Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69129 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 346(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69129 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 346(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Another small wince is presented.
“Wes.”
“I’ve gotta call Bofshever back and finish that meeting, plus I’ve got three more on calendar today, including a joint PR session with us and MINOH’s.”
“Of course,” she murmurs in irrefutable irritation. “Because why would you bother sacrificing any of your time for our family?”
It’s impossible not to scoot to the edge of the couch. “Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry is your hearing actually going or are you doing your best old man Batman impression?”
“There.” A single finger point is executed. “There is that passive aggressive bullshit I was talking about in our session with Yang last month.”
“Really?” The sight of her eyebrows launching to the ceiling is a bit unsettling. “You want me to be aggressive, aggressive?”
“I want you to be open and brutally honest with me the way you were before Wy was born.”
“You mean before I had to put my entire fucking life on pause to play devoted socialite, wife, and mother?”
There isn’t even time to consider a retort.
“You want me to be someone I can’t possibly fucking be anymore because our lives are not what they once were!”
Yet again I can’t speak.
Not that I’m certain I should.
“You want me to be honest, Wes?” Her arms fold defensively across her chest. “How about the fact that I hate you work more than we fuck?”
“That’s not-”
“Or how about the fact that I hate that I always have to come to your office, yet you rarely step foot in mine?”
“It’s not-”
“Or how about the fact that I hate how you never rearrange your schedule to pick up your son? Or that you never join me and Jessie for the godawful birthday parties we have to attend every other fucking weekend? Or that you can’t stop reviewing paperwork to read to him Knuffle Bunny for the seventeenth time in a day? Or that you’re the only one in the whole fucking estate who can’t seem to spare. Five. Fucking. Minutes. To make a grilled PBJ with him?”
Guilt has my jaw bobbing yet prevents me from actually speaking.
Am I really that…absent?
Am I really becoming the king in that fucking parable?
Am I really turning into my father despite what I believed to be my best efforts?
“Brynley-”
Two solid taps to my office door interrupt our conversation.
“Ooo,” she teasingly coos, “saved by the assistant.”
“I-”
“Don’t make Jenni knock twice!” Evie Jordan, our family’s personal publicist, huffs from the other side of the blockade.
“Wouldn’t want that,” the love of my life mockingly mumbles prior to backing up towards the desk.
“Brynl-”
“Our word search is on your desk, you know, just in case you get a minute to do something other than work,” she informs at the same time she snatches up her small clutch. “And so is the Batman cake pop I special ordered from Yasmine’s for you.”
Additional guilt crumbles my entire torso. “Bryn-”
“I don’t mind knocking twiceskies!” the young woman whose brother now plays hockey for Camelot – giving her the closer family fix she craves – frantically squawks. “Evie hates me knocking twiceskies! She thinks it ruins my manicure!”
No more than a faint croak manages to escape due to my wife opening the door to state, “She’s not wrong.”
“Yet you are for walking around in public looking like a slutty Smurfette,” our publicist sardonically sneers.
“Acted like her too,” is accompanied by theatrical wink.
“Didn’t we just attend a seminar about appropriate phrases in the workplace,” Julia Pham politely interjects.
“Doesn’t apply here,” Evie brushes off without missing a beat. “Tell me that you at least remembered to avoid the windows this time. Because while it’s less work spinning a salacious tale of a husband and wife squeezing in a quickie into a fairy tale moment of a married couple simply capturing a few intimate moments together than it is having to reassure the afternoon tryst was actually with his wife and not his smoking hot, barely able to drink his brand nanny that calls him daddy in a different way-”
“Feels like it applies now,” Pham less than quietly proclaims.
“-it is still more work than I need considering that I to have finish approving J.T.’s talking points for the guest lecture he’ll be giving at Vlasta University next week for their tech expo – fulfilling the company’s newest commitment to educating the youth – and revising the Wilcox fall family photoshoot agenda as to not repeat last year’s ‘lost our child in a corn maze’ press nightmare.”
Lost seems…like an oversell.
We didn’t lose him.
He ran away.
He mumbled something in gibberish, put his balled fist in the air, and then took off into the shrubbery like he was son to Scarecrow versus Batman.
It was embarrassing.
Not because he toddled off as if breaking out of prison but because of how long it took me to find him.
And that task fell to me because I was the one who wouldn’t hang up the phone to immediately follow what I later learned to be a hide-and-seek mastermind.