Chapter 5
Chapter five
“Uncle Sergio! Wake up!”
“Oof …” Sergio coughs and wheezes, then rolls onto his side, curling into a ball, and tries to catch his breath. The sound of Gus’s familiar hiss rings out below him before the cat goes running out the door like an angry, furry specter. “Morning, Henry …”
Henry tilts his head, looking at him quizzically. “Are you alright?”
“I’ve been better,” Sergio says around a labored breath.
Henry’s head tilts the other way. “Are you sick?”
Sick of this shit. “No. It’s been a rough morning.”
“But you just woke up!” Henry throws his hands up, exasperated with his uncle.
Sergio repositions himself to sit up against the headboard and pulls Henry into his lap. “It was a long night.”
Henry’s eyes go wide. “Did you have a bad dream? I had one of those once. Mommy says to not be scared.”
“You know what, kid? You’re right. It was only a bad dream.” It’s more like a living nightmare, but Henry doesn’t need to know that.
Henry leaps off Sergio’s lap, narrowly missing kneeing him in the balls again. “Stay here. I have something to help,” he says as he runs out the door. His footsteps thunder across the hall to his bedroom. There’s a brief pause in the noise before his footsteps start up again in quick succession.
Sergio, now a little wiser, braces himself for Henry’s approach and holds his arms out when he sees Henry come careening into his room, holding a stuffed dog the size of his torso.
The sight almost catches him off guard, but Sergio still manages to grab Henry and control his landing as he leaps back onto the bed.
“Here!” Henry yells, holding the toy out for Sergio. Sergio takes it and looks at it. It’s reminiscent of a Saint Bernard except it has comically long, droopy ears.
“What’s this?” Sergio asks.
“It’s a dog.”
“Yes, I can see that.” Sergio chuckles and flaps the stuffed dog’s ears. “But what does it do?”
Henry shrugs and floats his hands up to shoulder height. “Keeps the bad dreams away?”
“Hmm …” Sergio hums, nodding with his lips pulled into a tight line to make himself look serious about what Henry handed him as a solution.
He knows full well there is nothing this stuffed dog can do about his current predicament, but he’s certainly not going to crush Henry’s spirit with a reaction that conveys that.
“Thank you, Henry,” he says, and places the toy beside him on the bed, tucking it in so only its head is peeking out from underneath the covers.
“I believe this dog will be most helpful in fighting off bad dreams.”
Henry’s lips pull into a wide and confident grin.
Sergio ruffles his hair. “Should we go get some breakfast?”
“Yeah!”
“Good,” he says and gets out of the bed, helping Henry down in the process. “I’m starving. Now, go wake up your Uncle Adrien.”
“Okay!” Henry bounds out the door, holding two very enthusiastic thumbs up over his head.
In a rare moment of awareness, Sergio cranes his head out the door and yells, “Gently!”
Henry raises his thumbs over his head once again, then bursts through the door to Adrien’s bedroom. He is greeted by Adrien with a sleepy, “Hey, buddy.” Thankfully, it is not accompanied by the ‘oof’ of Henry kicking Adrien in the balls.
Sergio, wearing the self-satisfied grin of a man who feels like he accomplished a good deed, leaves his bedroom and heads down the stairs. Having done something altruistic—no matter how minor—he’s ready to take on this repeated day with a new attitude.
“Good morning, shithead!” he says in chorus with Holden as he enters the kitchen, trips over Gus, recovers, and makes a swift move to grab the flatware from Rose to lie across the table.
Unlike his failure to avoid tripping over Gus, he does manage to deftly dodge the whip of Rose’s ponytail by leaning back.
After finishing setting the table, he grabs the coffee and begins filling up the mugs, starting with a cup for Rose.
She raises a suspicious eyebrow at him as he hands her the steaming cup.
“What? Did you expect me to only pour coffee for myself?” he asks as he fills a second mug and holds it out to Adrien as he enters the kitchen with Henry hanging from his shoulders.
“I suspect that’s exactly what she thought,” Adrien says as he takes the mug after placing Henry back onto his feet.
“You all have such little faith in me.” Sergio shakes his head. He has a smile on his lips and thinks, See? This isn’t so hard.
“I have faith in you,” Holden says, and places the plates full of pancakes, bacon, and sliced fruit onto the table. He even refuses the mug of coffee Sergio is holding out for him. “You take that. I’ll drink the sludge at the bottom of the pot.”
“Seriously?” Sergio, Rose, and Adrien all ask together.
“Yeah. I like it when I can chew it,” Holden says, pouring himself the last remnants of the coffee. He takes an exaggerated sip from his mug and smacks his lips after he swallows. “Ahh. Delicious.”
