He refused it.
"Daddy?
Can I have Pop Tarts today?"
Ian went back to the bedroom, hunted for clean clothes while his coffee brewed.
"Daddy why can't I have Pop Tarts?"
Because you aren't really there.
"Daddy?
Daddy,
why?
"
No.
"Daddy, please?
Daddy
please!
"
No!
Alex heaved an exaggerated sigh and hurled himself to the hallway floor.
Go stand in the corner if you're going to act like that.
"No!"
Right now, Alex.
Right -
Ian clenched his eyes closed, ground his teeth.
This wasn't easy.
"I won't!"
Six months ago Ian would've taken the boy by the shoulders and steered him to the corner; carried him bodily if needed.
Now he stalked to the stereo in the living room, flipped it to FM and turned it up.
Dessa's voice blared from the speakers, observing that the years passed by now in twos and threes.
Beneath the music, Alex screamed.
At the first red light, Alex said, "Daddy, I don't like that black hat."
He was talking about Ian's ski mask, the one he took out when it was time to shovel the snow from the driveway.
That's fine,
Ian had told him.
You're not the one who has to go shoveling.
"The eyes are scary on that black hat.
Will you leave it inside, please?"
No, Alex.
I need it for shoveling.
Alex fell silent.
As the cross traffic slowed, Ian flipped the mirror down and saw the backseat was empty.
It's easier to answer him,
he thought.
He goes away if I play out the conversations.
Maybe I should just do that.
And then, immediately:
Just resign myself to him being there, just talk to him alone in my head like I used to talk to him out loud.
Whenever he wants to, forever.
The light turned green, and Ian pushed on the gas, cursing.
He hadn't finished his résumé on Monday, so he worked doggedly on it between calls.
Billi gave him some pointers.
At lunch he stayed in the cafeteria.
He didn't want to see Alex in the car.
He got back to his desk ten minutes before his break ended, and looked up bus schedules.
He could get to work that way without being alone.
If it took an extra hour each way, he didn't care.
It wasn't like he had a family to get home to.
That afternoon he finished up the application and sent it in along with the makeshift résumé.
Both of them were crap.
But the deadline was tomorrow, and he didn't want to miss it.
Sheila flounced past him on the way back from one of her bathroom trips.
He got chewed out every time he was as much as a minute late, but she could take fifteen trips to the bathroom over the course of a day.
He alt-tabbed as she went by, but he wasn't quick enough.
She took a step backward, peering over his shoulder.
"'Supernatural.com,'" she announced.
"Go back to that, I want to see."
"Look it up yourself," he answered.
"I don't like to surf on company time," she said, without a hint of sarcasm.
"Then I guess you're screwed."
"God, what is wrong with you?
Why are you such a prick?
I just want to see."
She leaned across him, reaching for his keyboard.
He caught a heady whiff of perfume, got a close-up view of the tanned swell of her breasts inside a black bra, and felt an embarrassing stirring in his crotch.
She flipped the window back and stood up.
"'Home Exorcisms.'"
She clicked her tongue.
"Sounds... dangerous.
Colmes, you wild man."
"Jesus Christ," he answered as he closed the browser.
"You are not in high school anymore, Sheila.
Do you get that?
Would you leave me the fuck alone?"
She made an affronted sound.
"You talk about me being in high school?
You're the guy who's 45 minutes late every morning."
"And you're on your fifteenth bathroom break of the day.
You know, normally I don't bother the people I work with.
I'm pretty 'live and let live.'
You ought to try it.
It's a great way to get along."
Jorge stood up, glaring over the cube wall.
"I'm on a call, guys."
"Sorry," Ian answered, but Sheila just went back to her desk.
He glanced back at her, fuming, and she gave him a smile that said,
I win.
No.
You know what?
Fuck that.
No.
He tore his headset off and threw it on the desk.
"Going on a bathroom break?" she asked as he stalked past.
His hand twitched out.
He nearly flipped her off.
Instead he balled it into a fist and held it as his side.
You have no fucking idea what I'm going through.
Do you?
You just have to push and push and push.
Do you know that I'm hallucinating, bitch?
Do you?
I'm fucking unstable.
Keep pushing and find out.
But it was an empty, stupid threat.
He wasn't one of those guys who was going to bring a gun to work and kill everyone.
