Fortunately he was feeling cheerful enough to laugh. “You’ve convinced me. Let’s go low-key with things and offer our copious apologies. From a good family, is he? We’d better not let him think we’re too well off here or he’ll be less inclined to give us the figure we want.” He let out this awful criminal mastermind cackle. “Or maybe I should just go into business with him.”
Axel inserted into my life indefinitely: it sounded like a nightmare for both of us. “Remember he’s a…” I realised that any of the things I could safely tell Dad about Axel that wouldn’t have him wanting to knock his block off were not going to be helpful. Dad would probably love to be a rich bastard with too much of an eye for the ladies and more money than brains to know what to do with it. “He’s a challenging guy.” That was as far as I dared go. “If you can come to an arrangement with him that works well for you, great. But don’t take your eyes off him for a second. He won’t hesitate to screw you over.”
“I’ve screwed over some big boys in my own time you know,
Aileen,” said Dad with all the confidence of a man who hadn’t even been able to come to a satisfactory arrangement with women who had presumably loved him at some point in their lives.
I was the one who was screwed here; I could see it already. I’d reached way over my head with this one. But I was committed now; I would just have to see it through.
The best part of the planned hook-up with Axel was also the worst part: I had work on Sunday evening, the only time the takeaway shop seemed to give me shifts any more that aligned with my own availability, so I wasn’t going to be able to stick around and poke my nose into Dad’s negotiations with Axel.
I was already dressed up for work and on my way to being on my way out the door when Axel arrived, wearing an absurdly well-cut suit that seemed like it was basically part of him, and carrying a folder under one arm. That folder seemed like a big warning somehow, and the way he grinned when he saw me staring at it was all the confirmation I needed.
He shook hands with my dad, who I could tell was already primed to offer Axel anything he wanted. Then he put that folder front and centre right away.
“Before we start, Mr. Anderson, I’d like to clear the air on something that’s been bothering me.”
The page at the top of that folder’s contents when he opened it was very familiar to me now, although I’d yet to see it in printed form.
There were my fake boobs. My fake vulva. Well… they weren’t mine, that was the point. For someone else, excepting a few digital touch-ups, those parts were no doubt incredibly real.
And now Dad was staring at them, thinking…
“That is the worst photo editing job I have ever seen. You think this is going to impress me, kid?”
Axel was clearly about as thrown by this response as me, but he recovered as quickly as he needed to. “Not at all, sir. Honestly I just wanted to clear the air. That picture was something I did up as a joke, not meant to be seen by anyone… and of course it got out. It’s all over our school right now.”
Dad was shaking his head. “Common-sense rules, boy. If you don’t want anyone to see it, don’t let it exist at all.”
I was pretty sure Axel’s rueful little headshake was a calculated move. I was pretty sure Dad didn’t see it that way, either. “I just hope you understand I didn’t mean Aileen any harm. I’ve apologised for creating it.” Well this was the first I was hearing of that apology. Did it count if you learned about it through the person who’d wronged you lying about it to someone very important to you? “All the blame for this is on me, and I hope you’re able to see just how sincere I am.” Was that just his second lie for the day, or second and third?
“It’s very inappropriate,” said Dad, thoughtful like there was some world in which making that sort of image was forgivable. “But if Aileen is willing to accept your explanation, it’s not for me to go all vengeful dad.”
And just like that, he’d nullified any chance I had of getting justice through official channels for that trick. How could I pursue him for it now when he could get my own dad on his side?
I didn’t want to reveal any frustration or think too much more about this situation at all, so I took a step towards the door. “I’d better be off now. Got to get to work on time.”
Axel surveyed me with that look of pompous interest that had to be my least favourite of his expressions. It made me feel like I couldn’t keep going on with my day until he was done with his assessment. “Ah yes, the burgers won’t flip themselves, will they?”
“We can’t all be enterprising every minute of our lives, Axel. Someone has to flip the burgers.”
“Oh, no.” There was a flash of something close to anxiety on his face. “Just making conversation. I would never think to denigrate any job anyone is taking on.”
That wasn’t what I’d expected after all Callie had told us about Lucas wigging out over her old job—and her old job had been better than any job I’d ever had.
“Well… good to know, I guess. I’ll see you at school.”
“And I’ll see you, Aileen.”
It was an innocent enough response under any other circumstances, but I knew Axel was trying to remind me of the other part of our deal. Apparently making my dad think about how I didn’t look naked wasn’t savage enough for him.
“Okay, Mr. Anderson.” I couldn’t help listening to him getting to work right away as I finally fled out the door. “I familiarised myself with the details of your patent before coming over here, so I think we’re well-placed to just get to talking.”
Work was a disaster. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Axel would be saying to my dad, going over and over different scenarios. I ended up giving someone a burger with two patties, and she had the nerve to be all outraged about it even as I was making up a new one, launching into this rant about how she’d go to one of the big shitty chains if she wanted that sort of abomination. Well I had worked in one of those shitty chains before I moved up in the world, and the way some of these premium customers carried on I really missed those days.
I was tired and ready to get into my bed, no passing Go or anything—and then when I walked into the lounge at home, Axel was sitting in the chair I usually dropped into at the end of the day, making erotic faces at a mug of coffee. I didn’t think anything we could produce with what we had in our house was capable of impressing a guy who probably had two separate pod machines in his house to make the exact kind of premium coffee he felt like on any particular day. Maybe caffeine really was just caffeine at the end of it all.
When Dad saw me, he jumped out of his seat and was halfway towards his bedroom before he even spoke. “I’ll let you see Mr. Bennett out whenever he’s done with his drink, Aileen. You can even make him another one if he’s interested, don’t feel like you have to shove him out the door straight away.”