Stay With Me

by London James

  “Finally,” Dad says the minute I get out of the car I rented. “I’ve been waiting.”

  “You’re all set?” I look him over.

  He has on a gray t-shirt with ‘Navy’ emblazoned across the chest and gray sweatpants. He looks small, like he’s swimming in the clothes. His thick white hair is lank and a little greasy, which never would have happened if he weren’t sick. He was notoriously vain back in the day, never stepping out of the house without his hair styled — it was his pride and joy, since he still had a full head of it— or a neatly pressed outfit.

  His nurse, Nora, has had a few days off, and his interim nurses clearly aren’t as diligent as she is. At least they got him to the hospital when he passed out. They called me in the middle of the night two days ago, when I was in Atlanta on business, and I drove in the minute I got back. I need to get a car to keep in the city. I only have some at my houses in Miami and L.A.

  I push down the surge of pity I feel for him. He won’t want it.

  He was vague about what had happened to him on the phone. He just said that he had passed out in his chair all of a sudden, and that his nurses decided to take him to the hospital. His doctors said that it was a severe hypoglycemic episode, even though his blood sugar is usually fine. He’s always kept in shape, and he doesn’t have diabetes.

  “Make sure to watch his blood sugar for the next few days. Feel free to call us if anything else changes, okay?” the nurse says, plastering on a fake smile.

  “I just want to get out of here. Goddamn hospitals. Goddamn nurses.” He stands slowly and shuffles over to my car. I dart around to get the door for him, but he yanks it open and plops down before I can do it. The nurse books it back inside now that he’s in my custody. I sigh and get behind the wheel again, peeling off toward his house.

  I have the radio playing gently, and he turns it off without saying a word. The silence is absolutely miserable, but anything we could talk about would be worse. He doesn’t like music—any of it. It just doesn’t appeal to him at all, which is by far one of the weirdest things about him. Maybe that’s why I like it so much, since it was an easy act of rebellion to blast it from my room as a teenager. Metal was particularly annoying to him.

  “Let’s go to Bagel Factory,” he says, adjusting in his seat, pointing to the old bagel shop’s sign off the side of the highway. It’s the one place that we both agree on liking, and admittedly, I’m pretty hungry.

  “The nurse literally just said for you to watch your blood sugars, though,” I say, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel. He pauses, and I can feel him glaring at me. “Bagels have too many carbs.”

  “Get off at this exit,” he says, ignoring me. “They have eggs, don’t they? You must be hungry.”

  As if on cue, my stomach growls, and I do as he says. I flash back to high school, when we’d go to Bagel Factory after my wrestling meets. Dad was always trying to get me to gain weight to go up to the next class, where there was less competition. He would order a dozen bagels and cream cheese and watch me eat until he was satisfied that I was trying enough.

  Not that he had to encourage me much—I was a sixteen-year-old boy, for fuck’s sake. I was going to eat a shitload no matter what. But the very memory is a bit of a shock to the system. I bet normal people don’t have those memories with their dads.

  I get two egg-and-veggie scrambles and black coffee, even though I want a bagel myself. He begrudgingly takes it and digs in right away.

  “Your appetite’s better,” I note. He just grunts and keeps eating his eggs.

  When we get home, I help him back into his big leather chair. He groans and covers himself with a blanket.

  “How are you feeling?” I ask, sitting down with him. Nora won’t be back for another half hour or so.

  “Like shit.”

  I hold in a sigh. “Did they give you any paperwork about your diagnosis? Any discharge paperwork? I only know what you’ve told me.”

  He shakes his head. I raise an eyebrow. Usually I’m not around when he has medical treatments, so I always get information through his lens. I want to see what the doctor says directly, but since Dad hasn’t granted me the right to access his medical records or given his doctors consent to talk to me about his condition, I can’t see them.

  “What?” he snaps.

  “Why would they send you away with no information?” I ask. “Where’s your bag?”

  “Sit down, Ashton,” Dad hisses. “You don’t think I can take care of myself?”

