the laptop and handed it back to me. “I can’t get you in with the EU division right now. They’re swamped.” My heart plummeted, but when I grasped the computer, he held onto it. “But there’s a quarterly shareholder summit in the city in three weeks,” he said. My eyes snapped to his. “I can get you on the agenda to speak. Ten minutes, fifteen, something like that.” He waved his other hand as if the specifics hardly mattered. “Can you be ready?”

It took me three long seconds to school myself, clear the surprise and hope and whatever else was showing on my face. “Da—yes. Yes, I can be ready.”

“There’s a formal reception the night after,” he said, his jaw tightening. “You’ll be expected to attend so I can drag you around and introduce you to insufferable idiots who’ll want to ask you inane questions.”

“Okay,” I said eagerly. Who cared? I would dance a jig for their amusement if they wanted. Petrushka does not fear the stage.

“You’ll be expected to bring someone,” he added with a meaningful look.

…Ah. I squinted at his empty expression, trying to work out what he was thinking. Would he insist I bring someone else? I think he almost did, and I’m not sure I would have blamed him. But after another long moment, he let go of the laptop finally with a heaving sigh. “It’ll be a long night for all three of us.”

All three. Yes, it would be.

I said the only thing I could. “Thanks, Calloway.”

He shook his head. “You know it’s for her, not you,” he said. Then he shrugged. “But, it’s…actually a decent presentation.” It was a reluctant concession, offered quickly and not allowed to linger. His face returned to his customary glare like he had flipped a switch. “You had best not fuck this up, Sokolov.”

I wouldn’t. I couldn’t.

---

Bonus Content:
Next Time. I Promise.

---

Author’s Note

B-Side Track: Britney Spears – Work Bitch

I spend way too much of my life in PowerPoint during my day job. I cannot tell you how much I feel for Misha here. The corporate world is obsessed with slide presentations (“decks”). 😭

FUN FACT:

In the last chapter’s note I talked about why Sigma Theta Rho attracts all these richie rich kids, but even within that group you’ll notice a lot of differences. Misha and Adrian grew up under a lot of expectations, but how they respond to them couldn’t be more different. Meanwhile, you’ve also got Jacob, whose mom is a Big Tech CEO—but Jacob’s interested in the tech side, not business. Elliott plans to be about as far from an oil baron as it’s possible to be, though he knows his dad’s business is what gives him the freedom to follow his passion.

Alright, so: Adrian’s help has been acquired. Now to see if Misha can make his way through Corporate America. 👀