Page 11 of The Grump I Loathe
4
CONNOR
“Don’t forget, Mom’s calling you at two o’clock Saturday,” I reminded Grace on the drive over to school. “So don’t make any plans with friends until after.”
“I never forget,” Grace said, looking up from the Nintendo Switch in her hands. She leaned her head back against the seat and sighed. “I wish I could talk to her every day.”
“I know, sweetheart.” I swallowed down a ball of frustration, a familiar pang of helplessness twisting my insides. I hated the longing in her voice. I hated the fact that Grace wanted something I couldn’t give her.
I’d spend any amount of money to make her happy, but this was one thing I couldn’t throw money at. Ali needed to meet me halfway, and right now she couldn’t even find her way to the court. “But you know Mom’s just busy planning her wedding. Once things settle down a bit, I bet she’ll have plenty of time to talk.”
“Yeah, probably,” Grace said, her little eyebrows knitting together.
I squeezed the steering wheel until my knuckles blanched. Grace sounded unconvinced, and I could hardly blame her. She was more than smart enough to see that her mom wasn’t making her a priority.
“She’s better at fixing my hair for school,” Grace admitted, touching the back of her head.
“Hey,” I argued playfully, “I’m not that bad, am I?” I was struck suddenly by the memory of Ali sitting on the couch in the mornings, Grace perched between her legs as she pulled back her hair with butterfly clips. The pang in my chest twisted into a full ache. I didn’t miss me and Ali, but I missed what we’d been for Grace before everything fell apart. Because despite our current issues, Ali had been good at the mom thing. Certainly better than me at braiding hair and picking out the right sneakers for fourth grade. “I think I’ve successfully mastered the ponytail.”
“It’s tight enough, but it’s crooked,” Grace said. “Colin says it’s going to make my brain grow lopsided.”
Who the hell was Colin and why was this the first I was hearing of this? “That’s definitely not true.”
“I knowthat, Dad,” Grace said, theduhimplied. “Shelley’s mom says Colin skipped the day the teachers handed out common sense.”
I snorted. “Okay, good. But I’m gonna study up on the hair stuff, okay? I’ll get better.”
She packed her Switch away into her backpack as we joined the drop-off line outside St. Orwell Prep. “We can look up some YouTube tutorials,” I offered. “You can pick out whatever style you like. Sound good?”
“Sounds good,” she agreed. “Love you.”
“I love you, too. I’ll see you later.”
Grace hopped out of the car and flashed me a finger heart before racing up the steps as someone called her name.
I added “watch hair tutorials” to my calendar, then sniffled away this damn cold before setting off for the office. I was dreading sitting in on another bunch of interviews, especially after last week’s had all been so awful, but we were running out of time, and I was determined to lock down the narrative designer forShadow of the Hyperiontoday.
The drive over to SoMa was predictably jammed, and I made my way through a pack of tissues as I fended off the worst of the traffic, parked, and rode the elevator to the top of the twisting skyscraper before it spit me out into LockMill’s lobby. By the time I reached the conference room, the pressure in my head was so intense, one good sneeze would send my eyeballs flying.
Max laughed at me the moment I walked in the door. “You look like shit.”
Max was the senior game engineer at LockMill Games and the one who’d developed the augment engine—the system responsible for in-game mechanics—for LockMill’s very first game. He was irreplaceable to LockMill, and he knew it…which meant he had zero fear when it came to talking shit to the boss.
It probably also helped that he was my best friend.
My eyes narrowed as I took in his smirk. “Shut up.”
“Actually, you look like shit someone stepped in and tracked down the sidewalk.”
“Why haven’t I fired you yet?” I muttered as I took a seat, whipping out my laptop.
“Because I’m the only one who understands your convoluted augment engines. And you don’t want to have to headhunt a new engineer ontop of a narrative designer right now. And you love me too much and would miss me desperately if I were gone.”
“Funny,” I said. “Because right now you’re just pissing me off.”
Max grinned, way too used to my grumpiness to be put off by it. There was also the fact that for all his teasing, he was just about the most loyal friend anyone could have. When things had been at their worst between Ali and me, he’d stuck to my side like glue, making sure Grace and I had everything we needed.
My family had come through for me too, of course—my brothers and my mom had done all they could. But Max was the one in the trenches with me, helping me keep this company going when the divorce threatened to tear it all apart.
