Chapter Seventy-Four

“So, how are you doing?” I asked Brett when he visited me in New York. We were up having beer on the rooftop.

“I’m fine,” he said, but his tone was not so convincing. I raised a brow at him. “By that, I mean I’m surviving information overload, trial by fire, meeting up with more people in a month than I ever did in my entire life, and trying to become the great Robert Clarke in approximately two hundred and fifty-five days. I’m losing my bachelor years too fast, but yeah, I’m all right.”

I reached out and squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry. It could have been me, you know.”

He nodded. “Yeah. You could have been in my shoes. But the thing is, I never dreamed of becoming a chef. I’ve always wanted to be a businessman. I can’t force this fate on you, too. It’s just things are happening too fast, too soon.”

“Don’t worry, Brett. You’ll do great. Soon, you’ll be in Forbes magazine as one of the youngest, most successful CEOs in the country. It’s written in your stars. You were brilliant in schoo