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“I like your mom,” I say. “I wouldn’t mind meeting her.”
“That,” she says succinctly, “is because you’re not related to her.”
“Probably.”
She sighs, shakes her head at her laptop, and stands up. “Well. I’m going to start dinner.” She looks over at me. “Are you sure you won’t let me feed you?”
“That would be cheating,” I say glibly.
“Because I think you’re losing weight, and I didn’t think that was possible.”
I am saved from answering this by the sound of the Imperial March emanating from my watch. I swallow, check to make sure that Maria isn’t in the room, and then very carefully, I hit accept.
“Blake.” My dad is sitting at his desk, which is unusual. Usually he stands, paces even, like he can’t bear to be still for even the duration of a video conversation. Today, he looks…tired. More than tired. I’ve seen him tired before, and usually, he can hide it. This? He has dark circles under his eyes.
“Dude.” He lets out a sigh. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for days.”
“I’ve been answering your emails.”
“And I’ve been telling you we need to talk.” He glares at me.
“Okay. So.” I don’t look at Tina. “Talk.”
“So. We have to talk over the Adam/Blake scenarios for the Fernanda launch. I actually liked your number three.”
I try not to glance at Tina. Like is not the word I would use to describe how I feel about her third scenario. It’s the closest I can come to the truth at present. In her draft, Tina’s written us with our usual banter, our typical friendliness—except with just a little added distance, a little formality. It’s obvious from the script that I’m trying too hard.
“Blake,” my father is supposed to say at some point. “What’s going on with you?”
“This is the first project I’ve taken on by myself,” I will confess. “I just want you to be proud of me.”
“Always,” Tina has my father saying. “I’m always proud of you.”
I don’t like this scenario. I want it. It makes me feel naked and exposed. It’s not just a true construction; it’s a whisper of my deepest desires.
“Yeah?” I’m carefully nonchalant. “You liked that?”
“It’s heartwarming,” Dad says, “it’s sweet without being maudlin. It’s exactly what I want—something that reinforces the fact that you’re an adult now, entirely capable of anything that gets thrown at you. But I want to ramp up the ending. We need to add in that I’m stepping down temporarily. Effective as of the launch.”
My whole body goes cold. “Dad. That’s three weeks away.”
He looks at me. He doesn’t launch into an immediate argument, and maybe that’s what sends a chill down my spine. Instead, he simply shakes his head gravely. “I know,” he says quietly. “Can you take over for me?”
“I’m in school. I have classes.”
He lets out a breath. “Blake. I know. I know. But—please. Do this for me.”
My hands are cold.
I have always known that there would come a time when my will would get pitted directly against his. When all the misdirection, all the tricks I’ve employed, will not be enough to keep him at bay. I just had hoped I would have more time.
“Dad.” I glance away from him, over to Tina. It doesn’t last long; my gaze is drawn back to his. My hands are shaking. I want him to be proud of me, and I’ve finally come to the point where I either have to lose myself completely or disappoint him. “I don’t want to take over.”
He lets out a breath and rubs a palm against his forehead. “Yeah,” he says. “I know. I kinda figured that one out when you thought it would be more fun to go waste time at a fucking university than stay here. But, Blake…” His hand drops and he looks at me. “If you really wanted to leave, you’d have gone more than forty miles. Right now, you fucking bastard, I really, really need you.”
He doesn’t explain why. I have no doubt that he’d probably choke before telling me the truth. But I’ve been watching him fossilize slowly in his office over the last year. I’ve worried about him. I don’t want to fail him.
I can say no to his brashest commands. But this?
I can’t, Dad. I have a problem. But now, both he and Tina are watching. It’s been better, a little bit, these last few weeks. I know it has. I’m sure it has. I just need more time.
But Dad would only beg if he was on the verge of breaking down. I have a problem, I want to scream. But I swallow those words.
“Fine,” I hear myself say. My voice sounds very, very far away. “Promise me it’s only temporary. Because I can’t do for long.”
I can make it a month, I tell myself. Six weeks.
I’m already running in my head. Even though I’m standing here, I want to get my shoes and get out the door. At least if I do, I’ll disappear my way.
