Might as well get this over with.
He answered the call. “Yeah?”
“Elijah?”
“It’s my phone, Dad. Who else do you think would be picking up?”
“All right, all right,” his father said. “There isn’t any need to get a smart mouth.”
Elijah waited. He wasn’t about to rise to that accusation, as if he was a teenager.
His father let out a sigh. “What happened at the launch today wasn’t good, Elijah. You storming out like that… it caught people’s attention.”
“And you didn’t want anyone paying any attention to me,” Elijah said. “I’m aware of that, Dad. You don’t need to call and tell me that I’ve embarrassed you. Actually, I can just go ahead and assume that’s always the case from now on. Whatever I do, we’ll just figure it’s an embarrassment, and then you and I don’t have to have these talks anymore. Does that sound good?”
“Why are you being so temperamental? Didn’t you have a good night?”
“You really don’t know, do you?” Elijah asked. “You honestly have no idea.”
His father was quiet for a moment. “The girl you brought with you,” he said.
“Stephanie.”
“Right. She was the one you took to the ball game?”
“That’s who you told me to bring. Don’t tell me something about that pissed you off. You didn’t even say hello to her, by the way. She wanted to meet you. She thought your speech was good—she wanted to hear mine.”
“Oh,” his father said with a tone of realization dawning. “That’s what this is all about. You wanted to give a speech at the launch. You’re annoyed with me for canceling it.”
“Sure, Dad.” Elijah had no desire to get into the nuance with his father. He didn’t care about giving a speech, but to be brushed off as if he was nothing—that had been an annoyance, to be sure.
“Well, you know,” his father said, “if you contributed a little more to the company, Elijah, things might be different. If you were to develop an idea of your own, build your own app, launch your own product, then you would get to choose what the rollout looked like. Then you would be the one who got to stand up in front of a room full of people and be congratulated on your accomplishments. But you can’t just keep piggybacking on my hard work. You need to accomplish something for yourself.”
The rage that flooded through Elijah was so powerful that he was hard pressed not to throw the phone across the room. “You made me come to that launch,” he said. “You made me prepare a speech. And then you told me that I couldn’t give it because you were afraid it would make you look bad. I should never have come at all. And Stephanie… I can’t believe you told me to bring the woman I’m seeing just so you could shame me in front of her.”
“Elijah.” His father’s voice changed, softened slightly. “That isn’t what I was trying to do.”
“Then what? Because obviously you didn’t want to meet her.”
His father sighed. “Do I need to meet her? You and I both know your relationships don’t tend to last that long, so I saw no reason to make a big formal introduction. I asked you to bring her because I saw the picture of the two of you in the paperand thought she seemed like a decent woman. Like the kind you could appear in public with and escape without any scandal taking place. And now that I’ve seen her, I still think that. I’d like you to keep seeing her.”
“You know you can’t tell me who to date, don’t you?” Elijah gritted his teeth. This was maddening. Hedidwant to go on seeing Stephanie, of course, and twenty minutes ago he’d been feeling happy about that fact. But now, hearing that his father also wanted it, his outlook shifted. If he went out with her again, his father would think that Elijah was just doing what he had been told.
Oh, but who cares what he thinks? He’s made it more than clear that he’s never going to think well of me, no matter what I do. I wouldn’t date someone to please him—but I also shouldn’t avoid someone I really like just to cause him strife.
Something released deep within him, a tension he hadn’t realized he had been holding onto.
“You know what?” he told his father. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have walked out tonight.”
His father paused, obviously thrown for a loop. “I’m right?”
“It won’t happen again,” Elijah said.
“I… oh. Well. That’s good to hear.”
“But now I’m going to bed,” Elijah said. “I’ve had a long night, and I’m tired.”
“What do you mean, you’ve had a long night? Did you go out when you left the event? Where did you go? Should I be expecting something in the news tomorrow? Were you photographed?”
