2025 – Richard
The thing about billionaires is that people assume you enjoy shopping for clothes.
I don't.
I enjoy profit margins, clean code, and watching my competitors sweat during earnings calls. I do not enjoy standing in a gilded torture chamber disguised as a high-end menswear boutique – Maison du Corbeau, because apparently "House of Crow" in French is what ultra-rich men want on their lapels – while my best friend twirls in front of a mirror like he's auditioning for a boy band reunion tour.
"Bro, check this," Mark declared, turning half a pirouette in a white dinner jacket so sharp it could have its own kill count. "Do I look like James Bond, or like James Bond's hotter cousin who owns a vineyard?"
I pinched the bridge of my nose. "You look like a man who can't tell the difference between a cummerbund and a compression bandage."
Mark grinned, unbothered, the eternal sunbeam that he was. He had the ease of someone who'd been born into money – generational wealth, trust funds, the kind of childhood where summer camp meant yachts in the Mediterranean. He radiated golden retriever energy in human form.
And Cynthia… well. Cynthia was the same. Just sharper, cheekier, a little more wicked around the edges. Together, they were a chaos duet, a match made in either heaven or a very elaborate prank show.
"You know," Mark mused, smoothing his lapels, "Cyn says we're exactly alike. Except she's sexier."
"True." I adjusted my tie and let the sales associate fawn over cufflinks I didn't need. "But you cry more."
His smile faltered. "That's low."
"Remember the breakup?"
He groaned. "Don't."
"I had to answer forty-seven drunk voicemails. You sang Taylor Swift to me at three in the morning. Off key."
Mark slapped my arm. "A true friend supports a man through heartbreak."
"A true friend deletes the voicemails before they can be subpoenaed," I shot back.
The truth was, I was happy for him. Really. But when he and Cynthia announced their wedding was finally back on – after that dramatic split, after Cynthia's "I don't want to marry a family friend, I want to live" phase, after Mark's whiskey-soaked months of despair – I privately decided to pour myself three fingers of scotch every time they called me.
Now, of course, I was the best man. At a wedding. On a private island his family bought, because apparently that's what you do when you have too much money and not enough sense.
And me? I wanted it over. Toasts, rings, flowers – done. My company, NexoVector, was waiting. My engineers had just finalized a prototype AI chip that could reduce processing time by half and cut energy use by a third. That mattered.
Vows? Cake tastings? Not so much.
But Mark wanted a cake from a hole-in-the-wall bakery on the edge of town. "The best chocolate mousse of my life, man. Worth it." He said.
Which is why, two hours later, we were in his Aston Martin, weaving through streets so narrow even pigeons had to walk single file. Naturally, the car sputtered, coughed, and died in the least glamorous part of town, outside a balloon vendor with a hand-painted sign that read HAPPY BOB'S BALLOONS!!!
I was about to call a tow when Mark said, "Oh look, balloons!" and bounded across the street like a child high on sugar.
That's when I saw her.
At first, she didn't register. A girl – or woman, rather – messy hair piled into something resembling a bird's nest, baggy pajamas with a suspicious stain on one leg, flip-flops that slapped the pavement with every step. She was juggling an ice cream cone stacked four scoops high while simultaneously paying for a fistful of balloons.
She looked… feral. Like a raccoon in human cosplay.
And yet.
Her face.
One glance at her profile and something slammed into my chest, hard and undeniable. Ten years dissolved in an instant. The girl who stabbed my Italian loafers and grabbed my groin in front of an auditorium was right there, alive, disheveled, ridiculous – and unmistakably her.
Alaska.
Of all places. Of all times.
Of course fate would drop her in front of me, holding a balloon bouquet like she was auditioning for a circus.
"Richard?" Mark jogged back, holding a balloon shaped like a giraffe. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
I had.
And the ghost was holding cotton-candy-pink balloons and licking mint-chip ice cream like it owed her rent money.
Panic clawed up my throat. I was thirty-five, a billionaire, a man in complete control of his empire. But the memory of her shoe heel drilling through my foot, her hand clamping onto places hands don't belong in public, haunted me. Some things you don't forget.
"Let's go," I barked, spinning on my heel so fast the sales tags in my pocket crinkled.
"But the car – "
"We'll walk."
"It's a two-mile walk."
"Good. Exercise."
Mark blinked. "Dude, are you okay?"
No. No, I was not.
Because ten years later, one glimpse of Alaska-the-chaos-goblin, and I remembered everything: the sting of humiliation, the spark of banter, and the infuriating pull of attraction I'd spent a decade trying to bury.
I shoved my hands in my pockets, jaw tight.
Avoid. Evade. Forget.
Because some accidents shouldn't be repeated.