A Cosmic Kind of Love(38)

Now I had to tell my father I was going to rent out Mom’s apartment, and I knew how well that conversation would go. Whether because of the level of fame I’d reached with NASA or the fact that I’d dated a society princess, he incorrectly assumed it meant I wanted to be a part of his world now. And being a part of Javier Ortiz’s world meant caring about appearances. Living in the right apartment, in the right area, meant something to him. He used to complain all the time about living in Bedford as if it weren’t an extremely nice place to live. But it was the one thing Mom would not budge on. She didn’t want us growing up in a world so far removed from what she’d grown up in. From what most people grew up in. Although it had a very small Latinx community, Bedford wasn’t just for the upper middle class, and Mom liked that. She thought it was a good compromise between what my father wanted and what she wanted.

I couldn’t give a shit about that materialistic stuff. I’d seen too much of the real world to know none of it mattered in the end. I wasn’t the New York society guy, no matter what the internet tried to say about me.

It was best to tell my father about the apartment now anyway, while he was already angry with me. There was no more avoiding him. Aunt Richelle was right. I had to face my father. I just hated doing that when I was so uncertain about my future. Uncertainty was something that ambitious son of a bitch seemed incapable of feeling.

My father and Benjamin Clairmont’s company was housed in an impressive building in Lower Manhattan that also held a law firm and a tech company, but my father had the prime upper floors. Including the best view. His staff greeted me with a warm welcome as his assistant led me toward his office.

“It’s been a while, Christopher,” Mena said with a smile thrown over her shoulder. “Your father will be pleased to see you.”

Right.

Co-owning a conglomerate meant my father was an incredibly busy man. Work was his life. His company was a multi-industry, multinational one, which meant he knew a lot about many things. To his despair, neither Miguel nor I showed any interest in what he did. Miguel, he’d forgiven. Me not so much. Not until I became an astronaut.

Mena stopped in at her office, a small space attached to my father’s, and picked up her phone. “Mr. Ortiz, your son is here to see you.” After a second she replied, “Right away, sir,” and hung up. She gave me a bright smile. “This way.”

My father had the best office in the entire building. Any view from the South Street side entrance was pretty good, but Javier Ortiz’s office was near the top floor, and his windows looked out across the East River toward Brooklyn.

“Thank you, Mena.” I inclined my head toward her as I stepped into my father’s space. His home, really. The sofa on the left side of his office was big enough for him to sleep on, which I assumed he did frequently. There was an attached private restroom with a shower. There were a lot of bookshelves filled with books in my father’s office. I’d never seen him reading anything but paperwork, but I couldn’t assume they were just for show. There were many things, I guessed, that I didn’t know about him.

Once his assistant closed the door behind her, I finally met my father’s gaze. He stood by his desk, his expression neutral. Javier Ortiz was a distinguished, handsome man in his sixties. There were deeper wrinkles around his eyes and mouth than there used to be, and his black hair was now salt and pepper, but he still did not look his age. Perhaps it was the way he held himself.

I’d never seen my father in anything but a sharp, tailored suit, other than a tuxedo. I couldn’t remember a time when I woke up to breakfast to find him sitting in the kitchen in his pajamas, drinking coffee, and shooting the shit with Mom. That never happened. Even on the Christmas mornings he attended (and there were only a few) he was already dressed in a shirt and suit pants when Miguel and I got up to open presents. It was like he wasn’t a real person. More work robot than human.

“He finally deigns to come see his father,” he said as he rounded his desk.

I didn’t bother taking a seat. “How are you?”

“How am I? More to the point, how are you? I’ve been calling and getting no answer. Is that any way to treat your father? Did I raise you to be so disrespectful of my time?”

“No. I apologize.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Is that it?”

“What else do you want me to say?”

His expression hardened. “Why don’t you start with what the hell is going on with your career? Why are you gallivanting around the Hamptons with your aunt? Shouldn’t you be in Houston?”

Here goes nothing. “I turned down their mission offer. And I’ve retired from the air force.”

The atmosphere in the office went from cool to freezing in zero point two seconds.

“You did what?”

I sighed. “I don’t want to go back into space, and I’m absolutely certain that I no longer want to fly jets for the air force.”

My father’s dark eyes ran all over my face like he’d never seen me before. I was familiar with the expression. “Why are you so set toward destroying your own life?”

Another question of his I was familiar with. He’d said it to me when I told him I’d applied to the US Air Force Academy instead of the Ivys. The irritating thing was, he’d probably been right about that one. I had followed Miguel instead of following my own path.