Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
Alex
I followed Kyle’s advice and sent Mona a message through the app.
Well, it was sent under the alias I have on there.
Considering the urgency of the message she had sent me, I expected to get a reply right away.
But here I am, seventy-two hours later, staring at my Holidates inbox, and seeing nothing.
I refresh the browser, but no luck, so I pick up my phone. I open the app and tap on the inbox. Empty.
“What the fuck.” I throw the phone on the desk, disgust lacing my tone. How am I supposed to win Mona back when she won’t even answer to the fake me now?
On a whim, I pick up the phone again and find her name in my contacts. I don’t hesitate when I tap on the call icon, then wait for it to ring. Instead, it goes straight to voicemail, which can only mean that, true to her word, she still has me blocked.
Pressure builds up in my head, to the point where it feels like it may explode. I go back to my contacts and look up the name of the one person who I blame for this entire fucked up situation.
“She never wrote back,” I snap at Kyle as soon as he answers the phone.
“What?” He sounds groggy and like I just woke him up.
“You said I should write to her and ask to meet again,” I grunt through my very tense jaw. “I did that, and she has not responded. At all,” I make sure to add. “Not one fucking word.”
There’s a shuffling noise coming from the other end, making me wonder what the hell he’s doing.
“I’ll be right back, baby,” he whispers to someone. That only makes me want to punch a damn whole into the wall. Why is he always with Zara when I call? And why do they have to sound so damn happy every single time? Don’t they fight? Everybody fights, right?
I pace the floor of my office, going back and forth as I wait for Kyle to come back to our phone conversation.
In the corner of my eye, I see a couple of messages popping on my computer from the work account.
My first instinct is to go check because it could be something important, but I take a deep breath and focus on the problem at hand.
Multitasking is not a good idea at the moment. I would most likely mess something up.
“Okay, man, sorry about that.” Kyle sighs into the phone.
“I have no idea why I called you,” I confess to him. “You’re useless to me.”
He snorts at hearing that. “How so?”
“I keep on listening to you and all this advice you have for me to get Mona back, and nothing fucking works. In fact…” I run a hand through my hair, desperation invading all my senses. “Whatever you tell me, I should do the complete opposite.”
I hear the panic in my tone, but I can’t stop myself. I’ve never felt like this before, like I’ve lost control of every single part of my life, and nothing makes sense.
“Dude, you gotta calm down. Where are you even?”
I roll my eyes at his question even though he can see me. “I’m at the office, like every normal person who works for a living.”
“Hey!” He takes offense to that. “I work for a living, too.”
“You were fucking sleeping with your girlfriend at two o’clock in the afternoon,” I yell at him. “Why is she even there? Shouldn’t she be at work? You support her now?”
I want to take the words back as soon as they come out, but it’s too late. Kyle is eerily quiet, and I don’t blame him. After all, it is not my first time saying unflattering things about Zara.
“I’m sorry.” I sigh and continue pacing. “I’m a fucking asshole. I can’t stop myself. I don’t know how to stop myself,” I admit.
He remains quiet, which is not his style at all. He normally likes to run his mouth and annoy the shit out of me. Oh, how the tables have turned.
“I understand you’re a nutcase,” he finally says. “But if you say one more thing about Zara, or suggest that she’s using me for money… You are no longer my friend, and you never will be again.”
“Kyle,” I sigh. “I’m sorry. I didn’t…”
“Tell me that you understand what I just told you,” he demands. His easy-going attitude is gone, and he means business.
“I do, man. I promise. I’ll make it up to Zara, too…”
I don’t even know why I say that. I have zero clue how I could do that. I already talked to her, apologized, and she told me to fuck off.
“You need fucking therapy,” Kyle declares. “And maybe you need to take your old man to one of the sessions, so that the crazy people doc can fully understand the gravity of the situation. Five minutes with your father, and they’ll have a plan of attack on how to fix you.”
Since I have no idea how to respond to that, I bring us back to the reason why I called him to begin with.
“Mona didn’t write back. You said she would.”
“Maybe she hasn’t seen the message yet.” Kyle doesn’t seem concerned at all. “Not everyone is glued to their phone twenty-four seven.”