“You’re disgusting,” Rose and Adrien say together as everyone begins to grab food.
“So,” Sergio says, dishing up his plate and looking toward Rose. “Jeremy. What’s his day look like?”
She barely looks at him while she pours syrup over Henry’s pancakes. “Why? Are you looking to insult him again?”
Sergio feels his cheeks get slightly hot. “No. I was …” He pauses, and his shoulders creep up towards his ears. “Hoping to apologize, actually.”
“Really?” she says. “I’ve never known you to ever say you’re sorry.”
“You and me both,” Adrien says, with a tight laugh.
Sergio snaps his head to look at his brother. He takes a quick breath before retorting. Saying something snarky at his moment isn’t going to keep his brother from quitting on him later. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll be saying I’m sorry to you later.”
“Doubt it,” Adrien says and takes a long sip of his coffee.
One person at a time. Sergio lets out a small, quick sigh. He turns his attention back to Rose. “Really, though. Should I go talk to him before or after skiing?”
Rose shrugs. “After, I guess. Allison is gonna be at the barn any minute now, and we need to get right to work with no distractions.” She takes a bite of her food and then washes it down with coffee. “Which, speaking of, I better get going.”
“You didn’t finish your breakfast,” Holden says, looking rejected as if there’s something wrong with his spread.
She rises from her seat and grabs her plate, then kisses him on the cheek.
“I’ll take the rest of it to go. You boys have fun.
And maybe while you’re on the mountain, you can feed this idiot”—she ruffles Sergio’s hair with her free hand as she walks by— “a proper script on how to apologize to someone.”
In the chair lift high above the snow-covered mountain, with their legs and skis dangling in the air, Adrien teases Sergio.
“Do we need to talk about what you’re gonna say to Jeremy today to apologize to him?
Or are you going to act like a grown-up on your own?
We could pull a Cyrano De Bergerac if you need? ”
“Nah.” Sergio laughs, enjoying the lightness between himself and his brother. “I think I can manage.”
“I don’t know,” Adrien says with a slight sing-song nature to his voice. “Have you ever actually apologized to anyone?”
Sergio scoffs. “Yes.” He has. Sort of. It’s arguable if he’s ever really done it without the ulterior motive of aiming to get his way, though.
“Well, a word of advice. Don’t make it about you.”
“I would never.”
“You would always.” Adrien playfully jostles him with his shoulder, making their airborne chariot sway back and forth.
Sergio turns to look at his brother and gives him a quick wink.
Keep it light and playful, he reminds himself.
Every other time the two brothers have been on this lift, Adrien has quit on him when he hasn’t managed to keep the mood fun.
With his brother in a seemingly good and lighthearted mood, Sergio is feeling amiable.
“So, I’ve been thinking,” he begins, jostling Adrien back with his shoulder and creating more sway back and forth on the chairlift.
“About?”
“I’m giving you a raise,” Sergio says.
“Sergio.” Adrien laughs with a tinge of bitterness that makes Sergio nervous. “I don’t need a raise.”
“Sure you do. You’re the reason I stay afloat. Anyone can see that.”
“I’m the reason you make your deadlines. The money from our bottomless trust keeps us afloat.”
“Maybe so,” he says, dropping all pretenses and bluster.
“But without your help behind the scenes, I’d be nowhere.
” Sergio looks over his shoulder at his brother.
His profile is striking against the backdrop of the high trees and ice blue sky.
Sergio can’t help but want to take a picture.
He pulls out his camera and captures it.
Holding the screen to his brother, he shows it to him. “You always did photograph well.”
“You’ve always known how to take an excellent shot.” Adrien shrugs.
“Anyway, as I was saying, we make a good team. And it’s high time I started making you feel like you were an equal partner.”
Adrien lets out a sigh, and his cheeks lose some of their rosy color.
“That’s the thing, though, Sergio. I don’t want to be an equal partner.
I need to branch out on my own.” He pauses and takes a deep breath, then turns to look at Sergio with a bit of sadness.
“I’ve been putting this off. But it’s time for me to stop working for you. ”
Defeated, Sergio moves his gaze to their dangling skis. “How long have you felt this way?”
“I can’t pinpoint when, but it’s been a while.”
“Like since Daphne?”
“No,” Adrien snaps. “This has nothing to do with Daphne. This is about me wanting to realize my own dream. I can’t keep leeching off of you.”
Sergio turns and half smiles at his brother. “Technically, as you pointed out, we’re leeching off our trust fund.”
“Yeah, well, I can’t keep leeching only off that either and maintain any sense of dignity.”