I could wait until he comes back...
Except of course that’s a terrible idea on nearly every front. But it’s so tempting. The thought of going back to work, of calling more clients, of sending more emails... In the heady memories of what we’ve already done in this office, it’s hard to escape the desire.
But Nash and I have no understanding on what happens next, and I don’t just have a job, I have a business to run, so I give myself one last second to soak in the scent of Nash that lingers in the air and the remembered sound of his soft grunt as he came in his fist, before I put my grown-up socks back on and get back to work.
My dad calls that evening, just as I’m digging into my take-out curry.
“Hello?” I say around a mouthful of coconut rice.
“Hey, sport. Am I catching you at a bad time?”
I grimace. I try to see my dad every couple weeks, but lately we’ve communicated more by phone and text than face-to-face. Even the phone calls have gotten spotty.
“No.” I stuff a fresh roll in behind the rice and chew quickly. “Just finishing dinner.”
“How you been?” I can hear the smile in my dad’s voice, which only makes me feel guiltier that I’ve been out of touch the last little while.
“Yeah, good. Busy.” I wince, knowing how insufficient it sounds.
“Busy.” Dad snorts. “Brady, I’m going to outlaw that word from your vocabulary. You use it every time we talk. It gives me no new information.”
My dad is my biggest supporter in every way imaginable. When other people’s parents would have thrown up their hands in disgust after I quit my fourth job in three years out of school, Dad shrugged and waited for me to make my next move. He reviewed my business plans, introduced me to my first client—a tiny travel agency down the street from his house in Greektown—and even fronted me the money on my start-up costs when my credit cards were done and I still didn’t have the cash flow I needed to keep going.
“Yeah, it’s good,” I say, scrambling for work-related details that aren’t Nash’s shining eyes and the wet suction of his mouth on my dick. My dad and I are close, but there’s close and there’s weird, and the line is a pretty obvious one. “I’m working on a quote for a new client. He runs a bunch of tutoring centres.”
We talk about a few other clients—very specifically not Out & About. My dad’s a great listener and gives good advice. He’s a teacher. He’s been teaching middle school students about integers and Canada’s role in World War I for longer than I’ve been alive. The man has more patience in his little finger than I do in my whole body, and if he can get bored thirteen-year-olds to care about the Somme, then he can find a solution to almost any problem.
Except the one problem we always come back to, somehow.
“You’ve been getting out?” he says.
I pretend I don’t understand what he means. “Sure. We’ve had the co-working space for nine months now. You came by right after we moved in, remember?”
“Brady,” he says in that “we both know you’re bullshitting me, but I’m not professionally allowed to saybullshit, so let’s cut to the chase” way that only career teachers have. “I mean are you gettingout? Seeing friends? Anyone?”
“Friends?” I roll the word over my tongue like I’m a Muppet. “What does this mean? Friends?”
He laughs, but I can’t distract him. “You work a lot. I haven’t seen you in two months.”
“Sure you have! I saw you...” I do the math. It’s July... June we did the install for the pharmaceutical tech start-up in Vaughan, and Ramona was away for a weekend to go to a wedding. May... in May I lost three clients who all went out of business in the same week, which meant I spent all of May hustling to find new clients to fill that revenue gap. But the long weekend, I would have... Oh. No, I spent the long weekend in a virtual summit for IT specialists and finishing the last assignment in a certification course I needed. So...
“Have I seen you since Easter?” I ask, suddenly horrified.
Dad laughs again. “We came over for your birthday.”
My birthday. Did we go out for dinner? I don’t remember a party.
“Your mom and I brought meatloaf and strawberry shortcake,” Dad says helpfully, and suddenly I remember. The sight of them, standing together in the apartment door. My first thought was that I was dreaming. The second was that they had come to stage an intervention. And maybe they had. We got as far as opening a bottle of wine when the football phone went off. It was Nash. The festival website was down. Web hosting isn’t even part of my service, but I spent two hours on the phone with some hosting provider I had undoubtedly woken up in Ukraine before I managed to get it resolved. When I finally came back to the living room, my parents were gone, the cake was in the fridge, and the meatloaf was staying warm in the oven.
At least they had the good grace to drink the wine. I felt bad enough as it was.
Still, was that the last time I saw my dad?
“I’m sorry,” I say.
He sighs. “It’s fine. You’re an adult. But I worry. There’s working hard and then there’s...”
Whatever I’m doing.
