Chapter 7

Jacob

IT HAD been a long day. I worked long days, lived long days and this had been one of the longest.

What have I done, I thought pitifully, to deserve this?

I regretted, with every bone in my body, breaking up with Sierra. That’s the truth. I knew I couldn’t go back in time and undo it, I was clear on that, but it had been a blip, a momentary error, made out of frustration and fear and total immaturity. For her to now waltz back into my life, looking like a rock star and dripping confidence? That was a cruel joke, and the whole universe seemed to have been in on it.

After all, I hadn’t even known she worked for Pillers. Can someone run the odds on that? How damn unlikely is it that my ex and I would unknowingly end up working at the same construction company, in totally different cities and then get paired off for an entire bloody weekend? What did fate have up its sleeve? Was this some kind of soulmate thing, two magnetics being drawn together by—

Oh, no no. I couldn’t let myself think like that. If I started throwing around words like ‘soulmate,’ it wouldn’t be long until I was begging Sierra’s forgiveness, and given her icy demeanor, that didn’t seem like it would be forthcoming. Far better to save myself the pain and humiliation, and play it off as though I too still resented her, still harbored that same unique kind of loathing. I’d broken up with her in part because I didn’t want to get hurt. I wasn’t about to take another injurious risk. Keep it civil, I told myself. Keep it uncomplicated.

I needed a shower something awful — being around Sierra had, much to my shame, made me sweat buckets. I anxiously stripped off my suit — the thing felt like a suffocation device — and threw it over the back of a nearby overstuffed armchair. I strode into my bathroom and hopped in the shower, placing my phone on a nearby ledge that would be untouched by the water spray so that I could make a call. The shower was so gargantuan that the water was several feet removed from the ledge, and I’m nothing if not a multi-tasker.

Grabbing a squirt of soap from a nearby dispenser — Charles really had thought of everything — I lathered my pecs up and pressed a few buttons on my cell. As the phone rang, I scrubbed my biceps harder, wanting to make sure that any whiff of my sweat was cleaned off before I saw Sierra next. She couldn’t know how nervous I’d been — that wouldn’t be very cool and laid back, which was the general aura I was angling for.

After a few moments, the line picked up.

“Hello?” a voice said, sounding tinny.

“Hey, Dad,” I replied over the whoosh of the waterfall shower head.

“Oh, hi there, m’boy. How’s the retreat going?”

“It’s not a retreat,” I began to explain. “It’s a pitch—”

“Right, whatever. Are you doing good? Making me proud?”

I nodded, then realizing he couldn’t see the nod, said, “Sure am. Charles, the potential buyer — or developer, I guess — has taken a shine to me. I sat next to him the entire dinner. He’s a little bit of a nut, but I suppose he can afford to be. In any case, he basically asked me to spend the weekend entertaining him.”

My dad chuckled. “Well, God knows you’re good at that.”

It was true. I always had been the clown in the family. Turning towels into animals and putting on a show for the little cousins, leading everybody in a round of late night fireworks. A therapist might say it was a desperation to keep people happy. I preferred to not think about it.

I ran my hands down my thighs, generating thick suds between their hairs. Perhaps if I soaped up my cock enough, I’d remove all sensitive flesh from its surface, such that every encounter with Sierra wouldn’t cause it to jump like an anxious puppy.

My dad sighed, and I wondered fleetingly if he’d heard my mortifying thoughts.

“Probably a good thing you took over the company,” he commented with forced ease. It came out sounding strangled. At least it wasn’t concern for my dick-centric line of thinking. “You’re a talented young man.”

“Uh, thanks. I guess.” This was a sore subject, and not one I particularly felt like revisiting, not after the day I’d had. ‘Talented young man’ was often his lead in to a bigger ‘but.’

Sure enough, the other shoe dropped moments later.

“You know,” he began, about to launch into a speech I’d heard many times before. “If you’d given me just a little longer, just a touch more time, I’m sure I could have…”

I tuned him out as his spiel took flight, rubbing shampoo into my hair and hoping the liquid would clog my ears.

See, Got Wood Inc. wasn’t doing well. It hadn’t been doing well since before the housing crash. The short version is, my dad got real sick, but being the stubborn old bastard he was, refused to tell anyone in the family about it, even me. I can’t imagine having a child and not telling her or him I had stage two pancreatic cancer, but maybe it’s because us millennial men are trying this new thing where we talk about our feelings, our hopes, our fears. My dad’s generation, in contrast, was all about silence and stiff upper lips.

