Trade Me (Cyclone #1)(6)

At the exact same time, the lights in my dad’s office shut off.

“Goddammit,” Dad says. “There’s an unintended consequence. Julio, lights.”

Obligingly, his experimental computerized environmental system turns his lights back on—and just as obligingly, mine plunges my kitchen back into darkness.

Dad lets out a sharp bark of laughter. I cross the room and flip the lights on old school with my elbow. “Okay, I’ll file the bug report. What’s going on?”

I’m holding the apple in my hand opposite the watch. I got it from the fridge a minute before and it’s still cold against my skin. In a few minutes, my hands will warm it up until it’s body temperature. I pass it to my watch hand. One.

“We have to talk about the Fernanda launch in March.” Dad growls when he talks, an effect so powerful that unless he makes an effort to sound friendly, he comes off as perpetually angry.

I know him well enough to know that’s just the way he talks, but still, a hint of anxious anticipation gathers in me at his tone. “It’s only a few months away.” His eyes spear me. “I think you should run it.”

I swallow, feeling a pit open up in my stomach. This is far from the first time he’s pushed me to take on a larger role in the company, and it won’t be the last. And this particular role?

“Come on, Dad. Nobody wants me to do the whole launch. That’s not how these things work.”

One of his eyebrows rises. “Bullshit. These things work the way I say they work.”

I don’t think there is anyone in the world who could argue that my dad is not a great man—or, at the very least, a powerful one. Over the course of the last three decades, he built a Fortune 500 company from almost nothing. He’s right; the world bends to him, not the other way around.

I used to think that was cool.

“I know you want me to take on a larger public role, but I’m busy with school.”

He could point out that we scheduled the product launch to coincide with my spring break. Instead…

“Fuck school,” Dad says succinctly. “College serves only two purposes. It teaches people to bleat on command, like sheep, and it lets *s think they’re ‘finding themselves’”—he illustrates this with air quotes—“by getting degrees in Russian Literature before they head into the real world and land jobs as insurance adjusters. You’re not a sheep, and you’re not going to be an insurance adjuster. Why do you give a shit?”

When my dad was my age, he’d already dropped out of Yale, started Cyclone, and made his first ten million dollars. Having avoided what he calls “stupid bullshit” all his life, he can’t figure out why I’m interested in it.

“I’m just as much a sheep if I follow in your footsteps,” I tell him. “Maybe I do want to find myself.”

“Hippy crap.”

“Maybe I have secret dreams of being an insurance adjuster,” I deadpan. “The forbidden is always tempting.” I switch my apple to the other hand. It’s the second time I’ve moved it.

He snorts. Other parents tell their kids they have to go to college if they expect to amount to anything. My dad has been telling me the opposite all my life, threatening me with a career as an insurance adjuster as if nothing worse could ever happen.

He regards me skeptically now. He’s forty miles away and his face is just an icon on an inch-sized screen, but I can still feel the force of his gaze. When he coughs, stocks plummet around the globe. It’s hardly surprising that he can make me feel uneasy with just a look. He’s that kind of man.

I’m not.

“It’s been six months since you left,” he finally mutters. “This is a really inefficient method of finding yourself, and I’m pretty sure it’s bullshit. You’re not trying to find yourself. You’re trying to lose yourself. You’re afraid that you can’t f*cking do this.” He gestures widely to the office around him. “Well, I know you, and I say you can. Hurry the f*ck up, Blake. I’m not going to be on top of my game forever. I need you. Run the goddamned launch.”

For the last year, he’s been offering opportunities like this to me. For the last year, I’ve had dreams where I say yes. Nightmares, really, ones that wake me in a cold sweat. During the last year, he’s pushed and prodded me. Every time we’ve had some version of this conversation, I’ve imagined telling him the truth.

I can’t do this, Dad. I have a problem.

But I haven’t told anyone that. Most days, I try not to admit it even to myself. And I already know what he will do if I tell him. He’ll look at me, frown, and toss out one of his foul-mouthed aphorisms. Something like problems are for pussies.

Right now, at least I’m standing up to him, and he respects that. If he knew the truth? I don’t want to see him disappointed in me. Not now. Not ever.

“Not on top of your game?” I joke instead. “Shit. What do you need? A vacation?”

He doesn’t laugh at this. He folds his arms. “Maybe. Maybe something like that.”

I roll my eyes. I know exactly what it’s like when Dad takes a vacation: He doesn’t. For the last thirty years, he’s worked and worked and worked without stopping, waking up in the middle of the night to leave messages for his chief engineer about every last improvement he’s dreamed up. Going to some beach somewhere doesn’t change his habits; it just means that his key staff have to change time zones to match his schedule.