“Sorry I was too busy re-scheduling your life, seeing as you ruined the production schedule for your dumb TV show,” I retorted.
Now we were “where the magic happens”, according to Kiegan. Hordes of people worked at desks, the space was pretty liberal, and the whole place was decorated in bright colours. It was much like what I would have imagined the headquarters at Google or Apple to look like.
We strode past the whole floor of ringing phones and frantic hand gestures and towards an office at the back. Kiegan’s office. For a guy who was there so little, he sure had a whole bunch of space for himself. I mean, I guess you can do that when you’re the head of the company.
I sat down on a couch near the entrance to the room and checked my messages while Kiegan opened up a laptop and started working.
“You didn’t need to come here, you know,” he told me as he looked at me trying to balance a notepad on my leg.
“I wanted to see where your “real business” happens,” I replied. I knew I could leave whenever I wanted to, but I had been curious about his other company.
“Fair enough. I’m going to be here for a while, wanna order some lunch?”
“Sure. What are you in the mood for?”
“Whatever. But here’s a stack of menus from the best places near here,” he told me, opening a drawer and handing me a pile of take out brochures.
“Chinese?”
“Sounds good.”
I hadn’t had good Chinese food in a long time, so when I paid the delivery guy and the smell of sweet and sour pork and fried rice wafted up from the cardboard container inside the plastic bags, my stomach began to rumble.
I went over to Kiegan’s desk and we split up the order. I moved to the comfortable leather chair across the table from him and sat down. I supposed there was nothing else to do except… talk.
“So why did you leave the family, anyway?” Kiegan asked me. Right. Straight to the meat of it.
“I’m still not going to tell you. It’s private.”
“Suit yourself. I’ve told you why I left.”
“Yeah, well, that’s you. As you’ve already proven in the last few days, you’re a lot braver than I am.”
Kiegan shrugged. “Meh. Bravery comes in a lot of different forms.”
I glanced at him sideways. I’d given Kiegan the perfect opportunity to be a total douche to me, and he passed on it. What was going on?
“Well, I’m still not going to tell you why I left.”
“Fine. Suit yourself. Why Seattle, though?”
“I figured if I was going to go as far away from the Hunt family as possible, my best options were the west coast. California I always thought was pretty expensive, so then it became a coin toss between Seattle and Portland.”
“What made Seattle win out?”
“Oh, it was a literal coin toss. Heads was Portland, tails was Seattle.”
Kiegan burst out laughing. “That’s awesome. What a great way to choose the next place to live.”
I shrugged. “Well, it seemed to make sense at the time. And it was good, when I had a job. Well, it was ok anyway. At least I wasn’t near the family.”
Kiegan nodded. “I know what you mean. I only moved to New York, but at least that was already far enough away to start breaking off ties with them.”
“Do you speak to them ever?”
Kiegan shook his head.
“No. And they stopped calling a while ago. I think they’ve given up on me.”
“On both of us, it seems. Though I was never really a part of the family.”
Kiegan glanced at me.
“No, you weren’t, were you?”
“Well it’s not like you helped make me feel welcome.”
Kiegan spread out his arms and grinned, a chow mein noodle falling off his fork and onto the hardwood floor that I assumed some poor cleaner would have to pick up later that night.
“You’re right. I was a bit of a dick.”
“A bit of a dick? You’re a bit of a dick now. I’ll grant you you’ve changed somewhat. But in high school you were the biggest dick.”
“Now I’ve just got the biggest dick,” came his reply, and my face instantly flushed.
“You know… we’re not… I’m not… that didn’t…”
“I know, I know, you’re pretending that never happened,” he replied with a laugh, digging into his Chinese container.
“Exactly.” I pretended to be super focused on getting exactly the right amount of fried rice onto my chopsticks.
“Look, I know I was a dick to you in high school, and I’m sorry. I guess a part of me didn’t want someone new in the family, so I figured I’d drive you away.”
“Thanks,” I replied. “So what’s your excuse for now?” I couldn’t resist the opening.
“Oh come on,” Kiegan laughed. “Now it’s just that I have a crush on you, and you’re so cute when you blush. But none of the stuff I’ve gotten you to do has been that bad.”
To my chagrin, my face instantly went beet red.
“You have… a crush… what…”
“I figured after what happened at the helicopter company it would have been obvious.”
“No. No way. This can’t be happening.”