Rich and Bossy (Rich Boys)

7. Paxton

CHAPTER 7

Paxton

Now, this, this is what I look forward to every single week.

“Fly me next! Fly me next, Uncle Pax!”

I look over at Brody, the other four-year-old nephew who is growing extremely impatient that he has to wait.

“It’s still my turn!” Brayden yells, arms out, as I zoom him around my mother’s living room, complete with the jet noises. He’s making them too. “You wait!”

I don’t know how much more of this my knee can take. I’m thirty minutes in and I can feel my shoulders wanting to cramp up too.

Brody jumps up and down, his arms in the air, hands waving back and forth. “Fly me! My turn! Your turn over!”

“Don’t stop.” Brayden tenses in my arms. “He always gets longer than me!”

“That’s untrue. I log all the flight hours and it’s the same. You’ll both have a pilot’s license soon as much as you love to torture me.”

I start to bring him in for a landing by the fireplace.

The second I do, all I hear is, “Noooo!” It quickly morphs into an, “Awwww,” the second we come to a stop on the runway.

I set him down and immediately start rotating my shoulder, loving the instant relief.

My sister cannot stop laughing at my predicament.

I haven’t even begun to recover, when Brody slams into my bad knee and damn near buckles me onto it. Fortunately, he’s holding me up, and damn, four-year-olds are strong as shit.

“My turn! My turn!”

I’m going to die.

But, like any good athlete, I suck it up and put on my game face. Adversity builds character. I turn to him, knowing damn well that you have to be clear and concise with kids like this, setting the limits, or they really will send you to an early grave. Or you’ll at least be sore for the next week.

I lean down, messing with him. “I don’t know. I think it’s been about even.”

He immediately starts shaking his head. “No, no! He get two turns, me only have one! Only one, Uncle Pax!” He holds up a single, small chubby finger at me. “Only one! You know only one for me!”

I glance away at the ceiling like I’m trying to remember. “No, I thought you had two already.” I’m totally messing with him.

“That a lie!” He turns to his mom. “Uncle Pax lie to me!”

She’s dying laughing and nodding. “Yeah, Uncle Pax definitely lying to you.”

He points at her. “See, Uncle Pax, she say you lie too!”

I glance over at Brayden. “Am I lying?”

He looks around like he wants to take my side, but then his conscience gets the better of him. “Yes, I do two, he only do one.”

I turn back to Brody and wink at him. “Okay, one more time for you.” My eyes widen. “Then we’re even, right? Everyone has the same flight time?”

He starts bouncing up and down. “Yes, yes, one more! One more and even!”

I snatch him up before he realizes what happens and start making the jet noises, running him around the living room. His arms immediately shoot out and he’s once again in heaven.

It hurts like hell, but I love these two. I love watching them smile like this, knowing I get to be a part of their lives.

My sister laughs, watching from the sofa while I jog around with him.

I fly him right at the wall, then bank at the last second so he damn near takes a framed picture off the wall.

“Pax! Be careful! For crying out loud!”

We both laugh at her reaction. “Oh please, we used to jump off the roof all the time. You kidding me?”

“Do not give them ideas!” She tries not to laugh as she scolds me for that.

It’s the great thing about being an uncle. I can get them all amped up then send them home with their mother. Avoid the hard things, like actually having to parent them.

I send him up over the mantle, damn near to the ceiling.

“Pax! God, I can’t watch.”

Brody is laughing his ass off, loving every second of this.

“You’re worried about them?” I bring Brody low and fly him right at his mom then swerve off at the last second when she ducks for cover on the couch.

“I’m the one who’s gonna feel this all week! The heck are you feeding them? They get five pounds heavier every time I see them.”

“You’re telling me. They eat like garbage disposals.” She wears that loving, thoughtful expression mothers wear when they think about how their kids are growing. Our mom used to do the same thing when Poppy and I were young.

I make the mistake of zooming him over the grand piano at the far end of the room. Mom’s prized possession.

“That is enough! What do you think you two are doing?” Mom comes storming around the corner.

“Uh oh.” That’s all I say in Brody’s ear. “We might be in trouble now.”

“Wuh oh,” he repeats.

I bring him in for a landing on the same runway I just landed Brayden on.

