He pulled out the important documents and folders piled to the top of the drawer. They stacked up to his calf muscles. His dad never liked to throw anything out. This delicate paper wasn’t a paper at all. It was a Polaroid photo, weathered and frayed from being stuck down there for so long, but the image was still clear. A young man and woman smiling at the camera in the middle of a gigantic outdoor concert.
The photo began to shake. That was Nathan’s hand, and his body, quivering with a realization. The young man was his father. He had far less hair now, but his gumball-sized eyes hadn’t changed a day. And the woman…with her red hair…Nathan just knew. He knew it in his heart, in every synapse in his brain.
“Mum?”
“Nope.” Mr. Baby Arm hung on the doorframe wearing nothing but boxers. His sexiness did nothing for Nathan. “But I can be your daddy.”
“Hey, I’m sorry about this, but I have to cut our morning short.” Nathan could barely get the words out. His fingers traced the picture over and over. “I have some business to attend to.”
“Early flight?”
Right. I’m a pilot.
“I have to file a flight report. It’s the unglamorous part about my job. Can you see yourself out?”
The guy’s face dropped. Nathan didn’t mean to be so sudden. But playtime was definitely over. He gave him money for breakfast and a cab and promised to call him, whatever his name was.
Nathan stared at the picture, stared at her face. That was his fucking mum!
He had spent the past six years trying to follow his dad’s instructions. Forget about her. Push the sad feelings down. Nathan had taken the extra step to cover them with a thick layer of sarcasm, sex, and alcohol. But the wound pushed through.
Maybe this was a sign. He found this picture for a reason. In rehab, they talked about signs. Well, they were referring to signs of addiction taking over your life, but signs nonetheless. There had to be a better family out there for him, one with redheads or just people who cared about him, and he intended to find them.
Chapter 2
Liam
When Liam went to sleep last night, he had made a promise to himself. No going on Facebook. He didn’t even like Facebook and believed it to be one of the worst inventions known to man.
The next morning, he threw on the same pair of weathered jeans from yesterday with his boxers peeking above the waistband and got his day started. As he cooked himself scrambled eggs while brushing his teeth, careful not to get any foam in the skillet, he thought of other things. More important things. He had a lengthy to-do list, just as he did every morning. Perhaps he should add “clean the house” to his list. Though it wasn’t that dirty, more just old.
He walked past his computer en route to the kitchen. No stopping. He scratched at his thick beard as he cooked himself some eggs. Liam had always been clean-shaven, but after the major life overhaul of the past year and a half, he decided to grow it out. He needed the change. He was a rancher now, not a city boy. He was living out in the wops, practically the middle of nowhere, with lush, rolling hills of green grass laid out before him. His shaggy black hair puffed out in wild bushels, making his eyes appear even bluer in contrast. With the beard and his muscular chest, not to mention the thick arms and legs that came from manual labor, he was the definition of rugged.
Liam lived in a shed that he and his oldest brother converted into a studio apartment for him. The bedroom was next to the kitchen, which flowed into his living room and the corner where his computer resided. He was only one guy. He didn’t need extra space.
It was during breakfast that Liamjust happenedto remember that he had to email one of his buyers. Right that instant. It had nothing to do with it being Kelly’s birthday yesterday.
Liam went on his computer, emailed the vendor, and…
“Fuck,” he said under his breath. “Fucking Facebook.”
He clicked onto Kelly’s page. She smiled at a dinner table in a fancy Wellington restaurant surrounded by their mutual friends, their faces aglow from the birthday candles. And Craig was sitting right next to her, his fucking arm around her fucking shoulders. Liam wished he were born one hundred years ago, in a time without social media, in a time when if your girlfriend left you for your best friend, you didn’t have to keep seeing pictures of them. You wouldn’t be able to compare social media updates to determine if they’d been having a long-term affair. They could be truly out of sight and out of mind.
Liam couldn’t escape it. Even after defriending them, Kelly and Craig kept popping up as “People You Might Know.” Their pictures showed up in their mutual friends’ statuses.
He heard familiar yelling coming from outside the shed.
“Yeah, I know!” he yelled back. “I only went on to email someone.”
The yelling continued in its constant dull tone.
“I really did!”
The yelling gained voices and volumes. They sounded more desperate than usual. Liam stuck his head out the window into the dark of early morning. Five of his nosiest sheep baaa’d up at him. He looked out on a sea of wool.
“Fine. I checked.” He shook his head. “Be lucky they haven’t invented Facebook for sheep.”
Some ranchers had roosters crowing to wake them up. Liam had sheep. He came from a line of sheep farmers here in New Zealand, a country where sheep outnumbered people. After being cheated on in the most unbearable fashion, he found refuge in the sea of non-judgmental wool.
