Trade Me (27 page)

It’s exactly five days before the launch when I figure this out. My therapist asks me the one question I don’t want to answer. I look into her eyes and I know—I
know
—why this is a problem, and why I’ve been so stymied. I know why I haven’t been able to find the answer.

I go to Tina’s—my house, I suppose, although I don’t know what it is anymore—afterward. She waves at me when I come in. She lets me kiss her. And then she goes back to reading over the launch script one last time. I can see it over her shoulder. I’ve read it myself a dozen times now.

All this time I’ve been telling myself I can find a solution, that now that I’m seeing someone, I can fake it once I get back. I’ve been telling myself that I can actually be the person that my dad needs me to be and still not disappear. I’ve even been telling myself that maybe I’ll figure this out—figure out how to keep Tina, too.

Tina reaches out and makes a tiny change to the script. I put my hand on top of hers.

“Hey,” I say.

She looks up. “What’s going on?”

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

For a second, her eyes widen. She moves back, ever so subtly.

“It’s about Peter.”

“Peter Georgiacodis?”

At this point, she’s read every launch script. I don’t know how much she’s managed to infer. His comments are all over the scripts before his death. She’s seen our last launch. She knows—she has to know—that he wasn’t just a coworker. That he mattered to me, to Dad.

I sit down next to her. “I must have met him for the first time when I was a kid, even though I don’t remember it. I don’t remember when he started meaning so much. Maybe it was because he never suggested to Dad that I should be in daycare instead of wandering around a major corporation. Maybe it was because he was always there. He would stop whatever he was doing to walk me through my algebra homework when my dad didn’t know the answers. It’s fucked up, I guess, to say that one of the most important people in my life was my dad’s CFO. But…he was.”

She looks over at me. “There’s nothing fucked up about love.”

“No?” I can’t even look at her now. “Do you know what it’s like to run a place like Cyclone? Peter and my dad… I can’t even guess how much time they spent working. Eighty, hundred-hour weeks, again and again without ending. Year after year. Peter was the strongest person I knew. He was the only person who could make my dad back down when he was wrong. Peter was twenty-eight when he took over as CFO.” I take a deep breath. “He died of a heart attack at forty-five.”

“I know.” She stands up and runs a hand down my shoulder. “I know, Blake.”

“Since then, even my dad has begun to lose it. He doesn’t say it, but I know it. There’s only so much he can take.” I look over at Tina. “If this broke Peter, if it’s breaking my dad…what chance do I have?”

She doesn’t say anything.

“All this time, I’ve been telling myself that once I fix this little problem, once I figure out why I’m so fucked up, I’m going back. I’m taking over. I’m going to be there for my dad. But that’s why it’s not going away. Because I can’t let myself go back.” Every time. Every time I thought it was going so well. Every time, I’d talk to my dad, and he’d tell me to come back, and it would all get fucked up again. “If I take over,” I tell her, “I really will be killing myself. At least this way, I choose how I go.”

She folds her arm around me and pulls me close. It’s fucked up. I know it’s fucked up.

Tina inhales. “Blake. You have to tell your father.”

“I know,” I say. I’ve never wanted to tell him the truth I’ve known deep down: that I’m not the person he thinks I am. That I can’t do this. “I know.”

I try to tell him. Really, I do. I plan out what I’m going to say. I write it out. I visualize it. I use every trick my therapist has to get me ready to deliver.

But there’s no time. When I call my dad a few days before the launch, he looks…relaxed, for the first time in months. That edgy energy, crackling around him, has subsided into almost softness.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Hi, Blake.” He smiles at me. “How are you doing? Enjoying your last few days of freedom?”

I can’t make myself smile at that. I can’t make myself joke. I just look in his eyes. I’ve imagined telling him a thousand times:
Dad, I have a problem. Dad, we need to talk.

But he’s smiling, really smiling. I haven’t seen him smile like this since Peter passed away. “You know, Blake,” he says quietly, “I’m proud of you.”

That’s the thing. If Vader had really raised Luke Skywalker, this would be the moment when he could have asked anything of his son, and Luke would have done it. No questions asked.

“I know.” My throat hurts.

“I’m proud of you for telling me to go to hell because you wanted to go to school,” he says. “I’m proud of everything you’ve done. I’m proud of the launch you’ve come up with. And I’m really proud of Fernanda. She’s going to make a huge splash. The media is going crazy with speculation.”

“I know,” I say.

“I just wanted to say that. I’m proud of you, asshole.”

It’s all I’ve ever wanted. And maybe that’s why I can’t make myself say it.
Dad, I have a problem.

I don’t want him to know. I don’t want him to ever doubt me. I’m stuck between two things I cannot do, and in the end, my dad’s strength of will is going to win out.

“You’re going to kick everyone’s ass,” he says. “Hell. Maybe I won’t bother coming back at all.”

I manage a smile.

And as soon as I cut the video, I go for a run.

