Page 3 of Heartache & Playdates
There was only one woman in my life that I’d ever pictured marrying and having a family with. But we were teenagers when we knew each other, so I doubt it was real.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw Peyton Russo.
It was a windy fall day, and I was sitting in calculus class, which I took in what would have technically been my sophomore year, but since I completed my freshman and sophomore credits my first year of high school, I was taking my junior and senior credits my second year to graduate early at age sixteen. I was staring out the window at the leaves rustling in the trees when I heard the door open. A gorgeous girl with long chestnut hair and huge green eyes walked into the classroom. She had the sort of presence that commanded attention.
It was like something out of a movie. Time stood still and my entire world narrowed to a pinpoint where only she and I existed. A glow surrounded her as the mid-morning sun shone through the window illuminating her in nature’s spotlight. Her long brunette hair hung down to her waist and shimmered with strands of golden highlights weaved through. Her large green eyes surrounded by dark, thick lashes mesmerized me from across the room, pulling me under their spell.
She looked like a real-life angel.
“Class this is Peyton Russo, she just transferred from Washington D.C.” Mrs. Zolinski introduced her.
Then, in slow motion, her gaze dipped down to the ground, she brushed a hair that had fallen in her face behind her ear and when she looked back up her full cherry lips parted in a wide smile revealing the smile that haunted me to this day.
Peyton’s smile was the sort of smile that could cure the world’s pain. It wasn’t just a facial expression; it was a religious experience. Seeing Peyton smile was like seeing a window into the heavens.
That was it. The moment she smiled at me I was hers. All these years later, she still owned a part of me. Sadly, it was my heart—the part that I would need to be in a committed relationship with someone. Hence me being single for the past two decades.
Beside me, Lizzy cleared her throat. I glanced over and saw that her brow was lifted in passive accusation. “Wherever you just went, tells me it isabsolutelyin the cards for you. You were thinking about Totga, weren’t you?”
Damn. Lizzy was too perceptive. Totga was the clever name that Lizzy had given Peyton. It was an acronym for “The One That Got Away.”
Only a handful of people in my life knew about Peyton, Lizzy was one of them. She and my brothers, or the two men that I considered brothers Nick and Alex. The three of us met when we ended up in the same group home together in our adolescence.
I’d been nine at the time, Alex was eleven, and Nick was thirteen. We weren’t a likely trio, but we’d bonded over a love of video games, girls, sports, and ambition.
None of us had had an easy time growing up, we’d all been in the system basically our entire lives. But we were all determined to not let our circumstances define us. If anything, our humble beginnings drove us to be more successful, to prove everyone around us wrong. To show that we wereworthy, that we could make something out of our lives. We’d all ended up becoming successful in our own rights.
I was, as Lizzy pointed out, the tech nerd of The Three Musketeers. From the time I could remember I could disarm any security system I came across. I knew all the cheat codes for every video game and could hotwire cars. I’d carried that gift into my adulthood and developed a cybersecurity system that was used by the Pentagon. I’d been offered billions for the patent but turned it down. Money wasn’t everything and my code in the hands of the wrong people could start wars.
At age sixteen, with my high school diploma in hand I was emancipated and got a full ride academic scholarship to Stanford. In four years, at age twenty, I graduated with a master’s degree in computer science and electrical engineering.
Immediately after graduation I started my own company, TTT Security Systems. The company went public six years ago and the IPO was over seventy dollars per share. Since then, the stock value has skyrocketed.
Alex, who was two years my senior, had been the athlete in the group before he had to drop out of school to provide for his pregnant girlfriend. He worked his ass off in construction until he started his own business, Vaughn Holdings. He began by buying and renovating apartment complexes around the Bay Area but quickly the company went global. Within a few years he became a millionaire.
Nick, the eldest in our trio who was rounding the corner to forty, was the talker. He was a salesman, a showman. He was the true entrepreneur in the group. He’d built his media empire starting as an intern at a local radio station. Soon he was on the air. Within two short years, his radio show was not only number one in its area, it had been syndicated. Once he started making real money, he dabbled in the stock market and made a few bold investments that had paid off. When they did, he created Locke Media Group and bought the station that he’d interned at as well as two other local stations.
We’d all started from nothing and were now leaders in our field. Some people didn’t understand my bond with Alex and Nick, or hell even with my ex, Lizzy and her husband. But I didn’t have a family. I was in the system from the age of five and before that my life hadn’t been easy. Hannah, Lizzy, Ryan, Alex and Nick…they were my family.
A loud bell rang out and we both looked up and saw that Hannah had reached the top. Lizzy and I began to cheer as our nimble five-year-old came down and immediately started another climb.
“So, what’s the deal with Totga? Have you honestlyneverlooked her up?” Lizzy asked. “In all these years?”
“She’s not on social media.”
Her lips flattened to a straight line. “Oh, please. You could find out her phone number, address, social security number, credit score, medical history, her latest Amazon order and probably what she ate for breakfast in less than ten minutes.”
“Five minutes,” I corrected her.
“Exactly, sooo, have you?”
I sighed as I responded honestly. “No.”
“Why not?”
Because she left. She left me and didn’t even say goodbye. And in all these years, she hadn’t looked me up either. Or if she did, she wasn’t interested enough to reach out. I had an Instagram account and was the CEO and founder of a billion-dollar company that had made headlines in several national and international publications.
I wasn’t hard to find. If she wanted to find me, she could.
