Pins and Needles

by A. J. Thomas

  His first instinct was to slam the door shut, but his father shoved his way inside before he had the chance. “I realize you needed to sleep in, but it’s nearly one o’clock, Nathan, and you weren’t answering your phone.”

  “What do you want?” he asked, trying to hide his bare stomach behind the door.

  “To check on you, obviously,” his mother said, grabbing his arm and tugging him toward the kitchen. She reached for his right arm, pouting at the thick bandages. “Your hand! Emmitt said you got hurt, but your entire hand is wrapped up. And what on earth made you get a tattoo?”

  From the door, Steven snickered. “A hot tattoo artist.”

  Nate glared at him, then stepped around his mother to start making coffee.

  “No. You sit,” his mother insisted, shoving him into an oak dining chair. “I’ll start a pot of coffee as soon as I put this food in the fridge. Have you eaten yet?” She gestured for Steven to follow her, and Nate noticed he was carrying four heavily laden canvas bags.

  “All I’ve got is leftover pizza, and I can manage that on my own.” He glanced at his father, confused. “Why did you feel the need to bring everyone out here to check on me? Laura’s in town too, isn’t she?”

  Matthew, who hadn’t said a damn thing, was still standing near the door.

  “Laura took the kids out for lunch and shopping with her parents,” Emmitt explained. “And I didn’t intend for the entire family to accompany me. I came to review your case files in the Wilkinson matter. Since I’m working on this in addition to my regular caseload, I thought I’d use the days off to get up to speed. But I made the mistake of mentioning that you were injured.”

  “Yeah, Dad mentioned it.” Steven joined him at the table, with Cheryl following him eventually. “You get knifed outside a tattoo parlor and I have to find out about it from Dad? That’s not okay.”

  “I’m fine,” Nate said again. “Besides, what would you have done if I’d called? Rushed down to spend the night sitting in the ER waiting room again? There was nothing you could have done anyway, and it was stitches, nothing life-threatening.”

  “He didn’t call anybody,” Emmitt complained.

  “That’s not true. I called Hawk. I didn’t call you because I thought it was none of your business.”

  “None of our business?” his mother shrieked.

  “Well, obviously, with the insurance thing, I was wrong.”

  His mom looked angry. “Insurance? You could have been killed, and you think we’re worried about the bill? What if you were still in danger?” Her glare was filled with rage and betrayal. She glanced at the table, lingering on Steven and Cheryl before she took a deep breath and collected herself. “Do you still take cream and sugar?”

  “I’ve always taken my coffee black, Mom. But there’s milk in the fridge if you’d like some.”

  “And really, Anna, with that boy’s father looming around, I’m sure they were perfectly safe.”

  “Hawk’s not his father,” Nate pointed out.

  His dad looked at him like he was a moron. “Yes, he is. Say you find a stray cat on your doorstep. If you feed the cat, and shelter the cat, and love the cat, and ten years later you still have the cat—it’s yours, even if you persist in calling it a stray.”

  His mom wrapped her arms around Emmitt’s shoulders and gave him a quick hug before she returned to the kitchen and began a systematic search of his cabinets. “Where are your coffee cups?”

  “Second door from the right,” he told her. Looking at his dad, he smiled softly, strangely touched by his observation. “Can I borrow that metaphor? I think it might do Hawk and Sean both some good.”

  “Of course.”

  “Safe or not, you can’t not let us know when you have an emergency,” his mom went on. She set cups of coffee down in front of everyone and began digging through his fridge for the milk. “You really do only have leftover pizza. This is not healthy.”

  “It has vegetables on it—it’s fine. So, you can see I’m in one piece, I won’t starve, and you’ve got houseguests.” He nodded at Matthew, who was still skulking on the far side of the open living room. “And things to do, I’m sure.”

  “Cheryl and I don’t have things to do,” Steven said with a bright smile. “When Dad said he was heading this direction, I mentioned we were going to come visit you today. Dad said you wouldn’t be up for it after you were attacked last night.”

