I had a lot of regrets, but I loved my life and was proud of how far I’d come. I never felt a lick of shame for the things I’d done and the shit I’d gone through. But, sometimes, the fact that it took me at least twenty minutes to read a single page of text kicked the feet out from under me. I wasn’t a stupid man, but I was keenly aware of how critical I was of myself when it came to my academic capabilities.
“It’s not for everyone. That’s for sure. Besides, outsourcing leaves more time for you to make that video I’ve been begging for.”
I shook my head. “I’ve made so many of your ideas already, Eugene. The mechanic one. The one with the lifeguards and the guy who almost drowned and wanted to show his appreciation.”
Eugene looked like the cat who ate the canary. “That was a good one. So you’ll do it, right?”
“I make no promises.”
“You’ll do it.” He nodded, far too pleased with himself.
He wasn’t wrong.
FIVE
SAWYER
Somewhere after thefourth lap I lost count, but that wasn’t unusual for me. The pool had always been my escape. In the water, I was untouchable. None of my parents' bullshit could reach me here. While my brother played mediocre baseball, I excelled in the pool. Not that I ever let my parents find out, or they’d have shoved me toward a team and made me go to meets, and just in general sucked the fun out of it like they did everything else.
My muscles burned by the time I stopped, and when I popped out of the water at the end of the lane, Yvette was there waiting for me. I met Yvette my freshman year of college. She, unlike me, had been on the swim team, and she lowkey hated that I’d never joined up.
“It still annoys me how good you are.” Yvette sat on the edge of the pool and slipped her legs into the water.
“It still annoys me that you’re annoyed, so we’re even.” Done for the day, I yanked the swim cap off my head, freeing my hairfrom its prison. “What are you doing here on a Monday? Don’t you have an evil day job?”
“Paid time off is a wonderful thing. You should have said you were coming here; I’d have done laps with you.”
“If you want to have coffee after, I can wait downstairs for you. I was just going to go home and work anyway.” The gym we went to was in a building that housed different offices, and on the ground floor there were a couple of restaurants and a cafe. The cafe was used to people setting up with their laptops and getting work done. It wouldn’t be the first time I waited there for Yvette.
“Aww, you do love me.” Yvette kissed my cheek and gave me a shove. “Now prove it and get out of my lane.”
“So warm. So kind.” I shook my head and climbed out of the pool. After a quick shower to get the chlorine off my skin, I redressed in my slacks and my usual button-up. Yvette would give me shit for my wardrobe, but I opted to leave the shirt untucked under my sweater. I knew I looked like a nerd, but I kind of was so it had never bothered me.
At least it never used to bother me. Then I saw Lukas, and he reminded me that, once upon a time, I hadn’t always wanted to be this sweater-wearing stiff. When I was a kid, I wanted a leather jacket. A black one with zippers and buckles, and I made the grave mistake of imparting this desire to my parents. It wasn’t the first time the vein in my mother’s forehead pulsed as she clenched her jaw, but it was the first time her anger had been directed at me with such force.
No son of mine is going to walk around looking like a criminal.
My older brother just shook his head at me like he couldn’t believe I’d been so stupid. Now I could afford a jacket like that, but I worried that I’d look stupid in it. I wasn’t really a leatherbiker jacket kind of guy, but the small rebellious part of me still wanted one just to piss my parents off.
Ever since my trust fund was transferred over to my control a few years ago, I’d taken delight in the fact that they could no longer hold it over me. I could do things like buy a leather jacket and not worry about what they were going to say or do. Now the worst they could do was yell at me and tell me what a disappointment I was. That wasn’t news.
After I lined up and got my coffee and my croissant, I took a seat in the corner of the cafe at a table by the windows and set my laptop up. Other than my book and the one I was working on with Lukas, I ran a side business as an editor, and sometimes I dabbled in small graphic design projects.
I’d ghostwritten before, but none of those projects had consumed me the way the book with Lukas did. We hadn’t gotten very far yet. We’d only met once after I found out what he really did for a living, and we still had a lot of ground to cover. I’d tried to get him to send me notes to work off, but he said he’d rather work directly with me.
While Lukas didn’t actively star in any new productions, he did direct, produce, and film them himself. So we had to work around his shooting schedule. This was a side project for him, a passion project, but it clearly wasn’t his priority at the moment. Which was fine. It gave me time to rewrite the introduction several times until I felt like I got the tone just right.
The introduction touched on the reasons he wanted to write the biography. It had taken most of our last meeting for me to get the details from him. What drove him to write this? What kind of story did he have to tell?
There were clearly skeletons in Lukas’s closet. I saw their ghosts in his eyes sometimes. So far, I’d managed to not ask about them. We’d get there when he was ready.
I was putting the finishing touches on a small design project when Yvette appeared and sat down across from me. She pushed at the screen of my laptop, closing it partway.
“Computer time over. It’s friend time now.” She sipped at her latte and flicked her braid from where it sat draped over her shoulder to behind her. It had been hidden under the swim cap, so I hadn’t seen the most recent style change.
“Your hair looks nice. What’s left of it.”
“Thanks.” She ran her fingers over the side of her head above her ears where it had been shaved down short. The top had been left long, though. “It’s going to be a nightmare if I ever let it grow out.”
