Decker didn’t know why, but hearing that his nephew wanted to stay there and work alongside him gave him a sense of elation. It was like a balloon was in his chest filling with helium as his nephew looked at him with almost hero worship in his eyes. But that balloon quickly popped when he reminded himself that he was as far from hero material as one could get. And his brother would be the first to point that out.
“There might be a flaw in your plan. I doubt Brian wants you to grow up like me.”
“That’s ’cause Brian can be a tool.”
“Maybe, but he’s got a good head on his shoulders and he’s smart. And he wants more for you than screwing in crown molding and painting walls.”
“What about what I want?” Miles burst out. “Because that sounds pretty cool to me.”
Decker wasn’t going to be the one to deter Miles. In fact, he was a firm believer in chasing your dreams no matter the cost.He wouldn’t have had the career he’d had if he hadn’t chased his dream with a thousand percent focus.
“Then you’d better get your phone out and call him, because this will be your last call. The second the producers get here and discover you’re squatting, your summer will be in lockdown.”
DIARY ROOM:
Poppy: It was just one of those coincidences.
Producer: Then explain how you ended up working on a project with your father after years of estrangement.
Poppy: Like I said, happy coincidence.
Producer: Can you stop fidgeting with the hair band on your wrist? It will be distracting for the viewers. Now, let’s go over that again.
13
“He’s going to kill me.”
“Who?” Poppy asked. “Brian, for your scaling a fence and trespassing in the middle of the night? Or Decker, for you tossing the phone at him and screaming, ‘You’re it’?”
“All I got out was, ‘I’m with Deck,’ and Brian lost it.”
“Describe ‘losing it’,” Poppy said, sticking her head in the box freezer, her breath turning to frost.
“What do you mean ‘describe it’?”
Poppy looked over her shoulder at Miles, who was sitting on the concrete floor, his jeans speckled with a light dusting of sawdust, his face contorted into an expression of dejection. Her heart went out to him. She felt his pain on a cellular level. It was a rusty but familiar ache in her soul that never quite went away no matter how far away from the situation she got.
As for Miles, it was still fresh. He looked like a supersized Eeyore in college gear.
“I was just trying to figure out if it was a one or two ice cream sandwich kind of talk,” she said. “I can see now it’s a two.”
She tossed the sandwiches, one after another, and the kid caught them with ease.
She grabbed two for herself and sat down next to him. The concrete was still warm from the day’s heat. She tore open one of the wrappers and took a huge bite, sinking her teeth into the chewy bittersweet chocolate cookie and through the cool ice cream. She moaned as it slid down her throat.
Before she could even get in another breath, she’d taken a second and third bite and before she knew it the sandwich was G-O-N-E.
She opened her eyes to find Miles staring at her like she’d just won the National Hot Dog Eating Championship. “What?”
“My therapist would call that emotional eating.”
She opened the other one and took a bite. Around the crumbs she said, “I call it adulting.”
“I’m clearly having a crisis of direction. What kind of crisis are you having?” he asked.
Poppy stopped mid-bite. “What do you mean? I’m not having a crisis of anything.”
“You seemed pretty upset when Deck brought up the crush accusation,” he said.
