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The response isn’t immediate, but that’s okay. It gives me time to get myself straightened out. When a follow-up text finally does come in a while later, it’s just as I’m stepping out of the private bathroom for us receptionists, and back toward my desk.
The text reads: Oh, no! You’ve already lavished enough of your money on me, pet. All those lunches and dinners. Not going to have any of it. Not this weekend! It’s all on me!
Hurrying back to my chair, I can’t help it: I’m giggling like a schoolgirl with her first crush. I might as well be since Dennis never had this kind of effect on me. He was never so chivalrous, and he was older than Tommy is by five years.
Yes, sir, I reply, feeling my temperature and hormones spike, whatever you say, sir. I am yours to command. I almost lose the courage to do this, but I finish the text off with some kissy lips and a few hearts. Something that Dennis always said was childish and unnecessary.
And you are mine to protect and treat right, is the reply text I get back. As long as I’m around, no one’s going to mess with you or devalue you ever again. If there’s one thing I want you to get over this weekend while we’re getting my wardrobe upgrade, it’s that.
Teary doesn’t even begin to describe where I’m at after reading this text, but I work to keep from bawling outright. Still, tears drip out of my eyes, happy ones. Under these, I move Dennis’s picture a little more out of the way.
That’s a real man for you, I think toward the pompous eyes and lips of Dennis’s portrait. A real man will make you cry from the amount of joy he brings you, not sadness.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Tommy
While running my errand to the bank directly after work, I’m kept happy and lighthearted by texting with Melissa, who’s still at work. I’ve just let her know what I’m going to do: that I’m withdrawing money for our date tomorrow. I’ve also just told her that she is not going to be allowed to spend any of her money on me since she’s already done that to an egregious and unacceptable level with me.
I’m her boss. Not her dependent. If anyone should be getting a “free ride” on tomorrow’s date, it’s her. Especially since I’ve just gotten out of the bank and back into my car with nearly five thousand in cash in hundred-dollar bills mostly, with a few smaller denominations thrown in there — in case we want to go get some food or break a bill for some change.
The envelope of money in hand, I hurry home. It’s now only a few minutes before four, and I’m eager to avoid Dad. Over the last week, he’s been bugging me for money. He wants me to give him something to spend, though I know he’ll just spend it on garbage: lottery tickets, beer, and titty magazines. If he sees the envelope, he’s going to ask what’s in it. If he finds out there’s money, and that much, he’ll be taking the “cream off the top” as he says — stealing what small bills there are off my pile — and pocketing them as his own.
I need to get this money home and stashed in my downstairs chest of drawers before he sees or smells one bit of it, I think angrily. He’s not getting his grubby, lazy sad-sack fingers on one dollar of it. Not one crisp, clean bill.
This is for my date. My first real date with the first really great girl I’ve met since I started working. This money is not for his instant gratification or for his black-hole vices!
These thoughts in mind, I gun it out of the parking lot, and down the streets that will take me home. I’m careful not to floor it too much, though. Cops are out in force on a Friday, and I see a few of them looking at me, giving me those warning glances, as I drive by.
Whether by this game of cat and mouse with the Friday afternoon cops or my share bad luck, by the time I get home and pull into my driveway, I’m not in a Dad Free Zone. I’m in anything but. He’s right there, right in the driveway, waiting for me to pull in. It’s like he can sense the money on me the way vampire scents a warm, untapped vein.
“Fuck,” I growl this, throwing my head against the headrest. “Fuck. Fuck. Why do you have to be here right now? You’re never home this early on a God damn Friday!” I take my head off the headrest, grip the steering wheel, and study him. He’s just smiling at me like I’m the toy in his box of cracker jacks. “You should be down at the bar, gambling away whatever money other stupid people are generous enough to give you, or ordering drinks you don’t need! Not here! Not now!”
