Page 1 of The Feeder Legacy

Chapter 1

I’m always late. It’s one of those things my friends accept as inevitable. I’m tall, I have brown hair, and I’m chronically late.

Not usually this late, though.

Still, I’m not hurrying all that much when I finally make it to the restaurant, wave off the staff, and slide into the empty seat at the table filled with my friends. Maybe it makes me an arsehole, but they’ve been waiting for nearly forty-five minutes already. An extra two isn’t going to hurt anyone.

“Sorry I’m late,” I announce to the mix of scowling and resigned faces staring at me. “I had to stop by work to collect the stuff I’d left.”

The scowling faces immediately turn resigned. “Why?” Catrina asks in that tone that says she knows the answer but is hoping it’s not true. “Couldn’t it have waited until your next shift?”

“Nope.” I pick up the menu. “Got sacked.”

A groan ripples around the table. Kade shakes his head. “What happened this time?”

I shrug. “The same thing as every other time. I can’t fucking stand being told what to do by an underachieving wanker with a superiority complex. I think I’ll have the Thai beef salad.”

“Adam—”

“Nah.” I hold up a hand to stop Kade in his tracks. “It’s all good, mate. I know I’m the problem here. I’ll find another job to pay the bills and keep working on finding the life path that’s going to make me less of an arsehole to my workmates.”

Tara snorts. “Not to kick a man when he’s down, but is that even possible?”

She’s got a point. Still, there has to be something out there that makes me happy.

Our server comes over with a look in her eye that says we’ve taken up the table without ordering more than drinks for long enough, and the next few minutes are a mess of questions about who wants to share what and does anyone care if the nachos have jalapeños on them before we’ve finally ordered and she leaves.

“Got any job ideas lined up, Adz?” Cat asks nosily. She’s actually my cousin, though we’d never met until we were at uni. She was dating Tara, who was in Kade’s and my Intro to Macroeconomics tutorial, and Cat joined us for drinks one day after we’d been working on a group project. I don’t remember exactly how it came out that we’re related—probably because we have the same surname—but I do remember how shocked I was. I didn’t even know my dad had a brother, much less that there were cousins and shit. When I mentioned meeting Cat to my parents during our weekly-ish phone call, I was told, “We don’t acknowledge those people, Adam. You’d be better off if you never spoke to that girl again.”

Too bad for them that I’ve never liked being told what to do. It’s ironic, because at the time I wasn’t even sure if I liked Cat. I probably wouldn’t have hung out with her anyway. I’m still not sure how much I like her, but somehow we’re both in this little weirdo friendship circle, even after she and Tara broke up. I’m not sure what my parents’ problem is with Dad’s family, but Cat’s a part of my life despite their wishes. And sometimes mine.

I make a face and shrug. “Not really, but something will come up. It’s not like I’m looking for a CEO job. Maybe I’ll go back to retail for a bit—I’m getting over hospitality.”

“But what⁠—”

“Could we maybe take a break from talking about Adz’s endless parade of jobs?” Ladi interrupts. “Not to be selfish or anything, but some of us want to talk about our jobs, too.”

I flash him a grin. “Aww. Does the grad student want to whine about his mean supervisor?” I make a big show of settling into my seat and propping my chin in my hands. “I’m listening.”

He throws a napkin at me, laughing. We’ve been friends long enough that he knows how incredibly proud I am of him—and Kade, who just got his doctorate in economics a few months ago and is now officially a professor at Melbourne Uni. Because for some reason he thought going into academia was a good idea. Ladi’s getting ready to defend his thesis soon, and even though we all know he’s going to kill it, the stress is eating him from the inside out.

And yes, I’m the only underachieving slacker in the group. Tara’s a lawyer, and Cat’s an executive assistant to some billionaire entrepreneur who works from her mansion on acreage in Toorak—one of the perks of Cat’s job is that she lives in this incredible pool house. Just thinking about how much it costs to own an acre of land in Toorak, one of Australia’s most expensive suburbs, makes me dizzy.

“Tell us what happened,” Tara says sympathetically to Ladi, and he launches into a story about another grad student and a fuckup in the lab they both work in that makes me incredibly glad I didn’t decide to pursue academia.

But I need to pursue something. Almost all my jobs have been in retail and hospitality, with a couple of short stints in call centres. Those weren’t successful, because it turns out people don’t want to hear what customer support really thinks. They also don’t want the salesperson who cold called them to tell them they’re shitty people. In my defence, I was calling on behalf of a charity for seriously ill kids, so “charities are a scam” pissed me all the way off. I didn’t expect to fall in love with any of the jobs I’ve had, but I was hoping that by now, something would have piqued my interest. I’m twenty-eight years old, for fuck’s sake. How can I not know what I want to do with my life?

Worse, what the hell am I going to do to pay the bills? I told Cat I was going back to retail, but it’s not that easy. The job market is tight right now, and at my age, employers always ask, “Where were you working before this?” Somehow, my work history and shoddy references always fail to impress.

In hindsight, that might be why I’ve only been able to get work with shitheads for the past few years.

Dinner with my friends soothes the restless part of me that’s worried about paying the rent next month—not that my tiny bedroom in a share house with five other people and a single mould-riddled bathroom is all that great—and as we work out how to split the bill, I impulsively suggest we do it again next week.

“I can’t, unless it’s Saturday.” Ladi frowns. “I’ve got to redo all that fucking lab work.”

Kade grimaces. “Saturday’s the only night I can’t do. The twins are playing against each other, and Dad’s decided it should be a family thing, so I’m going to the game and then dinner after.” Kade comes from a football family—his dad was on the Minotaurs during their powerhouse days in the early noughties, when they won four premierships back to back, and now he’s head coach of the same team. The youngest kids—two brothers and a sister—have all gone into the AFL and AFLW and are already living up to the hype. Nobody’s quite sure where Kade got his penchant for economics from.

Tara must see my disappointed face, because she says, “What if we do Saturday brunch?” I restrain myself from lunging across the table to kiss her.