Page 47 of Deep Daddy

Sammy wasn’t coming back.

The only thing left to do as far as Harrison could see was to accept this and let Sammy walk away. Harrison didn’t want to cause Sammy any more pain. If Sammy truly didn’t want to hear from Harrison, then Harrison decided that it was only right to not attempt to contact Sammy again.

‘I think it’s time for one last beer,’ Harrison said, getting up from his chair and walking out of the study and toward the kitchen. ‘One beer. One new chapter on the book. And then bed.’

* * *

Harrison decided that rather than one more beer, he would take all three cool beers from the refrigerator and have them on his desk as he worked. In theory, this was fine – but in practice it simply led him to spend more time thinking about Sammy, Justin, and pretty much every other person he had met in his whole life.

Why do I screw every relationship up?

I even screwed things up with my father.

Didn’t even resolve things with him before he passed…

Harrison remembered how him and his father had enjoyed a close relationship all the way through childhood until, quite abruptly, his mother and father divorced when Harrison was seventeen.

There was no great drama, no infidelity, no violence – simply two adults who had drifted apart over the years finally deciding that enough was enough. But Harrison had found it hard to handle. He was still a teenager and had the emotions to go alongside it.

The upshot of the divorce was that Harrison decided he no longer had much interest in being around his father on the weekends or during the holidays. Instead, Harrison poured his time into writing. It was time well spent but looking back Harrison could see that he would never get that time with his father back.

Harrison knew that his father had been ill earlier in his life and beaten it, so in the months after Harrison’s novel began to go stratospheric he didn’t think too much when he heard that his father was ill again. Sadly, his father was dead within two weeks. Harrison had to live with the knowledge that he didn’t see his father before he died – there was no turning back the clock and no way of changing things.

It was a regret that Harrison buried deep inside of himself. Looking back with hindsight, all of the partying that came when his book began to sell and win awards was probably a way of holding his emotions over his father at bay.

This tactic worked in one sense. But it was hard to argue that it didn’t negatively affect Harrison in many other aspects of his life. In fact, Harrison sometimes felt that he was still living with the pain of it all.

‘Fuck. Another beer it is,’ Harrison said, reaching over to the final bottle.

But before Harrison could open the drink and hear the comforting fizz of an open bottle, he heard a loud knocking on the door.

‘Who the hell is this?’ Harrison said, angrily getting up from the chair and stomping through toward the front door. ‘If that’s you, Hoffman… God help me!’

Harrison could feel his blood boiling. He was angry, confused, and hurt all in one. Harrison wanted to lash out. He wanted to do something – anything – to take away from the pain of Sammy no longer being in his life.

‘You?’ Harrison said, opening the door to Lars. ‘What do you-’

But before Harrison could even finish his sentence or invite Lars in, the Little was already inside the house and ready to talk…

‘OMG… I can’t believe it took me so long to work this out!’ Lars said.

‘Work what out? You’re not making any sense, boy!’ Harrison replied, not in the mood for riddles.

‘Sammy’s last message to me,’ Lars said. ‘It seemed weird. Like, not really written in his normal voice. At first, I thought he was maybe tired. Or using a voice app to convert it to text. But then I sent another message and asked a question that only Sammy would know the answer to…’

‘Go on…’

‘And Sammy, or rather not Sammy, got it wrong!’ Lars replied. ‘Sammy isn’t the one who’s been messaging me. I think someone, and I’m guessing that horrible manager of his, has been controlling Sammy’s phone!’

Harrison could feel the anger building up inside him.

That motherfucker Tucker.

I knew he was bad news.

This can’t stand. Not on my watch…

‘If Tucker is controlling Sammy’s phone, then who knows what kind of hold he has over him,’ Lars said, speaking so fast that he was almost tripping over his words. ‘We need to do something! Sammy needs his Daddy’s help!’