Another shrug. Nick bit back frustration at Hayden’s inability to understand how serious this was. And underneath the frustration was Nick’s discomfort that he didn’t know how to reach his son, powered by years of regret that he’d squandered his chance to be a full-time parent. Now he wasn’t close enough to Hayden to help him—whether he wanted help or not.
“His probation officer will be calling you later.” The officer nodded and returned to his car. Hayden slunk into the house.
The PO called as Nick was getting out of the shower before his shift. Anya got to deal with it. Her face was grim, her words clipped. Hayden, commanded to the kitchen table for the conversation, stared blankly ahead the whole time.
“You are on house arrest,” Anya said, once she was off the phone. “That means you’re either here or you’re at school. That’s it. There is no leeway on that.”
“Iwasat school!”
“When you weren’t supposed to be! The probation officer called the school, and none of your teachers said they’d asked you to stay behind.”
Hayden slumped in his chair.
“It’s not fair,” he mumbled down into his hands.
“Fair? You want to talk about fair?” Anya’s hands were on her hips, and she stretched to the very edge of her limited height.
They couldn’t keep going like this. Nick needed to find a way to fix things. Give them space, but also repair their fractured relationships.
Or, at least, he needed a break.
As he changed into his uniform at work, he punched out a text on his phone.
Tomorrow night? Angelo’s. Dinner at 6?
The reply came back pretty quickly.
Who is this?
Nick grimaced.
Sorry. It’s Nick.
He almost wroteNick from Jess’s email, but that sounded weak. The point was, he was ready to make a decision, if only not to be home on his night off. Even if they had nothing in common and the date was a disaster, Nick needed a few hours to breathe.
Sure. See you then.
That was it. A date. Not a lot of enthusiasm, and Nick still didn’t know anything about Oliver, not even what he looked like, but he didn’t have time to dwell on it. His shift was busy. A car accident, two false alarms from one of the apartment towers on the north side of the highway, and a request for assistance from the department in the next county kept Nick’s attention off his mystery man.
Social media only occurred to him the following day. Nick wasn’t really much for it. He didn’t have a cat needing its day documented, and you could only take so many pictures of your microwaved leftovers in the fire department kitchen before your life truly started looking sad.
Apparently, Oliver J. Stevenson had a similar theory about social media. Finding him took some work. In fact, Nick wasn’t even sure he’d found the right guy since it said he lived in Charlotte, but he was the only one in North Carolina, so Nick figured it must be him.
Nick was impressed, though. And intimidated. Oliver J. Stevenson looked like a movie star with short blond hair and a bright smile on a tanned, clean-shaven jaw. And he was living a movie star’s life, or close to it. The few photos posted on Oliver’s profile were full of sunshine and beautiful people. The most recent ones were tagged with locations that looked like resorts charging more a night than Nick made in a shift.
Yeah, Nick was intimidated.
What exactly was it Jess thought they had in common?
Hayden came home from school on time on Thursday, but Anya came back from the salon in a mood. One of her best clients announced they were leaving, and another, a walk-in from the day before, returned to announce she hated the color Anya gave her and demanded a complete redo at no charge.
“I told her it would be too light. She said she understood. She looked like a haystack yesterday, but she swore she was happy with it, and who am I to judge? I mean, I don’t even know her. This is why I hate doing color on walk-ins.”
“I’m going out tonight,” he said.
“Out? Where?” Anya’s eyes flashed, and Nick swallowed hard as old memories from unpleasant fights swam up. He blamed himself most days for their failed marriage, but Anya hadn’t been able to back down from an argument toward the end either. In the years after, she’d had a few boyfriends, although none that lasted long. It didn’t seem worth it to make a big deal about Nick’s date with Oliver.
“I’m going to have a bite to eat.”