“The flying is done!” Mom says in a mock-angry tone.

Now that we’re past the piano, she seems to have calmed down a little.

“My living room is not an airfield.”

I stand up, now rolling both of my shoulders, grinning at her. “Sure it is. Look at this place.”

“What were you thinking, flying him over the piano?”

“We needed some aerial shots. Gotta know the lay of the land to be a good aviator.”

The boys both start giggling, mainly at the fact I’m getting in trouble. God knows she’ll never discipline her two little angel grandkids.

She points right at me. “Don’t do it again. And you’re getting a little too old for this. Look at you.”

I glance down at my body. “What? I’m in my prime.”

“Mmhmm.” She laughs.

Poppy smiles. “Yeah, you’re not that young anymore, bro.”

“Oh whatever.” I roll my eyes, then turn to the boys. “Your mom is one whole year younger than me. Remind her next time she calls me old.”

Brody scowls at his mother the way only a four-year-old can do. “He not old.” He’s all defiant when he says it.

“Yeah, I not old.” I flash her a shit-eating grin.

“Whatever you need to tell yourself.”

Brody looks up at me. “You hair get a little gray, Uncle Pax.”

Mom and Poppy have the decency to hide their laughter behind their hands, though the laughter is still quite audible.

So, Hazel doesn’t think I have any connection to the real world? What the hell would you call this right here?

Why are you so defensive when she says shit like that?

You have nothing to prove to her.

Right? I love this. I love being the fun uncle who gets used like a jungle gym and a punching bag and a wrestling partner. I love hearing their excited squeals whenever I walk through the door. Fact is, I have to enjoy every second of this. Poppy isn’t going to have any more kids. These moments are fleeting. They’re going to come and go fast, it’s why I make sure I’m a part of their lives as much as I can be.

Soon, they’ll be teenagers and it won’t be cool to have your uncle wrestle on the floor with you.

I bug my eyes at him. “Is that so?”

He nods, laughing.

“Sounds like someone doesn’t want to log any more flight hours on the Uncle Pax simulator.”

“No!” Brody clings to my leg. “No gray.”

Man, I can already feel it in my knee.

Even though he recanted, it’s too late.

Mom and Poppy are ready to pounce. “You’re right though, Brody.” Mom nods. “I do see a little bit of silver in Uncle Paxton’s hair.”

“Why am I getting picked on?” I drop into an armchair across from where she and Poppy are seated. “When did this become the game of choice around here?”

“I’m just saying.” Mom shrugs. “Not getting any younger. Might wanna think about some things.” She gestures toward the two boys.

I fall back into the recliner with a sigh. “Here we go. Get it out of your system, Ma! You been waiting all week for this lecture, I’m sure.”

Poppy hoots out a laugh. “You knew this was coming. Take it like a man.”

“What?” Mom makes the most innocent face she can muster.

Poppy looks like a younger version of Mom, inherited her sandy-hair, while I take after Dad. Dark hair, large figure.

The two of them sitting together could be a before-and-after, they look so much alike.

Mom sighs. “Is it so wrong to want my son to settle down and give me a few more grandbabies?”

“What, these two animals aren’t enough?” They’re already clamoring to get into my lap.

“Hey!” Brayden puts his hands on his hips, scowling. “We not animals. We little boys.”

“Sure you are.” I shove him down on the ground with a classic stiff arm move from my playing days.

It doesn’t deter him one bit. He bounces right back and tries to jump on my lap.

“Hey, be careful with him!” Mom narrows her eyes at me.

“Aww, he can take it, look at him!” I do it again.

He laughs so hard it echoes through the house. I did it to distract Mom and get her off my case, but it may have been a mistake. Now Brody is hauling ass at me waiting for the same treatment. It’s like playing whack a mole with them and they’re laughing like hyenas when I do it.

“You’re being too rough in my house, and I know what you’re doing.”

I look at Brayden and Brody with wide eyes. “Hear that? She knows what we’re doing.” I laugh and keep doing it.

“You’re all gonna go to your rooms if you don’t stop.”

The two boys come to attention immediately, because it’s a real threat for them.

I point over at her. “Aww, mean grandma.”

Poppy is dying.

Mom gives me a stare, and I’m not going to lie, it still strikes a little fear. “Fine.” I hold up my hands.

