Forward (BoyxBoy)

Chapter Twenty Nine

On Saturday morning, James's father was in the kitchen eating toast. This was strange for two reasons, the first being that James rarely ever got to see his father eat breakfast, so the sight of him munching on toast gave him pause, and the second was that it was a Saturday, and that meant that the older man didn't have work, and should have been sleeping until noon. "Hey," James greeted, going over to the coffee maker as he typically did first thing on the weekends. His mother had off work as well, and often slept in as late as his father, so James fended for himself in the mornings.

"You making coffee?" his dad asked around a mouthful of bread. Crumbs fell from his mouth and scattered across his navy dress shirt and he groaned, rubbing them away with a hand. "I tried to figure it out but I gave up".

James looked at his father, then the coffee maker, and simply pressed the brew button. "I set it all up last night before I went to bed", he explained, going over to lean on the counter next to his father. "What are you doing up so early? And why are you wearing a button down?"

"Work," his father grumbled, displeased.

"On a Saturday?" 

"It's a Saturday?" His father asked with wide eyes, and James just looked at him blankly.

"You're joking," he deduced, and his fathers surprised face shifted to an amused one.

"I am," he agreed with a nod of his head, taking the last bite of his toast and then speaking around it to explain. "Mr. Bradford has off today, so he asked me earlier in the week if I would come in and get some paperwork done. He's paying me overtime, and said I can dress business casual".

"Ah," James voice, frowning. "It sucks that you're losing one of your days off though".

"Yeah," his father agreed, swallowing and shrugging. "I'll just catch up on my sleep tomorrow. It's not that big of a deal. The money will be nice". He elbowed James. "Our savings are almost up enough to get a new car".

"That's great dad," James said, and he meant it. He knew how frustrating it had to be for his parents to share the one vehicle they had, especially since they both worked during the day. More often than not, his father found himself taking the bus to work, which meant he had to wake up about an hour earlier than usually to accommodate the extended ride.

"Hey," his father said, elbowing him again to get his full attention, which has been directed at the slowly filling coffee pot. "It seems like I'm going to have the office to myself if you want to come see how it's done".

James would have liked this. It had been a while since he had spent time with just his father, and he honestly missed the man. Work had him occupied lately, and when he wasn't working he was typically sleepy.

"Ranicheck?" James offered, and his father sighed, but nodded, still maintaining his smile. "I'd like to, but I already told Tyler he could come over today".

"Ah, how's he doing?" his father asked before pointing at the coffee pot. "Is that finished? I gotta go soon and I'd like to take some with me if that's alright".

"Oh, yeah, that's fine," James assured, nodding his head. "Yeah it's finished".

"Cool". His father grabbed a travel mug from the cabinet behind him, and went over to the coffee machine.

"Tyler's good, I think," James answered. "He's been really tired lately, but he has insomnia so it's not like he can just sleep it off".

"Ahh," his father voiced, pouring half of the coffee pot into his travel mug before returning the pot to the hot pad. "That's unfortunate. He should talk to someone about that.  I suffered from insomnia when your mother and I began dating, and eventually I began passing out form exhaustion and falling asleep in random places".