Page 83 of Center of Gravity

“Alex, I’d like to—” He didn’t give me the opportunity to finish.

“That’s all I needed. I’ve gotta go.”

And just like that, he disconnected. I stared at the phone in disbelief, stung to my core. When I dialed him back, it went directly to voicemail. And again after that. And three times more. I considered throwing my phone, but I was too fucking old for that. So instead, I reached for a box of tissue and cleaned myself up.

The knock on my door a minute later disoriented me. I balled up the wads of tissue and tossed them into the trash when I got up to open it. Sean’s five o’clock shadow and disheveled hair greeted me. He had a strange look on his face and glanced over my shoulder as I peered at him. We hadn’t spoken much since my promotion and dinner shut-down unless we had to.

“What?” I was tired and depressed and just wanted to go home and collapse in my half-painted apartment.

“Who were you talking to?” He smelled faintly of alcohol, but didn’t seem drunk.

I frowned. “Have you been standing outside of my door?”

“I saw you were still here and I had a question and…yes,” he confessed. “Are you seeing someone else? Is that why you turned me down that night?”

I gave him an incredulous stare. “I’m not even getting into this. It’s none of your goddamn business, for one, and I thought we were decisively past all of this.”

“That guy who showed up at your place? Thatkid?”Sean’s eyes narrowed.“Is he even legal? You could get into a lot of trouble.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, are you drunk?” I waved my hand and turned away, fuming at the audacity of him standing there, his tie loose around his throat, that stupid smirk on his face. “Never mind. Don’t even bother answering. I’m going home. You should, too.”

“You’re kidding me. Tell me you’re kidding me, Rob. Jesus, even I can do better than a fucking kid.”

The impact of my fist against his jaw sent streaks of pain shooting through my forearm before my brain fully registered that I’d taken a swing at him. For a brief second, it felt as righteous as I’d always imagined it would. And then just as abruptly, it didn’t. Sean flailed and sagged back against the doorframe, wide-eyed as he cradled his jaw.

“The fuck you do that for?” As if he didn’t know. Even the look in his eyes admitted as much, though in a flash they shifted from vulnerable and hurt to angry. “You better hope I don’t go to HR.”

“You’d better hope I don’t beat you to it,” I bit out, grabbing my coat and keys off the desk. I flicked off the lights in my office and pushed him out of the way before locking my door and stalking off.

* * *

I kept hopingAlex would call me back, that he’d see all the missed calls or listen to the voicemail I’d left, which was little more than a pleading request for us to talk. But he didn’t, and I sat on the couch in my apartment staring at a partially painted wall, feeling the edge of panic gather in my lungs. I thought about Nook Island, thought about Savannah and my job. My hard-won promotion and my career track. What was there to look forward to now? Another pay raise? More assistants? More time spent in the office, crunching numbers and filing taxes for other people and other companies and coming home to my three-legged dictator of a dog?

What did I want?Alex had accused me of serving only myself, but I didn’tknowwhat I wanted. Had I ever asked myself that before? Ever done more than falling in line and shuffling along with other cogs in the machine in the pursuit of a vague American Dream? I couldn’t recall a time I’d ever closed my eyes, asked the question and found a definitive answer. Maybe I wasn’t alone in that, maybe most of us were shuffling along in pursuit of something we only felt peripherally, searching for the dream as it had been told to us rather than the one of our own making.

I’d been a dutiful son, I’d made good grades in high school. I’d gone to college and graduated. I had taken care of my parents when they were ill. I paid my bills on time and contributed to my retirement fund every year. I had a steady job and a recent promotion, and I was still nothing but bruising ache and emptiness. I could see my future laid out before me: the promotions and backslapping, the poker once a week. Client dinners. Eventually, golf. Someday I’d probably wear a sweater and refer to it as a cardigan. Christ, what was I doing?

I may not have known what I wanted exactly, but I knew what I didn’t want and that was more of this. I didn’t want a job that seemed as if the sole purpose was climbing the ladder. And I didn’t want to be the kind of person who used a job as an excuse to shut people out.

Alex might have been off the table now, but he’d been a step in the right direction.

That night,in the yellow-orange spotlight of the lamp on my desk, with the scent of new paint tickling my nose, I wrote my resignation letter.

When I finished, I turned out all the lights, sat in my dark, half-painted apartment and stroked Winslow’s belly with my foot as he snored. And for the first time in a long time, I thought I’d gotten something right.

26

Alex

My dad and I had taken to driving around after dinner. There was never a destination, we just drove. Sometimes into the city, down the wide avenues of live oaks and hanging moss, sometimes to the edge of Nook Island where we’d park and roll the windows down, listening to the surf and the birds. He was declining fast, worse even than when I’d called Rob in a panic after a round of scans that showed the cancer had spread farther. It was in his lymph nodes, his organs, everywhere—this dark, malevolent thing eating him alive from the inside out. It was a matter of weeks, the doctor said, maybe a month or two. It was hard to predict andblah blah blah. We’d rented a hospital bed and he had pain meds that left him in varying states of lucidity. He was too weak to do much else, but he still had most of his wits about him, so we drove. Sometimes we’d talk, sometimes we’d just drive in silence.

I spent almost all of my free time with him, as if I could shore up an oversupply of his company and divvy it out to myself after he died. I knew it didn’t work like that, but I had this fear that I’d feel guilty later or miss something important if I was gone. I stopped sleeping around. It hadn’t made me feel better, anyway. It had just highlighted a widening gulf of ache in me. Even my anger was tired. And mostly, I was just sad. I found myself hovering on the cliff’s edge of calling Rob again, sometimes, but it seemed pointless. What did I have to offer? I wondered sometimes, too, whether this was how he’d felt with me: raw and exhausted and spent, only capable of taking and sometimes not even in the mood for that. It was hard enough for me to keep up with school, and I did it solely because of the promise I’d made to my dad.

The Eagles played through the radio, the volume low. Dad had a window cracked an inch, listening to the air whistle through and letting the chill blast against his cheeks. I thought he was dozing. He nodded off a lot lately.

He straightened a bit in his seat. “I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but isn’t there something you should be out doing? Or someone? You’ve been stuck to my side like a leech for weeks.” His head lolled a little, sallow gaze landing on me.

“How do you even know what day it is, old man?” I teased.