Chapter 5 Catching Up with Ryan

KADEN

Thank God it was fucking Friday. If there wasn't already a song written about it, and if I could carry a tune to save my life, I might have written a song about it to celebrate.

Fridays were usually a joyous occasion in my life, but today was even happier than usual since this week had sucked balls. As I'd promised myself I would, I got my work and John's work done.

But it had been five days of hell. The guy's files were a mess, even more so than I had expected. It took me hours before I could tell elbow from ass of what was going on with those clients.

Since my life was also most decidedly not a musical, singing and songwriting to celebrate was out of the question. Drinks after work with my best friend, however, was just what the doctor ordered.

I triumphantly hit print one last time and stapled the papers of my proposal together. Opening the file in question, I dropped the proposal inside and added it to my pile of work completed for the week.

It was more of a tower than a pile. I was damned proud of it. I'd really stepped up this week. It felt good.

Scrolling through my planner on my computer, I double checked that I had no more urgent stuff left to do before firing off a text to Ryan. My best friend was an architect at a firm nearby and kept similarly crazy hours to mine.

Whenever one of us saw a gap in our hectic schedules, we checked with the other to see if drinks were a possibility. I hoped he would be free today, since I was in the mood for both celebrating and blowing off steam.

I tossed the phone onto my desk, knowing Ryan would answer me when he got around to it. Before I could officially call it the weekend, one during which I would not be working for a change, I had one more task left to do.

My dad was behind his desk when I got to his office, barking orders into his phone. There were some papers that needed his signature before we were good to go on those accounts for now. I planned on leaving them on his desk and collecting them on Monday morning, but he held up a finger to show me to wait a minute.

"What's this?" He pulled the stack of papers closer once he'd slammed his phone back down into its cradle. Rifling through them, I saw dissatisfaction tugging down the corners of his mouth.

"It's those accounts I took over from Honeyball that you wanted to review before signing off," I told him, wondering what he possibly could have found wrong in the files from giving them only a cursory glance.

I hadn't been expecting a pat on the back-I knew my dad better than that-but would telling me I'd done a good job absolutely have killed him? Probably, actually. "What? I did those myself. There's nothing wrong on any of them."

"Maybe not." He dropped the papers with a low thud. "But if you'd have kept your wits about you and only fired Honeyball today, you would have been able to do your own job instead of having to deal with this shit."

I bit back a retort. I had done my own job in addition to doing his, but arguing with Dad was only going to result in a protracted battle where we both dug in our heels. It would cut into my drinking time with Ryan. Work took up enough of my time as it was. I wasn't in the mood to spend more time here on a Friday afternoon, trying to drive home a point to a man who was as stubborn as a mule.

"I'll see you Monday," I told him instead, giving him a curt nod before turning my back on him and leaving him to contemplate my stupidity on his own time.

Ryan replied with a thumbs-up emoji while I was in Dad's office, and less than an hour later, I met up with him at a local watering hole a few blocks away from both our offices. It was a typical pub with a pocked wooden bar, the smell of stale beer and perfume mixing in the air, and dim lighting.

There was an indoor fireplace crackling in one corner and already a mess of bodies competing for the barman's attention. Ryan had beaten me there and waited in our regular booth next to the window in the front with two whiskeys on the table in front of him.

"Hey," I greeted, sliding onto the red pleather bench across from him.

He slid my whiskey across the slightly sticky table and grinned. "What's up? How is it that you invite me, and I'm still here before you?"

I shrugged, relishing the smooth burn of the whiskey as it made its way to my stomach. "I had to deal with my dad before heading out. What a fucking week."

Ryan nodded, a lock of his pitch-black hair falling across his forehead. He swiped it away and took a deep sip of his drink. "I hear you, man. It's been a crazy one. I got to consult on a new stadium they want to build back home, though, so that should be fun."

Back home for Ryan was Texas. We met there back in high school, and after my dad moved me to New York with him, we kept in touch until eventually landing at Harvard together. I was in business and finance, while Ryan was in architecture, but our friendship picked up as if we'd never been separated, and it just stuck.

"What kind of stadium?" I asked, spinning my tumbler between my fingers on the table.

Ryan smirked, his pine-green eyes lighting up. "Football. Is there any other kind?"

I laughed, shaking my head. "Guess not."

"What about you?" Ryan asked, a more serious expression creeping onto his face. "What did your dad want before you left?"