Anyhow, by the time he finally owned up to just how bad things were, the business had taken a major dive, because he couldn’t handle the impact of the recession. I mean, who among us could, but my dad was especially hard hit. The dive had nearly caused his house to be foreclosed upon, like he was one missed payment away from losing it all. That, combined with the chemo… well, it wasn’t pretty, I’ll tell you that. The stress was too much, and Got Wood was taking the brunt of the impact. The company had been successful, placing us firmly in the middle class, for decades. But with my dad’s illness and subsequent downturn in engagement with Got Wood, the company nosedived — we’re talking way, way deep into the red.

When he at last asked for help, I was angry. How could he have kept something crucial from me for so very long? I know, I know, it’s not great form to yell at a sick old man, especially not one who gave you life, but his actions had consequences. It meant I had to take over the company and keep the business afloat to support the two of us. Years of bailing us out, years of struggling to keep the train chugging. Even despite all of my involvement with Pillers and the many successful projects I’d done with them, my father and I were still in a financially precarious situation. The bank’s words, not mine.

And if this deal with Charles didn’t go through, Got Wood would be like so much kindling, and my father would lose his only source of income, seeing as he’d spent his savings on bailouts. I was his only hope, his last log floating down a stream, post-steamboat crash.

Needless to say, the pressure was intense and sometimes felt like a noose around my neck. Add to all of it Sierra’s presence, and it was more than I could handle.

I sighed loudly, and my dad’s ramble came to an abrupt halt.

“Everything all right, Jacob?” he grumbled. “You’re huffing and puffing over there.”

“It’s the shower,” I lied badly.

“Don’t be glib, I know when my own son’s upset. What’s got you in a twist?”

I swallowed. For all my dad’s shortcomings, he was frustratingly perceptive. I figured I should leave out the whole thing about me needing to provide and care for him, and the necessary success of this business deal, and just stick with the most recent wrench in my best laid plans.

“Sierra’s here,” I admitted.

“Sierra? As in your ex Sierra?” my dad bellowed. I could picture him sitting up straight in his Lay-Z-Boy and crumpling a beer can in his hands.

“Yup. Sierra. She’s here, in Jacksonville, at the mansion.” And she hates me, I thought to myself.

“No fucking way.”

My dad remembered Sierra, of course — she was the last girl I’d been serious about. Didn’t hurt that, after a couple of good dinners with sparkling conversation, he liked her plenty, and had done everything short of proposing on my behalf to secure himself a great daughter-in-law. When I broke up with her, I’d decided to play it off to him like a mutual decision, because he would never have forgiven me for wrecking our relationship. Like, he would’ve gladly adopted Sierra as his kid and scratched me off the will.

“Jacob,” he said sternly, “you treat that lovely woman right, you hear me?”

“Yeah, Dad.”

“I’m serious. Things went south with you two, but that doesn’t mean you gotta have bad blood over it.”

Good thing he couldn’t see my eye roll through the phone. “I know.”

“She’s an angel.”

I wondered if he’d feel that way if he knew how she reacted to me today. Stupid question — he’d obviously side with her. Besides, her reaction, like everything else, was my fault. Being an adult is hard.

“Got it,” I snapped back, frustrated by this turn in the conversation.

“Kid,” my dad said, using a term I felt hadn’t applied to me in too many years, “just because things didn’t work out with your mother doesn’t mean—”

“Okay, enough,” I interrupted. “I’m not in the mood to revisit this tonight.” That’s what always seemed to happen when I got on the phone with my dad — old wounds cracked open and bled. And my mother was the oldest, the bloodiest, wound. She walked out of our lives decades ago. I wasn’t sure where she was and I was okay with that. I didn’t hate her, but I didn’t care about her either.

My dad was getting on in years, and I’d let him run his mouth for a while, but this was where I drew the line. I love my father, honest, I do, and I always turn to him when I need some tough but fair wisdom, but he wasn’t a perfect man. Knocking him off my mental pedestal had taken years, and it had been hard won.

He began, “But—”

“No,” I said, cutting him off, a thing I seemed to be doing a lot during this little discussion. “I’ve got to save your business, remember? The one you almost bankrupted rather than ask for help like a normal person. You and your damn pride.”

There was a long beat of silence before my dad replied quietly, “I suppose you’re right, Jacob.”

“Yeah, I know. Love you, Dad, good night.” I clicked off before he could say goodbye. Was that petty of me? Maybe. But I had reached the end of my rope, and if it snapped… well, then that pettiness would turn to open anger.

With thoughts of Got Wood, my mother, and most of all, Sierra, swirling in my head, I toweled dry, padded over to the bed, and collapsed backward onto the satin duvet, scrunching my fingers tightly up in the silky fabric, trying not to rip it clean off the mattress.

Given all the emotions swirling in my head, I thought it’d take ages for me to drift off, but moments later, I was asleep and dreaming of Sierra’s soft skin in that fiery red dress.