The intern starts on Monday. His name is Patrick. He looks like he’s about twelve and tells me he’s from somewhere called Grizzly Falls when Harpreet brings him by my office for an introduction. He also thanks me about a hundred times for giving him this opportunity. I wish I could tell him we’re paying him to play on Facebook all summer, but it feels unprofessional. Also, the way he looks at me with naked awe, as if he’s meeting the prime minister, makes me feel about a million years old.
“How old is he?” I mouth to Harpreet as she leads him away, but she only shrugs.
His laptop doesn’t work. Or, maybe it does, but he can’t log in. Harpreet’s on the phone with Brady, their conversation audible through my open office door. Somehow, I neither want him to solve the problem over the phone nor come to the office to fix it. Because despite all my good intentions about gratitude and everything else, I can still feel the imprint of his palm on my knee and the cool trickle of his water down my throat. And not far behind that is the purr of his voice as he says he can’t decide if he wants to call me daddy or daddy.
Would it be so bad? Maybe not with Brady. The work thing makes it complicated. But maybe it’s time. The divorce has been final for six months and Dominic asked me to leave six months before that. Would it be so bad if I met someone new? It doesn’t have to be serious. Just an itch to scratch with someone willing and moderately attractive.
“Hey there.” Brady’s voice makes my head snap up. I glance at the clock on my laptop. It’s after noon. For the last two hours, I’ve been mindlessly scrolling between reports and spreadsheets and some mock-ups Harpreet put together last week.
“Hi,” I say, feeling guilty, like he’s caught me watching porn at the office.
“How you doing?” He gives me a grin that draws my attention from the dimple on his cheek to the diamond stud in one earring. Has he always had that?
“Fine. You?”
His grin spreads, and with every fraction of an inch it grows, my heart beats faster too. “No, I mean. How are you doing? After Saturday.”
My skittering heart wobbles to a sloppy stop. Because maybe on Friday he wanted to call me daddy, but now I’m the idiot who nearly passed out in a yoga class.
“Oh. Yeah. Fine.” I lift the mug on my desk. “Staying hydrated.”
He frowns. “Coffee dehydrates you.”
It’s actually chamomile and peppermint tea, but correcting him feels fussy, especially while my ego is still licking its wounds, so instead I say, “You here for the laptop?”
“Yeah.” He jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “We got it worked out. I gave Harpreet the wrong password. My fault.” His grin is cocky, but after meeting Patrick the intern, today Brady looks like an actual adult to me. He must be almost thirty, right? Old enough that he could—
“How’s your phone? Still got your contacts?” he says.
Old enough that he knows how to be a professional—something I am failing at today.
“Yeah. It’s great. Thanks.”
We’re not usually this stilted. I’d even go so far as to say we have a certain kind of banter. We had another IT service before I hired Brady’s company, but every time I called them with a problem, the guy on the phone sounded like he was about to burst into tears. Brady’s no-nonsense, and he’s been able to work with us as the organization continues to grow. We’re up to sixteen full-time employees and an army of short-term staff and volunteers when the festival rolls around.
“Well, call me if you run into any other problems.” He’s backing away, hands in his pockets. They pull the front of his Bermuda shorts tight across his crotch, and suddenly I’m wondering what he looks like in his underwear.
When I blink back to the present again, he’s gone, and Harpreet is standing in his place. “The marketing team and I are taking Patrick out for a welcome lunch. Wanna come?”
“No. I still haven’t finished going over the quotes for the new website.”
Her mouth pinches. She wanted to have a web designer picked out by the end of June, but I got behind. She’s offered more than once to go with the lowest bidder and be done with it, but I’d rather be methodical and know we’re getting the best value we can. I just have to find the time to make a decision.
The rest of my week is pretty much par for the course. I talk to the boys every night. Dominic’s got them in some kind of sports camp this week, since they’re off school for the summer. Jacob scored a goal in soccer. Karter helped hand out water and animal crackers. They may be twins, but they’re so different. Jacob is rough and tumble. He can out-talk me on a good day and is a champion negotiator. Karter is the caretaker. Not super coordinated, but he’s got a heart of gold.
I’m speaking at a conference this weekend. It’s a gathering of queer creators. When they asked me to give the keynote speech, I was pretty sure they’d called the wrong number. The more I work on my presentation, though, and as I explore some of the lessons learned as we’ve taken the Out & About Film Festival from little more than me and my roommates swapping DVDs in our dorm to an event with international contributors from—I double-check my notes—twenty-seven countries this year, I’m reminded we’ve really built something to be proud of.
But my presentation isn’t ready yet. I’m preparing my fiftieth slide at ten o’clock on Friday night. There hasn’t been time this week to put it together at the office. Also, I’m pretty sure fifty slides is at least twenty too many for a forty-five minute talk, but I’ll figure it out.
Outside, a summer storm is raging. A good one. A fork of lightning splits the sky, highlighting the skyline. The air shakes as thunder booms so close it might be in the unit upstairs.
And the lights go out. It’s only for a few seconds, long enough for my heart to rattle in my chest and my eyes to strain in the dark, and then everything is back on.
Except my computer. It sits on my desk, inert, with a black screen.
I fight down the first fluttering of panic as I press the power button.
Nothing happens. Not on the second time either. Or the third. I stab at the little button over and over, waiting for something, anything. A flicker of the screen. The hum of a fan.
Nothing
My slides. All fifty-something of them. They’re gone.
Acid bubbles in my esophagus, and my vision wavers. That was hours of work, and I’m giving this talk tomorrow. Outside, another clap of thunder shakes the building and makes me flinch. I scramble, trying to find a solution. My phone? It’s not set up for slides. The office? I have a key, but no one else will be there, and I have no way to get into anyone else’s computer, even if the slides weren’t on my hard drive. Harpreet’s always nagging me to save my things on the cloud, but no one ever uses my slides but me, so what’s the point of putting them in a shared location?
The answer is pretty obvious right now. I’m fucked. Another weekend I committed to my job instead of my family, and now it’s all gone to hell.
With shaking hands, I dial the only number I can think of.
5
Brady
The thunderstorm outside is so intense that, even though I’m exhausted after the work week, I’ll never be able to sleep while it’s going. I’m debating whether to pick up a new book or surf social media for a while when the football phone at my hip vibrates. I must be half asleep, because the sensation is so startling I nearly leap off the couch.