Chapter 33 Cass

Jorge Luis Borges had a number.

That number was 1.8 million digits long, represented as approximately 1.9560 times 10 to the 1,834,097th power. The origin of that number was 25 to a power of 410 times 40 times 80. The reason for those numbers was actually pretty straightforward:

25: the number of characters in Borges's alphabet (22 letters plus a space character, a period, and the comma)

410: the number of pages in every book in the Library of Babel

40: the number of lines per page

80: the number of characters per line

When I was in the fourth grade, we learned exponents in school. My teacher asked us for an example of how exponents existed in real life—her expectation being that one of us would talk about common permutations ( There are two main options for Happy Meals—burgers or nuggets—and there are just two options for sides—fries or apple slices—which means there are 2 to the second power total options). Naturally, ten-year-old Cass didn't realize that, and proudly raised her hand to speak about Borges's number.

My classmates laughed relentlessly. I cried in the classroom. My teacher called my parents and suggested I had ADHD and was speaking nonsense. It turned out she didn't realize there was an Argentine writer named Jorge Luis Borges who just happened to love writing about math. After that meeting, my parents pulled me out of my school and enrolled me in a gifted academy. That was a colossal joke because nobody there was particularly gifted.

But there were countless occasions after that day when I wondered what would have happened if I had just kept my mouth shut. If I had never raised my hand to talk about Borges's number, maybe I would have never switched schools and would have never been subjected to the relentless strings of adults' expectations that tugged at me like I was a marionette.

I started calling those occasions "Borges Moments." They were occasions when I wished I had just done one thing differently—and maybe everything would have gone better.

Most people called this regret, but most people didn't have to replay these occasions in stark detail over and over and over again.

Marcus's last night at college was a Borges Moment.

The time I went home with a guy and had incredibly loud sex, not realizing that he shared a two-bedroom apartment with his mother was a Borges Moment.

And last night was a Borges Moment.

Marcus couldn't even make eye contact with me. He was seated in Alex's desk chair with his hands on the back of his neck, massaging it as he breathed between his knees. The door was locked and the blinds were shut tight. He had just confirmed what I had suspected—that he had gotten to the bottom of the mystery transactions and it wasn't pretty. It was hideous, in fact. But in addition to that, he had just confirmed there was now photographic evidence of me and him together—and it was in the hands of Alex Larson.

Minutes passed. Neither of us spoke until he said, "I've spent all morning trying to think of how I can fix this, and I don't know what to do." He looked up at me, his green eyes pained. He raised a shoulder. "I'm so sorry."

I knew he was.

"I've never encountered a problem I couldn't solve," he went on. "And the fact that you're involved in this and I can't fix it is—"

"Stop," I interjected.

Surprised, Marcus lowered his hands from his neck. His expression was familiar; it was the face he made on that night in college when I hurt him. I recognized the shock and confusion—his disbelief that I had the capacity to hurt anybody.

He thought I was about to do the same thing, and that thought tortured me.

"What's there to fix?" I asked, working to keep my tone calm. "Is it your job to fix your company after your CEO committed a major breach of consumer trust and data management, or is it your job to fix my career after I was careless and put my job on the line?"

I knew him well enough to recognize he really did think it was his responsibility to repair all of this—the company, the deal with Davenport-Ridgeway, and me.

Marcus. Sweet, selfless Marcus.

"It was never your job to fix me," I told him, shaking my head. "Worry about Libra and worry about yourself right now. That's all you can do."

"But what about you, Cass? You need this job—"

"Well," I said as I rose out of my chair. "I guess I shouldn't have been so reckless with it, right?"

"Cass…"

"I have to go tell Corinne now," I informed him. I picked up my tote from the floor of Alex's office. "Immediately."

Marcus's hands went back to his neck and I could see the tension ripping through him. It made him look so much younger than he was—or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe he finally looked his age. Twenty-eight. Still a kid in so many ways.

"Don't pity me," I said as I stood by the door. "The last time I fucked up my life like this, it put me on the path that led me to you. Sometimes it's not bad to reap what you sow."

I left before he had a chance to respond.

***

Corinne let out a heavy sigh—a sigh that held more volumes than a full set of Encyclopedia Britannicas . "You're certain?"

Silently, I nodded. I felt stupid staying quiet, but there wasn't anything I could say that would change the situation. The deal would fall through. End of story.

