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When I finally heard the door knock, I set my tablet on the coffee table and pushed myself off the couch, opening the door for Easton. As I stood in the doorway, staring at the tardy motherfucker, I checked my watch and said, “What took you so goddamn long?”
“You just love being a dick, don’t you.” He squeezed my shoulder on the way in and helped himself to a beer from my fridge. “Where’s Jovana?”
Easton and I had both bought penthouses in the same building.
Only eight paces separated our entrances.
That was why I couldn’t figure out how he could be ten minutes late.
“She’s with her parents—” My phone vibrated from my pocket, and I took it out, checking the screen. “Give me a sec, that’s her,” I told him and answered, “Hey you.”
“Hi! We just stopped to grab something to eat, so I wanted to call and see how everything is going?”
I held out my hand to Easton, signaling I wanted him to get me a beer, too, and he placed a cold one in my grip. “All is good. Easton just stopped over.”
“Tell him I said hi.”
I nodded toward my best friend. “Jovana says hi.”
“What’s up, J.”
“Did you hear him?” I asked her.
She laughed. “Yep.”
“Have you had any luck finding your parents a new place to live?”
She sighed.
I could hear the stress in her breath.
“Oh, we’ve found four places that would work great for them. I just can’t get them to commit. They don’t want me to pay for their lease, so Dad is intentionally sabotaging each showing, finding the smallest things wrong. Like the washer is a front loader instead of a top loader, that there aren’t enough outlets in the kitchen, or that only one of the two bathrooms has a tub. My parents don’t even have a washer and dryer now—Mom goes to the Laundromat since the one in the basement is broken a majority of the time, and Dad hasn’t taken a bath since he was a child. Please make sense of this because I can’t.”
I twisted off the top of the beer and tossed the metal in the trash. “Pick the one you think they’ll enjoy the most and sign the paperwork.”
There was noise in the background, what sounded like several trucks driving by. “We have a few more places to look at after lunch. If they don’t pick one of those, I’m doing exactly what you said.”
“Don’t get discouraged.” I carried the beer into the living room and returned to my seat on the couch. “My dad acted the same when I bought him a house. Fought me the whole time. It’s just in their nature. They don’t know how to accept things because they’ve always been the provider. They’ll come around, you’ll see.”
“I hope so.”
Easton sat beside me, a cushion between us, and took out his phone, reading whatever was on the screen.
Because he’d been late arriving at my place, I knew my doorman was about to call at any minute, letting me know our visitor was here—the whole reason Easton had come over in the first place, so I wouldn’t be doing this alone.
Since Jovana didn’t know what we had planned, I wanted to wrap up our call before she got tipped off by hearing something.
“Go have a good time at lunch and order your dad a Sam Adams. Maybe he’ll loosen up a little.”
“You know, I really should have brought you. You would have been the perfect distraction and probably would have gotten Dad to agree to anything.”
I crossed my legs, tucking an arm behind my head. “Oh yeah?”
“Dad’s semi-obsessed with you. He’s brought you up at least twenty times already.”
I chuckled. “If you need leverage, offer up a Red Sox game. Box seats.”
“Don’t tease me, Grayson. Dad will literally go nuts if I dangle that in front of his face.”
