20. HARRISON
HARRISON
The house didn’t feel the same without Sammy, and nothing that Harrison could do would even get close to changing that.
Having arrived back from the bar feeling a little on the drunk side, Harrison decided to rustle up a late-night snack to make himself feel better.
‘If only I knew someone who was good with food, huh?’ Harrison muttered, clumsily banging into the corner of the solid-oak kitchen unit. ‘Pfft. Whatever. I’m a grown-ass man. I can make a fucking sandwich.’
Harrison picked up the bread knife and began angrily cutting away at the large sourdough loaf. Next up for the chopping board was a large tomato that Harrison just about managed to slice without removing his own fingers in the process too.
‘Grrrr. No freakin’ cheese,’ Harrison said, opening the refrigerator and seeing pretty much a barren wasteland aside from a couple of bottles of pale ale and a milk carton. ‘Oh well. Tomato sandwich it is.’
Harrison put the sandwich on a large white plate and wandered toward his study. Harrison sat down on his work chair and instinctively turned the computer on.
It was late.
Harrison was drunk.
But his instinct to work on his novel was still there.
It was almost like a defense mechanism for him.
Things may have been going all to hell with Sammy, and with Dean Hoffman too, but Harrison reasoned that if he could at least get some words on the page then that would go some way to helping him carry on like everything was normal.
‘Fuck, this is terrible,’ Harrison said, suddenly realizing that the tomato in his sandwich was probably a good two or three days past its best. ‘Damned Little. It’s all his fault.’
Harrison knew it was wrong to feel angry toward Sammy. He was simply lashing out. But there was something that was becoming clearer and clearer to Harrison, and it wasn’t a comfortable feeling to sit with either.
Harrison cast his mind back to when his former boy, Justin walked out and ended their relationship.
It had always been the narrative in Harrison’s head that it was Justin who couldn’t handle the change in Harrison’s status when his book really took off and changed his life.
Harrison had always been more than happy to lay the vast majority of blame at Justin’s door.
But gradually over the years, Harrison had known on a subconscious level that it wasn’t quite that simple. Being in a happy relationship with Sammy had helped to clarify that further – but now Sammy was gone, Harrison was refining his version of events even more.
I was so arrogant back then.
Always thinking of me and my success.
Maybe Justin just had to prioritize himself…
Harrison sat at his desk and stared at his off-color tomato sandwich. Was it possible that Sammy had grown tired with Harrison’s self-obsession over his career? After all, even in their short time together, Harrison had devoted a lot of time to working on his manuscript.
Perhaps it was possible that Sammy didn’t appreciate this, that he wanted to be the undisputed priority in Harrison’s life. And following this line of thinking, maybe this was why Sammy headed back to the city and was now ignoring Harrison.
‘Does the boy… just not want to be with me?’ Harrison said, running his fingers across his keyboard but not typing a word. ‘Just like Justin, Sammy had enough and needed to break away from me…’
Harrison felt an overwhelming sense of devastation come over him.
Maybe Sammy had a lucky escape and got out early.
Harrison could now see just how arrogant and cocky he had been in his younger years. No wonder Justin left him in search of something more, and something better too.
At the peak of his career, Harrison had once thought that the good times would never end. It was this arrogance that led to Justin walking out and Harrison blindly assuming that he would come running back. It never happened, and Harrison had allowed that to cast a shadow over him for many years.
If the same thing was happening all over again with Sammy, Harrison decided that the only real option he had was to face up to the truth as early as possible and accept it.
Sammy was gone.
Sammy wasn’t coming back.
The only thing left to do as far as Harrison could see was to accept this and let Sammy walk away. Harrison didn’t want to cause Sammy any more pain. If Sammy truly didn’t want to hear from Harrison, then Harrison decided that it was only right to not attempt to contact Sammy again.
‘I think it’s time for one last beer,’ Harrison said, getting up from his chair and walking out of the study and toward the kitchen. ‘One beer. One new chapter on the book. And then bed.’
* * *
Harrison decided that rather than one more beer, he would take all three cool beers from the refrigerator and have them on his desk as he worked.
In theory, this was fine – but in practice it simply led him to spend more time thinking about Sammy, Justin, and pretty much every other person he had met in his whole life.
Why do I screw every relationship up?
I even screwed things up with my father.
Didn’t even resolve things with him before he passed…
Harrison remembered how him and his father had enjoyed a close relationship all the way through childhood until, quite abruptly, his mother and father divorced when Harrison was seventeen.
