The Man Who Has No Love (Soulless 3)

She turned back to me.

“I need you to find me that condo.”

Her happy mood slowly drifted away at my request, her eyes a little less bright.

I couldn’t do this anymore. I couldn’t have these beautiful mornings that were short-lived. I couldn’t go to another dinner and introduce her as someone insignificant. I was tired of seeing my ex-wife and lying to her face about Cleo. “My patience has expired.”

“I know.”

“Then you should get to work on that. I want to move out within the next two weeks.”

She nodded. “Alright.”

“And the place doesn’t have to be perfect. It just can’t be here.”

I only wore a suit because I was headed to work directly afterward. I went to Valerie’s residence and knocked.

She opened the door right away, in tight jeans, heels, and a bright blouse. Her hair was done like she was going to a photo shoot instead of dropping her son off at school. “Ready, Derek?” She turned into the condo.

There was no response.

Valerie turned back to me and sighed. “He’s a little nervous.”

“Really? He seemed excited before.”

She shrugged. “Maybe now that the moment is here, he’s not so confident.” She walked back into the living room. “Derek, come on. Your father is here.”

Still, nothing.

She sighed. “If he makes me late…”

I welcomed myself inside her residence. “Can I try to talk to him?”

She raised her hand and gestured to the hallway.

I located his bedroom and found him sitting on his bed, his legs dangling over the edge. His backpack was on, and he was dressed in his school uniform, navy trousers with a collared shirt underneath his gray vest. He kicked his legs like usual, his eyes on the floor.

“Hey, little man.” I stayed by the doorway, my hands in my pockets.

He stared at his own legs. “Hey, Dad…”

“Don’t want to go to school?”

He shrugged.

“I thought you were excited.”

He ignored me.

I walked into his bedroom and took a seat next to him, my feet touching the floor because I was a grown man. I watched him, giving him some time to talk to me on his own. But he wasn’t interested in a conversation. “There’s nothing to be scared of.”

“You and Mom won’t be there…”

“No. But we’ll be there to pick you up afterward. We’ll always be there.”

“You’ll be there too?” he asked hopefully.

“Of course.” For his first day, I wanted to be there for everything.

“Could you come with me?” He raised his chin and looked at me.

“Well, I already finished kindergarten.”

“Yeah, but you can do it with me,” he said. “We hang out all the time.”

“True. But if I don’t go to work, people will suffer.”

His eyes fell.

“You want me to make people feel better, right?”

He nodded.

“So, I can’t come with you. And more importantly, if you don’t go to school, you can never help people either. You need to get an education. That’s how I got here.”

“I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up…”

“Well, you’ve got a lot of time to figure it out.”

“Sometimes I think it would be cool to be an astronaut…or do something with space.”

“That’s quite ambitious. And you would be doing that on behalf of the human race. But a job like that requires a lot of education, a lot of intelligence. You’ll never get there if you stay home and go to the cabin with me on the weekends. Isn’t losing that opportunity scarier than going to class?”

He shrugged. “What if no one likes me? What if I don’t have any friends?”

“People will like you, Derek. And it’s okay not to have a lot of friends. I don’t.” I didn’t want to give him false hope that he would be the most popular kid in the class. Those with higher intelligence tended to have weaker social skills. “And you always have me and your mother. We’ll always be your friends.”

“Yeah…”

“Being scared doesn’t change the fact that you have to do it. So, you may as well be brave.” I didn’t want to give him tough love like this. I wanted to hold him and never let go. But it was my job to make him strong, to make him pursue a place in the world without fear. Little did he know, this day was much harder for me than it ever would be for him.

He nodded. “Alright, I want to be brave like you.”

My hand went to his shoulder. “Why do you think I’m brave?”

“Because you help people…even though you know they might still die.”

I released a quiet sigh as I looked at him, always amazed how much Derek understood, how intuitive he was, how strong his social intelligence was. And mostly, just how big that heart was. “Yeah…it is scary.”

I sat against the window while Valerie sat against the other. Derek was in between us with his backpack on his lap.