  “Christ, Dad, I was just trying to help—”

  “Trying to help by putting me up to some bullshit medical tests or giving me a damn egg scramble when I could be eating a bagel.” He grabs the TV remote and turns it on.

  I glare at him, wondering if I should just get up and leave. But there’s a real risk of him passing out again, and if he made it through, he would never let me hear the end of it.

  God, why is my fear of being berated greater than the fear of him dying? I’m a piece of shit. Maybe Dad’s guilt-tripping is warranted.

  I hate this, passionately. I want to say I hate him, but I can’t, for reasons I don’t understand. A lot of people openly hate their parents who don’t say things that are as fucked up as what Dad has said to me over the years. So many of my friends who know him beg me to tell him to fuck off, but I can’t bring myself to do it.

  I grit my teeth, trying to get myself into a more positive mental space so I won’t have a damn meltdown. I glance at my watch. Once Nora gets here, I can head back to Brooklyn, to Briony’s place. I’ve never been so excited to do something boring like arranging flowers before. Briony makes a lot of boring things more exciting.

  I bite the inside of my cheek. Trying to be just friends with her is harder than I thought it would be, though I do enjoy her company. It’s something beyond just physical attraction, though that’s definitely a big part of it. Something about her that I can’t place draws me to her and makes me feel like myself in a whole new way. She’s opened a little door in the back of my mind that I’ve never even noticed. We just click somehow.

  Do I have a crush on her?

  Jesus, I’m a grown man—I don’t have crushes. But I am feeling something I haven’t felt in a long, long time, and I’m not sure what to do with it. I stuff it in the back of my mind. It’s not like I can act on it. That would be like strolling into enemy territory without a plan and expecting it to go well. I can either have Briony as a friend for a long time, or have her as a girlfriend, inevitably feel claustrophobic and tied down, and break up with her. The first option is much less of a headache.

  “Nice news,” Dad says, breaking my train of thought.

  “What?” I look up at him.

  He nods his head toward the TV, which is covering my company. The segment ends and moves on to something about Google before I can learn what it was about. I never get used to seeing myself on TV, even if it’s just a photo.

  “About the company’s valuation going up,” he says. “Nice.”

  “Thanks.” I’m already a little proud of myself for that, but hearing Dad say it makes me feel even better. Pulling praise from him is like pulling teeth.

  I drum my fingers on the arm of my chair, feeling guilty yet again. What he thinks about what I do shouldn’t matter to me, but old habits die hard. It’s like the twelve-year-old Ash popped up out of nowhere, excited that Dad told me I did a good job at anything for once. Those moments were so rare as a kid and are even more so now as an adult.

  “Now’s the time to—”

  “Take it public. Yeah, I know, Dad. We’ve talked about this,” I say, shutting down and turning up the TV.

  Even though I’ve cut off the conversation, the juxtaposition of him being pleased with me and the idea of giving up control of my company for a shit-ton of money connects some synapses in my brain that need to stay unlinked. I can’t be that guy, the one who gives something up because he feels pressured to. But god, is the idea tempting.

&nb
sp; And now that the company is worth more, we can get a ton of money by going public. We could do so much more with our training program and raise wages across the board. Unlike Dad, I don’t want to hoard it all. Another glass of lemonade from my lemon of a childhood—I never want to be a slave to money. Not that I dislike nice things or having a salary that’s much higher than 99.9 percent of America’s, but it isn’t the end goal of what I do. I have three homes, one in Brooklyn, one in Miami, and one in LA. They’re nice, but nothing too extreme. They’re just enough.

  Thankfully, Nora comes bustling in not long after that, putting away her things and starting to check over Dad’s medicine. Once she gives me the okay, I leave, speeding back to Brooklyn.

  I run back home to let Sarge out in the backyard before I go to Briony’s. Over text she mentioned that she wanted to meet him, but I doubt Sarge and Chunk would get along. Sarge sees anything smaller than himself as a very fun challenge—and by challenge, I mean snack.