The second I do, I have two four-year-olds in my lap, one on each knee. I turn to her with my arms spread wide around them. “Happy now?”

She nods. “Actually yes. Now, about my question.”

I groan.

Poppy laughs even harder.

My lap is not enough. Now I can feel them fighting for position on my already-sore shoulders. “Now I have two monkeys climbing all over me.”

Poppy glares. “Just great, Pax.”

Before she can get my name out, the two boys start hooting and hollering, making monkey noises. I don’t move a muscle and just smile right at Mom and Poppy.

Mom winces at the cacophony but won’t be swayed. “We know what you’re doing. For heaven’s sake, you’re thirty-five years old. It’s time for a family, Paxton. What else could you possibly achieve before you’re ready to settle down?”

Not a bad question. Though considering the fact that I paid for the house we’re now sitting in, my family, including these two boys, will never want for anything. They’ll go to any schools they want, do anything they want with their lives. I paid for that precious piano too. You’d think I could get a little bit of gratitude, even though I’d never demand that in return.

The worst part is I can’t even bring up Hazel. If it were normal circumstances, and it was a real date, I could mention it. I could get Mom off my case. She’d be happy about it, though I would get hit with more follow up questions.

But what can I say? She’s a twenty-one-year-old employee and I had to steal her fliers and follow her around to get her to have a drink with me. Oh no, she wouldn’t approve of that. Nobody would.

Jesus, it was so reckless. I couldn’t help myself. I can’t stop thinking about her! Even now, with a toddler-size shoe slamming into my cheek. God knows where it’s been and what it’s trampled on.

What would John think about what I’m doing?

Man, I can’t even go down that rabbit hole of a thought process. He would lose his absolute shit.

The lawyers. Hah! He’d have me in a room with them, guarding me until this whole thing plays out.

There’s no way I can tell him. He might try to fight me. He’d lose, but still. I don’t know if he could stop himself.

Then, there’s the shareholders, the board. I’d be done. Ousted from our baby, that we built from the ground up in our dormroom at Minnesota. It’s possible it’d turn into a national scandal, embarrass my family.

Knowing all this, I still can’t stop thinking about her! Why? Fucking why?

“Are you even seeing anyone?” Poppy asks.

I blink a few times, trying to get my mind back in the present. For once, I’m grateful the two monsters are climbing all over me, helping to distract me.

I glance over at her. “You, too? It’s bad enough coming from her.” I gesture to Mom.

“It’s just a question.” She sticks her tongue out at me, and we might as well be teenagers all over again. “Why you so defensive? It’s what you do when you’re hiding something.”

If we were still teenagers, I’d give her that same stiff arm maneuver her two boys just got a taste of. I can’t exactly get away with that now, especially with these two watching. I’m a hero to them. “I'm not hiding anything. I just don’t see why we must discuss my personal life, or lack thereof, constantly.”

Mom exchanges a look with my sister. “He’s hiding something.”

“Know what?” I stand up, both boys clinging to me for dear life, but holding on like some champions. I raise an arm out, with one of them still clinging to it, trying not to fall to the floor. It hurts like hell, but I don’t show an ounce of pain as I point to Mom, then to Poppy. “I’m going to check on Dad.”

“Nooo!” Both boys yell at the same time.

“Oh yessss!” I grin and start shaking wildly until I throw both of them off of me.

“Pax! You’re gonna hurt them!” Mom yells.

I don’t stop and both of them finally roll off onto the floor with a thud, laughing harder than they’ve laughed all day.

“See ya!” I smile at all of them, then take off running through the living room, careful not to stomp on any fingers or toes.

Once I’m a safe distance away, with them shaking their heads at me, I slow to a speedy walk and get the hell out of there. I know they’re talking about me, but I don’t care. That was getting intense.

Plus the fact you are hiding something.

Oh, fuck off.

I walk through to the garage, where Dad’s working on his pet project. I helped him get an old ’61 Corvette Stingray. I could’ve gotten him one fully restored, like new, but he loves working with his hands. It’s his passion, fixing up old cars. So I found him an old beat-up shell that still had potential for restoration.

