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It was going to feel so good to be together again.

He hoped Bren might still be dreaming when he got there.

Maybe they could meet up.

40

“Hey, Dad, do you have a minute?”

Dad turned with a squeak of ancient chair wheels, his hand rumpling hair above a face creased with fading frown lines.

“Yes, please, distraction—I mean son. What’s up?”

“Is everything OK?” A.J. asked, recognizing a writer’s block when he saw one.

“The notes aren’t cooperating today.”

“What are they doing instead?” he asked, peering over his dad’s shoulder. From what he could see at a glance, it didn’t look terrible.

“Copyright infringement mostly.”

“Hey I did that last year too!” A.J. said, remembering how he almost owed Evanescence money.

“Well, you’re in good company here,” his dad said, patting his lap so Rudy laid his head there. Whether they were a cure for writer’s block or not, ear scritches were just plain good for the soul.

“Never mind me and my unruly spawn. What does the first of my good children need?”

A.J. peered over his dad’s shoulder for the ill-behaved sibling he didn’t know he had, then shook himself back into the conversation.

“So, the music school in Cork actually wants two recorded pieces as part of the application. One from a list and then, just, any song we pick.” His hand clenched around the flash drive as the words spilled out. “Do you think it would be weird to play something I wrote? I’m not really sure if I’d ever want to perform professionally but if I could make money doing something with music, I think that would make me really—Dad?”

Dad waved him off with the hand he’d used to dab at the corners of his eye, his smile shaky as he spoke.

“Sorry. Not every day your son tells you he wants to follow in his old man’s devastatingly handsome footsteps.”

“Yeah, like you gave me any choice,” A.J. said, skirting past Dad’s appraisal.

Back when they’d been getting to know about each other’s pasts, Bren had been quick to point out how different their parents’ toolkits had been growing up. Bren only got songs at bedtime instead of when he was scared, hungry or needed to sit down and listen to what his parents were saying.

“Once you find something that makes your screaming baby let you sleep through the night, you lean into it. You’ll be on my side once you have some of your own.”

A house in the Irish countryside or maybe a sleepy suburb over in Cork—Bren with laugh lines and flecks of grey, holding a bundle of—

A.J. spluttered as he hurled himself out of the future that Dad had forced him to contemplate.

“So, yeah uh—” He squeezed the flash drive in his hand again. “Do you think it would be dumb to send in a piece I wrote as the second audition?”

Dad considered the general space around him with his face set.

“As long as it’s not ‘A.J. Walker Presents: An Ode To Chopsticks’,” Dad said, waving his hand like it was spelled out across a marquee.

“It’s, maybe, like, one step above that,” A.J. said.

He’d never been exactly confident in The Navigator until Mrs. Doherty had handed him back that ninety-eight, but he couldn’t remember wanting to burn the thing down to the ground quite as badly as this new piece.

“Well, let’s take a look,” Dad said, holding out his hand.

A.J. handed the flash drive over without letting out the sigh he was containing, which should have qualified him for some kind of award really.