Chapter 1: Kyle

A Friendly Game of Tennis

“Who are we playing and why did I agree to this again?” I asked grouchily. I was, admittedly, moderately hungover at 10 AM on a Sunday morning after a somewhat adventurous Saturday night.

“We’re playing a senior partner at my firm, whose good graces I’m trying to get into, and his wife. You are doing this because you’re a good friend, and ostensibly decent at tennis,” Reed, my longtime friend, said.

“Friendly reminder, I said I was good at tennis in high school and have barely touched a racquet since I graduated college,” I said, hoping to temper expectations.

“You also said it was probably like riding a bike and your muscle memory would kick in,” Reed replied in a haughty tone. He was mocking my overly confident drunken words from the previous weekend when he initially presented the idea.

“Whatever, it doesn’t really matter if we win,” Reed continued. “This douche is always talking up how good he and his wife are. They play on ladders and shit at this fancy racquet club we’re meeting at. He basically wants to show off, if we get smoked it’ll just feed his ego since I’ve been telling him how much I love the game and how much I practice. If we win he’ll be foaming at the mouth for a rematch. Either way, I win because I get more face time with him at work.”

“I’m still amazed you took fucking tennis lessons just to make friends with this guy,” I said.

“You know my rules, no expense spared in pursuit of climbing the ladder and making money,” Reed said with a grin that reminded me of a shark. He had always been unapologetically ambitious, which I somewhat identified with, although I was not quite on his level.

“Right, and in the pursuit of women. You remember the time you went fucking fly fishing in Wyoming trying to score points with Wendy’s dad?” I laughed as I brought up the memory.

“That’s a fucking low blow, man. I was young and dumb.”

Wendy was Reed’s ex who he had been infatuated with when I met him ten years ago. We were both living in Dallas at the time, and I was dating Wendy’s best friend Matilda, who went by Tilly. We had become fast friends trying to navigate the complexities of dating the daughters of high-society Highland Park families while we tried to make our way in life just after college graduation.

I had moved away in my mid-20s to work for a startup in Silicon Valley called Theranos that a couple buddies from my days in college at Cal said was going to be the next Amazon. Despite my best efforts, that ultimately led to my break up with Tilly. I had stayed in touch with Reed, though.

Reed had been in law school at Texas Wesleyan when we met, which was a constant source of embarrassment for Wendy and Tilly; they always wanted him to lie and say he was at SMU. Neither woman understood that for guys like Reed, who came from a relatively modest background, a full scholarship for law school was far more important than the name on the diploma.

He ended up getting a job in Houston after graduation with a pretty high-profile law firm and had risen through the ranks. I gathered he was pretty skilled at what he did and I knew that his work ethic was strong considering how many hours he put in. I think he was starting to get tired of me making Suits jokes when he had to work late. He now had his eye on becoming a partner. Wendy had been willing to stick around and live in Houston but Reed grew more and more annoyed with pretentious bullshit.

Meanwhile, the cracks at Theranos had been obvious to me almost from day one since my job was technical documentation of the core product. I was about to bail, but when I found out about the Walgreens partnership I decided to hold out. By the following year I was convinced the whole thing was a bubble and got out while I could even though my stock options hadn’t fully vested.

Reed and I would frequently hop on Skype in those days and debrief about things over a few drinks, so he knew my concerns about Theranos well. When I finally bailed he suggested maybe a change of scenery was in order. My friends from Cal were all still drinking the Theranos Kool-aid, so I decided ‘what the heck’ and moved to Houston. Reed connected me with a drinking buddy of his who was a VP at a medium-sized tech firm for a job and the rest was history.

Reed finally decided enough with Wendy, and they had broken up soon after I moved to Houston. I was not sad to see her go. Unfortunately, Reed then had a truly awful experience with a ‘saving herself for marriage’ girl he had dated as a rebound, and quickly married, after he and Wendy broke up.

He married Alayna on a whim in Vegas and things had been a mess from day one. Alayna was extremely controlling and extremely unappreciative of my brand of humor so we did not speak as much during the six months he had been married. During the divorce process I had sort of become his confidant. When, with characteristic charisma, Reed jumped two feet first back into seeking out female companionship, I was his ‘go to’ wingman. He was fully committed to a bachelor lifestyle following his experiences with Wendy and Alayna.