The Founder by Aubrey Parker

Author:Aubrey Parker [Parker, Aubrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: EROS
Published: 2017-10-24T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

EVAN

IF YOU HAD TO START all over — if you had to burn LiveLyfe to the ground and do it all again from the beginning — what would you build?

I’ve been asking myself variations of this question for months. I said something similar, albeit in less definitive terms, while climbing with Hampton and Mateo. I even discussed it with Mateo afterward, because even as big as he’s built his PEZA restaurants, the same sort of wanderlust seems to have infiltrated his bones, with his plans to buy his mountain.

Even success, for people like us, can be a trap. I made LiveLyfe, and it’s like a child to me. I’d never burn it down, but every day I have to feed it. I don’t want LiveLyfe to define me, just like Mateo doesn’t want PEZA to define him. There’s a duality within me, same as Mateo. We both made something for the world. Now we want to do it again, but this time for ourselves.

My thoughts have stalled, caught in internal snares and thorns. The problem is that LiveLyfe doesn’t strike me as “for the world” at all. It’s made me incredibly wealthy. It’s changed the world — in many cases, for the better, and I have reaped all the benefit. I feel guilty wanting more than LiveLyfe, and I feel obligated by it. My plans revolve around it by necessity. To think from a blank slate — as if LiveLyfe doesn’t exist? That’d be like designing a highway to cross Gibraltar without considering the enormous rock in its heart.

But as I make my preparations for dinner, I hear Rebecca’s words and new possibilities open like buds to greet the morning sun.

That’s why you paid her so much, I think. That’s why Callie was wrong. You had to spend a million dollars so you’d take your consultant’s words seriously.

But so much of the nuance, as I roll her words around, is in the tone of Becca’s voice. I can picture her saying them. I see her across from me in that loud restaurant. The way her lips moved. The toss of her dark hair in the breeze from an overhead fan. Those blue, blue eyes, unlike any I’ve seen before I met her.

When I go to bed at night, I remember the way she looked at me, that day in the conference room.

When I wake in the morning, I’ve gotten into the habit of taking time I can’t afford to waste to read the latest on her website. I tell myself I’m doing it to see if she’s leaking confidential information through her lack of a filter; paradoxically I find myself disappointed every time I go unmentioned.

I can imagine why she’s been so distant since that day. I even understand it. But I also hate it. I know what I want, and these days she’s my only fantasy.

I find myself yearning, and I’m not the kind of guy who has time or energy to yearn.

Taylor calls. Sam calls. They both remind me of all my mounting obligations.

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