Watermelon

Long & Hard

"Have a good rest of the week, okay? I'll see you next Thursday. Tell your dad I said hi." Shawn watched as the seven year old boy he had just spent the last hour counseling waved at him and then scurried out of his office and back out to the waiting room where his dad was. Shawn stood up from the big chair in the corner of his office and walked over to his desk in the opposite corner, dropping his notepad down onto his desk. He tapped his phone screen to see if he had missed any messages in the last hour. He hadn't. He sat down at his desk and opened up his laptop just as his office door swung open again. It was Jace.

"I don't think the new receptionist is too fond of me..."

"What'd you do this time?" Shawn jokingly asked. Jace sat down on the couch and kicked his feet up onto the coffee table, taking a big drink of the frozen Mountain Dew slushy he had gotten from the gas station across the street.

"She thought I was a patient and when I explained who I was she definitely didn't believe me."

"Well she let you back here so I'm guessing you were believable enough."

"Did she let me back here? Or did I just ignore her and walk back here without permission?" The teenage boy shrugged. "The world may never know..."

Shawn sighed and shook his head, clearly not thrilled with Jace's solution but he couldn't help but chuckle a little bit at the thought. "Gladis will be back soon. She took some time off to go visit her grandkids. But yeah...the new girl covering for her in the meantime is still learning the ropes." He took a sip of the hour-old coffee that sat on his desk. "What brought you to this side of town?"

Jace sighed. "Frustration."

Shawn lifted his eyes from his laptop and towards Jace. "Need me to get in the chair?" Shawn asked, nodding towards the big chair in front of the couch that he usually sat in during the therapy sessions. Jace snorted.

"No...not that bad. Just annoyed. I've spent my entire afternoon driving around the entirety of Toronto trying to apply for jobs but I swear that no place is hiring. I have a kid on the way! I can't just not have a job."

"Where did you try to apply?"

"Literally everywhere."

"I doubt that's true..."

"Well it feels like it! I'm not picky — I'll literally take any job...I just still can't seem to find one."

"You should ask Camila. Maybe her place is hiring interns or assistants or something."

"Yeah but then I'm the guy that only got hired because the Vice President of the company is my guardian. And then everyone will hate me. Nobody likes a nepo-baby."

Shawn laughed. "Actually, you know what? I have a job that you could start today. Right now, even."

"Yeah?" Jace took another big slurp of his slushy.

"We need to get our shit moved over to the new house. We have the keys to the new place, it's ours. And pretty much everything is packed. It just needs moved from the current house to the new house. How does $10 per box moved sound?"

"It sounds like I've got work to do," Jace said, clearly happy with the deal as he stood up from the couch.

"Drive careful."

"Always," Jace called out as he left Shawn's office to go get started on moving stuff.

Shawn grabbed his phone and texted his wife.

S: Hold off on hiring the moving company for now. Jace is looking for jobs...I told him we'd pay him to be our mover.

C: You're such a smarty pants
C: Which I find very very hot btw !!