“Budweiser’s fine.” I smiled. “Thanks.”
He smiled back and then headed up to the mostly deserted bar to get us a couple of drinks.
Alone with my thoughts, I sat back and released a long breath. What a day. What a year. And it wasn’t over yet. I wasn’t just the father of a college graduate. In a few months, I’d have a son-in-law. Brooke and her girlfriend were making noise about getting married too, and Karen was already insisting on paying for her wedding just like she was paying for Kelsey’s.
Tyler and his girlfriend hadn’t said a word about weddings—I was pretty sure neither was interested in the whole institution—but they were saving to buy a house together after they graduated. I was thrilled for all of them, but I’d warned them all that I was not to be a grandfather before I turned fifty. With the way Kelsey and her fiancé kept swooning over every baby within a ten-mile radius, I probably wasn’t going to win this one. And even if I wouldn’t admit it out loud, I was pretty okay with that.
It was just hard to believe how much everything was changing. My family was growing up and expanding. My boyfriend and I were, as my daughters were wont to say, stupidly in love. We were living together now. His job ebbed and flowed, and sometimes he worked long days that rivaled the grueling periods at Mitchell & Forsythe, so he’d be home at ten and back to the office at six. But those precious few hours at home were spent in the same bed, even when we were both too exhausted to even think about sex, and when he went to work every day, he wore a slim leather collar beneath his shirt and tie.
My career had, of course, been through its share of upheaval, especially after I’d decided to leave my job. I just couldn’t keep working for those people, even after Rick had put them in their place, so I’d started looking for another job. I’d been right about one thing—no one in town would hire me. It was never blatantly clear why. Maybe they were looking to switch to more modern modeling techniques. Maybe they didn’t want a forty-something modeler when there were twenty-somethings who’d do it for half the price. Maybe they’d heard the truth about why I wanted to leave the firm, and didn’t particularly want someone on the payroll who might jeopardize a valuable contract with his dick. It could have been anything. All I knew was, six months down the line, I’d still been working for the firm and hunting for something better.
It was Marie who’d ultimately helped me find something. She knew someone at the architectural college downtown, and their course program was in dire need of experienced modelers and drafters who did know the old-school ways. Three interviews later, I was hired. Though it had taken a while for the dust to settle, I was content with where things were now.
The NSFW crew didn’t last much longer than I did. Teagan had wisely been taking 3D modeling classes for the past year or two, and a rival firm snatched her up after one interview. Bianca and Cal both moved to one of the aerospace companies. Scott and Silent Dave both went part-time and went back to school. In fact, Silent Dave was my TA this semester, and I was working with Scott to get him a job teaching computer-aided drafting.
I missed working with them, but we all made a point to get together at Arturo’s at least twice a month, and Teagan and I still had sushi on a regular basis. In fact, now that Rick and I were living together—I’d moved in a little under a year ago—he frequently had me invite the crew over. He loved cooking for the whole group, and it was good to see everybody. Between them and my kids visiting whenever they were off school, his enormous house didn’t feel so empty anymore, and he’d decided not to downsize after all. Which was great as far as I was concerned. After all that work we’d both put into converting one of the empty rooms into a dungeon, it’d be a shame to have to tear it all out and sanitize it so the house could go on the market. That had been enough of a pain in the ass when I’d put my place up for sale.
Life was good. Hell, life was fantastic. Things were crazy, things were changing faster than I could keep up with them, but I was happy. I liked the way things were, chaos and all.
Footsteps shook me out of my thoughts, and I looked up as Rick came back with a couple of beer bottles in hand. He set one in front of me, then sat across from me with his own. “Doing okay?”
I nodded. “Just…thinking.”
He sipped his beer. “A little overwhelmed?”
“You could say that. Man, I thought it was weird having kids in college. Now they’re starting to finish college.” I blew out a breath as I brought my beer up to my lips. “I can’t believe one of my kids is on her way to graduate school. That’s just…” I shook my head. “Hard to fit in my head, I guess.”
“I can imagine.”