When I come back, Tina doesn’t ask me what I was thinking. She doesn’t berate me. She doesn’t tell me I’m an idiot. She doesn’t say any of the things that I’m thinking to myself.

She doesn’t even look at me, as if she knows our time is already over and she’s just waiting it out. She bends over her laptop, frowning at the launch script.

I’m losing everything.

I slide by her into the shower. I’m marshaling my arguments, getting everything in order. We’re good together, I should tell her. I’m only fucked up half the time. Chances like this don’t come along very often, and I’m not about to give this one up. Don’t make me lose you, too.

The soapsuds sting my eyes. I can’t tell my father what he needs to hear. Maybe I can tell her.

But when I come out of the shower, she’s sitting cross-legged on the bed. She’s wearing yoga pants, and she’s holding a single sheet of paper.

“I have something for you,” she says.

“What’s going on?”

“Your life.” She swallows. “You promised me we’d trade lives through the launch, right? That means your life is still mine for the next two days. And I’ve realized the launch is completely wrong.” Her chin goes up. “The Adam and Blake show is not what it needs to be. You want a true construct? To hell with everything I’ve written so far.”

She hands over the paper. “I don’t have a whole lot yet. This isn’t a script. But what I do have starts like this.”

I take the paper from her hands.

She’s right. This isn’t a script. It’s a single line of dialogue.

Blake: Dad, I can’t take over for you. I have a problem.

Fuck. I can’t breathe. I can’t do this. I can’t say those words to him.

But Tina taps her watch as I’m struggling. I don’t know who she could be calling—not at first, not until the person on the other end answers.

“Hi, Tina,” my father says, as if they video call all the time.

“Adam.” Tina doesn’t look at her screen. She looks at me. “We need to come down the night before the launch. Blake needs to talk to you.”

Dad pauses. When he speaks again, his voice is low. “Is this urgent?”

“It is,” Tina says calmly. “It’s going to take a little time, too.”

And this is my dad, so he doesn’t question. He doesn’t complain. He doesn’t say that the night before a launch is always taken up with a thousand little details, all of which require his attention. He doesn’t ask to reschedule. He just says, “Fine. I’ll make it happen.”

“Thanks.” She pauses. “Asshole.”

“Ha. He told you about that?” My dad laughs. “God, I corrupted such a nice kid.”

“Shut up, Adam. We’ll see you tomorrow.” She cuts the connection. “There.” She presses her lips together and looks at me.

I should be mad. I should tell her she has no right to interfere. And I would—except that what I feel is not anger, but the complete absence of weight. For the first time in a year, I’m experiencing the unbearable feeling of
not
being crushed, of seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.

It’s dim, but I can see it. If I can tell my father the truth, I can tell her. There are a lot of things Tina and I haven’t said to each other. With the end of the relationship assumed, there’s no point in saying them. But there are a lot of ways that you say you care about a person. And that? That was definitely one of them.

I take her head in my hands and kiss her.

I don’t know what she’s thinking. I don’t know what she’s feeling as our hands caress each other, as we strip to nothing. As she climbs on top of me.

I can only guess from the clench of her fingers on my shoulders, from the catch of her breath, from the way she looks at me.

From the bedroom window, I can see the scattered grid of the city lights below. They spill out onto bridges, stretch into distant buildings across the water.

She takes me and I hold her. I pour out everything into her. And I think about the stars.

18.

BLAKE

My father has conquered the world.

It’s all I can think about when he hugs me at the door. He’s conquered the world and I’m not even master of myself.

“Hey,” he says roughly, punching me on the shoulder. “It’s good to see you.”

He won’t be saying that for long. I punch him back. “Good to see you, too.”

I know my dad loves me. I know he’s proud of what I’ve done. I know he thinks the world of me—and I know I’m not worth a quarter of the value he’s assigned to me. But somehow, I manage to operate on autopilot. I joke. I shove him out of the way. I let him and Tina carry the conversation, and I remark that whatever it is in the oven smells good.

“It should,” Dad says smugly. “I had Fred make your favorite.”

It’s easy to fall into our old routines, even with Tina here. It’s like nothing is wrong, and I almost want to keep up the pretense forever. Almost.

I’m setting plates and forks on the table. Tina is shuffling through cabinets, finding glasses. Dad takes a dish out of the oven, looking surprisingly domestic with a cherry-red oven mitt. He sets it on the counter, a polished black marble that could double as a mirror, and then spoons pork, apples, and shredded, buttered Brussels sprouts onto plates. It smells amazing, and I can’t do this. I can’t sit here. I can’t eat. I can’t tell him.

He’s as neat as ever, fastidiously wiping up a drop of gravy the instant it hits the counter, rinsing out the dish and setting it in the dishwasher, putting the oven mitt back in place. I’ve missed him so much.

And yet, if I could, I would walk out the door and just leave. But Tina takes my hand, as if she knows I want to escape, and she anchors me down.