“Hard to say, Dad. We’re both very busy with work.”
This was tearing me apart. I hated not being honest with my father, but I hated the idea that the truth would hurt him even more.
The minute my head hit my pillow, I started sobbing. Not just crying, but full-blown, so-sorry-for-myself bawling with tears and snot. The whole shebang.
I was not a crier. I’d cried the day my mother died and on a few occasions after that, like the day I’d gotten my period without her there to calm me down and after I’d stolen that wallet. But tonight, it felt like the weight of the world rested squarely on my shoulders, and I wanted to throw it away or let it bury me in the ground.
The thing about crying for hours is, you always end up sleeping like the dead afterward. It happened to me the night after my mother died. (The night she did, I couldn’t sleep a wink—was too afraid the world would collapse if I let my eyes drift shut.) Misery has a way of pulling you down and drowning you in it. It’s sweet and suffocating, like a lullaby, soothing you to sleep.
That night, I slept like a baby.
Living alone was a choice I made rather happily.
The alternative was living a lie, and I didn’t do lies, nor theft—not since both things had exploded in my face in spectacular fashion. Even though I had a car, I took the subway to work every morning. And since everyone in my family for the last three generations had personal drivers, I was seen as the black sheep of the tribe. Luckily, the tribe had dwindled and was nearly nonexistent, so it’s not like I had anyone to impress.
Besides, I liked the smell of piss and the general misery of harsh city life. It reminded me that I was a lucky motherfucker, even on the days I felt like God—if he existed—had made a point of pissing all over my plans.
On my way to work, I thought about what had driven me to pull Judith into the power room on Friday and fuck her mouth into what could have been a mass power outage in one of the largest skyscrapers in New York. My jizz definitely shouldn’t have been anywhere near all those electrical switches.
I was definitely trying to piss all over my territory, but in the process, I’d also pissed over my no-repeats rule, as well as my professional relationship with her. Currently, I was trying to decide if I should go back to normal and act like she didn’t exist until she quit and the problem took care of itself, or figure the damage had already been done and make her a booty call for when I was too tired to go on the prowl.
Pros: the Manhattan singles scene was beginning to grate on my nerves. I was starting to see the same faces in the same clubs. Every hookup and Tinder profile blended together in my head. At least with Judith, I had sexual chemistry.
Cons: her pussy aside, she had an annoying, holier-than-thou attitude, not to mention, she was mouthy, and I really couldn’t fucking stand her.
When I got to the office building, I had to take a phone call. Lily. I normally sent her straight to voicemail, but this was the third time she’d called since I’d gotten off the subway, so I wanted to make sure Madelyn, her grandmother, was okay.
“Anyone dead?” These were my exact words when I took the call.
I didn’t go into the building, knowing things could get pretty crappy and fast when it came to Lily and me. I rarely raised my voice, but for her, I was always happy to make an exception.
“What?” Her default voice was whining. The kind that sounds like a fork scraping against a plate. “No. Grams is doing great. I was just wondering if—”
“No need to wonder. The answer is no.”
“Célian, wait! I—”
But I’d already hung up. I turned around to walk through the double glass doors and spotted Judith sitting on the top stair reading, soaking in the first rays of sun like a thirsty flower. She wore one of her crumpled, wannabe-grownup black suits and hugged her backpack.
Her Chucks were red today. Oh, boy.
She wiped her eyes quickly, but I wasn’t sure whether she was crying or about to. She was talking on the phone, and any other bastard would’ve turned around, walked away, and vowed to stop making her life more difficult.
But I was programmed differently, carved from stone like the very people who’d created me.
I rounded her tiny, blond figure, half-listening to her conversation.
“Okay, Milton. Just…please don’t tell him.”
Milton sounded very much male and very much like a douchebag. The latter wasn’t based solely on his affiliation with Judith, but also his name. Now I was fully invested in the conversation.