Page 27 of The One

“Were you getting paid?” she asked. “I shouldn’t ask that, but it just made me think.”

“I wasn’t. I got forty percent of the company if it took off and then I could decide to leave my job and go there or not. That was how I was thinking of it. You know, make a difference in the world.”

“What were you creating?” she asked.

He laughed. “It changed so much. Dean couldn’t stay focused and that was a problem. That happens with development though. Sometimes it doesn’t work the way you want or you can’t figure it out. He was looking at a social media platform. As if there wasn’t enough out there. It was one tailored toward careers though.”

“So you could be in contact with people in your field more?” she asked.

“Exactly. You wouldn’t get bogged down by others. It would be a network of sorts for information. It ended up being bigger than what he’d thought. Two years in, we didn’t see an end in sight. Or I didn’t. I was burning out, the same as he was.”

“That sounds horrible. Why not walk away?”

“I couldn’t do that to him. He had everything on the line. His wife was pushing him to get another job, but we were making progress. I didn’t want to be one more person that didn’t believe in him.”

“Sounds like you do commit,” she said.

“To my job. My friends. I haven’t found a woman yet. Maybe it’s because I was focused on all the wrong things for years.”

“But you did leave,” she said.

“Short version, another social media giant heard what Dean was trying to do. They came in and talked and in the end, with his wife’s urging, he sold the rights to the code for millions.A lotof millions. He didn’t get the product he wanted and maybe it would never happen, but he got one hell of a payday for two years of work.”

“Wow. That’s wonderful. Not to sound crass or anything, but you did too, right? You should have gotten something for all your hard work.”

He smiled. “Forty percent of the sale. I was riding high and loving it. I thought, shit, it’s not what I imagined would have happened, but it was still great.”

Then Dean’s wife filed for divorce and was going for half of his sixty percent.

His best friend and partner in crime lost everything he’d loved and Rick felt some of the blame was on his shoulders.

It was an eye-opener for him that he was wasting his life so much on work. His close friend sacrificed everything he had to get what he thought he wanted. When it was final, he ended up losing what mattered.

“That’s when you decided to move?”

“Yes,” he said. “I could do what I wanted. I didn’t have to work at all, but I knew I would. It was more that life had passed me by. I was tired; my family, when they saw me, said I didn’t look good. I didn’t see that though. I’d lost weight because I was too busy to eat. When I wasn’t working I was sleeping.”

He was being honest but didn’t want to say that seeing Dean lose the love of his life and he hadn’t even found one was another thing that was hard for him to handle.

It was time to put himself first and balance life some more.

“You were working two full-time jobs by the sounds of it.”

“I was. Then Robin found out she was pregnant and I didn’t want to miss much more. I had to let things settle while I made a plan, but I was looking for other jobs. I figured I’d make the move to what I wanted. What felt right.”

“Where do you work now?” she asked.

“Buchanan Inc. They are based out of Richmond, but the owner splits his time between Richmond and Lake Placid. They’ve got corporate offices there but employees all over the US. Offices spread out too. The way the world is now, most in my profession don’t need to be in an office daily. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about working from home but needed to give it a try. It’s actually nice and I’m more productive.”

He’d thought he was a people person but realized that had more to do with chasing the carrot on the string. He wasn’t that rabbit anymore.

“I’m not sure I could work from home,” she said. “Though my job is more effective when I meet face to face.”

“You need that to connect to your patients. I don’t. Nick, the owner of the company, is very hands-on. He’s got a lot of employees, but he knows them. He talks to them. I’ve talked to him more in the few months I’ve been employed than my immediate supervisor in the years at my other job.”

“That’s great,” she said.

“It is. They are family-oriented which is funny for being so big. But his father works for him, his best friend too.”