  “Sean was attacked,” Nathan tried to clarify.

  Emmitt scoffed. “And you have over thirty stitches in your hand because of it.”

  “A fact you exploited to convince Sean to let you waltz in on this case.”

  “Yes, I did,” Emmitt said. “Someone has to maintain a level head and be able to look at this case objectively, and I doubt you or your smitten fool of a client are capable of it right now. He is more than willing to sign away his rights in this case if he thinks it’ll keep you safe.”

  “He wouldn’t.”

  “Yes, he would. Him being worried about you was the only reason he agreed to put up with me. Although he made me yielding to your lead a condition of the agreement. He also managed to make me feel like a complete and utter jackass in the process.”

  “The ‘opportunistic’ comment? I told him about working with Tillman, and Hawk had a meeting with him that really solidified Sean’s opinion, but I will try to clarify that you weren’t personally involved in Tillman’s drama.”

  “Not that, although it stung.” Emmitt closed his eyes and sighed. “I owe you an apology for that business with Greg Tillman, but it’s a different matter. His work since you left has been…”

  “Disappointing?”

  “Utterly unacceptable and displaying a degree of incompetence I’d expect from a new paralegal. But no, your young man managed to be almost polite, considering his opinion of me. He seems convinced I’m so deplorable that I’d condemn and judge him for… well, things I have no business repeating.” He looked at Nate almost timidly, and there was a flash of pain in his eyes.

  “Sean told you? Everything?”

  “I very much doubt it, but he told me enough. Do you have your case files here?”

  “It’s not like I’ve got an office.” He reluctantly got up and grabbed his laptop off the coffee table. It was awkward opening the correct files without being able to use his right hand, but he managed.

  “If nothing else, I can play secretary until you’re healed,” Emmitt said, shifting the computer screen so he could see the first of several hundred pages of court filings, depositions, case briefs, and research.

  “You don’t actually have to do this,” Nate said, knowing his father was likely already engrossed in the text. “I’ve got everything….” He realized what he was about to say and looked at the bandages. His hand was still throbbing, and he was pretty sure everything back to his elbow was swollen. The skin wasn’t discolored, and there were no signs of infection, but it was still bloated and painful. “I was going say I’ve got everything ‘well in hand,’ but I suspect I’m the only one who’d think it was funny,” he admitted, smirking.

  On the other side of the table, Cheryl and Steven both chuckled.

  His future sister-in-law reached across and patted the back of his left hand. “It’s only in poor taste if someone else says it.”

  “Since you’re all here, would one of you mind opening up pill bottles for me?”

  Once Nate had taken a couple of ibuprofens and chugged his coffee, he excused himself to get dressed. He opted for slacks and a dress shirt, foregoing a jacket, and returned to find his dad engrossed in work and his mom chatting with his siblings at the table. Matthew had found his way to a chair, and for a brief moment, he felt like he’d walked back in time. His parents had bought the house as a vacation property when they were young, and his family had spent many weekends and summers there. Despite the fact that the house was hardly twelve hundred square feet, a far cry from their massive, sprawling home in the city, they’d always been hap
py there. He and his brothers had crammed into the tiny second bedroom, where they’d had two sets of bunk beds set up. Because there wasn’t enough room for an office, his dad had always taken over one end of the table and worked away quietly while they played board games at the other end. There were no televisions, video games, computers, trampolines, or swimming pools, but they’d had fun.

  “So when do I get to meet this young man?” his mom asked, glancing up from his fridge.

  “Uh, you don’t get to meet him,” he mumbled, retreating to the table. Steven was smirking.

  “He’s the one your father said was covered in tattoos, right?”

  “Dad called him a ‘tattoo-covered thug,’ yeah. Which is part of why you don’t get to meet him. He’s a great guy, and even though he expects people to assume the worst and treat him like shit, I’d rather not subject him to that from my own flesh and blood.”

