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“He’ll call,” Brock said again. “He always calls.”
“Yeah. Until the one time he doesn’t.”
Not wanting to think about that, I forced my mind to switch gears. “Heard anything from anyoneelse?” I asked, changing the subject.
Brock glanced back at me with a knowing smirk. “Nah. Not yet.”
I chuckled. “Think we scared her off?”
“Maybe,” he said. Then, sighing: “Probably.”
“Yeah, well rules are rules,” I told him with a shrug. “We knew it going in. We did what we said we’d do.”
“She was just so… I dunno.”
“Goddamn perfect?”
“Yeah,” my friend laughed. “All around, too.”
“Well I don’t regret a thing,” I said plainly. “Maybe she calls, maybe she doesn’t. But last night? That was solid. She rolled with it, and so did we. And setting up her tree, filling her empty apartment? All that stuff made her happy.”
“All that food mademehappy,” Brock said, rubbing his stomach.
“Yeah. That too. Plus, it felt like Christmas.”
The conversation dwindled as Brock’s old man walked up on us, a clipboard folded neatly beneath one arm. He stared at the stack of Belgium block for a moment, then swung his gaze back at me. I knew the expression on his face even before he started shaking his head.
“What?”
“Think that’s the right color?” he demanded.
“Look grey to me.”
“Yes but that’sstonegrey. It’s notclassicgrey.”
Ah, shit.
“Classic grey is a little darker. You want the one on the left, not the right.”
“Yeah dude,” Brock piled on, mocking silent laughter behind his father’s back. “Way to fuck things up!”
His father threatened to hit him with his clipboard, and Brock ended up ducking out. He grinned as he walked off though. Behind my back, out of sight of the old man, I curled my hand into a fist and flipped him off.
“Why don’t you just call them light grey and dark grey?” I lamented. “All these weird names are confusing as hell.”
“Just get your ass back in there and fix it,” the old man told me, pointing back to the forklift. “Alright?”
“Yes boss.”
I dragged the orange fencing back into place again, then jumped into the lift. Before I did, I checked my phone one last time. Nothing.
“You’d better still be on the wagon,” I grumbled, wondering if I had the phrase right. “Or however you say it.”
Either way, I needed to know where Brandon was, and more importantly, that he was okay. Last time this happened I came back to our place and half his shit was gone. Another time, most of it had been sold away.
For today though at least, it was still there.
Moving the lift back into position, I raised the fork and vowed to focus on more pleasant things.
