Chapter 1
Ash
Today wasn't off to a good start.
I made a point of arriving at the airport two hours before my flight.
That was my way and I didn't care whether it was excessive.
Two hours meant plenty of time to unpack my entire life at the security checkpoint and then put it all back together, a leisurely stroll to my gate, and a coffee and snack before takeoff.
That was my way.
I wasn't getting my way today. Not after a morning of hellish Denver traffic, a shitshow at the rental car return lot, and now—apparently—major staffing issues at the baggage check counters.
As far as I could tell, the airline had one agent processing a line of passengers that now extended out the terminal door and onto the curb.
I checked my smartwatch again. I had an hour before boarding my flight to Boston and I knew that was enough time to get me from here to the gate but that didn't stop me from scowling at my wrist. Rather than waiting for the pot to boil, I banded my arm over my chest and tucked my hand under my arm.
But sweating over time would've been easier than watching the family of four in front of me. I'd stopped counting but it seemed like a solid estimate to say they had a million pieces of luggage between them as well as a complete inability to gather their boarding passes and passports.
It took everything in me to keep myself from jumping in and organizing them. I blinked, rocked back on my heels, tapped my fist against my lips. And then I checked my watch again. Only two minutes had passed but I lived my life in six-minute billable hour increments. Those two minutes mattered.
The family shuffled away from the counter—not all the way because chaotic messes never cleared out efficiently—and I stepped up, documents in hand. My luggage was on the scale before the agent could ask whether I was checking any bags today.
"One bag checked through to Boston Logan, Mr. Santillian," the agent announced, her gaze glued to her screen.
I didn't correct her pronunciation. Not worth the effort to explain it was Sahn-tee-yawn and not San-till-ee-an.
Not worth the time. "You'll be departing from gate A35 and your flight is on time. "
I shot another glimpse at my watch as I slipped my boarding pass and ID into my pocket.
While I had a long, successful history of simultaneously walking and telling time, today just wasn't my day.
I knew it while suffering through gridlocked traffic and car rental hassles and the luggage check queue from hell, and I knew it the minute my wingtip connected with child-shaped soft tissue.
Though time slowed to stillness, my body was moving, flying through the air at a speed I couldn't harness. There was a yelp, a scream, the clatter of bags hitting the ground and shoes slapping against linoleum tile, and then a crack, a crunch, a grunt.
The grunt was all mine. The crack and crunch too. The remainder of the noise belonged to everyone else. I knew that as well as I knew this day was well and fully fucked.
From the unpleasant heap in which I'd landed on this unforgiving floor, I blinked up at the terminal's blinding fluorescent lights. I lifted my arm, pouted at my cracked smartwatch. The movement sent pain pulsing through my shoulder, down to my hip. I tasted blood on my tongue.
I gathered myself up, brushed my hands down my trousers. My suit coat sat crumpled against the wall of a vacant counter, my laptop bag beside it. Then I heard a shout in my direction. "Watch where you're going next time, man!"
Glancing back at the source of my stumble, I found several people kneeling beside a child.
Tears streaked his cheeks though he appeared intact.
"Sorry," I replied. As much as I wanted to suggest the kid—who was anywhere between four and fourteen years old, for all I knew about children—not crouch down in the middle of busy airports, I wasn't dying on that hill.
Especially when the clock was ticking and I needed to exchange that preflight coffee for a whiskey sour to ease the throb in my shoulder.
Hell, the throb on the entire right side of my body. "Is everyone all right?"
"Fine, no thanks to you," a woman answered. She thumbed away the child's tears.
Out of habit, I consulted my watch. The dead-eyed gaze of the black screen sent a bolt of cool anxiety down my neck, through my belly.
I didn't have time to not have the time.
Not today. Not after sealing a new deal that would either bring my father around to my vision for our accounting partnership or kill that partnership altogether.
"Again," I started, glancing around the terminal for a clock, "I'm sorry.
