Chapter 18
Even with summer drawing near, the water was still enough that Connor opted for a spring wetsuit when he stopped by his apartment, trading his phone for his board
Paddling out past the shorebreaks at Newport Beach felt like muscle memory, as much as navigating around a spreadsheet.
He’d never been good at surfing, not like some of the guys that frequented the dusk patrol, but none of that mattered when he was being thrown around by wave after wave, slamming down in the water, coming back up to shake the sea salt out of his eyes while getting back on his board to do it all again.
Fail, fail, fail, and fail. As long as he could get his head back above water, he’d be okay to try and fail again.
He surfed until the sky was streaked gold, orange, purple with the setting sun, until his limbs ached from slamming into water and sand again and again.
And then he went home, only picking up his phone to book a flight for the next morning–and to call his parents. Might as well let them know he was coming.
The next two days were the most time Connor had spent in his home town since he first moved to California. But little changed on the shores of Lake Erie.
Squares of cornfields looked the same as ever flying into Ohio. A life he’d left behind so many years ago.
His mom picked him up from the airport, gushing about how happy she was to see him. That had been a surprise, though not unwelcome. Connor even let her hug him when they met at Baggage Claim, hugging her back just as tight.
“How’s work?” She asked on the drive home. Connor knew better than to tell her everything, but he told her just enough.
“It’s been better,” he said, trying not to sound as bitter as he felt. “Some trouble. Office politics, but it’ll pass.”
Maybe.
Maybe it would pass. But he wasn’t going to tell his mom that.
“Oh, well, you’ll get through it. You always do.”
He wasn't so sure about that, but he wasn’t going to argue with his mom about it.
“How are the kids this year?” He decided to change the subject, and it worked. His mom beamed from the driver’s seat.
“Oh, they’re perfect. Even when they’re not, they’re learning to work through so many big emotions. At the start of this year, daily tantrums. Now? Maybe one a week.”
“Think you’ll teach kindergarten again next year?”
“I’ll teach kindergarten until I’m ready for you to ship me off to the glue factory,” she said brightly. Connor cracked a smile.
Truly, nothing had changed while he was gone.
His childhood home looked almost exactly the same as he remembered leaving it back when he was 22–a neatly trimmed lawn, shaded by an ancient (to Connor, at least) oak tree, the wooden panels the same blue he remembered helping his dad paint one summer back in high school.
From the window of his old attic bedroom, he swore you could see the shores of Lake Erie on a clear day. Not so much today, with gray clouds creeping in over the blue, bringing threats of more to come.
No place like home, he supposed.
He hadn’t brought much with him, only a small suitcase that he carried inside before his mom could even mention it.
They’d replaced their sofa in the years since Connor had left, bringing in a cream loveseat complete with a new rug in a pretty sage green. A new TV over the fireplace, though he couldn’t imagine it got much use between his mom’s books and his dad’s radio hobby.
The kitchen was exactly as he remembered. His mom ushered him to the table as soon as he was inside, insisting he try the blueberry muffins she made that morning, and then toast from her sourdough bread.
“You came all this way, you must be so hungry,” she’d say, and Connor let her, because he knew he’d denied her that.
His mom was happiest when she was taking care of someone. Connor didn’t have to wonder where he got that particular trait from when he was around her.
The way being decreed useful had given him a sense of worth while he worked under his first principal, and then with Curtis–
And then Nate.
As he watched his mom flit about her kitchen like a sparrow in the spring, from cupboard to pantry to fridge and back to him in one buzzing rhythm, he recalled the first few days he’d spent with Nate.
How he’d hovered over his shoulder, ready to insert himself at a moment's notice on the off chance Nate needed him–
Centering solutions to Nate’s problems around how he could help–
But that was the job, wasn’t it?
Except it wasn’t.
What did Junie do, day in and day out?
Connor knew this well–she complained often about her workload.
Elle Thornton had Junie running resource checks, performing internal audits, drafting presentations and memos while coordinating communications between different departments.
Junie didn’t bring Thornton coffee.
She didn’t help her rehearse presentations, and she sure as shit didn’t get on her knees and pretend it was the job she signed up for just because it was what Thornton had come to expect.