  Her apartment is in an old brick building not too far from Prospect Park, tucked down the block from a nail salon and a drug store. I press the buzzer for her apartment and wait… and wait.

  Am I in the right place? The address is right. The vibe is right, too. The area is filled with thirty-something professionals and young families. Briony had called it the bargain-brand version of Park Slope over text, which I’d read mid-meeting. I’d snorted so loudly that my CFO asked if I needed a tissue.

  “Hello?” she finally says over the intercom, sounding out of breath.

  “It’s Ash.”

  “Oh, shit. Okay. Just a second. Hold on.” The door clicks open, and I walk up the three flights of stairs to her place. The stairwell has worn marble stairs and a railing that really needs to be replaced before someone dies breaking it.

  “You’re early!” Briony shouts from down the hall, poking her head out of the apartment.

  “Am I?” I look at my watch. “By five minutes.”

  “Five minutes I was hoping to have to pull myself together. Come in.” She holds the door open for me.

  The place is small, which I knew it would be, and basically every available surface is covered with flowers. It smells great, which momentarily distracts me from the fact that it’s insanely hot inside, even with the windows open. It’s been a long time since I lived in an apartment building without central air. I’m only wearing shorts and a t-shirt but sweat is already pooling on my lower back. Damn, I’m getting too soft.

  I curse the late July heat but am suddenly very thankful to be sweating my ass off inside when I see Briony in the tiniest running shorts I’d seen in a while and a thin t-shirt. The shorts are cut in just the right way to show off her hips and thighs; the fabric pulled tight across her curves. I know her ass will look just as good if she turns. I like how sturdy she is, for lack of a better word. She’s womanly as hell with her little waist and broad hips but looks like she can withstand a hurricane with enough willpower.

  Her cheeks are flushed from the heat, not makeup, and her hair is up in a messy knot on the top of her head. Is she wearing a bra? From the way she’s moving, it seems like she isn’t. I don’t look hard enough to see if her nipples are hard. Goddamn, she’s tempting.

  Maybe this appropriately friend-zone’ activity is a bad idea.

  “Have a seat wherever you can find a spot,” Briony says, navigating the minefield of vases on the ground to her bedroom. “Give me a second.”

  I kick off my shoes and sit down on her couch, sinking deep into the cushions. I hear a chirp and look down to find Chunk butting his head against my leg. I give him a scratch behind the ears before he flops down on the other side of the coffee table, adequately greeted.

  I look around the apartment. It’s clearly a shared space, but it still has touches of Briony. The walls are pale pink, which is probably still her favorite color, and plants are in every nook and cranny. A speaker is sitting on the shelf next to a row of romance novels, and a few photography prints of some Long Island beaches are on the wall. It’s cozy without feeling too cramped.

  Maybe it’s because it’s filled with flowers, but it smells like her, too. Well, her perfume, rather. Maybe I can find out what brand it is if I get a chance to snoop in her bathroom. But that’s way too creepy, isn’t it?

  I like it, besides the lack of cool air. Maybe I can buy her the silent window unit that a buddy of mine’s company makes. Friends do things like that, don’t they? It isn’t like I’m buying her a dildo.

  Why do I torture myself with thoughts like this? My body is thinking with my dick way too often for my comfort.

  “Okay, I’m back, sorry.” She comes out of her bedroom. Jesus, she wasn’t wearing a bra before, but now she is. “I took way too long in the shower and lost track of time.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” I run my hand through my hair.

  “And sorry it’s literally two thousand degrees in here. C’mere, Chunky boy.” She leans over to pick up Chunk, giving me a view down her shirt. I look away immediately and start thinking about calculus to keep my dick under control. “Let me get the fan.”

  She moves Chunk out of the way and fills his spot with a tower fan. The relief is instantaneous. Chunk wanders back in front of it and flops on his side, letting the air hit his belly.

  “That’s better.” She sits down beside me, laptop in hand. “Thanks again for your help. I’m guessing you’ve never put together flower arrangements, right?”