That’s a dig at me because I am never without my cell. I constantly check my emails and respond to any messages that need immediate attention. In my world, they all do.
“Have you tried calling her?” he asks.
“Yeah, I’m still blocked.”
He lets out a low whistle. “I have to say that I am impressed with how determined she is to get rid of you.”
“Thanks, that’s helpful,” I deadpan.
He chuckles softly. “I was only teasing. Apparently, it’s too soon.”
“I know it’s funny to you, but you already have someone who thinks you hung the moon. And that’s not criticism toward Zara,” I rush to say as I remember his warning from only a couple of minutes ago.
“What exactly is it that you want, man?” Kyle sounds incredulous. “Are you saying that you want Mona to be yours forever?”
I run a nervous hand through my hair. “I’m saying that I can’t imagine being with anyone else but her.”
“So go to her then,” he suggests. “Tell her how you feel. She’ll listen.”
“You also said that she’ll reply to my email, so excuse me if I don’t have any confidence in what you’re telling me.”
Kyle huffs in annoyance. “Why did you call me then? Other than to insult both me and my girlfriend?”
I pause my pacing, stopping short in the middle of the room.
“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing,” I admit. “I don’t know how to tell her that I want her, and that I never wanted us to break up again. I won’t break up with her again if she takes me back…”
Kyle stops me. “It sounds me to that this is a conversation you need to have with Mona, not me.”
“You’re right,” I agree, then repeat the words I said to him when he first answered. “You’re useless.”
Thankfully, Kyle does take it as a joke. He chuckles and just hangs up on me. It would’ve been nice if before he disconnected the call, he shared with me how I should approach Mona again.
A knock on my door interrupts my thoughts. “Alex,” someone calls from the other side. “You have a Zoom in two minutes.”
I walk back to my desk and drop in the seat, my mind never this removed from a business meeting.
The next few hours go by painfully slow as I continue checking my Holidates inbox. Since my focus is not on work, I at least have enough sense to postpone anything the I would lose money on should I make the wrong decision.
By the time my employees start getting ready to leave for the day, I am angry with the world. I must be putting out some serious negative vibes because no one approaches me, most don’t even say goodbye before taking off for the day.
I rock back and forth in my chair, angry at the world as a whole. Kyle’s words about my parents, and my father in particular, bounce around in my head as I try to make sense of everything.
On a whim, I grab my phone and dial my father’s number. He doesn’t disappoint as he answers after the first ring.
“Alex,” he greets me. “This is a surprise.
I’m not known for calling just to check in or to see how he’s doing, so I understand why he says that.
“I trust things are going well with your company.”
Despite me having a privileged background, when it came for me needing financial backing for my first startup, my father refused to participate.
“If you can’t make it on your own, you don’t deserve to have money,” he told me.
“Things are going great, dad,” I now assure him.
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
His tone is pure steel mixed with a little bit of pride. He takes full credit for everything I have achieved in my life. In a way, I appreciate that his treatment of me was more on the rougher side. It gave me the push, and later on, the drive that I was craving.
“How are things with you?” I force myself to ask. Small talk has never been our thing.
He doesn’t respond right away, and I can almost hear the wheels turning in his head.
“If you’re calling me to ask for money, I have none to give,” he informs me. “Money needs to be earned and not given. You are not a charity case.”
Ironically, he does donate to various charities quite a bit.
On the flip side, he is very particular about said charities.
He has them fully vetted by a team specifically assembled just for that.
And, without fail, if the focus is on single mothers, no money shall be given.
They are all presumed to be gold diggers without any further investigation.
“I didn’t call to ask for money.” My jaw aches when I speak, the words tasting bitter in my mouth. Good to see he’d always have my back. Not.
I realize with a start that the only people who ever had my back are my friends. They came up with the capital to invest in my startup, and they continue sticking with me through thick and thin. They are more of a family to me than the man who raised me.
“Oh, why did you call then?” My father sounds surprised. That makes the two of us.
I clear the back of my throat a couple of times. “I called to ask you about…” I clear my throat again. “About a few things.”
