Chapter 5 #2
We ended the call, and I stared at myself in the mirror for a moment, not sure I recognized the man I saw there. This wasn’t me. I’d never let it be. But it was as if Jackie’s teasing the other day had cracked open a Pandora’s box of desires inside me that refused to let me tuck them away again.
Without thinking, I pulled up Jackie’s number and hit the call button.
He declined it, and a text message popped up a moment later.
No one does voice calls anymore, old man. What’s up?
I snorted back a laugh, shaking my head, and hit call again. Fucking Gen Z.
This time, Jackie answered.
“You do know it’s almost midnight,” he said without any greeting, the sound of thumping music behind him.
“What I know is that I taught you phone etiquette the summer you interned in the New York office for me.”
He laughed, but the background sounds quieted, as if he’d moved away from wherever he was partying. “Yeah, but why waste on things like ‘hello’ when you’re clearly calling me with something urgent.”
I opened my mouth, then realized I wasn’t exactly sure why I’d called him. Surely, I wasn’t about to ask for relationship advice from the kid my sister had tasked with being a role model for. Jackie was half my age, for God’s sake.
“Uncle Cal?” he said, the teasing note disappearing from his voice and true concern bleeding through. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes,” I said, quickly. “Everything’s fine. I’ve just… had an unexpected development come up.”
“How can I help?” he asked instantly, reminding me why I loved the brat.
I laughed, scrubbing a hand over my face. “I’m not sure ‘help’ is what I need, but do you remember the busboy we met at La Vigneta?”
Jackie snorted. “Uh, yeah. The one I thought you were going to disown me for disrespecting? Wait. Uncle Cal! Holy shit, did you actually go back and make a move on the boy?”
“No.” I paused. “But he is in my bed right now.”
“Holy shit,” Jackie repeated, sounding positively gleeful. “Finally! Good job, old man! Wait, you’re not calling me to ask for sex advice, are you?”
“Hardly,” I said dryly. “Besides, sex isn’t an issue.” At least, not yet. “I’m in San Francisco.”
“Uh, what? So, where’s the boy?”
“In my apartment back in New York,” I said, quickly filling Jackie in on the day’s events.
“Do you really think leaving a stranger all alone, with no direction and no supervision, is smart, Uncle Cal?” he asked, sounding genuinely concerned.
When he put it like that, no. But the simple truth was that I couldn’t have left him anywhere else. I don’t think I could have left him, period.
“I need to take care of him,” I admitted to my nephew, not sure I understood that myself.
“I don’t know the whole story, but I need him to be there.
And…” I blew out an explosive breath, pinching the bridge of my nose.
“He’s expecting me to give him some sort of ‘duties’ as my house sitter, but what do I tell him?
I already have a service for the cleaning, and the building is secure enough as it is.
The doormen will handle any deliveries, Andrea will take care of anything unexpected that comes up, so… ”
“So basically, you don’t need him.”
“I do,” I snapped, which made Jackie laugh hard enough that I seriously considered hanging up on him.
“Okay, okay,” he said once he calmed down enough to talk. “Sorry, but man, this is priceless. You’re back on Friday?”
“Right.”
“Okay, don’t worry. I’ll help you out with this. I’ll go talk to the boy and sort something out.”
I vividly remembered the last time Jackie had talked to Dashiell. “I don’t know if having you get involved is a good idea.”
“Well, too late now,” the little shit said gleefully. “So suck it up, buttercup! You’re out of town anyway, and can’t stop me!”
“Jackie…” I started, a warning growl in my voice.
Then I gave in, surrendering to the inevitable and admitting, albeit silently and only in the privacy of my own mind, that maybe that really had been why I’d called.
“Fine. I can forward you his schedule from La Vigneta, but I believe he’s off work tomorrow. Just… please don’t scare him away.”
“You like him,” Jackie said, a softer note in his voice.
My knee-jerk reaction was to deny it. But instead, I went with the truth. “I shouldn’t.”
Jackie snorted. “Fuck that. There’s no ‘should’ involved here. You do, Uncle Cal. Own it. And since you’ve already managed to get him in your bed, the next step is figuring out how to keep him there.”
That definitely wasn’t the next step. There were many, many steps in between; steps that my nephew was blithely skimming right over with the willful ignorance of the young and impetuous.
But I wanted it anyway. Maybe it was easier to admit with three thousand miles between us, but I wanted Dashiell to be mine.
Still, I made myself say, “I believe all I asked you for was help figuring out his house-sitting duties.”
Jackie laughed. “Then isn’t it lucky for you that I know what you really want.”
And then the little shit hung up on me… and I realized I was grinning again, because Jackie was right. He did know what I wanted.
And maybe it was time to finally go after it.