Page 42 of Deep Daddy

But… the knocking at the door continued.

And continued.

‘Jesus! I’m coming!’ Harrison bellowed, his patience seriously fraying. ‘One damn second!’

Harrison stomped his big, heavy feet out of the study and down the hallway toward the front door. To his relief, Harrison could see from the vague outline of the person on the other side of the frosted glass that it wasn’t the Dean.

But that begged the question… who was it?

For a brief moment, Harrison thought it might just be Sammy. His hopes were dashed however when he opened the door and was faced by Lars – a worried looking Lars too…

‘What’s up, kid?’ Harrison said, standing to one side and gesturing for a concerned seeming Lars to enter. ‘Something tells me this is to do with Sammy…’

Harrison took a step back so that he wasn’t too up close and personal with Lars. Harrison knew he could be an imposing, intimidating figure for Littles and didn’t want to make Lars feel any more uneasy than he already looked.

Lars was wearing his white lab coat underneath his jacket, which suggested to Harrison that he had come over to the house in something of a rush. That wasn’t a good sign, and Harrison just had to say something to make Lars speak…

‘Okay, okay, how about some milk and cookies?’ Harrison said, walking toward the kitchen and beckoning Lars along too. ‘I could do with something to crunch on. I’m sure you could too, you look like you’ve run here?’

Lars sat at the kitchen table and waited for his milk and cookies. Harrison noticed that Lars was fiddling with his fingers, every part of him appearing to be on edge.

‘It’s okay, you can talk freely,’ Harrison said.

‘B… B… But I don’t want to get Sammy in trouble,’ Lars said, breaking his silence as he took a sip of oat milk from the big red mug.

‘You won’t. Don’t worry about that,’ Harrison said. ‘Sammy is my boy and if he’s in trouble, I need to know. Don’t you worry about a thing. Now… speak.’

Harrison was being firm, but also sensitive to how uncertain Lars appeared to be. Fortunately, his carefully authoritative tone worked and Lars began to speak.

‘Well, the thing is…’ Lars said. ‘Something’s just not as it should be. We were messaging and…’

‘Go on.’

‘Well…,’ Lars said, crunching on a cookie. ‘It’s like this…’

Lars went on to explain that the pair of them had been messaging on and off. Sammy hadn’t seemed happy at all, and without directly saying it was to do with Tucker, it definitely seemed that way to Lars.

Lars had started to ask questions, wanting to know exactly when Sammy would be returning from the city – and it was at this point that the responses from Sammy had dried up. Lars had even tried calling Sammy, but the calls were going to voicemail.

‘That doesn’t sound good,’ Harrison said, his arms folded and his mind running wild with possibilities. ‘I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.’

‘Did I do the right thing in talking to you?’ Lars asked, his voice trembling. ‘I don’t want to be a tattle-tale.’

‘No, you absolutely made the right call,’ Harrison said, taking two more cookies out from the large glass jar and handing them to Lars. ‘Here, take these. If you don’t mind, I have some thinking to do.’

‘No, not at all, I have to get back to the lab anyhow,’ Lars said, managing a little smile as he got up from the table. ‘Will Sammy be okay?’

‘If I’ve got anything to do with it, then yes he will,’ Harrison replied, wanting to sound as reassuring as he possibly could. Harrison could see that Sammy meant a lot to Lars, and didn’t want him to worry any more than he clearly already was.

But beneath Harrison’s calm, composed exterior was one worried Daddy…

* * *

The Oil Bar was one of Harrison and Zane’s favorite bars. With its sophisticated but well-worn upholstery and fine selection of craft ales, it was a perfect Daddy-style hangout.

Harrison had spent the remainder of the afternoon pacing around his house. Lars’s arrival and subsequent concerning words about Sammy had played on Harrison’s mind. There was no way to know exactly what was going on in Sammy’s head, and that was a big part of the problem.

Harrison knew that it may well have been the case that Sammy’s filming schedule was so hectic that he might just have put his phone on mute. Sure, Sammy liked Lars and they had become good friends – but friends or not, Sammy might just have not had time for him at that moment.