will be done in about a month, and I took the liberty of adding a diving board to the plans. It’s going to cost you a fortune in homeowners insurance, but Jack will love it.” I smiled. “You’re welcome by the way.”
He blinked at me for several seconds. I’d known Cal long enough to be able to see the gears turning in his head. Vanessa was probably at home, already scheduling pool parties with her girlfriends, and he was sitting in my office, debating if he could live with himself for accepting such an exorbitant gift from his best friend in the name of happy wife, happy life. Deep down, he wanted it though because Cal would do damn near anything to make Vanessa happy.
He’d come around. Eventually.
I was prepared for him and had played out our argument in my head long before I’d pulled the trigger on the pool.
Lurching to his feet, he started to pace. “There is no damn way I’m letting you buy us a pool as a wedding gift. Or any kind of gift, for that matter. And what the hell is wrong with you for trying? I know business is going well right now, but you have a kid, Hudson.”
“Yeah. A kid who will be swimming in your pool all the damn time. Honestly, this isn’t a hardship.”
My computer chimed with an incoming email notification, but I did my best to ignore it.
He stopped pacing and planted his hands on his hips. “So put the pool at your house.”
“What? Are you crazy? I’ve got a kid. He’ll drown.”
He ran a hand through the top of his hair. “He’ll drown at my place too!”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He doesn’t sleepwalk at your house.” I leaned forward and propped my elbows on my desk. “Wait? Has Jack been hitchhiking to your house in the middle of the night again? That little punk.”
Cal shot me an unimpressed glare.
I had at least another week of this back-and-forth before he’d finally accept the pool, but if I didn’t want to make it a month, I needed to set the framework now. “Would you sit down and relax? Christ, I figured a week of getting laid would mellow you out. Though, judging by that tan, you spent more time on the beach than you did between the sheets. Trouble in paradise already?”
“Fuck off,” he shot back, but he finally relaxed into his chair.
“Look, it’s not a big deal. I own all the equipment, I’ve got a couple of guys who could really use the extra hours, and I called in a few favors on the shit I can’t do. It’ll cost me ten grand max.”
He barked a loud, humorless laugh. “Ten grand is still a lot of fucking money.”
He didn’t have to tell me that.
My financial situation had changed drastically over the six years since I had started Hud Construction. When Jack was first born, I was working for a different construction company across town and sleeping on Lauren’s couch. It wasn’t the best arrangement, but I’d wanted to be there those first few months to help out and bond with my son. Though, from watching Lauren struggle to finish school while my paycheck barely covered the power bill and formula, I’d been hungry for more.
So. Fucking. Hungry.
Taking handouts from her family wasn’t my style. So I worked every waking hour, trying to build Hud Construction from the ground up, all the while framing houses and pouring concrete at my nine-to-five to keep my boy in diapers. It was the most grueling year of my life.
But so incredibly worth it.
Repaying all the people who had stood by my side in the years when I’d had absolutely nothing to offer anyone—including myself—was priority number one.
If that meant buying a pool for my best friend, a kid who had paid for my football cleats senior year so I hadn’t looked like a slouch in front of the college recruiters and then stayed up all damn night to help me study to take the SATs a third time when it didn’t look like I wasn’t going to get picked up at all—the very same man who had sat beside me at my mother’s funeral, never once mentioning the tears I’d cried for a woman who didn’t deserve them—then so fucking be it.
As far as I was concerned, ten grand was almost an insult after everything Dr. Calvin whatever-the-hell-he-wanted-his-middle-name-to-be-that-day Lawson, MD had done for me.
I’d let him argue. I’d even let him think he was winning