Page 4 of When You Least Expect It
Chapter 2
Myer~
According to our labor contract, I was only legally obligated to work eight hours a day, but that only happened in a perfect world, one in which we most definitely did not live in.Plus, I’d been the stupid ass that had taken the promotion last year, thinking that the pay couldn’t be beat.
Who was the fool now?
Last year, I had accepted the role of manager for Miller Shipping, and there was a reason why my father had done his time at the shipping yard as general labor only, finally retiring a couple of years ago.As a manager, you put in more hours than the laborers did, but since you didn’t own the place, there were no perks that came with the responsibility.Yeah, the pay and benefits were great, but it was a delicate balance between worker and management that I struggled with often.
Granted, it wasn’t like I had a family to go home to, but that was beside the point.Like most everyone else, I didn’t want to put in ten-hour days if I didn’t have to.Luckily, I was computer literate enough that keeping the books didn’t take me forever, but still.
There was also the fact that my mother demanded that our family meet once a month for dinner, and tonight was that night.My parents, Trevor and Ferma Justus, had been hands-on parents, and that hadn’t changed with age.I was thirty-eight, and my brother was thirty-six, but our parents didn’t care about any of that.We were always going to be their sons, and that came with a bit of smothering from time to time, especially since they didn’t have any grandchildren to spoil yet, which I blamed on Zachary.
My father was a retired dock worker, and he spent most of his time tinkering in his garage, always involved in some kind of project or other.My mother was an insurance agent, and though she wasn’t quite close to retiring, she was thinking about it more and more these days.Luckily, they were in a good financial place where they’d be fine once she did.
As for my brother, Zachary was a career military man, and though he had a steady girlfriend, he kept deploying, and he wasn’t big on the idea of getting married, then leaving his wife to raise their children alone, which was often the case with career military enlistments.At any rate, while I was fairly certain that he and Whitney Luna were solid, I wasn’t sure how much longer she was willing to wait for the ring and family, so I usually just kept my fingers crossed for my brother.
Nevertheless, since he was often deployed, that left me and Whitney to satisfy my mother’s monthly family dinners, and it was usually two hours of listening to her jibber-jabber about stuff that neither of us could care less about.My mother was your typical gossip, and half the time, she was gossiping about people that I didn’t even know.Still, I loved the woman, so I did my best to make each dinner, sharing the torment with Whitney and my father.
Now, most of the time, her nonsense was manageable, and I was able to get through the dinner fairly unscathed.However, it was whenever she brought up Paula that I wanted to bash my head in with my dinner plate.My mother liked to act as if the past year hadn’t happened, bringing false hope to the idea that Paula and I might reconcile, but that was never going to happen.
Ever.
I’d met Paula six years ago, and I could admit to being captivated by her stunning beauty more than anything else.I’d been thirty-two, and she’d been twenty-seven, and I’d sworn that the five-year age difference wouldn’t matter in the long run.However, along with all the other things that I’d been wrong about in our relationship, I’d been wrong about that also.As I’d been working my ass off at the shipping yard, making the most of the college degree that Ididn’thave, Paula had been dreaming of an easy life of no work with all the perks.
Three years into our relationship, she had announced that she was going to become a fashion influencer, and like a fool in love, I’d been all for it.Not only had I supported her financially for that first year, but I had also encouraged her and listened to all her ideas and grand plans, proof that love really did make you stupid.
It wasn’t until I started asking her about her plan to contribute financially to the household that things had started to go south.Now, had she been my wife, I never would have broached the subject.I’d been making enough at the shipping yard to support us both, but the older that I’d gotten, the more significant that our age gap had become.I’d been reaching a point where I’d wanted a family and financial stability, and Paula had been at a point where she had wanted easy money and internet significance.Those five years had put us in two different generational eras, and when I’d started to realize that we hadn’t been after the same things, I’d broken things off.
Much to my mother’s dismay.
Now, it wasn’t that my mother loved Paula or anything like that, though they’d gotten along well.No, it was that her grandchild biological clock was ticking, and she’d been hoping that Paula would take care of that for her.Little did she know that there was no way that Paula would have gotten pregnant at such a young age.While I had no idea what she was doing with her life now, Paula’s quest to be a fashion influencer would have been derailed had I gotten her pregnant.
Forgetting all about Paula and her influencer dreams, I grabbed the last of the invoices that I had to go through, needing to get this shit done before my mother called about my whereabouts.She didn’t fuck around when it came to her family dinners, and it’d be my ass if I missed this one.
Just then, my phone rang, and when I saw that it was my brother, I almost didn’t answer it.While I loved Zachary, I didn’t have time for bullshit right now.Still, it could be an emergency, and that was the only reason that I answered.
“This had better be an emergency,” I said in lieu of a greeting.“I need to get this work done before Mom cooks my ass.”
“You know, since we don’t get to spend a lot of time together, you’d think that you’d be a little nicer to me,” he quipped.“After all, I am the baby of the family.”
I snorted at that.Even at thirty-six, Zachary was six-foot-one of honed military muscle, and the man wasn’t the baby of anything.Resembling each other, we both shared our father’s black hair and green eyes, and even though I was an inch taller than my brother and kept in shape myself, there was no denying that he could probably cripple me if he wanted to.
“First off, you’re full of shit,” I told him.“Second of all, if it’s a choice between hurting your feelings and pissing off Mom, I’d rather hurt your feelings.”
“I’d be offended if I didn’t feel the same way,” he replied seriously.“And I just wanted to know what time you’re showing up.Whitney’s had a long day and isn’t feeling too hot, so I promised her that I’d bring up your dating life to shield her from Mom for the night.”
“Well, aren’t you just boyfriend of the year,” I drawled out, though not entirely blaming him.
“I try to be when I can,” he replied cheerfully.
“If Whitney isn’t feeling well, why are you guys even showing up?”I asked.“Are you trying to spread the wealth?”
