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I gave them a quick rundown—leaving out the dollar amounts—and the table erupted into laughter and hoots as if I’d told the best joke ever. “What’s so funny?”
“You’re just… you’re not really the type to get married, you know?” Theo said.
“Yeah, you might as well say goodbye to that money,“ Jared said with a snort.
I sighed and nodded, combing my fingers through my short beard. “You guys suck, but you’re right. I should just forget about it.”
Cam slid me a bottle of beer. “Sorry, friend. That really sucks.”
“Yeah,” I murmured, taking a swig of beer and trying to pretend like that afternoon hadn’t happened.
Chapter Two
Soren
“Look, what I’m saying is Mom and Dad are heartbroken that you’re gone. They asked me to tell you that you’ve given this whim more than enough time and now you need to come home. It doesn’t even make sense, what you’re doing out there.”
I scoffed and rolled my eyes at the harsh words my brother Hugo had just delivered, despite the fact that he couldn’t see the eye roll over the phone. I had the urge to flip him off, but he wouldn’t be able to see that, either. “I’m not saying it has to make sense, I’m just saying I hope the rest of you can accept it. Besides, you don’t need to be the messenger for Mom and Dad. They can talk to me just fine if they want to. The phone works both ways.” I loved my parents but they definitely had a knack for avoiding difficult conversations when they wanted to.
He chuckled, and I could picture him shaking his head the way he always did when he conceded the point in an argument. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m not the one who’s having a hard time with it. It’s Mom and Dad you have to convince.”
My tone softened. “I know. Are they having a hard time still?”
“It’s been, like, a month since you quit your job, broke up with Shawna, and moved halfway across the country to chase what you’re calling your dreams. Dreams they didn’t even know you had five weeks ago. Of course they are.”
I settled on the well-worn couch I’d almost gotten used to sleeping on over the past month and looked around the dimly lit room. It wasn’t much—sparsely decorated and in serious need of restoration—but it was mine. A warmth spread through me as that thought hit me, as it always did when I thought about what I’d done. Mine.
“Soren, are you even listening?”
“Mmm? Sorry. Can you say that again?”
He let out a soft sigh. “All I said was, it might be a nice gesture if you come back to visit soon.”
Another scoff escaped me. “You’re kidding, right? I’ve been gone four weeks. They’ll survive without seeing me for a little while longer. I can’t afford to just drop everything and fly back to Kansas every few weeks. It took just about everything I had just to buy this place and put some secondhand furniture in the apartment upstairs. Anything left over is going into restoring this old place. She’ll need every last dime and then some. Besides, last-minute flights are expensive.” I didn’t bother mentioning how much I hated to fly. Just the idea of flying made my stomach hurt, never mind boarding an actual plane.
He hummed in agreement and on the line was a little shuffling like he was handling a paper bag. “I know. Just think about it, okay? Maybe I can float you—“
“No. I won’t take a handout unless it’s to help fix up the Radiance.”
“That’s what you’re calling it?”
“That’s the name of the original theater and I’m not changing it.”
“Okay, okay, message received. Listen, I have to run, okay? My takeout just arrived and I don’t want it to get cold. You know how Benny’s tastes when that happens.”
I wrinkled my nose. Benny’s was a combo burger and Chinese food place near Wichita, where I’d moved from. “Yeah. I’ll talk to you later.”
When the call disconnected, I put my phone on the table and let out a long, slow exhale. I let my gaze skim the room. Since I’d moved in, I’d added the furniture, sure, but I’d hardly done any other work to the upstairs. All of the work I’d put in had been to the theater part, not the living quarters.
I stood and went into the small kitchen to eat my own dinner, which was also getting cold. I’d made the questionable decision to cook a burger for myself, causing the whole apartment to fill with smoke as I tried to pan-cook a burger on the ancient stove using ancient cookware. As soon as that had happened, I’d opened the windows to prevent the smoke alarm from going off, and then Hugo had called.
I took a bite of the burger, which was both cold and dry, and put it back on the plate, defeated. I picked at a few of the fries on the plate, also cold and dry, before tossing the whole mess in the trash and grabbing a foam cup of microwavable noodles and ate them standing at the kitchen counter, shoveling noodles in my mouth with a set of reusable stainless steel chopsticks.
Once I’d downed a second cup of noodles and quelled the hunger gnawing at my stomach, I glanced at the time and saw that it was getting late, so I made my way downstairs to check the locks and make sure the grates were down before heading back up to bed.
As I made my nightly rounds through the building, I let my mind wander. I knew my parents were stunned when I’d packed up everything, sold my house, and bought a run-down historic theater in Virginia, far away from where I’d grown up, but I didn’t know they would take it so personally. I wasn’t running away from them. I was running toward my dream of owning a piece of history. What better place to do that than the riverfront city where we’d spent our summers when I was a kid?
The front doors were locked and the grates covered the windows and doors, but as I started to head upstairs, I made my way past the concession stand and my sock sank into wet carpet. I frowned deeply and tilted my head to the side for a moment. The carpet was soaked through. I tracked the wetness to its origin—the men’s restrooms. As I pushed open the door and stepped inside, my stomach sank. The tile floor was covered in an inch of water, and the sink I’d replaced just before dinner, maybe an hour ago, was leaking profusely, spraying water into the air.
