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What are you doing, man? You’re not meeting her kid.
I was getting too comfortable thinking of Emma as mine. What I wasn’t comfortable with was how she hadn’t contacted me once while she was out of the office. She cleared it with human recourses, she followed all the correct steps, and did everything right. It still bothered me that she didn’t reach out personally. Our relationship was complicated, to say the least, but I thought we’d made a breakthrough in that respect.
She hadn’t even sent me a dammed email.
Maybe I should’ve called her. Maybe I should’ve sent a text. But, the truth of the matter was that because she was the one who ran, it should’ve been her who reached out to me.
Or, maybe I was too scared to hear what she had to say.
I allowed myself exactly once to ask Krista about Emma. She assured me that both Emma and Lily were fine, Emma just needed time, and so help me, me being the selfish bastard I was, I couldn’t help but think she needed time from me.
We’d just had sex, we’d just agreed to only see each other, and then she vanished.
Because of all that I, reluctantly, agreed Krista’s absurd idea to have a thirtieth birthday party.
A joint birthday.
I stood in the grand entry way of my newly purchased house that still didn’t feel like home. New York hadn’t felt much like home either. I was starting to think it was me, not the bricks and mortar.
Ay Krista’s vehement urging, I was wearing my finely tailored, black, Italian suit and I was getting dropped off at Solstice, some club I’d otherwise never set foot in. With a heavy sig at my own inability to deny my sister, I stepped outside to find Henry and the car waiting for me.
“Good evening, sir,” Henry said.
“Maybe for you,” I muttered back.
Henry frowned. “I was surprised when I saw where I was taking you this evening,” he admitted. “Not your usual scene.”
“No, it’s not.”
Henry opened the door for me, and I slid in. “Well, I know this is an early birthday celebration, just think of all the fun you’ll have.”
“Right,” I said, keeping my tone light. Henry didn’t deserve my anger. “Hey, Henry?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Why don’t you take the week off. Paid. You deserve it.”
“Thank you, sir,” Henry said.
I figured someone should be happy.
Twenty minutes later, an even more chipper than usual Henry dropped me off at the newest, hottest club in all of California. Solecist wasn’t the kind of place Krista or I, or even any of our friends would’ve normally hung out at, but because of my new tax bracket, Krista said we should try new things.
Those new things apparently included buying our way into an ultra-pretentious club that probably served watered down drinks and played bad house music.
To make matters worse, the hostess told me—one of the guests of honor—that I was the first person in my party to arrive. She led me around the overpacked dance floor, around a crowded bar, and past large circular booths, to a roped off section with overstuffed chairs and bartenders with carts of liquor.
If I hadn’t given Henry the week off, I would’ve called him back and told him I changed my mind.
Instead, I took a seat and asked for a whiskey on the rocks, that was then served to me in an odd, rounded glass that was supposed to resemble the moon in keeping with the solstice theme. I shook my head in distaste, but luckily the whiskey still tasted good.
“Happy early birthday, man,” Dante, my sister’s boyfriend said as he joined me in out roped off section. “Where the hell is everybody?”
I stood to give Dante our customary bro hug. I liked him. He was a good man, an educator just like Krista, and had a level head on his shoulders. We just weren’t that close through no fault of his. I was always out of town until recently.
“You know how Krista is. She forced me to come here and didn’t bother showing up herself.”
Dante laughed. “When her and Emma get together, I just stand back. I’m sure they’ll still getting ready over at Emma’s place.”