  “When would I have done that, Briony?” I ask, laughing.

  “You surprise me sometimes.” She shrugs. “Here’s what we’re trying to recreate, more or less, for the tables.”

  She pulls up a photo of a flower arrangement. I don’t know shit about flowers, but I can tell it’s something thoughtfully put together and deceptively simple. It's beautiful.

  “Okay, so…” She gets up and gathers a bunch of flowers in long boxes, the ends wrapped in damp paper towels. “Here’s the order you put the flowers in the vase—basically, small to large. The greenery, then the small flowers, then the big bulbs. Don’t worry about making it look fancy, because I’ll do that once you’re done. Sound good?”

  “Thanks for putting it into my language,” I say, picking up a big leaf I vaguely recognize. “These plants have names, don’t they?”

  She grins, one of her dimples appearing next to her mouth. “Yeah, but does it matter to you?”

  “At this moment? Not really.”

  “Well, there you go.” She stands up, putting her ass right at my eye level. Maybe I’ve gone to hell, and this is my torture. “What flower-arranging jams would you like to listen to?”

  “What does a person listen to while arranging flowers?”

  “Hm.” She gives me a mischievous glance over her shoulder as she puts her phone into the speaker I noticed on her shelf. “We could make it a throwback kind of day.”

  “Please no Lady Gaga or whoever,” I beg. She had just gotten big when I was in college, and my neighbors spent so much time blasting her music that I can hardly stand her even to this day. And when they weren’t blasting her music, someone in the quad was.

  “You’re pretty much asking for Gaga, then.”

  “Please, no. Is this going to be like our carpools in high school?” I ask. Whoever got shotgun picked the music, which meant that Briony and I spent a lot of time fighting for the front seat. Since I was bigger and stronger than her, I used to hip check her out of the way and scramble inside, even if she’d called it first.

  In retrospect, I treated her like one of the guys half the time, which probably confused her the rest of the time when I playfully flirted with her. No wonder things had blown up between us.

  “Yes, except we have more than whatever I burned onto my CDs.” She puts her hands on her hips. “Eminem, for a classic ‘Ben and Ash post-wrestling practice’ throwback?”

  “Oh, god.” I run my hand over my face. There was a long period when Ben and I listened to excessive amounts of Eminem. We li
stened to it because it drove both our parents and Briony absolutely crazy. She hated how loudly we blasted it, and our parents thought we were going to become violent psychopaths because of him. And, as teenage suburban white guys, it’s the law to listen to him at some point, more or less. “What about Aerosmith?”

  “Did you seriously just suggest Aerosmith?” she asks, her eyebrow going up.

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Old-people music.”

  “It’s not old-people music.” I get up and go behind her to see what she’s doing. “I think the word you’re thinking of is classic.”

  “Fine, it’s classic old-people music.” She rolls her eyes, still smiling so hard that her dimples showed. “Let’s go with some pop.”

  She scrolls through Spotify and picks an album. A horn plays a long beat and shifts into something pop-y. “Carly Rae Jepsen. Then you can pick the next thing.”

  “Fine.” I’m close enough to her to see the freckles on the tops of her shoulders. If we were going to hook up, I’d probably put my hands around her small waist and kiss along her neck, pulling her into my arms. I like how she’s smaller than me, but not too short. She has just enough meat on her to sink my fingers into a little bit. I force myself to take a step back from her, so I won’t break down and do it.

  We get to work. I place the proper flowers in the small white vases while she works on two large arrangements in floor vases, trimming the ends of plants and putting them in stem by stem, stepping back and looking at her work with her head cocked to the side. Sometimes she mumbles something to herself and undoes whatever she just did. I find myself falling into a groove with the flowers, the poppy music brightening the atmosphere.

  “Are you dancing?” she asks, her head suddenly inches behind me. I jump. “Do you love this?”

  “Hold up; love is a strong word,” I protest. “It’s catchy. I can’t help it. And bobbing my head isn't dancing.”