Chapter 24 #2
George shrugged. “There’s no money in it, but on the bright side, you won’t have to court another job offer in Midtown again.”
“Thank God,” Freddie murmured, letting his head fall back against the headrest.
Freddie didn’t head back to the Uppercross.
His emotions were still too raw and the idea for a nonprofit was fizzing in his brain, shooting from one possibility to the next too fast for him to nail down.
So he did what he always had to when he needed to untether his brain—let it roam and work until it came up with a plan: He went to Queens.
By lunchtime he was helping his mother in the garden like he had for so many years.
Everything had been moved into her small greenhouse near the garage, and together they repotted seedlings, debating whether to plant spinach again next summer.
Then he went to the basement, where his dad still had Bertha going, churning out oregano and parsley year-round.
It was good to have his hands in dirt again, back where it all started. His body went into autopilot while his brain examined every angle for his nonprofit, coming up with idea after idea until he finally had to head upstairs to grab one of his dad’s small reporter’s notebooks to jot them down.
An hour later, he was sitting in his parents’ living room, the Jets game on TV and a beer in his hand while he filled page after page, mapping out the first steps for his charity. He only paused when his dad shuffled around the corner in his pajamas and carrying a beer of his own.
“What’s the score?” he asked.
“Nineteen–three, Rams,” Freddie answered grimly.
“Goddamn it.” Fred Sr. landed heavily in the recliner beside the sofa. “So, what are you still doing out here? Did your mother find that Santa in the basement?”
“No. I just needed a change of scenery,” Freddie replied, tapping his pen against his leg. “Where’s Sophie?”
“At the shop,” his father replied, waving a hand toward the front door and, somewhere beyond it, Manhattan. “The launch party is tomorrow so she’s working on some last-minute details.”
Freddie nodded, even as the reminder of the launch party triggered a shot of anxiety. “Are you and Mom going?”
His father threw him an incredulous glare. “We don’t go into the city after dark. You know that. We’ll go in during normal business hours. You kids have fun.”
The Jets turned the ball over with ten seconds left in the quarter and Fred Sr. grumbled to himself as the game went to commercial.
“Your sister has been singing Anne’s praises for the past few weeks,” his father said after a moment. “Sounds like she did a real bang-up job with all the accounting.”
“Yeah.”
“And Sophie asked her to be her partner?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah.”
“Why’d you two break up again?”
Freddie’s head fell back. “Dad, can we not—”
“Hey, just asking,” his father said, holding up his hands in mock surrender.
The game returned, and they sat in silence as the Jets were intercepted, as the Rams missed a field goal.
Freddie tried to watch, to get lost in the game and forget everything else, but instead, everything else felt like it was going to swallow him whole.
He had to say it, hash it out, or he would end up exactly where he was eight years ago, broken and confused and having no idea what to do with it.
“I’m still in love with her, Dad,” he finally said.
He didn’t look surprised. If anything, a new tinge of sadness swelled in his eyes. “Does she know that?”
Freddie shook his head. “I had the chance to tell her, but I fucked it up.”
“How did you fuck it up?”
He almost wanted to laugh. “Instead of trying to move forward, I brought up everything that had been eating away at me for the past eight years and threw it in her face.”
His dad let out a low whistle.
Freddie sighed. “Yeah.”
“You should apologize,” his father said.
“I don’t know if an apology is going to cut it,” Freddie murmured, scratching at his jaw.
“Depends what you say.”
Freddie’s brow furrowed. “Other than I’m sorry?”
“Anybody can say I’m sorry. You have to put those words into action. Talk things out. Learn from it. Otherwise, what the hell are you doing?”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“How?”
Freddie let out a long sigh. “There are still a lot of things that I don’t know if we’ll ever resolve.”
“Then you gotta pick your things.”
Freddie’s brow furrowed. “I don’t get it.”
His father threw him an exasperated glare.
“Those things that bug you, maybe even drive you crazy, but you can live with because you’re living with her.
It’s like that tree.” He pointed over to the towering silver monstrosity in the corner.
“That is the ugliest goddamn Christmas tree that God ever put on this earth. But every November for the past twenty years, I help your mom put it up.”
“So why don’t you say something?”
“Because she loves it. And I love her,” he said. “That’s a thing. Get it?”
Freddie stared at the metallic branches, the twinkle lights that were almost blinding. “Yeah. I get it.”
Silence descended then. They watched the third down, then the fourth, before his father spoke again.
“Have you turned down that job yet?” his father asked during the next commercial break.
Freddie’s gaze snapped to his dad. “How’d you know about that?”
“I didn’t.” He shrugged. “But you were never gonna be happy behind a desk, Freddie. We’ve known that since you locked your kindergarten class out of the classroom and tried to convince the other kids to stage a revolt.”
Freddie laughed. “Yeah. Mom’s going to be disappointed, though.”
“Oh, please. She still has that painting you did of that kindergarten class up in the kitchen. She’s always proud of you. She just also has a lot of opinions.” He got distracted by the game for a moment and cursed under his breath before turning to Freddie again. “What are you gonna do now?”
“Well… I was thinking of finally starting up that nonprofit to fund the implementation of cost-effective sustainable farming techniques in underserved communities,” Freddie continued, trying not to wince.
His father narrowed his eyes on him. “So… still unemployed.” A moment, then Fred Sr. grinned. “At least some things never change.”
Then he clinked his bottle with Freddie’s and turned back to the game.