Chapter 26 — Jack

Jack sat at his desk and stared out the window while Kevin told him about… whatever. Jack honestly couldn’t remember a thing that the intern had said over the past ten minutes that he’d been standing in the doorway of Jack’s office.

As long as Jack nodded and grunted in what felt like appropriate places, Kevin didn’t seem to mind that the conversation was completely one-sided.

Not that it would have mattered to Jack if the kid had minded. He genuinely liked having Kevin around most days, but… not today.

In fact, Jack would have been hard pressed to name anything he liked today.

“Sorry, Kev,” Jack said, finally, reluctantly shifting his attention from the window to the still-talking intern standing across from him. “I’m just not feeling very well today.”

“Hey, no problem, man,” Kevin said, agreeable as always. “I’m glad to see you back, though. It’s been pretty quiet around here without you—oh, shit. Incoming.”

He scurried away from the door with an urgency that could only mean one thing.

“Good afternoon, Mr. McGuire,” Jack intoned, almost before his boss had even rounded the corner into his office. “What can I do for you?”

“Well, Jim, you’ve really put me in a bind with all this vacation time you’ve been taking. I wasn’t sure you’d even be back today, so I thought I should stop by and make sure we’re still on the same page here.”

Jack opened his mouth to correct him but shut it instead. He wasn’t sure what was more offensive—the fact that his boss of almost six years couldn’t get his fucking name right or the fact that he was trying to somehow imply that Jack wasn’t dedicated to his job because he had taken the vacation hours he’d legitimately earned over those same six years.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” was all Jack managed to say. It was at least a better alternative than “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Less satisfying, maybe, but better for now.

“I mean that the partners and I are concerned that you’re dropping the ball on this hospital campaign.” He crossed his arms and gave Jack a stern look. “I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that this is a very important client, and that we normally wouldn’t have even considered letting someone with your lack of experience anywhere near—”

“Just a second,” Jack held up a hand, interrupting his boss in mid-sentence. “While I have said on several occasions that I appreciate the opportunity, Mr. McGuire, with all due respect, I don’t need a lecture about my responsibilities to this client—or to this firm, for that matter.”

Ted McGuire’s eyes went wide and Jack knew he had already said too much, but he couldn’t seem to stop the words from tumbling out.

“And I’d also like to state for the record that every hour of vacation time I’ve used has been mine to use. I’ve accumulated it over the course of my employment here, and I frankly don’t appreciate your implication that I’ve somehow been slacking because I’ve had to attend to some personal business.”

“You won’t talk to me like that ever again,” Ted barked. “I’ll have you escorted out of here so fast it’ll—”

“No, I don’t think you will,” Jack said, interrupting him again as he stood up from behind his desk. “You know, it’s awfully hard to fire someone when you don’t even take the time to learn their name.” Jack picked up the briefcase next to his desk and walked past his boss to the door, pausing for just a moment to say, “And just so we’re on the same page, Ted, the other reason why you can’t have me escorted out of here is because I quit.”

He walked out of his own office with a smile on his face for the first time all day, not even bothering to turn around as his boss—former boss—sputtered and stomped and called his name.

Fuck that guy.

And fuck this place.

Jack didn’t belong here anymore.

###

Jack couldn’t stop smiling all the way home. Driving with his windows rolled down and the radio turned up, it had almost been easy to forget how bad the day had actually been.

Almost.

It all came flooding back as soon as he opened the door to his apartment, though.

His too-quiet, too-small, too-expensive apartment with the shitty view that he was tired of pretending justified the rent.

After all the time he’d spent in Boston, he could name the people he would consider to be friends on one hand, with more than a couple of fingers left over. He still didn’t even know the name of the guy who lived across the hall.

He’d made more—and better—friends in Silver Lake in two weeks than he’d managed in nearly a decade of living in this city.

Shouldn’t that tell him something?

Jack fished his phone from his pocket and started dialing Calvin’s number out of habit, but stopped himself.

He definitely wanted to talk to Calvin, but… not yet.

Not until Jack figured out what the fuck he was going to do. If he told Calvin that he had just quit his job without any other plan in mind, Calvin would either freak out—and rightly so—or he would read too much into it and get his hopes up.

And Jack couldn’t stand the thought of crushing Calvin’s hopes again. He absolutely wouldn’t do that, no matter what.

He sat down on the couch and looked up at the ceiling. What, then, was he going to do?

Stay in Boston and be miserable?

Go back home to Silver Lake and try to make the small-town life work for him when it never had before?

What if he got there and couldn’t find a job?

What if he stayed here and couldn’t?

Jack shoved a hand back through his hair and closed his eyes. Why the hell did everything have to be complicated? Why couldn’t he just be with Calvin all the time?

That was all he really wanted.

Jack opened his eyes again. Was that all he really wanted?

Yeah, it really was.

He missed Calvin. He wanted to see Calvin.

He loved Calvin.

And when he thought about it like that, the choice seemed pretty simple.

When he thought about it like that, it didn’t even seem like a choice at all.