If Corinne and I were optimists, maybe we would have celebrated the fact that we dodged a bullet. Inevitably, the truth about Libra would have come to light. Had that happened while Davenport-Ridgeway owned the company, the ripple effect of that kind of scandal could have been a tsunami in the making.

But as luck would have it (not luck, but just the cold reality of women who worked in corporate America), neither Corinne nor I were optimists.

"Fuck," she murmured before she slammed the palm of her delicate, well-moisturized, six-carat Harry Winston engagement ring-sporting hand on her desk. "I hate these stupid tech boys sometimes."

"There's something else," I continued, "that you should know."

Corinne's eyes widened and I had never seen a beautiful woman's fa?ade break more quickly in my entire life.

"Marcus Fitz and I were…intimate."

That was another Borges Moment: It was a mistake to wait until the middle of the conversation to tell her about the NSFW content that Marcus and I had produced. Corinne paused with her lips parted, her jaw slowly lowering fractions of an inch until she snapped back to attention. "Cassandra, that's incredibly problematic."

"Don't react yet," I continued. "It's actually much worse than that."

"There's more?" she demanded as her cheeks darkened. "How could there be more ? Did you two murder someone together and hide the body?"

"There's a video of us together at the Libra offices. Alex Larson filmed us and he wanted to use that video as leverage to keep me from telling you about the data sale," I admitted, although I strongly suspected she would have been more accepting of a murder.

Corinne was still as a statue, her gaze locked on me. The disgust on her face was undeniable, and if I weren't equally disgusted with myself, I probably would have wilted under her glare. "Don't say anything else."

"Okay."

"I mean it," she insisted. "I don't think we can talk about this anymore until I get HR and legal involved."

"I understand."

"And I should probably…" She looked down at her laptop and then back up at me. I could tell she was hesitating. "Cassandra, can I say something?"

Silently, I nodded.

Corinne tucked her long brown hair behind her ears and she leaned forward as she stared at me. "I'm going to say this not as an executive at this company, but just as another woman in the corporate world."

"Sure."

"How could you be so stupid?" she questioned. Her voice had turned sharp and there was this confusion in her eyes I had never seen before.

My gut reaction was to freeze. I turned to stone with breath in my lungs and a lump rising in my throat. I didn't know how to respond to her. I just sat on her words, surprised to hear them, but not resistant. Those words dug into my skin and prickled through the surface, burrowing deeper as the silence dragged on.

I had been called many things in my life, but stupid had never been one of them.

I didn't like this feeling.

I hated this feeling.

"How is it possible for someone so smart to make so many bad decisions?" She leaned back in her chair and shook her head, pausing like she was done. I knew that look. I knew she was far from done. And sure enough, she dipped forward towards me again. She bowed in her seat so I had nowhere to look but right in her eyes, and I was grateful because I could see that she was truly and deeply concerned about me.

"Corinne—"

"Look, I'm furious this deal has fallen through. It's going to be a massive blow to my standing here, and I don't know how I'm going to manage that. But I'm more upset you could be so reckless and so stupid as to let something like this happen to you. And for what?"

I started to respond, but Corinne held up her hand. God, she was powerful.

"Look, I don't know you very well, but here's what I do know: You're brilliant. And I'm not just saying that because it's sweet and that's what we're supposed to do, as women, to support each other. I'm saying it because it's true . You're so incomprehensibly smart that it makes me want to steal your soul somedays. So for me to see you screw up your career because of some guy, is…it's practically painful ." Corinne pressed her lips together as she blew a thick exhale through her nostrils. "Please tell me I'm not the first person to recognize this. Please tell me that."

"Far from it."

That response did nothing to put her at ease. If anything, it increased her frustration tenfold. "So if you know you're brilliant, why are you pretending you're not?"

Once again, I was quiet. My mind started racing with all the memories—of Borges Moments and tutors and kids at school who gawked at me like I was a freak, and adults who told me I was definitely going to sit on the Supreme Court or win a Nobel Prize or cure cancer one day. I saw those moments in technicolor and surround sound. They pulsed and breathed with a life of their own. And the things I felt when I was living through them—the confusion and the fear and the anxiety and the absolute certainty they were wrong—they were wrong about me— still crashed through my body like it was brand new.

"Talk to me," she requested, her tone softer as she watched me drift away in my own mind. "HR isn't here. Legal isn't here. But at this point, I have to know."

"I'm just a little lost," I admitted, in one of the grossest understatements and biggest lies I had ever delivered. "I don't expect your sympathy. I don't want it, either."

