“Not me, this. And you better. Because if you don’t, you’re gonna be too close to my grandma for me to be having the thoughts I’m starting to have about you.”

Delia flushed everywhere, but when she raised her head and caught Eric’s small, tentative smile, she didn’t mind.

“Here goes,” he said. “‘Breaths raise you from the depths.’ And cue laughter.”

Delia did, a little, because it was corny. But one thing Delia had learned from her dad was to embrace the corny.

Eric placed his hands on his stomach and signaled for her to do the same on hers. “Next time you want to scream and not scare away stoned summer students, breathe in, and think, ‘Breaths raise you from the depths.’”

“Breaths raise you from the depths,” she said.

And they did.

But so did Eric.

SIXTEEN

GOLDEN RULE • The investor with the gold makes the rules

LUCY SHUT HER LAPTOP and swiveled her head between Maddie and Delia. The bags under Delia’s eyes were barely noticeable now that she’d allowed Lucy to apply a heavy dose of concealer, the same tactic Lucy had been employing all week to mask her own.

For days, Delia had been head down into the wee hours, immersing herself in all things database, and Lucy, feeling bad about the other night, had stayed up right alongside her. Maddie was there too; she’d stepped it up, just like she’d promised. The end result . . .

Lit looked fabulous.

Lit sounded fabulous.

Lit was fabulous.

Because Lit worked.

Worked!

Lit would kick Gavin Cox’s ass.

And impress Ryan’s.

Ryan.

Not his ass.

Though maybe that too.

“Enough,” Lucy said, placing her laptop beside her Teen Vogue mug, a welcome gift from her editor after her first article. Eau de locker room in the ValleyStart headquarters made Lucy insist they work in the dorm room. She’d set a whiteboard on the desk in front of the windows with a running to-do list, had switched out the harsh white fluorescents for warmer bulbs, and played ambient music emitting “problem solving” brainwaves day and night.

While Delia and Maddie had been making sure the code and user interface worked together seamlessly, Lucy had been putting the pieces in place for their beta test, which due to its reliance on crowdsourcing presented more of a challenge in the testing phase than some of the other team projects. A challenge, but one Lucy had eighty-five reasons to master. Prevailing in the beta test gave them an eighty-five percent chance of winning Demo Day, which meant Lucy was that much closer to Pulse and to Stanford.

“That’s enough.” Lucy pushed her laptop to the far corner of the desk. “You know my motto.”

“Quality and quantity,” Maddie said.

“Style leads to substance,” Delia said.

“Always detox after a full moon, not before,” Maddie said.

“Never wear plaid,” Delia said.