get his father to give a shit about him. One failed attempt after the other. Over and over and over again.
When he’d been a kid, he’d thought that if he did everything right, it’d make his father realize that Alex existed. When that hadn’t worked, he’d done everything wrong for years, and the results were a bit better. Still no real father-son bond, but at least his existence was occasionally acknowledged.
His father, for all intents and purposes, wasn’t a bad person. Alex knew it somewhere inside him. But that didn’t make the lack of love sting any less.
So maybe it was time to let it go. Stop trying. Maybe it was time for Alex to take a hint that for his father, the perfect relationship with his son was that of two cordial strangers?
“Everything all right?” his father asked, and it was the first time in forever he’d asked that question from Alex. Fuck, he must have really sounded like shit if even his father noticed.
Alex wanted to retort with something snippy, but he just couldn’t. Noah’s absence was everywhere around him, and he couldn’t bring himself to care about anything else.
“Fine,” Alex replied on a clipped tone, itching to get his father off the line and get back to his worrying. The man hadn’t taken any interest in Alex’s life for years. Unless it came to his father’s business and the small role Alex played in its success, his father just didn’t seem to give a shit. So Alex had no clue what the sudden interest in his well-being was about. Nor did he care.
Alex was really getting fed up with those long pauses, where the only thing he could hear was his father’s breaths on the other end of the line.
“Look, I’ve got—” he started to say when his father interrupted.
“You don’t sound fine.”
Oh for fuck’s sake!
“Is there a reason for this call?” Alex snapped.
“Can’t I take interest in my son’s life? You were supposed to arrive back to New York last week.”
“And it only took you six days to notice. If I’d been kidnapped on my way over there, I’d be fucked, it seems. I’m told the first twenty-four hours are the most crucial in disappearance cases.”
“Alex.” There was a long sigh, which made Alex clutch his phone in his hand, the only thing stopping him from chucking the device against the wall the fact that he was still expecting Noah to call.
“Alex,” his father repeated in a low voice. “I’ve never been good at this.”
“Good at what?” Alex stalked back to the window. Still no sign of Noah anywhere.
“Being your father.”
That made Alex turn around and frown.
“Okay?” he eventually said when his father didn’t add anything to his previous statement. It wasn’t as if it was some kind of a revelation.
Please, Alex thought, phone still pressed against his ear, absently staring at the street below. Please come home. But no Noah, despite of all the silent pleas.
“You reminded me so much of your mother,” his father’s voice said somewhere in the background. “You looked so much like her, and when she left, I didn’t know what to do. I was—am—not a good father.”
Alex turned away from the window.
“Well, boo-hoo for you. What do you want me to do? Congratulate you for not stepping up and actually trying?”
Another sigh. “No. I…”
Alex waited for what felt like forever before he ran out of patience with the call.
“Look, if you’ve got nothing of interest to say to me, then I’d appreciate it if we could end this little bonding session of ours. I’m expecting a call.”
He didn’t wait for his father’s reply as he unceremoniously disconnected the call. In the grand scheme of things, his father’s sudden guilt for not being up to the task when it came to parenting was so overdue that Alex couldn’t find it in himself to care even a little bit right then.
Alex looked down at the phone.
“Ring,” he muttered. “Ring, damnit.”
Or maybe, a voice in Alex’s head spoke up, just maybe you could call Noah and ask him something in the line of, hey, you trying to come up with a way to dump me again?
Alex grabbed his phone. He’d just confirm that Noah was on his way like a normal person would, instead of driving himself nuts with all the doubts.
He dialed and forced himself to calm his breathing as he listened to the dial tone, but nobody picked up. He tried, uselessly, several more times over the next few hours, leaving