Page 107 of A Much Younger Man
It scraped across the polished concrete until I took it and sat.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi.” He eyed me cautiously. “Just off work?”
I nodded. “Fridays are half days.”
Silence fell all around us. That might have been my imagination.
“Are those Ajax Fairchild’s dogs?” I asked.
“Yeah. Well, they belong to his grandpa. You know him?”
“I know Ajax. He’s the one who brought them in when they moved here. They look good.”
“They just got out of the groomer.” He wrinkled his nose. “They smell like potpourri.”
I reached down and picked one up. “They’re sweet. Don’t know how he tells them apart.”
Beck picked up the other dog. “This little girl has an orange collar. Yours has pink.”
I set her in my lap and petted her while sipping my coffee with my free hand. “So you’re dog walking for the Fairchild household?”
“Not just that. Dmytro and Ajax are taking the girls to LA for a week, and they hired me to stay with Mr. Fairchild the elder while they’re gone. He’s pretty self-sufficient, but they want someone around in case he needs help.”
“That’s cool. They have one of the best views in town.”
“They do.” He quirked a brow. “Have you met Dmytro and his daughters?”
“Not yet.”
“He was married before. He’s almost forty, and Ajax is only in his twenties.”
“Is that so?”
Beck winked. “Just sayin’. Dmytro’s pretty badass.”
“I hope I get to meet them all sometime. They sound like an awesome family.”
“They’re pretty sweet.” Beck turned away. “Guess some people think it’s okay to live in the present instead of always thinking about what might go wrong.”
Ouch.“Guess so.”
“Look, it’s not my business anymore, but—”
“Beck.”
“No, hear me out.” He leaned forward, eyes like lasers, straight to my soul. “You think I’m just some dumb kid who got caught up in a couple bad choices. You think that’s why I was living rough, why I latched onto Tug, why I came on to you.”
“Beck, you don’t know what I think.”
“No, I know you believe I’m naïve because I’m young. You’ve said that. But I’ve been through things you have no way to understand, and what I know is there are only three truly certain things. We’re born. We live. And we die.”
“I know you’ve had it hard—”
“No, listen. Everything is secondary to those three basic realities. We have no control over being born. Death is a matter of biology or bad luck. My biodad died in a welding accident. My younger brother died of leukemia. I’ve seen the beginning and the end, and all I want to do now is live. We’re born. We live. We die. And we only really have control over one of those things.”
I stroked the dog’s soft white fur. “What do you want from me?”