" This fiasco had me four minutes behind schedule and that schedule was already compressed due to the other failings of this day.
I bent down to collect my suit coat and laptop bag.
Later, I'd thank my good sense for investing in a satchel meant for war zones because I couldn't survive losing my laptop and my smartwatch in one shot. "I hope you have a good flight."
I didn't wait for a response, instead marching toward the security checkpoint. All I had to do was disembowel my carry-on, walk barefoot and unbelted through a body scanner, and reassemble myself well enough to order some liquor.
It didn't matter that it was seven thirty in the morning, right?
No, that didn't matter. For as horrible as this day was turning out to be, the week ahead would be worse.
I was flat-out slammed, completely overcommitted right now.
I still hadn't found a decent auditing assistant to replace the one I'd lost to KMPG.
My father and I were long overdue for a serious conversation about the future of our firm.
Add to that my broken watch and certainly bruised body, and my plate was overflowing.
But that wasn't all of it.
My sister was getting married next weekend.
But my sister, the one born three and a half minutes after me, wasn't just exchanging vows and then eating some cake.
No, that would be asking far too much. My sister and her fiancé were having a wedding rehearsal and a party to welcome their out-of-town guests.
All of that was before the actual wedding ceremony and reception but it didn't end there.
No, the marital mania extended into brunch the next morning.
Motherfucking brunch.
For reasons I could not comprehend, I was obligated to attend all of these events.
I wasn't an out-of-town guest but my mother had verbally backhanded me when I'd questioned whether I could pass on that shindig.
And I loved an omelet as much as the next guy but I preferred them without the associated marshmallow fluff of weddings.
That was my plate. Work and work and disapproving dad drama and work with a side of three-day wedding weekend.
Not on my plate was Millie, my on-again, off-again (mostly off) girlfriend. She wasn't on the plate because she woke me up with a text announcing her desire to skip the wedding…and while she was at it, she wanted to explain she was skipping me too.
If I believed in signs, I would've seen that message as a big one.
I would've yanked the blankets over my head, changed my flight, and spent the morning eating an omelet unaffiliated with nuptial events.
Not because I loved Millie or felt the sting of her rejection but because now I had to explain this shit to my mother, the self-appointed ruler of the seating chart.
But I didn't believe in signs unless they were in a mathematical equation.
Getting drunk first thing in the morning wasn't part of my standard air travel procedure.
It wasn't part of any procedure of mine. I didn't get drunk. On occasion, I enjoyed a beer or two, a glass of wine if it was offered, maybe a cocktail, but I rarely drank to the point of feeling it the next day. There was no space in my life for hauntings by ghosts of decisions past.
But I was well on my way to drunk this morning.
I had coffee topped with a hearty dose of whiskey and the ache in my shoulder had quieted to a low throb.
While I waited for the rest of the passengers to board, I amused myself by scrolling through résumés.
I'd never screened applicants while under the influence but I was enjoying it.
There was no reason to stress over the complete shortage of qualified candidates.
Not when I had a whiskey latte to dull it down to a mild irritation.
That was all it was to everyone else. An irritation.
My father couldn't find it in him to get worked up over our glaring need for more support staff, better systems, new revenue sources.
He didn't get worked up over anything, not even fiscal year-ends or tax season.
I was busy pulling late nights and weekends while he shrugged off the mountains of extensions and corporate filings waiting to be reviewed with little more than, "It will get done. "
"Yeah," I muttered to myself. "It gets done because I do it."
Millie wasn't fond of my urgency either.
She worked at one of the high-profile management consulting firms in Boston and couldn't conceive of anyone leaving an international financial services giant for a small accounting shop as I had a few years ago.
She couldn't understand that shop having enough business to require anything more than nine-to-five either.
"You can go fuck yourself, Millie."
I washed that thought down with another sip and toggled to the next résumé. A quick scan had me copying and pasting my standard "thanks but no thanks" response but I stopped short of sending it when a man edged into my row.