Page 43 of Keeping Kyle

“Don’t say that. That’s ridiculous.”

We didn’t speak for a moment. The only way I knew the call was still connected was I heard his TV in the background.

“Phoenix might be okay, right?” He tried for a silver lining.

“Seriously? They don’t even do winter there. No frozen ponds for skating. And I’m sure you can’t make a sandman.”

“Well, I think that’s probably just sand sculpture. You can work on those skills, I suppose. Of course, you’d have to have a good amount of water for that too. At least you’d have the major component of ice…”

I chuckled, and it quickly rolled into a hysterical laugh. Bobby joined in. The sandman thing wasn’t all that funny, but the entire situation was hilarious in a tragic way. Might as well crack up over it.

“I needed that,” I said once we both calmed down. “Thank you.” I took a moment, deciding if I wanted to ask my next question—especially since I’d said I wanted to be a grown up.

“Is Mom really okay with the trade? I know she says that I don’t need to worry…”

“I know you hold on to what everybody told you after dad’s funeral for some twenty years, but Mom doesn’t need a man of the family unless she decides to go find another one.” Cue Bobby’s empathetic therapist voice. “She’s always said she had the love of her life, and even though it was only for a few years, she’s never wanted anyone else.”

This repeated many discussions we’d had, but I needed to hear it. “You’re right. And I know I’m silly.”

“No, you’re not.” I stopped pacing and dropped onto the couch—missing Austin nestled against me as he’d been last night. “What’s silly is they dumped all that on you when you were eight. They thought they were giving you something to focus on. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful that you felt like I was your responsibility. It kept us close. But you need to feel like you can go on to a new city and do whatever you want without worrying about Mom—or me.” He paused, and I knew he had more to say. “Can I dispense a little advice you may not want?”

When he said it that way, I rarely wanted to hear what came next, even though he’d be right. “Give me your worst.”

“Don’t just turn Austin away. I saw the happiness in your eyes with that picture you posted. Let him have a say in what happens. Don’t use the trade as the reason to call it off. And make sure if you’re going to hold his work life against him that you actually talk about what all that means. You deserve what I’ve got with Seb, so please don’t just give up.”

I figured he’d say more about Mom. Bobby didn’t catch me off guard much, but he got me by bringing up Austin in that context.

I couldn’t debate anything he’d said—of course. “I’ll think about it. I promise.”

“I can’t ask for more than that. Talk soon, okay, bro?”

“Thanks, Bobby. Love ya, man.”

I had a lot to think about.

A lot of adulting lay ahead. I’d never been away from home for more than a month. Even for college, I was only in Ann Arbor; I could get home anytime I wanted to.

Of course Bobby and Mom didn’t need me to take care of either one of them. One day hopefully that would sink into my thick skull.

It was less clear what to do about Austin though. Yesterday was perfect. Of course it couldn’t always be that way, but he did seem to want to get away from being a total workaholic control freak. But, I had no idea how to manage something long distance because I hardly knew how to handle a relationship in the first place. At least we both had that problem.

If nothing else, I needed to update him on the news Candace gave me, so I shot him a text so he’d get it from me directly.

TWENTY-TWO

AUSTIN

“I DON’T UNDERSTAND how this can happen. We’ve got state-of-the-art security across the board. We pass security audits. How did our prototype end up with the competition?” My temple pulsed as a rage headache gripped me. Meanwhile, the knot in my stomach went from making me ill to wanting to punch something to release it. Forcing my voice to remain even rather than lashing out wasn’t easy.

After the amazing afternoon and night with Kyle, I’d gotten a phone call from Tamara as I changed clothes to prepare to come back to the office. Tamara and I often talked in the morning as we commuted to get a head start on the day. She led with news that our prototype servers were breached. Everything we had out on review, including two new client pitches as well as new model year details for our existing ones, were stolen. Some had ended up on Twitter

I leveled my gaze at Max, the director of IT. “We know where it happened, but we’re still not clear how”—he highlighted reports he had displayed on the big screen in my office—“a hack bypassed the security and copied everything out of the partition for the prototypes.”

He took a breath and shifted to a new set of screens. I held back comments to let him finish.

“It appears to be a targeted job because the other partitions on the server where we’ve got the code that our clients actually use hasn’t had any abnormal activity. What we’re still working on is tracing the inbound and outbound traffic to see who did—”

I slammed my open hand on the table. Max and Tamara flinched. Momentarily, I felt bad because I didn’t often lose my temper. Honestly, my staff didn’t usually give me a reason to. This time, I couldn’t hold back.