of my mouth before I thought to check them. Damn it. I didn’t want him to think I was being contrary, but I was curious. Believing that everything around us was fake, manufactured, as if we were living inside the movie The Matrix, was, well, weird.
“Because it makes the things that have hurt me in life, the pain I’ve felt, more manageable,” Robbie said.
Eleanor, shockingly, reached across the table and patted his hand.
“Like losing your father?” Jason asked.
I choked on an onion. Oh my god. He went there. With Severin. Over dinner. I gulped some wine to clear my throat.
Severin glanced up from where he was pushing his food around his plate. He met Jason’s gaze and said, “Yes.”
A look of understanding passed between them, and Jason lowered his head with a nod. “That makes perfect sense to me.”
Amazingly, Severin seemed to relax after that. There was a lovely rapport that existed between the four of us at the table, but I was darned if I knew how it had gotten there. The rest of the meal was conversationally just as random as the beginning. Severin rarely answered direct questions, but he fired out ideas and opinions that seemingly had nothing to do with the conversation at hand. We veered from the weather at the North Pole to how he lived in hotels and didn’t ever reside in the many residences he owned. So much for sitting on the golden throne. This topic rolled into his dislike of material possessions and his collection of classic cars, housed in a garage in Los Angeles. He owned sixty-four luxury cars but didn’t consider them possessions. Logical? No. It was mentally exhausting trying to keep up.
“Your gift is the largest we’ve ever considered,” Robbie said toward the end of the meal while we enjoyed our pear sorbet. “While I like that you clearly understand that we would like to expand the company’s exposure on college campuses, positioning us as a potential employer to some of the brightest engineering minds in the future, I’m curious as to what you think will be the most successful way to engage students?”
Aha, finally! Shoptalk. This was my wheelhouse. I gave Jason a look that said, I’ve got this. Then I carefully put down my spoon even though my sorbet called to me with an insistence that was hard to ignore. I smoothed the tablecloth with my hands and focused on the best way to answer his question. I fell back on my tried-and-true method of numeric persuasion.
Robbie listened and nodded as I quoted statistics and demographics for the campaign’s optimum reach, but I got the feeling I was losing him. Panic made me talk faster as I pointed out that the Severin Robotics name would be attached to every bit of swag we distributed. That didn’t work either. He still looked underwhelmed. I felt as if I were rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic while the ship slowly sank into the icy North Atlantic. I needed to get him enthused about how the ACC could use a partnership with Severin Robotics to raise money to fight cancer and give Severin Robotics the massive exposure he sought.
“Well, you’ve given me a lot to think about,” Robbie said.
“Chelsea’s being very modest about our ambitions,” Jason said.
I looked at him and shook my head. He wouldn’t.
“And she left out the part about the BattleBots.” He did.
I was going to murder him. We’d talked about this. We were not going to pitch his insane robot idea.
“BattleBots?” Robbie asked. He dabbed his mouth with his napkin and leaned in. In. Instead of out, which was what he’d been doing when I talked.
“Yes,” Jason said. “We had originally thought this could be something used for in-house employee engagement, but I think it could be much bigger. Picture this: each college campus that participates is in charge of building a robot—”
“That serves the community in some way,” I interrupted. Jason looked at me in confusion. Too bad. If he was going to pitch this lunacy, I was going to make it the grown-up version with community involvement and not a death match between jacked-up old toasters.
“In what way?” Eleanor asked.
Jason shrugged. He looked as if he was grappling with my concept, but then he said, “That’s up to them, but the college with the most badass—er, resourceful—bot wins the coveted tournament cup.”
“There’s a cup?” Robbie asked.
“Sure. Like winning a Stanley Cup but for robotics. It could become an annual event, and every year the