Creep - Jennifer Hillier [17]
Ethan shook Morris’s hand firmly and headed toward the doorway. He was just outside the glass door when Morris stopped him. A few employees were milling around in the hallway, chatting, and they looked over curiously.
“Hey, Tom, wait a minute there.” Morris leaned in close, well beyond the boundaries of personal space. Immediately Ethan felt trapped. The big man’s voice was low, out of earshot of the other employees. “I know you’re a good friend of Randall’s. I’m ashamed to say I think I need some help here. I understand if you’re not comfortable, but he’s my son . . .”
“What can I do?”
“If you’re free for dinner tonight, maybe you’d let me buy you a steak and pick your brain about the best way to approach him. The last few times I’ve tried, he’s shot me down.”
It wasn’t hard for Ethan to feign discomfort with Morris standing so close to him. “I don’t know, sir. I’m not sure how Randy would feel about that.”
“No, no.” Morris looked around and moved in even closer. Ethan fought the urge to step away. “I’m not asking you to give away any of his confidences. You’re his buddy, that wouldn’t be right. But I could use some help figuring out what to say. And how to say it. I need to find common ground. He’s my son. He’s never even met Sheila, my fiancée.”
Ethan pretended to think it over. “Sure. Okay. I’d be glad to help.”
Morris rewarded him with a huge grin and clapped him on the shoulder. He finally took a step back and Ethan stifled a sigh of relief.
“Wonderful. That’s wonderful. There’s a great steakhouse on Olive Way, just two blocks from here. Why don’t we meet there at six? And we can also talk strategy about how to get you into this place. You would love working here, Tom, you really would.”
Tom might, but Ethan definitely wouldn’t.
Pleasantly stuffed after an expensive dinner of porterhouse and sourdough bread (no wine for the recovering alcoholic Morris), Ethan sat alone in front of the TV at home, mindlessly watching a rerun of Friends. Abby was at work, the midnight shift at Safeway. It was a crummy job, but it paid more than being a teaching assistant.
He rolled the platinum cuff link between his fingers, looking at it in the soft glow of the TV light. The initials MG were engraved into the square face in italics. Had this been a present from Sheila? Ethan had pretended to stumble on the sidewalk after dinner, and he’d slipped it off Morris after reflexively grabbing the man’s arm. No special reason for taking it, other than the pleasing thought of Morris looking for it later and realizing he’d lost it.
The dinner with Sheila’s fiancé had been enlightening, though Ethan’s blond wig had itched the entire time. He’d had to excuse himself several times to go to the restroom to scratch his head. Damn cheap wig.
It was clear Morris had liked “Tom.” They’d spent the first half of dinner discussing the elusive Randall, and Ethan had pretended to know exactly why the younger Gardener still held a grudge against his old man after all this time. As a psych major, it wasn’t rocket science to guess what most of Randall’s issues might be. Neglect, guilt, blame, feelings of helplessness watching his father on a downward spiral, anger at the family being torn apart. Blah blah blah, all very textbook and mundane. No doubt Morris had discussed it all with Sheila already.
As the evening progressed, Ethan had been able to steer the conversation toward Morris’s impending marriage, and therein lay the real reason Ethan had agreed to dinner. He wanted to know who Sheila was through Morris’s eyes. Thanks to the camaraderie that the charming and sensitive Tom had been able to build with Sheila’s fiancé, the older man hadn’t hesitated to drop a bomb.
Morris had been dating Sheila for an entire year and they had never once had sex.
It had taken all of Ethan’s willpower to contain himself, though he continued to listen with polite interest. Sheila had never slept with the man she was engaged to marry, but she’d been fucking Ethan regularly for the past three months. That meant something, right?