Worked up. Okay, Cal.
“We don’t want that,” I agreed.
“And that brings me to this. He says you’re not back to work either. Fix that.”
“Is that a threat?” I quipped back before I could stop myself.
“You can take it as that. Why are you not back to work?”
“Sabbatical,” I lied.
“Sure,” he said, rubbing his nose with his hand. “I looked you up. You’re not on the website.”
“What website?” There was a slight flutter in my chest.
“Delaware Financial. You worked there. It’s on your LinkedIn. You currently don’t, and you haven’t updated anything. Please don’t tell me that you went on that show to become some kind of brainless influencer? You’re not that stupid, are you?”
I was. Was I going to admit it? No.
“I’m…”
“No lies. Open and honest. You know this now. We don’t lie.”
“Your dad does.”
“Below the belt. He’s… He’s fucking scared, Ollie. He’s working on that.”
“And I’m not?” I half shouted.
“Yeah, you’re bricking it, sitting there in a dirty hoodie when your life looks like this.” He threw his arms out, like he was trying to show me my entire life. He wasn’t wrong because I was currently sat in it. On my one chair.
“Show me where you work.”
“I… I still… I’m still legally employed by Delaware.”
Honesty. Truth.
“And?”
“I haven’t even told your dad.”
“Then maybe you should?” he shouted.
Oh God. Here we were.
“I messed up,” I admitted as my heart seemed to stop.
“Then fix that,” he hissed. “And don’t come crawling back home until you can stand up and say you did. We don’t fuck things up around here and then walk away. We fix shit.”
“I know,” I said. He was a child. But I was starting to see what he was doing, and I didn’t like it. Not because of him.
Because of me.
I threw him out in the end and got myself dressed. Because he was right. And his constant nagging and the fact that he’d seen my empty fridge and ordered me an Uber Eats and added the basics to the order like he was some kind of teenage mother hen?
It was embarrassing. Humiliating. All those words that had floated around in the air as he’d done it. Like I couldn’t look after myself. I could. And I was starting to see things.
Lots of things.
