of rose-colored glasses and at least try and see the good sides of the family business? You might be surprised at what you find. You have so much raw talent, but it’s all overshadowed by your deep distaste for any kind of effort. Or work in general.”
His father continued with the same old speech Alex had heard time and time again, the general gist being that Alex was a lazy, good-for-nothing loser. The only difference was that this time, instead of just tuning his father out and doing something else until his father was done, Alex listened. And with every word his father uttered, Alex felt angrier and angrier because it was the same old speech, but Alex… Alex was not the same person that he had been a month ago.
Okay, so mostly he was, but there had been at least some changes. Not that he had spent a lot of time contemplating it, but he did work, didn’t he? Every day, from sunup ’til sundown, he was on the move. Especially now that, after the not-so-successful wolf retrieval mission, Carl had seemed to come to the realization that Alex was good for other jobs than cleaning. It was still dirty and exhausting and sometimes monotonous, but Alex hadn’t run off to Vegas like his father obviously had expected.
Alex didn’t even know where that sudden streak of responsibility had come from. Maybe it had started when Alex had decided to give Carl and his condescending attitude a proverbial suck it and prove that Alex wasn’t just a waste of space. Maybe it had begun as a way to impress Noah. Maybe he just hadn’t wanted to let down the animals because even Alex wasn’t enough of an asshole to let innocent souls suffer because of him.
Whatever it was, Alex was doing his part. He had a list of chores and he completed those tasks by the end of each day, and he didn’t complain, and not once had he contemplated taking off to LA or Vegas or fucking Cayman Islands to give up and go and enjoy the high life in a tropical paradise. Okay, so the first time he came into contact with bear shit, he might have thought about the Caribbean for a hot second, but not a single plane ticket had been purchased, so that didn’t count.
The water had started boiling a long time ago, and a considerable amount had already evaporated, but Alex’s father was still going strong, and Alex was just staring at the boiling water, pissed off but for whatever sadistic reason still listening.
Sometime around his father’s spiel about how Alex was going to die alone and poor, both obviously cardinal sins, Alex had had enough. “Is there a point to this call, other than making me feel like shit about myself?”
That startled his father into silence. It was probably weird for him to hear such a concise summary of Alex’s feelings in place of the usual flippant attitude that was Alex’s usual response to those speeches.
For long moments, Alex could only hear his father breathing on the other end of the line. Alex had already given up on hearing an answer to his query. He turned the stove off and poured the rest of the water away. His shirt was waiting on the kitchen table, so he straightened it out while holding the phone between his shoulder blade and ear, still listening for some inexplicable reason.
Turned out ironing the shirt with a pot took some work.
“Look, if there’s nothing else, I’m going to hang up,” Alex finally said when wrestling the hot pot and the phone became too much. “I’ve got myself a shirt to iron with my useless hands and lazy personality. Here’s hoping I won’t get bored halfway through and take off to Cancún.”
He went to hang up when his father’s voice stopped him.
“I just want what’s best for you, Alex.”
“You have a funny way of expressing that. Or is this some reverse-psychology crap where you tear me down and hope that I’ll build myself up as a better person? News flash, Dad, I’m not a car. You can’t upgrade me for a better model just because you don’t like the existing version. Should have read that manual more thoroughly before you decided to have me.”
“Look, son—” Alex couldn’t remember the last time his father had called him that. The word actually sounded like it was said in a foreign language his father was speaking for the first time, and that