Spring Break Secret by Holly Rayner
Tom
Tom had insisted on moving so much of his schedule around to accommodate his extended drive and lunch with Louisa that his next day was an absolute marathon of meetings, phone calls, and hurried conversations.
His head was, however, entirely in the clouds, off thinking about Louisa and how good it had felt to kiss her and twirl her hair within his fingers. He drifted through his day as best he could, signing off on various things without reading them too closely, nodding along in meetings, and wondering what would make a good gift for Rei when Louisa finally agreed to let him meet her.
But one thing he could not float through was his weekly one-on-one meeting with Nick. Neither of them ever missed this meeting, no matter what, and it was when they made most of their critical decisions and reviewed everything important from that week.
Nick arrived in Tom’s office right on time, his laptop bag over his shoulder. “I’ve got a ton to review with you, man,” Nick said, pulling the frosted glass door shut behind him. “Some of it isn’t our typical one-on-one material, just confirming some orders and shipments and stuff like that, but I couldn’t find you yesterday.”
“Sorry about that,” Tom said, closing his laptop so he would stop scrolling through pictures of Louisa and have a chance at processing any of the things Nick wanted to say to him.
“Anyway, let’s just get through all this.” Nick sat down across from Tom and flipped open his laptop. “All right, so, we’ve got the first shipment of Comentex coming down on the trucks three weeks from now, but we need to store it at the construction site, so we need approval for them to park the trucks even before construction begins, which is going to cost a little extra. I was thinking we could pull it out of the landscaping budget and cut the cactus fountain—”
Something triggered in Tom’s memory as Nick was talking, and he raised a hand to cut his friend off. “Wait. Comentex?”
“Right,” Nick said. “The main chemical going into our foundations. We ordered a ton of it and it’s already scheduled for shipment, but in order to let the guys park on our site, that counts as labor activity, so—”
“Hold on.” Tom remembered that this was the exact chemical Louisa had talked about during their first meeting, but he couldn’t recall what she was trying to say about it. He hadn’t exactly been poring over the research papers she kept trying to show him. But he knew that she said it would be bad for the environment, and she had seemed really upset about it. “Tell me more about this stuff, Comentex.”
Nick looked confused. “It was part of the initial building proposal. It’s the stuff that will let us build right on the shore without worrying about sands shifting under the foundation.”
“Right, right. And are we sure about it being safe to use?”
Now Nick looked concerned. “Our attorneys looked everything over, and we got the permit from the county to use it. Everything is good to go with this stuff.”
“Right, the lawyers say it’s fine, and the county says it’s fine, but what about the environmental people? Is there any research on this stuff?”
“Uh,” Nick said, clicking around in his email. “There are a few studies, they say the impact on humans is minimal. No cracks in the buildings, no problems with the structure or the foundation.”
“What about its effect on other stuff, like… I don’t know, like sea turtles?”
Nick laughed. “Come on, man. I know you got all into that eco stuff last time we were here, but that was like ten years ago. We’re not developing a resort and residential complex for turtles.”
Tom was not convinced that this was a good idea. “What would happen if we just didn’t use Comentex? Could we find something else?”
Nick looked like his eyes were going to bug out of his head. “Tom, dude, I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but there’s no way this project can work without Comentex. It’s what makes the whole thing possible.”
“Don’t you have a whole team of inventors and gizmo heads all trying to come up with the next best thing? Ask them.”
“I did, and this is what they came up with.” Nick was pointing to something on his screen. “Look—without Comentex, this development will cost more to build than we’ll make off it in fifty years. It’s what the entire profit model relies on.”
“Haven’t there been concerns raised about this stuff getting into the water?”
Nick clicked around, searching for something, then pulled up an email from months prior. “Some activists are mad about it, but our lawyers said it’s absolutely fine. Even if we have to pay some settlements for damaging coastal areas, it’ll still be way less money than we’ll actually make on the project.”
“Wait a minute.” Tom leaned in, narrowing his eyes as he read over the email. “So there is a possibility that this stuff can pollute the water?”
“Not badly enough that it will hurt the project,” Nick insisted. “Look, it’s all laid out right here. Even in the worst-case scenario, like if we kill all the turtles or something, we’d just pay some little fines.”
Tom did not like this idea. It sounded like they were just paying for the privilege of being able to destroy the ecosystem here, and that their lawyers and accountants had insisted it was okay because they would still be able to make a large profit.
“I want to put a hold on this for now,” Tom said. “I want us to look into potential alternatives to this Comentex stuff.”
“Tom, there are no alternatives.” Nick sounded frustrated, almost as angry as Louisa had been with him at the restaurant a few days ago. “All of this was outlined and approved months ago. The shipment has already been paid for and scheduled. If we delay this, we could lose millions of dollars.”
“So? You just said we could afford a bunch of fees.”
Tom still wasn’t convinced that the project, or even the use of Comentex, needed to be tossed aside entirely. But he owed it to Louisa, to Rei, and to his company to at least look into it. Perhaps the research would show that its risks were minimal, and Louisa was just being alarmist. Or maybe they could find a way to ensure that the chemical stayed in the foundations where it was meant to be, and didn’t leach out into the ocean.
“Tom,” Nick pleaded, “listen to me. I don’t know what’s going on with you lately, or why you haven’t been around the office much or answering my texts, but we can’t throw a wrench in the gears right now. It’s too late.”
“I’m the CEO,” Tom said, leaning back in his chair and enjoying, perhaps for the first time, his title and position at Palmco. “And I say we wait. Construction projects get delayed all the time. I only need a few extra days to dive into the research, see what we’re really getting ourselves into. Have your guys at the lab send me everything they’ve got on this Comentex stuff, and I’ll talk to some people I know.”
Nick opened his mouth to keep arguing, then snapped it shut. Tom had never pulled rank on him like this. “Fine,” he said, slamming his laptop shut. “But I’m telling you, a bunch of experts already looked all this over. You’ll see—Comentex is perfect for this project, perfect for this company, and you’re just wasting time with this.”
“Maybe I am. How about this—if I end up being wrong, and this delay is completely pointless, then whatever losses we take as a result of it, I’ll pull from my paycheck this year. Deal?”
Nick’s eyes, again, went huge and buggy. “It could be millions of dollars, Tom.”
“I have enough money,” Tom said. It was true. He might have to liquidate some investments, but it would be worth it. “I’ll take that bet.”
“All right,” Nick said, now clearly soothed by Tom’s promise and the knowledge that this wouldn’t end up financially damaging the company overall. “I’ll get everything we have on Comentex to you by tomorrow morning.”
“Thanks, man.”
Nick left, and Tom exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Talking with Nick wasn’t usually this stressful—but then again, Tom didn’t usually push back against Nick’s plans. It was Nick who had the big ideas, who consulted with the inventors and architects, who made these big moneymaking projects happen. Tom typically just signed off on whatever Nick wanted to do.
If Tom was honest, Nick was a much better businessman than he was. He had a natural talent for making money and running a huge company, and he loved doing it. Tom lent his gravitas as CEO and managed things like board member relations, but when it came to the day-to-day operations that kept Palmco afloat, it was mostly Nick.
After Tom had caught his breath and shaken out some of the stress from the meeting, he took out his phone and dialed Louisa. She sounded happy to hear from him when she answered the phone, but even more thrilled when Tom said that he wanted to meet up as soon as possible to hear more about her research and understand the impact of Comentex in greater detail.