That first day at home had Connor feeling a bit like the prodigal son, allowing his mother to embrace his return, even offering his gruff father a smile when the man returned from a long day on the lake.
“You still… doing what you’re doing?” His dad asked over dinner that evening. A stubborn man who refused to bend to both the will of other men and even age itself, he had never apologized to Connor for the things he said during his departure all those years ago.
Nor did Connor think he ever would.
But they could be civil enough, as his mother clearly wanted them to be. She hadn’t shied away from her nerves as evening approached, as his dad’s usual arrival time neared.
“I think he has a lot of regrets over how that last conversation between you two went,” she’d revealed tersely, just before he came home. “Be patient with him.”
And Connor could do that–no, he would, because nothing in Ohio felt anywhere near as large and unmanageable as California had become.
“I’m trying,” Connor answered his dad. He never would have admitted how homesick he’d been for his mother’s cooking. As a teenager, he’d reviled her meatloaf as bland and unappetizing. Tonight, it tasted of old memories and the comfort of being taken care of by someone else.
Connor had nearly forgotten how that felt.
“What’s stopping you?” His dad asked, a judgemental man ready to levy blame against him. It was bait Connor would have taken years ago.
He couldn’t bring himself to now.
Ruminating on his own homesickness, well, it just made him think of Nate, and how he’d longed for the tastes of his own family, an entire continent’s length away.
God, he didn’t want to think about Nate, but the man haunted him.
“Bit of conflict with some department heads,” Connor said, not wanting to admit it was his own, nor wanting to get too deep into an explanation with his father. His parents had never understood what it was Alarie did, nor did they seem to wrap their heads around Connor’s role.
He’d never forget the way his mom had sadly said, “Oh, so you’re like the butler,” when he tried to explain it to her.
But that had been for Curtis, and–well, what was the difference there?
Not for Nate.
Never for Nate.
Connor swallowed down the ache in his chest with another bite of meatloaf, going for an undercooked carrot as well.
“What kind of conflict?” His mom asked, clearly trying to keep the conversation going. Her hands moved so delicately over her own plate, perched in her chair like a songbird. “Not a fight, I’d hope.”
“Kind of.” Connor considered how much to tell them.
Nothing about Nate, of course. As far as he and his parents were concerned, none of them had any kind of dating life, so it wasn’t worth mentioning in the first place.
“There are a few… higherups that don’t like how closely I worked with someone who was fired last year. You know, guilt by association.”
“Do you think they might suspend you?” His mom asked like suspension might be the worst possible outcome–and for her world, it would be.
“Maybe,” was all he said. “I’m hoping to get some work done while I’m here that’ll change their minds.”
“You’ll have no trouble with that,” his dad cut in with. “Don’t let those suits take what’s yours.”
Connor’s fork paused over his plate, surprised. The last thing in the world that he ever expected from his father was encouragement to stay the course at Alarie.
No, that would have been expected from his mom. Never his dad.
“A man works with his hands,” he’d once said to Connor, reasoning to push him to work the summer after high school on his boat.
He smiled.
“I’m not planning on it.”
And Connor did just that, spending that night after dinner combing through his email for every exchange between him and Nate, times they’d mentioned Berkshire’s requested forms requiring Nate’s signatures, times Nate had slipped up and demonstrated incompetence in his role.
The time he’d forwarded an investor email to Connor, an auditing request of some index funds, and asked they should proceed.
Every case Connor could make for Nate fucking up while he was made to play the scapegoat.
And when Connor had sat at the end of his correspondence with Nate, the clock in his parents’ living room reading close to 2 AM, he found himself combing through texts, instead.
That was harder.
They’d always kept their conversations professional over email, but text had been something else entirely.
You coming over tonight?
Can’t wait to see you!
BTW, what sounds good for breakfast tomorrow?
Hey, do you want to sit in on that meeting later today? You should be the one to present our Q3 proposal. I mean, you wrote it!
Man, I loved seeing you handle those questions from Barnum.
Thanks for earlier. I don’t think I’d still be here without you.
Hey, since you made dinner last time, I want to treat you. It’s only fair.
Reading through text after text, Nate’s words to him, uncensored, unguarded. Texts he hadn’t reread since he’d initially received them.
But Connor read through each and every one, a hollow ache in his chest.
For fuck’s sake.