Skylar: Thanks, Adam. :)
Skylar: Sorry, gotta run. Off to work. Have a good night!
Me: You, too!
Adam winced as he sent the text, imagining what Skylar would have to endure that night. Still, he meant what he said. He wanted Skylar to have a good night and get himself closer to his goals. The sooner the boy managed that, the sooner he could get his clean break and move on.
Speaking of.Adam got up and took his dishes to the kitchen, then padded down the hallway to the third bedroom. He opened the door and found himself grinning at the sight of the empty room. Not a single item remained. No furniture. No boxes. It was all either relocated to his bedroom or gone on somewhere to be put to use rather than collecting dust. Adam felt light with relief as he pulled the door shut and went to his own room. Even with the few boxes added, his newly thinned out closet wasn't the chaotic disaster it had always been. Adam was easily able to reach the box of VHS tapes and pull one out, a bittersweet smile taking over his face as he traced his fingers over his dad's handwriting.
“I still miss you so much,” Adam whispered. “But I'm gonna be okay now. Thank you for being the best dad ever.”
Adam put the tape back, shut the closet door, and went back to getting his apartment ready for his post-op restrictions, taking his dad's blessing along with him.
Chapter 23
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JOHN
JOHN RACED into his office, both to escape the blistering heat outside and because he still had so much work to do before he could go home. He dropped heavily into his chair, giving himself barely a second to enjoy the air conditioning. The middle of July meant two things: one, the dreaded Mid-State Fair was in town, bringing huge crowds and tons of traffic; and, two, the temperature was consistently in the triple digits. John swiped the back of his arm across his forehead, then snatched up his to-do list.
The thing was a mess. Wrinkled, stained with coffee, items scratched out and rewritten because they shouldn't have been scratched out in the first place.
Christ. He was exhausted. The past few weeks had been beyond hectic. Ward was more distracted than ever, to the point that John had seriously considered making the man take some time off to clear his head. It didn't help that John couldn't focus, either. Between getting himself ready to take a few days off for Adam's surgery, missing sleep every time he spent the night at Adam's place, struggling to find time and inspiration to writeAdam's Song, and dealing with mounting problems atwork, John felt ready to explode. His head was a churning mess of noise. Too many different things constantly demanded his attention. And with all the added traffic, his daily commute was a snarled mess. Each day, all he wanted to do was get home and escape into a long shower, Adam's body, and a bottle of wine, and not necessarily in that order.
Of course, the last two were impossible when he stayed at Adam's place.
Which Adam didn't even seem to need anymore. Still, John kept voluntarily packing an overnight bag and driving himself to the apartment instead of his own house most nights, though whether he was trying to prove something to Adam or to himself was getting hazier by the day. Yes, he was still determined to show Adam that he'd be there for him, but the boy never got that haunted look in his eyes anymore, the one that screamed his fear of abandonment.
So maybe John was still fighting a losing battle with his own guilt. Making himself lie in Adam's bed, night after night, so vividly aware of the urn on the nightstand that it made his hair stand on end, and all the while waiting for some kind of sign, clarity, or insight. Something to tell him what he needed to do in order to finally move on.
But he couldn't think about any of that right then. He needed to stay focused. Get himself organized and get his work done.
No matter how hard he tried to get back to his usual semblance of order, though, all structure seemed to elude him. He kept forgetting things. Kept getting distracted. Meanwhile, Adam had been responsible and industrious, all without John's help. It was like they'd suddenly switched roles. John muttered a curse. Somehow, he needed to get past this shit. Get himself back on even footing.
But first, he had to make sure everything at work was ready for his absence. He didn't want to come back to any moreproblems or things left incomplete. John spent the rest of the afternoon getting as many things off his to-do list as he possibly could, then wrote out a long set of instructions for Ward and the others, all the tasks he wanted completed and issues he wanted addressed while he was away.
John was about to get up and go do a final check on the vats and barrels when Ward walked into the office. The man's shirt was drenched with sweat, his hair plastered to his forehead. John looked at him in alarm. Ward had been working in the warehouse, helping to build pallets going to the distributor on Monday. Even working hard and fast, the man shouldn't have looked like that. “Don't tell me the air conditioning failed in the warehouse.” That would be just what they needed. In this heat, they'd lose their entire stock.
“Huh?” Ward asked, then looked down at himself. “Oh. Ha!” He shook his head. “No, we finished the pallets, and then I went outside to make sure the trucks were all locked up for the night. Wound up chatting with the warehouse manager for a few minutes, out there in the heat. So I sprayed myself with the hose to cool off before I came in here.”
“Oh.” John heaved a sigh of relief. It was just water. Not sweat. At least, not entirely sweat. And there he'd been picturing his entire warehouse full of wine going bad because the space couldn't be kept cool. “Okay. Good.”
“Everything's fine, John. You don't have to worry. We'll handle everything while you're out.”
John slowly nodded even though he knew he'd spend a lot of the time, while taking care of Adam, waiting for inevitable phone calls from work. “You taking off?”
“Yeah.” Ward gathered up his things. “Pretty much everyone else is already gone.” He paused, swinging his keys around. Ward opened his mouth, closed it again, then breathed a laugh and shook his head. “Don't work too late.”
John nodded absently again. He started to turn back to his desk, trying to remember what he'd been about to do, then stopped and blurted out, “Have a good weekend.”
“You, too.” Ward headed for the door.
“Oh, wait!” John gasped, stopping Ward in his tracks. “What was it you were trying to tell me?” he asked. When Ward only frowned and shook his head, John muttered a curse. “Shit. This was a few days ago. Hell, maybe even a few weeks ago now. You started to tell me something about a problem, but I never gave you a chance to finish.”
Ward's frown deepened in thought. After a long moment, he slowly shook his head again. “Shit. Sorry. I've got nothing.”
Christ. John waved a hand. “Okay. Thanks.” Maybe it truly was nothing. Maybe it had already resolved itself, whatever it was. John muttered agoodnightto Ward, then watched the man walk out the door before he headed out himself, remembering that he'd wanted to survey the barrel room.
