Chapter 2

"Does she have any idea how much time I spent and how much work I had to do before coming up with that proposal?" he said, pacing to and fro around the room with a maximum of three steps in any direction he walked.

The room was illuminated by the rays of light given off by the moon that escaped the curtains that covered the windows. The only other source of illumination was from an air conditioner just above a window; it read, “23°”.

"I agree with you, Lana, she doesn't!" he said.

Lana was sitting on an oval brown table about three meters high. She was looking intently at every movement made by the man in the room.

He was dark-skinned, about six feet and two inches tall and had a lot of hair. He was also wearing nothing but shorts.

"She keeps telling me to do more, to put in more work if I'm to keep my place at her company," he said with a smirk. "No one puts in more work than me in that department!"

He sat down at the center of a blue couch big enough for three people to sit in. He placed his elbows on his knees and cupped his face in his hands as he looked at Lana.

“It’s like she doesn’t want me there and I bet it has something to do with my dad!”

"I wish we would make actual conversations Lana," he said as he looked into her big blue eyes, "so I would not need to guess what you have to say to me".

"Oh, Pete called me, he told me Dad will be hosting a party tomorrow."

He was holding both hands together with his elbows still on his knees as he looked at Lana.

"He wants me to show up. I guess he hopes my presence would piss Dad off," he scoffed.

"You think I should go?"

He didn't get any response from Lana, not even a movement. But he interpreted the stare she gave him as uncertainty.

"I also don't know, girl," he said as he lay down on the chair and looked at the ceiling. "Of course, my dad doesn't tell me about it, we haven't spoken in months." He turned on the chair as he lay on his side and said, looking at Lana, "He hates me, remember? That happens when you tell your dad to fuck off, that you don't need him to survive and that you can do better on your own without him controlling every aspect of your life".

He turned back to his previous position on the chair and was once again looking at the ceiling.

"To be honest, I think the word I used was 'manipulating' rather than 'controlling' and in my defense, Mom used worse words." There was a little smile on his face as he said that.

His eyes closed slowly, for a few seconds but he opened them again. It was as though he was fighting the urge to sleep.

"I wonder why my brother would want me there, though," he said as he scratched his head with his right hand. "It's not like we're friends or anything close to that. I wonder how there can be so much chaos in a family, I loved it better as a kid. What the fuck went wrong?"

He covered his mouth as he closed his eyes and yawned. He didn't bother opening his eyes anymore. He was tired and was going to sleep.

"Lana, do you know what 'think outside the box' means?" He stretched his left hand in her direction, still with his eyes closed, to feel for her presence. "Neither do I," he said as he rubbed her head. "Neither do I. It’s just some bullshit term people throw around when they have no idea what to say and how to motivate their employees."

He was silent for some seconds, and he had the appearance of someone who had finally found the sleep he was searching for.

"If I got a penny for every time my boss said to me, 'Paul, you need to think outside the box', I would be richer than my dad," he said, with the sound of his voice so low that someone a few centimeters away would strain to hear him.

Just then, his phone vibrated once, twice, three times.

He groaned and said, "No peace for the wicked."

He opened his eyes and stretched for the phone on the table where Lana was sitting. He looked at it for a while and said with a smirk, "Look who wants me at the party, but could only send his secretary to deliver the message."

He dropped the phone on the table and resumed his sleeping position.

Lana got down from the table, climbed the chair he was sleeping on and lay atop him.

"I see that you're also tired," he said, and as he rubbed Lana's body, she meowed.