"I know."

"I made bad decisions. I'm not going to try to deny that. But…he was worth it."

As soon as I said that out loud, my mind came to a screeching halt. And it was quiet for once—so lovely and quiet.

"Cassandra—"

"I mean it. I know I'm going to get fired before the end of the day and I know he's going to lose everything. I wish that all didn't have to happen. But was it worth it?" I nodded softly. "I spent my whole life being told I was one thing, when deep down I was so much more complex than what was on the surface. Obviously, I'm still trying to figure that out. But I think that was why I was good at this job. I'm good at figuring out what's below the surface because I've always just wanted someone— anyone —to see I was more than that."

"And he saw that?"

A nod. Again, that was a gross understatement. Marcus didn't just see me; he loved me. Even though he had never said it, I knew that he did. I felt it in my deepest center—the place where logic and reason couldn't reach. "He was the first person to ever do that for me, Corinne."

Something in her eyes told me my words resonated with her. I didn't know how and I wouldn't ask. But I could see it—maybe she had someone like that. Or maybe she was that person for someone else. I didn't know. But I could tell that in her silence, she understood it.

"You were good at this job," Corinne agreed after a moment. "But you were wasted there. I've always felt that way."

"Really?"

Corinne nodded again. "Look, this chapter in your life is going to close, and it's not going to end well. That's okay. Take it as an opportunity—find something to do that you really care about, not just something you do because you can." She raised both shoulders. "Pick out something that matters to you. It's so worth it."

I was about to respond when my phone began to ring in my hand, lighting up with the name of a woman whose timing was always impeccable. Mom .

"Take that," Corinne said as she eyed my vibrating phone "I have to get moving on…god, I don't even know. But go ahead."

I answered the call as I was walking out of Corinne's office and heading to the elevator. I didn't say anything at first. I just let her say my name a couple of times before I finally said, "Hi, mom."

She was quiet on the other end. I hadn't called her mom in years.

"Where are you?"

"At work," I responded. "Well, for now. I probably won't be here tomorrow."

I stepped into the elevator and saw my reflection in the mirrors that lined the car. I saw weary eyes and heavy cheeks. My stomach knotted. I was right back where I started six years ago.

"Why not?"

"I'm about to get fired from my job."

I continued to stare at my reflection, watching the way that my mouth delivered such weighty news so nonchalantly. "That's not me being dramatic. I'll be fired before the end of the day."

"What on earth did you do?" The concern in her voice was clear. I wasn't surprised. My father had been cold, but never my mother.

"I probably can't speak about that for legal reasons. Again, not being dramatic."

My mother was quiet before she released a breath against the phone. I could picture her face, staring out the bay window in the living room at the foggy San Francisco morning. When I was a girl, I spent hours staring out that window at the gray fog that surrounded our home. Nothingness. Sweet, quiet nothingness.

"It was because of a guy," I told her, even though she didn't ask. I knew she was thinking it.

"Cassandra, not again."

"It's not him . Trevor. I would never give up anything else for him."

"Who would you give up your career for?"

I paused, reflecting on that question for a few beats. Career. What a concept. That wasn't how I looked at my job at all. Being a due diligence analyst was meaningless to me. It was a transaction—a means to make money and nothing more. I did it because it paid well, and because I could .

Corinne's words were still fresh: Pick out something that matters to you.

As far as my career, I had no idea what mattered to me. I had never bothered to look. It had been an endless hunt for prestige, going to schools that others couldn't and aspiring to positions that only few could be selected for. Never, not once in those conversations, had anyone asked me what mattered to me.

So, I didn't know. But what I did know was that Marcus mattered to me—maybe more than anything had ever mattered to me.

"I love him," I told my mom, admitting it to her and to myself. It was the first time I had ever uttered those words about him, and once they were out in the open they blossomed. They blossomed with big red petals and yellow centers and leafy tendrils that soaked up sunlight and spread wide in the warmth of a nurturing world. "I love him so much, I wake up in the morning and I worry I'm going to realize it was all just a dream."

I stepped out of the elevator and headed towards my office, my mother sitting quietly in my ear all the while. Once I was inside of the office with the door closed behind me, I took a seat at my chair.

"I have to go now," I told her. "I'm not sure why you called, or if you even care anymore, but I'll be fine. Please tell dad I'll send more checks as soon as I find a new job."

I ended the call without waiting for her to respond. When she dialed me back shortly thereafter, I let it go to voicemail.