  “I refuse to apologize for that ‘thug’ comment,” his father insisted.

  “Emmitt,” his mom said, her tone almost a warning.

  “He is covered in tattoos. And he’s proud of times he’s had to resort to violence. Then there’s his language, which can only be politely described as ‘colorful’ at the best of times.”

  Matthew shot Nate a cold glare. “Dating a man isn’t bad enough?”

  Nate stared at his brother. He’d always stayed quiet as a teen when his brother resorted to snide comments, but the years apart had made him forget how difficult it had been. And he didn’t have any reason to stay quiet now. This wasn’t his parents’ home anymore—it was his. And the wife and children Matthew was so insistent on protecting weren’t here. “We’re not officially dating. But we’re sleeping together, and he’s really hot, so I’m hoping I can talk him into it.”

  Matthew stood up and paced toward the living room, seething.

  Steven smirked. “You walked right into that one, Matt.”

  “You know what?” Matthew looked like he was trying to strangle the air. “I’m going to go join Laura and the kids after all. If y’all want to sit here and pretend that the things coming out of his mouth aren’t disgusting, I can’t stop you, but I can’t support this.”

  Nate was a bit surprised when his father actually rolled his eyes.

  “I don’t recall asking for your support,” Nate said, staying in his seat.

  “You don’t have to flaunt your lifestyle in front of decent people.”

  “Why are you even here? This is my home. I might have bought it from Dad, but it’s still mine. I’m not going to sit here in my own home and pretend to be something I’m not in order to spare your feelings.”

  “Matthew, no one forced you to come along, and you may leave,” Emmitt said dismissively. “The code to the garage and the house is still the same, so feel free to let yourself in if you beat us home.”

  Matthew grumbled and left, slamming the door hard enough to shake the tiny house.

  “Well….” His mom forced herself to smile. “You were right.”

  “What?” Nate glanced back and forth between his parents.

  “I thought he’d be able to behave himself,” his mom explained. “I made lunch reservations. Your father told me you and Matthew would clash long before we got to the restaurant, so I should only make a reservation for five. I didn’t listen, of course, because I like to have faith in my children. Plus, it’s better to plan for the largest possible number of guests. You can always remove a place setting, but you can’t always get a bigger table. Still, all those ‘thug’ comments didn’t help, and you know it.”

  His dad looked smug. “Look on the bright side—the rest of us can now enjoy a pleasant afternoon.”

  “You let him follow you all the way out here knowing he was just going to leave? And telling Mom about Sean? What the hell?”

  Emmitt glanced meaningfully at Steven.

  “This is your doing, isn’t it?” Nate asked. “Why do you have to torment me?”

  “I only see you a couple times a year,” Steven said, chuckling. “I have to make up for lost time.”

  “By meddling in my life?”

  “I only pointed out that you’ve always been kind of a recluse. And that you were totally in love with this guy, so it might be worth learning a bit about him.”

  Nate stared into his coffee cup, trying to remember the details of his conversation with Steven before Tonya’s accident. “I think it’s a bit early to go that far.”

  “Did you, or did you not, tell Dad he’s worth the trouble you might get in?”

  “He is,” Nate said immediately. “But that doesn’t mean you need to gossip about my life.”

  Emmitt stared at him over the laptop screen.

  “You don’t,” Nate said again. “I don’t care what you think of him, he’s—”

  “Whether you care or not, don’t presume,” Emmitt said. “If he were only a tattoo-covered thug, I’d be trying to talk some sense into you. Given his circumstances, the fact that he managed to finish high school is extraordinary. And he not only finished high school, but college too. And managed two science majors and graduated with a perfect GPA.”

  Nate took a sip of his coffee. “For all the good it’s done him, yeah.”

  Emmitt folded the laptop screen down halfway. “We have two associates who work in patent prosecution who were rather curious about him too. Apparently he wrote CPG a computer program that might make fracking less of an environmental disaster.”

