“Dude, I just talked to Mom.” Emmet’s loud, good ole boy voice booms in my ear. “Is it true, ‘cause if anyone else told me this, I’d wonder what they were smokin’.”

I close the bathroom door tightly behind me and nudge the shower curtain aside so I can turn the hot water onto full power.

“What are you talking about?”

I conjure up an image of my oldest brother. He’s a big guy, big enough that he intimidated the players from opposing football teams, both while he was in high school and later at Texas A&E, who awarded him a full athletic scholarship even though our dad’s money meant he didn’t need it.

It’s the middle of the night in Texas, so he must be getting home from some fancy event, which would explain when he talked to our mother. They always attend the same events and then spend the time huddled together, gossiping about the attendees.

“Mom said you have a job,” Emmet booms. “And what is that sound?”

“Yes, I’m working for Northwest as a pilot.” I run a hand through my hair and wonder why the news warranted a phone call. “And the noise is the shower. I turned it on so I can’t be overheard.”

“Oh,” Emmet chortles. “You must be with a hottie.”

The description has my jaw clenching. Emmet doesn’t know Cassie, so I can’t really blame him for what he just said, but he’s talking about Cassie. She’s more than just a gorgeous and warm body.

“Why’d you call me?”

The question puts Emmet’s train of thought back on track. “Why the hell did you go out and get a job? I’d give my right arm if it meant I didn’t have to work anymore.”

After he graduated from college, Emmet started working at the company our great-grandfather started and that each generation since has managed to make grow. His entire life, he’s been told that this would happen, but it wasn’t until my father retired that Emmet realized that not only does he hate the work, he isn’t any good at it.

Luckily, the company is full of people who are happy to do most of the work and see that the company continues earning a massive profit margin each year. With the way things currently stand, Emmet is little more than the face of the company. He has to go into the office, shake a few hands, and sit in on the meetings. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but with the way he carries on, you’d think he was overworked and underpaid. As far as I can tell, he spends all of his time daydreaming about the day he gets to retire and spend all of his days sailing and playing golf. As far as I can tell, our dad is holding something over Emmet’s head, something that requires him to at least put in an appearance and make it look like he’s working. It’s strange though, because my dad has never had a problem with the fact that I spent my twenties bumming around the world and never made any kind of effort to work.

“Emmet, you do realize that most people have to work? It’s not like it’s the end of the world.” Not that I really have much experience. I got my very first job a week ago and have only been “working” for one flight.

“Most people have to work; it’s the only way they can pay for things. Or they have to take over the family legacy.” Bitterness seeps into Emmet’s voice. “You don’t. So why the hell did you go and get a job?”

“I like to fly.”

“You have your own planes,” Emmet points out.

“Yeah, but …” I hesitate, unsure of how to make my brother understand that while being a carefree playboy was fun, I’ve grown tired of it. Tired of not having anything important in my life. Tired of no one taking me seriously because in their minds I’m nothing more than a playboy who has nothing to contribute to the world. “Have you looked at Northwest’s paperwork? Their numbers?”

There’s a long pause. Emmet probably forgot he was talking on the phone. “What’s Northwest?” he finally asks.

I roll my eyes. “It’s a passenger airline. The family company owns a good deal of their stock. Not enough to be controlling shareholders, but enough to be genuinely interested in the company’s performance. Grandpa bought the stocks back when Northwest was just getting started.”

“And?” Emmet probes.

“The company is doing horribly. Everything was going great, they were operating at a comfortable profit margin up until about a decade ago. After that, things have been slowly falling apart. They’ve maxed out their credit line, they’re having employee problems, and most of their planes and other equipment should be replaced, but they don’t seem to have the money to do so.”

This is something that Emmet, as the head of the company, would know if he actually did his job instead of trusting others to do it for him. Which, now that I’m thinking about it, is also strange. One of his advisors must be watching Northwest. Why didn’t they say or do anything when it was obvious the company was in trouble?

“So?” Something thumps, probably Emmet taking off his shoes. “If the company tanks, we’ll get a tax write off, or something like that.”

I take a deep breath. Emmet is too self-absorbed to ever think of a bigger picture or of the different ways that things could go wrong.

“One, if someone gets hurt because they company was using damaged planes, everyone connected to Northwest will be put in the hot seat. Even if the family is lucky enough to avoid getting sued, we’ll probably never recover from the social media backlash.”

I pace from one side of the bathroom to the other and then back again. Since the room is only about two steps wide, it’s not a very satisfying experience.

It seems extreme, but I’ve seen it happen to others. People who use social media aren’t concerned with facts or things like innocent until proven guilty. They only care about their own opinions and what amounts to a vigilante style of justice.

“The company has been around forever,” Emmet says confidently. “It’ll survive anything.”

“Dude, I hope you’re right.” I shift the phone to my other hand.

“I’m always right.” The funny thing is that Emmet truly believes that’s true. He has a knack for forgetting all the times when his mistakes have led to minor disasters. “I still think you’re an idiot for taking a job. If you’re so concerned about this airline, you should have hired someone to check things out.”

“You’re probably right.” Sometimes it’s easier to just agree with whatever my family says. The only problem is that while this attitude has done great things for helping maintain family harmony, it’s also a factor in why they think I’m a lazy, shiftless, good-time guy. I’m tired of that.

“And how are you going to prove there’s anything wrong?” Emmet points out. “It’s not like you know anything about business.”

Ironic, coming from someone who doesn’t know the first thing about the multi-billion-dollar company he’s the head of.

“No, I don’t have a background in business,” I reluctantly confirm. “But I do know a little something something about planes.”

At least I should, after busting my butt in college to eventually earn my aeronautical engineering degree. Not that Emmet or anyone else in my family took the degree seriously, or even bothered to acknowledge I earned one. As far as they’re concerned, I spent the entire time I was in college partying, probably because that’s exactly what Emmet and my sister, Siobhan, did.

“Yeah, how to fly them, but how is that going to help you learn anything? Like I said, you should have hired someone to handle this. I have a couple people who would be great at it. They specialize in troubleshooting businesses. I can talk to them. Than you can go back to the life of Riley and forget all about this working thing.”

Just like that I’m very tired: tired of the conversation, tired of my family, and tired of the trajectory my life has been on for the past thirty years. The only thing I want to do right now is crawl back in bed with Cassie and pretend, even for just a few seconds, that I’m a normal guy.

“Look, Emmet, I’ve got to go.”

“The hottie you’re hiding out from is calling your name, isn’t she?” Emmet’s voice warms considerably. He loves women as much as he hates working.

“Something like that,” I mutter. “Talk to you later.” I disconnect the call and toss the phone on the counter.