“I take it the meeting went well?” I asked.
“It went better than well. Not only is the venture into the European market happening, but the investors are fronting most of the money. We projected we’d still have to pay for forty percent of this out of pocket, but we’re only going to have to pay ten.”
“Ten percent,” I said.
“Yep.”
I couldn’t believe it. I drew Mac in for a hug, not knowing how else to react. That meant so much more work was coming my way. I would have to get the coders on board with stringent European market rules, and I’d have to dig into the employees of the company and see if anyone spoke any other languages. There would be things to translate and platforms to reformat. We would need more space for uploading more videos, and I would have to personally reach out to the dominant companies in Europe and start conceiving positive business relationships. My mind was spinning with all the things that would have to be accomplished by this time next year, and the only thing that seemed appropriate was to smile.
Smile and think of Abby.
“What’s gotten into you?” Mac asked.
I was still hugging him through all the excitement and promptly let him go.
“I’m just excited,” I said, smiling. “Aren’t you excited?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I just don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile this big before. You road lagged or something?”
“No,” I said. “I’m just thankful.”
“Uh huh,” he said. “Well, you have a speech to give. Stay away from numbers and specifics. I’ll field those questions tonight. I sent you a massive file to your email. You can read through the numbers tonight from there.”
“Wonderful. Just wonderful.”
“Did you have too much coffee?” Mac asked.
“No,” I said, grinning. “No, I did not.”
I strode past Mac and headed for the stage. It was time for me to give my speech, and I knew exactly what I wanted to say. I walked up the side stairs and grabbed the microphone, and as I readied myself to talk, everyone was staring at me.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you’ll forgive my tardiness,” I said. “A massive ‘thank you’ to Mac Rosenberg for fielding a meeting I missed because winter weather does not agree with rental cars.”
Laughter trickled across the ballroom floor while Mac gave a polite wave to the crowd.
“I want to thank you all for being here tonight,” I said. “This charity we’re raising money for is near and dear to my heart. As you know, employees of this company take a trip every summer to a country in need and build fresh water wells for as many towns as they can get to in three weeks. Usually, we send twenty people, but this year, I would like to celebrate this new professional venture by sending thirty.”
Applause ricocheted across the room, and the sound pulled a smile across my cheeks.
“Thank you, thank you. The money raised tonight will not only fund the extra ten people, but it will go to the charity we support that devises and creates affordable water filtration systems for third-world countries. With our expansion into the European marketplace, it will open up monetary possibilities for us to make an even greater impact than we are now. So, for those of you who are willing to open up your pocketbooks and donate, from the bottom of my heart, I want to thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Colin!” someone shouted.
I bowed my head to chuckle, and the sound stopped the room in its tracks. The conversations I had with Abby came rushing back to my mind. Conversations of me being rigid and way too serious. Conversations about how I needed to lighten up and smile more than I did. As I looked out across a ballroom full of people who were shocked to simply hear me laugh, that was when Abby’s hypothesis had been tested.
She was right. Abby had been right about me the entire time.
“On my winding road trip up here,” I began. “I carpooled with a wonderful woman. A woman whose spunk and fiery tongue opened my eyes to a lot of things about me I wasn’t willing to admit. She called me things like ‘rigid’ and ‘stick in the mud,’ and for a while there, it upset me.”
Murmurs and head nods slowly trickled through the audience, confirming my worst fears. People actually saw me that way, despite how hard I’d worked in my life.
“She called me things like Scrooge and Grinch and told me I needed to lighten up, and it made me very upset,” I said. “I kept thinking to myself, how in the world can a laidback woman like her judge a hardworking man like me? But she taught me two very important lessons that I brought with me tonight. She taught me that everyone has a story, and she taught me that sometimes, the truth hurts. After opening up a bit to her, she told me her life story. Well, her life story that spanned these last few months of the year, and it exposed me to a strength I didn’t know any one human being could possess. And it’s because of her that I stand here right now with a smile on my face.”
I could feel everyone’s eyes on me as I chuckled into the microphone.
“As crazy as it sounds, she seems to have given me a new outlook on life that you all can see plainly up on this stage. Your reactions to my own reactions have proven to me that she was right. She was right to identify all those traits within me that I didn’t want to admit to myself. I sunk myself into work and became a serious individual and used my business and my success as a reason rather than as a culprit. But
