For some reason, it never occurred to me that he may still be in Edgewood. Having left the area myself, I figured he’d do the same.
He’d looked good—still had those soft features that used to get him into trouble while we were in high school with the guys that were too chicken shit to admit that they thought he was pretty.
Seeing him all grown up was a shock, but a good one.
Sending off the email, I slipped my phone back into my pocket and pulled the garage shut. The keys the facility allowed me to borrow were hanging off of my finger by the key ring, both of them clinking together while I walked back to my own car and climbed in.
The off-property garage was about fifteen minutes away from the McAllister residence, located in a highly secure facility with guards that were monitoring the property 24/7. Getting up here and showing all of my credentials had soon granted me access to my father’s rented space, allowing me to see just what had been collecting dust for the past few months since his death.
According to the property manager, the last time my father visited the garage was several years ago, leading me to believe that after the purchase of these cars, he’d set the rent on auto pay and promptly forgot about them.
While I wasn’t that savvy on classics, they seemed to be in relatively good condition. So whatever buyers Brandon had in his books would soon be getting a call once I’d gotten the all clear to sell them.
I was excited for what he had to say, mainly because I was eager to talk to him again. His wariness back at the shop wasn’t lost on me at all, however I was ready to chalk that up to the odd situation that brought us together in the first place.
Showing up at his work so out of the blue like that was no doubt jarring, especially when there had never been any type of correspondence after we’d lost touch. He didn’t seem freaked out, which was a positive.
It spelled good things for our future.
Pulling around to the admin office at the front of the facility, I dropped off the spare keys and then headed out. There was a good possibility that I’d be back sometime soon. Pictures could only do a car so much justice and with how Brandon used to be when it came to working on things, he was a hands-on sort of guy.
I was excited for him to come with me, if only for an afternoon. I was dying to catch up with him, to know what exactly was going on in his life over the past decade and a half.
As soon as I pulled out onto the main drag running through town, my car’s alert system chimed with an incoming call with my ex-wife Carrie’s name attached to it.
Tapping on the phone icon on my steering wheel, I said, “Hey you.”
She laughed. “Hey there, stranger. How was your trip?”
“Fine. Long. The air up here feels like I’m breathing in a straight tank full of pure oxygen.”
“I bet that’s doing wonders for your brain power.”
“I’ll be crunching stock numbers in my sleep.”
She laughed again. “Glad to hear it. You doing okay, though? I bet it’s weird being back there.”
It was. More than I thought it would be.
Carrie knew much about my gripes when it came to my father. Our relationship was always volatile, but she got to witness front and center how toxic we could be with each other. The day we’d gotten married, my father had decided that bringing his flavor of the week as his plus one would hardly be noticed.
If we were any family other than the McAllisters, I might have been willing to let it go for once.
However, we were never so lucky.
Reporters had shown up in droves for the chance at a glimpse of our wedding. Two powerful conglomerate families comingtogether in a formal union like ours was the kind of news that happened very seldom. Something that my father very much knew when pulling the stunt that he had.
Our fight had been horrible, resulting in my father, along with his date, being banned from the property.
That was the first time I’d cried in front of Carrie during our entire two and a half year relationship. My disappointment in my only living parent not attending my wedding through actions of his own doing had been the tipping block to send me right over the damn edge.
Still to this day, I had no idea why she ever went through with marrying me. Maybe she felt sorry for me—recognizing the lonely child that still lived inside of my man-sized frame. Or maybe it was a classic case of obligation, the pressure of which had been placed upon her shoulders by her own family.
Either way, I’d always be forever grateful for her sticking by my side through some incredibly tough times. Even if it did eventually end in us divorcing.
“I’m all right,” I finally said. “I certainly won’t complain when everything is said and done.”
“Yeah, I hear you. When you do come back, we’ll get together so you can tell me all about it over lunch. Eva misses you.”
