nevertheless~

Epilogue

HARDIN'S POV

I watch as the woman before my eyes shrivels and tries to neatly tuck the ends of her blouse into the pencil skirt for the 300th time today. I hope sooner or later she realizes that she’s about to have a blazer on top of all this, so it’s not like anything’s going to be visible underneath all that and especially, since the event is going to be about the opening of our new marketing firm, it’s not like our clothes will be center of attention.

When we were still not moved into her apartment, living together as we do now and the Paris tour had gotten over in July as scheduled. Jonathan had gotten into a lawsuit with one of his partners, turns out his publishing firm was in partnership with someone in Milan, and when he had flown from Paris to visit the said person in April when Tessa left me, it was regarding the lawsuit.

Soon, the court papers flew in, the management started to work in what can be called a glorified de escalation and then Jonathan & Sons.Co, shut down in the August of that year, investors of which had all pulled their monetary investments and aid back. We all had to leave.

And today, Landon, Nora, Candace and her girlfriend, Riley, Nash, his girlfriend Marcia, Tessa and I, are about to go for the inauguration of our marketing firm with Tessa as our MD. We are a small group, but the USP is we have all of Joanthan’s old clients and the BOD with the better half of the management, alongside that we also have an actual office.

After the riff-raff between us, and the lawsuits of Jonathan to the inevitable shut down, when we were back to our sweet sweet Washington, Tessa and I met up with my father, who gave this wonderful idea. Seeing that my father is already a great deal in the market, he told us he could pull some strings for us. And after a lot of string pulling, for around 6 months, today in March 2023, we are about to start this new chapter for the 8 of us.

Arranging money, starting all of this, it was fucking tough. I can’t count the number of times, we’ve all said, ‘Fuck it, we are crazy to think this works’. Finding a place, Setting up an office, Doing market analysis every month to see if we even have what it takes to live in this kind of volatile market, if we will even sustain, and then we had the problem of fund allocation, recruitment. We were all hard at work for the past 6 months. However, everytime we said, ‘Fuck all of this’; We had Tessa to say, ‘Let’s take 5 and come back’.

She’s been the best co-worker in all of this. The woman once again gave up her dream of dancing and stepped with me, just to make all of our dreams come to life. I secretly think that this is her dream too. I saw everytime in the last 6 months, when we were hard at work, breezing through stacks of paperwork for registration, bank statements, old financial reports, she looked majestic.

When I’d cross paths with her in the office I would feel a little disheartened when she didn’t even acknowledge me as she ran to her meeting with our old investors, but I’d feel like a piss boy when I used to watch her come out of that room with that gigantic smile on her face. Then I’d drive us back to her place, and she’d make me feel like the luckiest son of a bitch, as we’d cook and enjoy the rest of our evening or midnight as it were on some nights. Well, many nights.

My father has successfully gained the entire custody of Smith. Trish didn’t stand a fucking chance. Turns out that trash college lover of my name sake mother who she had left us for, left her too. With no monetary aid, and no one other than my mother who didn’t give off any good of an impression in the court, my father won, leaving Smith with him and me forever.

Ever since that, Smith has moved in with dad completely into my old apartment. Dad’s graciously given us his house to turn into our back office for now, and I moved in with Tessa.
I watch my Managing Director fiddle with her hair for all of two minutes and when my patience wears absolute thin, I say. “Baby, in this manner we’re gonna open next year”.