There was no great drama, no infidelity, no violence – simply two adults who had drifted apart over the years finally deciding that enough was enough. But Harrison had found it hard to handle. He was still a teenager and had the emotions to go alongside it.
The upshot of the divorce was that Harrison decided he no longer had much interest in being around his father on the weekends or during the holidays.
Instead, Harrison poured his time into writing.
It was time well spent but looking back Harrison could see that he would never get that time with his father back.
Harrison knew that his father had been ill earlier in his life and beaten it, so in the months after Harrison’s novel began to go stratospheric he didn’t think too much when he heard that his father was ill again.
Sadly, his father was dead within two weeks.
Harrison had to live with the knowledge that he didn’t see his father before he died – there was no turning back the clock and no way of changing things.
It was a regret that Harrison buried deep inside of himself. Looking back with hindsight, all of the partying that came when his book began to sell and win awards was probably a way of holding his emotions over his father at bay.
This tactic worked in one sense. But it was hard to argue that it didn’t negatively affect Harrison in many other aspects of his life. In fact, Harrison sometimes felt that he was still living with the pain of it all.
‘Fuck. Another beer it is,’ Harrison said, reaching over to the final bottle.
But before Harrison could open the drink and hear the comforting fizz of an open bottle, he heard a loud knocking on the door.
‘Who the hell is this?’ Harrison said, angrily getting up from the chair and stomping through toward the front door. ‘If that’s you, Hoffman… God help me!’
Harrison could feel his blood boiling. He was angry, confused, and hurt all in one. Harrison wanted to lash out. He wanted to do something – anything – to take away from the pain of Sammy no longer being in his life.
‘You?’ Harrison said, opening the door to Lars. ‘What do you-’
But before Harrison could even finish his sentence or invite Lars in, the Little was already inside the house and ready to talk…
‘OMG… I can’t believe it took me so long to work this out!’ Lars said.
‘Work what out? You’re not making any sense, boy!’ Harrison replied, not in the mood for riddles.
‘Sammy’s last message to me,’ Lars said. ‘It seemed weird. Like, not really written in his normal voice. At first, I thought he was maybe tired. Or using a voice app to convert it to text. But then I sent another message and asked a question that only Sammy would know the answer to…’
‘Go on…’
‘And Sammy, or rather not Sammy, got it wrong!’ Lars replied. ‘Sammy isn’t the one who’s been messaging me. I think someone, and I’m guessing that horrible manager of his, has been controlling Sammy’s phone!’
Harrison could feel the anger building up inside him.
That motherfucker Tucker.
I knew he was bad news.
This can’t stand. Not on my watch…
‘If Tucker is controlling Sammy’s phone, then who knows what kind of hold he has over him,’ Lars said, speaking so fast that he was almost tripping over his words. ‘We need to do something! Sammy needs his Daddy’s help!’
Harrison’s first instinct was to get in his car and drive to the city right there and then. But he knew that he’d had way too much to drink to even contemplate such a thing.
‘I don’t suppose you can drive?’ Harrison said, looking at Lars.
‘Sorry, Harrison, I’m strictly two wheels,’ Lars replied sadly.
Then it hit Harrison. Zane had a private driver who was available 24/7. As long as Zane wasn’t being driven somewhere for a late-night booty call, then that could be the answer.
One quick call later and not only was the driver heading over to Harrison’s house, but Zane was coming too.
All three of them would go to the city. There was no telling exactly what Tucker was up to, and it may well have been the case that Harrison, Zane or Lars could hold the key to sorting this mess out.
The one thing that Harrison was certain of was that something had to be done and there wasn’t a single second to waste. Harrison was determined to get his boy back and vanquish Tucker from Sammy’s life for good.
‘I just hope we’re there in time,’ Harrison said as he stood outside with Lars as they waited for the car to arrive.
‘You’re his Daddy, you’ll make it right,’ Lars replied. ‘I just know you will.’
Harrison nodded. But beneath his stoic exterior, his heart was racing. They had identified the problem, but solving it was a whole other matter.
Harrison wasn’t able to dwell on things for too much longer as he heard the sound of Zane’s car coming around the corner and parking up in front of his house.
‘New York City, here we come,’ Harrison said, his voice strong and determined. ‘It’s time to write some wrongs and get my boy back where he belongs – in my arms.’