Page 134 of Broken Brothers

“Yeah,” I said as I put on some gym shorts to go out to the kitchen. “Go ahead, ask me whatever you want.”

Andrew asked me some generic and surprisingly simple questions about sales strategies that I would have thought he would know as a CEO and founder. I knew them just from thinking about what my adoptive family did, and I was younger than him. But, it gave me a good excuse to look smart, so I blabbered on.

I was more focused on the fact that Morgan was nowhere to be seen in the living room. The TV wasn’t on, the couch was empty, and as far as I could see, he hadn’t touched the fridge since last night. It was peculiar, but I didn’t dwell on it too much. My head ached just enough that it wasn’t a concern of mine in that moment.

I spoke with Andrew for about half an hour, my headache slowly subsiding as I drank some water and muted the phone while I went to piss. At the end, I asked Andrew if he had any more questions.

“Well, I just, I don’t want to be rude and I know things come up, but I just want to make sure we don’t miss another one of these,” he said.

“Not at all,” I replied. “Not at all. I’ve got a pen and paper right now so I don’t mishear it. Then, I’m going to put it in my phone and on my calendar so I get as many notifications as I can. I’m sorry that I’ve now forgotten this twice, but I won’t forget it again.”

“Understood,” Andrew said. “Hey, I really appreciate you doing this. You were right, I think. Your insight is helpful.”

Well, I don’t know about that. And you may be the only person thanking me when this is all said and done. But I’ll take the compliments for now.

“I do what I can and all I can,” I said with a laugh. “When do you want to talk?”

“Let’s do a week from now,” Andrew said. “If you don’t mind, of course. I know we said once a month but I want to make up for the abruptness of today.”

Hmm, maybe this is Andrew developing something of a spine. If so, good on him. He needs it. It’ll help the business… which will help us… which will help us defeat…

Chance, stop. Give yourself a day off from all of this madness.

“Works for me. Do you want to do a later time than now given that it’s awfully early over there?”

“What, 6:20? I’m up at 5:30 anyways, it’s no big deal.”

“You’re a brave, brave soul,” I said with a chuckle. “Let’s say 7 a.m. your time. I don’t want the first thing you do in the morning to be to hear my awful voice.”

Andrew gave a polite laugh. It seemed like the fairest thing to do and probably the nicest thing I would hear all day given my luck.

“Well, that sounds good to me. Hope you feel better.”

“What? Oh, yeah, thanks, I appreciate it.”

Andrew gave an uneasy laugh as I feared he had figured out I was lying about being sick, but fuck it. I quickly wished him a good day and hung up.

So… now what?

With Morgan gone, I decided to shoot him a text, but the text message didn’t show delivered. I called, but it went straight to voicemail. That was a little odd, but it still didn’t worry me. Maybe he had gone for a jog and set his phone to Do Not Disturb. Maybe he had just turned it off or lost power.

In any case, I didn’t see a cause for concern.

I sat on the couch and almost turned on the TV but decided instead to take stock of everything. So much had gone wrong that I needed to make it right—objectively so, not letting my dick rule my business and dating actions as it had so far.

First things first, I had to make right with the person I could most easily do so. Claire. I wouldn’t go and see her—that would be violating the very thing we had agreed upon the previous night. So I shot her a text instead.

“I’m sorry I went a little berserk last night,” I wrote. “Things have gotten hairy, but I want to make them right. I’ll keep my distance, but please email me, text me, or call me with any business advice. Maybe let’s just avoid bars lol.”

I sent that and then thought of who I would turn my attention to next. Sarah? There wasn’t anything to say there that needed atoning, but it still made sense to reach out and see how she had liked the photo. I pulled up Facebook and saw she still had not logged in. Still, that didn’t mean I couldn’t message her.

“Hey sexy, hope you didn’t party too hard in New Zealand! Let me know what time you get here next Friday—I want to be the first person to see you ;-)”

I closed Facebook and opened my texts back up. Claire had texted me back, “Thanks, Chance, I will :-)” which was sweetlyreassuring. Not too flirtatious, but also clear she was open to communicating still.

The last person was Layla. I pulled up the last text from her, which simply stated she was at the bar. I had to choose my words carefully—I wanted to make clear I was still looking to be friends, but probably…

Well, we weren’t in business together anymore, were we? And Claire was out of the picture.