Trade Me (Cyclone #1)

He doesn’t explain why. I have no doubt that he’d probably choke before telling me the truth. But I’ve been watching him fossilize slowly in his office over the last year. I’ve worried about him. I don’t want to fail him.

I can say no to his brashest commands. But this?

I can’t, Dad. I have a problem. But now, both he and Tina are watching. It’s been better, a little bit, these last few weeks. I know it has. I’m sure it has. I just need more time.

But Dad would only beg if he was on the verge of breaking down. I have a problem, I want to scream. But I swallow those words.

“Fine,” I hear myself say. My voice sounds very, very far away. “Promise me it’s only temporary. Because I can’t do for long.”

I can make it a month, I tell myself. Six weeks.

I’m already running in my head. Even though I’m standing here, I want to get my shoes and get out the door. At least if I do, I’ll disappear my way.

But Dad lets out a long breath. “I promise,” he says. “I’ll talk to the Board. And Blake—thanks, asshole.”

I’m still standing in place when the conversation ends. It’s only in my head that I’m reduced to rubble. Tina is looking at me. I press my hands firmly together.

“Wow,” she says. “That was harsh. Does your dad usually call you an asshole? And a fucking bastard?”

“Yeah.” I turn away from her. “But he doesn’t mean it like you think he means it.”

“Oh, yes. The well-known other meaning of fucking bastard.”

“It’s a joke,” I say. “An inside joke.”

“Ha ha. So funny.” She makes a face.

“It is. Kind of. Five years ago, Peter—um, that’s Peter Georgiacodis, who used to be the CFO—told my dad that if he didn’t learn to watch his mouth, he was going to get sued one day. So he forced my dad to take corporate sensitivity training.”

“That worked well,” she says sarcastically.

“Actually, it kind of did. He’s…better, now. Really. With most people. But Dad said he wasn’t going through that sensitivity bullcrap unless Peter and I did it with him. And he was a little belligerent about it, as only he can be. Halfway through, he tried to explain that he just didn’t think that cursing was that insulting. Look, he said, I didn’t mind, and I was barely eighteen. So how bad could it be? In any event, the instructor lost his temper and told him that he could call the people he loved ‘you fucking bastard’ as much as he wanted, but that he had to treat his employees like real people.” I shrug. “Ever since then, that’s been the way we say ‘I love you.’ We swear at each other.”

She looks at me. “You know that is deeply fucked up, right?”

I smile at her. “Aw, I love you, too.”

She shakes her head. “I guess I’m hardly in a position to judge. My mom tells me she loves me by explaining the best way to transport meth.”

For a moment, we smile at each other.

And then reality hits: I just agreed to take over for my dad. The launch is in three weeks. After that, there will be no more afternoons with Tina. I won’t have time for a job washing dishes. This trade will be over—and I still don’t have a solution to my stupid problem.

I pull out a chair and sit. “I’m going to have to end the trade early.”

There are a thousand things she could say. I’m bailing early, just like she thought I would. I couldn’t hack it. It wasn’t real; it was never real. I couldn’t put down my life, any more than she could let go of her own terror. We’re still the same people we were before, scarred in the same ways we were scarred before. Everything I thought I could accomplish was fake. I can’t look at her.

“I won’t be in school anymore,” I say, “so there’s no question that you’ll stay here. And the money is yours—we agreed on that up front. You were right. We can’t trade. Not really. There’s nothing I can do to get out of my life.”

But it’s more than that. Once the trade is over, we’re over. We’re nothing. And we’ve tried—hard, so hard—not to be anything. But… I glance over at her and… My body yearns to press against hers. My lungs long to breath the air she releases. And deep down, somewhere inside of me, I just want. I want everything we haven’t had.

Don’t walk away, I imagine saying.

“I still want to meet your parents,” I tell her. “And just think—three weeks from now, your mom will never tease me about you again.”

She doesn’t say anything. But even though I try to cover what I’m thinking with a smile, she knows what I’m saying. She reaches out and takes my hand.

There are a million things we could be to each other, if only we were different people. If I were a different person, I would have asked her out last September. If she were a different person, we’d have been in bed weeks ago. Instead, we’re us. Close enough to hurt, but not close enough to do more than touch for an instant and let go.

“Until then,” I say, “I don’t want out of any of this.”

She doesn’t let go of my hand. “Until then.”

But she’s already turned her head away.