Keeping Gavin - Jenny Wood
Chapter One
Gavin
Meeting at eleven with Mr. Fairfield.
Have Ashlynn file whatever amendments I know we’ll have because the man is as stubborn as he is stupid.
Fit lunch somewhere between then and the appointment with Glenn Beckett, from Acadia, at one.
Read the revised contract from Pinewell Architects. Noted: Section 3.10.1 has changed.
Favor for Neesa Blake. You promised to call her with advice.
Go over amendments with Pete Walker, call before five.
Email Judge Carlson back. DO NOT FORGET THIS TIME.
Conference call with Bailey and Webb. Allow twenty minutes to get up to speed, call at four-forty-five.
Look over Harold Stinnett's proposal. You should've gotten back to him by now.
Forget having a life, you’re too busy. Make peace with it.
My afternoon schedule is only slightly less hectic than it was this morning. However, Christmas is this Sunday, so my business partner Nolan and our receptionist/assistant Ashlynn would be taking the next couple of weeks off for the holidays, starting Friday. That means we’re all trying to squeeze in everything we can into the next two days.
Nolan and his boyfriend, Tanner, are flying to Arizona to spend Christmas with Nolan’s parents, while Ashlynn has plans to spend the holiday with her mother in Iowa. The pair of them do the same thing every year. I plan to binge-watch something on one of the many streaming sites I currently subscribe to and maybe order Chinese takeout or pizza for sustenance. I’ll likely gain about twenty pounds, of which I’ll promise to lose in the New Year, but that’s about as far as any traditions go for me.
Like most kids who grew up without a family, Christmas just doesn’t hold the same appeal to me as it does to everyone else. I never had the early morning surprise of Santa or the frantic opening of gifts, I was lucky to have a roof over my head and someone to tolerate me for a few hundred extra dollars a month from the state. It wasn’t all bad though, not really. I’d honestly thought that most of the clichéd traditions were something that only happened in movies. It wasn’t until I met my high-school best friend, Donald, that I even understood what I was missing out on.
Going to his house after school one afternoon, I remember seeing the Christmas tree and the overabundance of wrapped gifts under it. I remember feeling so unworthy at the time. I’d only accepted his invitation to come over because I knew that I was going to be in trouble when I got home. I was hoping that the longer I waited, maybe everyone would forget what had gone on that morning before leaving for school. I’d gotten loud with my foster dad because I witnessed him slap one of the younger kids. I probably said something in an attempt to stop him, so he backhanded me across the face and bruised my cheek up pretty good. I’d always been smaller than average, but I couldn’t let him hurt little Dion, he’d only been eight-years-old. Dion hadn’t been in the system long, and I knew that because he still held onto that innocent hope that all the new kids started with. I knew it would be snuffed out in no time, but I’d hoped he could hang onto it for as long as he could. I’d take a whack in his place if I needed to, I had long since gotten used to it.
I sometimes wonder what happened to Dion, or the dozens of other kids I’d once shared a temporary home with. None of them had ever stayed with me long, and I probably wouldn’t recognize a single one of them if I were to pass them on the street. Donald had been my only constant, though I ruined that when he went away to college.
I mean sure, we stayed friends in that distant sort of way that feels more awkward than anything else. I hadn’t spoken to him in close to six years before he looked me up and wanted to hire me to represent his handful of business ventures a few years back. He and his business partner, Phillip Kline, own three nightclubs around New York, and I handle the contracts on all of them.
See, Donald wasn’t only my very best friend back then, but for all four years of high school, he was my only friend. He’d been so attentive and funny, and so very, very kind. He sat beside me in every class that we shared, and he was determined to get