He wasn't going to throw his life - such as it was - away over Sheila Fucking Swanson.
You don't have the guts,
he imagined her saying.
He rapped sharply on Justin's cube wall.
"I need to talk to -"
Justin waved at him, pointed at the headset he was wearing.
"Mm hm.
Well, that's possible.
I can look into it."
Ian took a deep breath.
He wanted to scream, to break something.
"Tomorrow's Friday, and we're already down three people.
Would next week work?
Otherwise Kate may be available too."
Pause.
"Yeah.
Okay, just take a look at the calendar.
My schedule's up to date."
Pause.
"All right, sounds good!"
Pause.
"Okay.
Thanks.
Bye.
"Ian!
What's going on?"
He took off the headset, gestured at one of the chairs in his cube.
"I'd like to move desks.
Across the wall."
Ian didn't sit down.
"Okay.
What's going on?" Justin repeated.
"I'm just...
Sheila is driving me nuts.
It's like she lives to bug me."
Jesus, he sounded whiny.
"You know, she's twenty years old and doesn't really get what I'm going through, and she...
"She actually told me that I should be getting here on time in the mornings since I don't have to worry about Alex anymore."
He scoffed.
"Can you fucking believe that?
It's so... fucking...
callous.
"
Justin recoiled from the vulgarity, like he'd just watched Ian whip his dick out.
"Okay.
Okay.
Are you sure you're not just taking a little too much offense to that?"
A hand of ice grasped Ian's stomach.
"Excuse me?"
His hand was trembling.
"No, I just mean... Maybe she's just trying to give you some advice?"
Or maybe you love looking down her shirt so much that you'll take her fucking side on anything.
"I didn't ask for her advice."
He pronounced each syllable carefully, neutrally.
"She needs to mind her own goddamn business."
"Ian,
please
.
Mind your language, we have people on the phone."
Ian blinked.
"Tell you what.
Let's go into a quiet room to discuss -"
"No.
You know what?
Forget it."
"Daddy, I don't like that black hat."
Yeah, you said that this morning.
He hit his signal, eased into the next lane.
"Daddy, I don't like that black hat."
Alex, please.
"Daddy, I don't like -"
Alex, god dammit!
He made a frozen pizza for dinner, and burned his thumb pulling it out of the oven.
He recoiled, roaring, and dropped the thing on the floor.
"
Fuck!
"
He almost kicked the oven rack with his bare foot, but stopped himself when he realized how stupid it would be; instead, he tried to slam the oven door closed with the rack still halfway out.
Bam!
Bam!
BAM!
The door closed.
"Daddy are you okay?"
His son was in the doorway to the dining room, eyes wide with worry, and Ian suddenly felt acutely ashamed.
"Yeah.
I'm okay."
He slopped up the pizza with a towel, wincing at the pain in his thumb, before turning to the sink to run his burn under cold water.
"Sorry.
I didn't mean to yell."
Alex didn't hear; he'd already gone.
Fuck it.
Ian grabbed a box of cereal from the cupboard and the half gallon carton of milk from the fridge.
He remembered when they'd had to buy two full gallons at a time to keep up with Alex's voracious appetite for milk.
Cinnamon Toast Crunch it is.
He carried the meal into the living room, where Alex was sitting on the couch.
"Daddy, can we watch Word Girl?"
Ian resolutely flipped on the TV to Law & Order and poured himself a bowl of cereal.
"Daddy, can we watch Word Girl please?"
No.
Not tonight.
"Why
not?
"
Ian chewed through a mouthful of crunchy cinnamon cereal.
Disgusted, Alex ran into his room to play.
He came back into the living room at eight o'clock, in footie pajamas and holding a beaten copy of
More More More, Said the Baby.
"I picked my book, Daddy," he announced.
Ian and Alina hadn't been perfect.
They'd fucked up plenty.
Hell, every day had felt like an exercise in discovering new ways to screw up as parents.
But this one thing, they had managed: every night, rain or shine, they'd taken turns reading a book to their son.
Williams' simple story of children loved deeply by their guardians had left Ian shaken the first time he'd read it.
He'd felt his love for his son like a river in his soul, infinite and fathomless.
At the sight of the book, he felt a whisper of that sensation again.
As Alex stood watching him, bright eyes shining eagerly, the whisper grew to a shout.
"Alex..." Ian said.
He turned off the TV.