“Such as?”
I press my thumb and forefinger into my eyes, applying as much pressure as I can physically take.
“Business advice, I presume,” he continues when I don’t say anything.
My mouth goes dry. It’s like I’m scared to speak.
“It’s personal, actually.”
“Personal?”
I’d laugh if I had the state of mind to appreciate the humor in all this.
We are not the type of father and son who share any personal stories.
While I appreciate my father not giving me away once my mother bailed, I am a bit surprised that he hasn’t sent me a bill for the money he had to spend on me for the schools I went to, clothing, food and shelter.
“I wanted to ask you about…” I instantly break into a sweat. “My mother.”
“Your mother?” He sounds incredulous. “She’s dead,” he declares. “What else is there to know?”
“Why haven’t you re-married after… her?”
He snorts, the sound coming off as sarcastic and condescending. “Isn’t that obvious?”
“But was it worth you being alone for the rest of your life?” I insist.
“Who says I’ve been alone?” he deadpans. “Just because I didn’t bring anyone around, it doesn’t mean I stopped having sex.”
I roll my eyes toward the ceiling. The conversation took a turn, and I honestly don’t care to hear about my father’s alleged sexcapades.
“I get the best of both worlds,” he proceeds to inform me. “I have my physical needs taken care of, and I don’t have to worry about a woman targeting me for my money. Again.”
What he says does make sense. But it’s not what I want to hear. Kyle got into my fucking head, and now all I can think about is that I’m going to end alone and miserable in my old age.
“I made sure to have a vasectomy. That reminds me, you need to do that as well.”
My cock instinctively shrivels up in my pants. “Why would I do that?”
“So you don’t end up like me.” He says it like it’s obvious.
The implication is obvious. Because of my maternal lineage, I was a burden to him, never someone he could be proud of. I was, and always will be, the reminder of how he got duped and lost a lot of money because of it.
“You don’t want any grandkids?” I pose the question as a joke.
The silence comes over the line louder than anything I’ve ever heard. It suffocates me with the tension it instantly creates.
“Did you call to tell me that you got some broad pregnant?”
A picture of Mona’s face pop up from my memory bank. She has the prettiest smile on her face, and she looks at me like she… loves me.
“Nobody’s pregnant,” I tell my father.
“Well, that’s a relief, I must say. If you want a kid, we’ll find you someone suitable.”
It’s weird how while he refuses to support me financially in any way, shape or form, he thinks he’s got a say in who I should marry.
I suddenly realize that he would treat Mona the same way that I treated Kyle’s girlfriend, with judgement and nothing but contempt.
“I’ll be damned,” I laugh. “Kyle is right.”
“About what? And which one is Kyle again?”
He’s never met any of my friends more than once, some not at all, so it’s a fair question.
“Kyle told me recently that you brought me up to hate women.” I finally tell him the reason I called. “I told him he was wrong, but…”
He cuts me off. “I’m assuming that this Kyle character doesn’t have two pennies to rub together, and he doesn’t have to worry about women chasing him for money.”
I laugh, sarcasm dripping heavy. “Kyle has enough money to retire for the next three lifetimes and still live comfortably.”
“Then he’s an idiot,” my father declares with no hesitation. “You should stay away from people whose intelligence matches that of a gnat’s.”
I don’t bother telling him that without Kyle and my other friends, I would be a much bigger asshole than they already consider me to be. I also wouldn’t be as successful as I am without them. They believed in me like my father should have.
“I have to go,” I say as I realize that this is a pointless conversation. His beliefs are too strong, to the point where he refuses to even consider having a heart to heart with me.
I guess I should be more concerned about me wanting to have this heart to heart with him.
“Thanks for the call,” he now says. “Be smart, and be vigilant. Always.” It’s like we’re spies on a mission.
We hang up, and I put the phone down. I go back to my computer wanting to check on my Holidates inbox again. Disappointment fills me when I still don’t see a response from Mona.
This leaves me with only one thing to do. Go back to her apartment. And hope she’ll let me in.
Maybe another piece of cake is in order despite the sick feeling I have in my stomach when I think of the price.
Sacrifices need to be made.