His Wild Blue Air

Day 25

Thursday

His office door slammed open without even so much of a knocking. Ethan looked up with a well-practiced glare, directed at whoever the fuck it was that decided it was good to just barge into his office like that. It only intensified when he saw Jeff, his PR rep, striding in with an almost similar expression on his face.

He tightened his grip on his pen, pausing his movements. "What do you want, Jeff?" He really hoped Jeff would know what was good for him and walk out the door. 

Except Jeff was an oblivious turtle. "What I want?" he echoed quite angrily, but Ethan would bet that his frustrations wouldn't match up with the pent up energy he had collected for the past five days. "I want you to get your father in control."

He clenched his jaw, deflecting his gaze to his pen that was wondrously not snapping in halves. "I don't need to get that man to do anything."

"Well, like it or not, Mr Boyd, you and your father share the same last name! He ran this company before you did, no matter how he failed. So yeah, whatever he does has got something to do with you! Now, he's just getting drunk off his ass until dawn without much of a care in the world and he's making headlines!"

Angrily, he tossed his pen on his desk with a clatter, not even giving a care as it slowly rolled off the desk and on to the carpeted floor. He leaned back in his chair, crossing his fingers as he stared up at Jeff. "Everyone knows that he's no longer running this company. Everyone knows I call the shots now. So who the fuck cares if he's getting drunk off his ass?"

"You need to fix this," Jeff hissed, leaning down and jabbing his finger repeatedly on a piece of paper to emphasize his point. "It's getting out of hand. It doesn't matter now who's calling the shots; it doesn't matter if your father's basically a retired deadbeat. What matters is that his name which is your name is on the top of this very building. The reputation of this company, this organization, lies on that name and if you don't fix it - " Jeff shook his head resolutely " - stocks will drop; market will plummet; and this company will fucking fall."

Ethan glanced away from him and looked down at the proposal that he had just been jotting notes on. He pended a few seconds before brushing his palm over his face and gave his rep a dismissing wave. "I'll talk to him later," he said tiredly, not even bothering to look at Jeff. "Close the door when you go."

Once he heard the door closed, he stood up in slow motion and knelt to pick up the discarded pen. He put it on the table and stood there, staring down at the item that had somehow become offensive. He pursed his lips and clenched his fists together to avoid another fiasco like two nights ago when his mother had to rush into his room to see what happened. 

"Just stressed with work, Mom. Don't worry," he'd lied.

There were bricks upon bricks stacked up on his chest, suppressing his airways and making it so hard to break. His initial thoughts that working non-stop would be able to remove some of those breaks were just mere thoughts. It was a failed experiment. He couldn't take them away. Every day, he was breathing and suffocating at the same time. 

It hadn't even been a week and he found himself engulfed in torrid flames and unable to escape. He had never experienced this kind of longing and pain in the thirty-three years of his life. His time in rehab couldn't even compare to what he was feeling right down to his bone marrows right now. Sometimes, he could barely get out of bed just to live another day of meaningless life.

It was probably crazy, how he just met a woman he barely knew three weeks ago and ended up hopelessly in love three weeks later. In no more than twenty one days, Skylar Smith had managed to fill up every crevice and dents of his being with her presence, offering him the most wonderful feeling in the world.