But Dad lets out a long breath. “I promise,” he says. “I’ll talk to the Board. And Blake—thanks, asshole.”
I’m still standing in place when the conversation ends. It’s only in my head that I’m reduced to rubble. Tina is looking at me. I press my hands firmly together.
“Wow,” she says. “That was harsh. Does your dad usually call you an asshole? And a fucking bastard?”
“Yeah.” I turn away from her. “But he doesn’t mean it like you think he means it.”
“Oh, yes. The well-known other meaning of fucking bastard.”
“It’s a joke,” I say. “An inside joke.”
“Ha ha. So funny.” She makes a face.
“It is. Kind of. Five years ago, Peter—um, that’s Peter Georgiacodis, who used to be the CFO—told my dad that if he didn’t learn to watch his mouth, he was going to get sued one day. So he forced my dad to take corporate sensitivity training.”
“That worked well,” she says sarcastically.
“Actually, it kind of did. He’s…better, now. Really. With most people. But Dad said he wasn’t going through that sensitivity bullcrap unless Peter and I did it with him. And he was a little belligerent about it, as only he can be. Halfway through, he tried to explain that he just didn’t think that cursing was that insulting. Look, he said, I didn’t mind, and I was barely eighteen. So how bad could it be? In any event, the instructor lost his temper and told him that he could call the people he loved ‘you fucking bastard’ as much as he wanted, but that he had to treat his employees like real people.” I shrug. “Ever since then, that’s been the way we say ‘I love you.’ We swear at each other.”
She looks at me. “You know that is deeply fucked up, right?”
I smile at her. “Aw, I love you, too.”
She shakes her head. “I guess I’m hardly in a position to judge. My mom tells me she loves me by explaining the best way to transport meth.”
For a moment, we smile at each other.
And then reality hits: I just agreed to take over for my dad. The launch is in three weeks. After that, there will be no more afternoons with Tina. I won’t have time for a job washing dishes. This trade will be over—and I still don’t have a solution to my stupid problem.
I pull out a chair and sit. “I’m going to have to end the trade early.”
There are a thousand things she could say. I’m bailing early, just like she thought I would. I couldn’t hack it. It wasn’t real; it was never real. I couldn’t put down my life, any more than she could let go of her own terror. We’re still the same people we were before, scarred in the same ways we were scarred before. Everything I thought I could accomplish was fake
. I can’t look at her.
“I won’t be in school anymore,” I say, “so there’s no question that you’ll stay here. And the money is yours—we agreed on that up front. You were right. We can’t trade. Not really. There’s nothing I can do to get out of my life.”
But it’s more than that. Once the trade is over, we’re over. We’re nothing. And we’ve tried—hard, so hard—not to be anything. But… I glance over at her and… My body yearns to press against hers. My lungs long to breath the air she releases. And deep down, somewhere inside of me, I just want. I want everything we haven’t had.
Don’t walk away, I imagine saying.
“I still want to meet your parents,” I tell her. “And just think—three weeks from now, your mom will never tease me about you again.”
She doesn’t say anything. But even though I try to cover what I’m thinking with a smile, she knows what I’m saying. She reaches out and takes my hand.
There are a million things we could be to each other, if only we were different people. If I were a different person, I would have asked her out last September. If she were a different person, we’d have been in bed weeks ago. Instead, we’re us. Close enough to hurt, but not close enough to do more than touch for an instant and let go.
“Until then,” I say, “I don’t want out of any of this.”
She doesn’t let go of my hand. “Until then.”
But she’s already turned her head away.
TINA
It’s nine at night, and Blake has gone to work, when my watch buzzes on my wrist. I glance down, expecting a calendar reminder. Instead, a little green notification appears.
Incoming call: Adam Reynolds.
I let those words fill my vision for a moment. Not because I intend to make him wait; it’s simply that for a second I freeze. Blake’s dad is a wolf, and I feel very much like the rabbit. The last time Adam and I talked, it didn’t turn out particularly well. But right now, the CEO of Cyclone—and the man who, incidentally, still thinks I’m dating his son—is calling me.
What can I do? I hit accept.