  “What?” Cheryl asked, wide-eyed and curious.

  “Yeah, something….” Nate tried to remember Sean’s explanations, but he hadn’t had enough coffee yet to make sense of it himself. “Something about pressure waves and interference patterns and… I honestly have no idea. I know CPG has made a big deal out of it.”

  Emmitt nodded. “He’s also won six awards for his tattoos, and his work has appeared in several major magazines. As I understand it, that’s the tattoo-artist equivalent of a researcher being published in a peer-reviewed journal. It’s a rather big deal.”

  “He is talented.”

  “Apparently. After speaking with him, I’m thinking we need to convince him to go back to school to pursue a juris doctorate, because he’d be one hell of a trial lawyer.”

  Nate could only nod in agreement. Sean was the type of person who had the drive and intelligence to be successful in anything he did, and he could argue circles around Nate himself. “He’d probably get a kick out of it, but no. Not a chance.”

  “Why not? He’d be good at it.”

  He shook his head, determined. “He would be good at it. And he was good at engineering. But he’s an amazing artist. Saying he should be an attorney is like looking at a stained-glass window in a cathedral and saying if you broke it into pieces, you could use the pieces to make an amazing lamp. You’d end up destroying a phenomenal work of art that’s already perfect exactly the way it is, and turning the scraps into something that’s useful but mundane.”

  Steven waved his hand in Nate’s direction and stared at their father. “See what I mean? Head over heels.”

  “I’ll concede the point,” Emmitt said with an indulgent smile. “Besides, that boy cares about you, Nathan. So much so that his only condition in allowing me to work on this case was that I essentially do nothing more than act as a consultant, and that if anyone asks, I give you full credit for representing him. He’s very obviously willing to take this matter to trial, to fight until every option is exhausted, so you can make a name for yourself.”

  Nate tried not to smile. He’d pushed Sean to settle from the start so he could get the money he needed quickly, but Sean had admitted he was willing to go to trial just to let Nate bask in the glory to follow. “He’s still going to accept a settlement if they offer one that’s reasonable. Unless he decides CPG really did tried to kill him,” Nate added. “He’d be pissed about that.”

  “I’m glad you’re at least putting his best interests above your professional goals. If it takes reassurance th
at CPG’s criminal actions can be addressed in a separate lawsuit, then we need to see to that, and anything else he needs to be comfortable accepting a reasonable settlement.”

  “I’m aware of that. But, believe it or not, he’s not the one holding things up. The intellectual-property issue is the problem. CPG wants a guarantee that he’s not going to challenge their patent application. Since he was an intern and not an employee, I don’t think they can make a case that they own it at all, but they’re trying anyway. And no amount of money is going to convince him to sign it over.”

  “That shouldn’t even be a part of the settlement,” Emmitt pointed out.

  “Which Sean and I both told them. But they won’t offer a cent without him agreeing.”

  Emmitt leaned back in his chair and stared at Nate. “It was a condition in the offer they sent Tuesday night?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And how did Wilkinson respond?”

  Nate shrugged. “I emailed Harrison to ask if the condition was still in there, because I wasn’t quite focused enough to read it. I haven’t heard back, but after I finally reviewed the document, it’s still there in black and white. And two hours after I responded….”

  Emmitt grew pale. “Oh, dear.”

  Nate nodded. “Yeah.”

  “I confess, I thought Mr. Wilkinson was being overdramatic last night. But this is going to be complicated. Of course, if it were simple, we’d be out of a job.” His dad turned his attention back to the computer. “Have you archived copies of each email? Are they in the case file?”

  “All but the recent ones, and I can forward you those.”

  “Thank you. Mind if I take copies of these?” he asked, pulling a tiny flash drive off his key ring. “It seems like a lot to go through.”

  “Go ahead. It’s about fifteen hundred pages,” Nate confirmed.