clocks

16

George

Sunday evening rolls around, and all three of us are packed. Dream and I for New Haven, Nelly for Sheilas house. Nelly spends the day keeping pretty much to herself, which leaves me wondering if I did the same when I was her age.

Dream and I spend the day on the sofa, with the television turned on. Dream tells me he's actually only watched it about three times since he bought it, and that he only really bought it for Nelly.

So he sits and reads instead, whilst I watch some comedy show thats playing. It's actually not awful, usually I don't watch all that much television myself but for some reason I become entranced, and then I get comfy.

I'm not sure what he's reading, but it's big and the cover is leather and it looks awfully boring, so I don't ask. He seems happy enough, though, so I leave him be.

Outside, it's a cold day. It's windy and I'm pretty sure it rained overnight. He explains to me, over breakfast, that today is the first day of September. There's even a few stray brown leaves that have fallen from the trees on his front porch. The sky is dark outside, it's practically night time now.

A cup of tea and a cup of coffee sit on the table in front of us, along with a few stray sheets that look like assignments he had been grading until he gave up, seeming bored and decided to read. I don't see how getting bored and then resulting in reading the most boring looking book known to man is a solution to that problem, but oh well, he is him.

There's a mustard coloured blanket thrown over the two of us. I don't remember when we got this close, and neither of us seem to want to acknowledge the closeness, so instead we soak it up, enjoying it whilst we can. I'm laying slightly against him, and one of his arms had been thrown around the back of the sofa until it fell cosily around my shoulders.

We're sitting in such silence that when he turns the page of his leather bound book, the sound seems to ring in my ears and then I am falling in my mind, falling to years ago.

My father flips through his pages of notes before dropping them down on the table in front of him. One of the new sales guys is answering a question on our recent deal with Vancouver that I was meant to chase up on, but never did, since I've spent the last week and a half in a cycle of being hungover and insanely stoned in the middle of Switzerland.

Now I'm in London, in headquarters, at nine in the morning at a meeting I only found out about last night. My father took one look at me when I rolled through the doors, and hasn't even glimpsed at me since. I think that's better, for the both of us.

Once the meeting comes to a close, I slip out of the door unnoticed, half hoping my father will care enough to come wandering out after me, wondering why my eyes are so dark and why my face is so glum and why I look as though I haven't slept in a year.

I even pause, before I press the button for the elevator, to see if his glass door will open, to see if for once in his life, he will care about me. Not about what he expects or wants for me, just— about me. Me, whoever that is.

The door never opens— and today, I wonder a lot about where I would be if it did. If he had just asked once, what's going on with you? If he had chased me through the streets of London demanding that I get back to work properly, demanding that I stop missing important meetings and forgetting to close up deals. Would I of listened to him? Would that have changed the course of the rest of my life?

I feel so stupid for waiting, for wanting him to care because he never has, so why should he start now? I want to kill myself for standing paused in front of the big metal elevator waiting for his head to appear around the office door, I hate myself for wishing he would try, just once, because I should know better.