He’s been fooling around with it for a few months now. Mom loves it because it keeps him out of her hair. I don’t know that they were ever ready for his retirement. I know he’d be miserable sitting around all day and doing nothing. I think a lot of older couples still need hobbies, time away to keep to themselves. I don’t know, maybe not. But it works for them.

Mom has her piano, Dad has his garage. It works.

Like me, he doesn’t do well with an empty schedule. He needs to be busy. His mind needs to keep moving.

“Lasted longer than I thought you would.” He ducks back beneath the hood, laughing to himself. “Those boys. I’d say they keep me young, but they remind me how old I am.”

“You’re telling me.” I swing my arms back and forth, stretching my shoulders. “Not sure I need to work out anymore. Once a week with them is about all I can handle. Especially as big as they’re getting.”

He looks my way before turning his attention back to the engine. Honestly, I have no idea what he’s doing. He’s the one with a longstanding love of cars. I love them, too, but it has more to do with their looks and how they drive than the inner workings. Still, some of my best memories are sitting in the garage when I was a kid, listening to him while he worked on our old station wagon. Keeping it going for the family, making sure we had safe, reliable transportation. Doing oil changes and tune-ups himself rather than taking it to a garage. He can fix anything on a car.

“How are you, son?” He has this ability to convey everything in his tone, and never has to look at you while he does it.

“I’m doing fine.”

“Sure about that?” He starts tinkering with a wrench on something. “Seemed a little spaced out at dinner.”

“Just busy. Lot going on all the time.” I try to laugh off his concern.

He doesn’t fall for it, as usual. “Lots of responsibility when you’re the boss.” He shakes his head, snickering like I’m full of shit.

I go along with it, as if he’s still buying what I’m selling him. “Yep. That’s how it goes.”

“Something else going on though? Up in that brain of yours?”

This feels ridiculous. I know I can talk to him about stuff, but still, we never do it. It’s not like I resent that. I know I can come to him with problems, for guidance, I just don’t.

“Just dealing with a little uncertainty right now.”

“Is that something new? I’d think there’s always uncertainty, with a company as large as yours.” He straightens up, wiping his greasy hands on an equally greasy rag. “I know we don’t talk a lot, but I’m always here. What’s up?”

Shit. Can I really do this? Will it help? “Unsure of some of my recent decisions. There’s a situation brewing. It’s small right now, containable. Worried that may not be the case for long.” I’m careful with what I tell him about Hazel. I leave out the parts involving how ridiculously attracted I am to her, how I can’t stop thinking about her. He doesn’t need to know how I got her to have a drink with me either.

I lay out all the work problems and leave out the personal stuff.

He listens intently to the whole thing but doesn’t say a word. I find myself a little upset, though. When I only talk about the work part, it makes Hazel out to be a troublemaker. A grumpy employee out for blood.

That’s not what she is, though. I try to paint her in the best light I can.

“I need to crush this, right? I just don’t think the way she’s handling it is the right way to go about it.”

“Right way for you? Or right way for her and the people at the warehouses?”

Fuck me.

“When you’re trying to solve a problem, you have to consider all points of view, even the ones you don’t agree with. Your mom and I don’t always agree, and sometimes I think she’s out of her damn mind, but I still have to look at things through her eyes the best I can. That’s the only way to get a real resolution to anything.”

“I don’t know, Dad. I just want the problem to go away.”

“Well, you’re the boss, and it doesn’t sound like that’s gonna just happen without some heads butting.”

“Yeah.”

“I think you know what you need to do. You just don’t want to do it.”

“Won’t that make me look like the bad guy? If I stop what she’s trying to do?”

“Everyone who knows you, knows what kind of person you are. You make mistakes, but you’re a good man. You have a responsibility I couldn’t even dream of having on my shoulders.. Every decision you make affects a hundred thousand people. You have to look at all of them, and make the best choice as a whole, not what one employee wants.”

Fuck. I know he’s right. I know if I didn’t like Hazel, I’d have crushed this little rebellion she’s trying to foment before it ever started. If people are unhappy, they need to go to HR, file complaints, fill out the surveys, then let it get to the appropriate levels, where people can evaluate those grievances and make some changes if they’re needed.

Maybe operations has gotten overzealous with how hard they’re pushing workers. But you don’t ambush me in an elevator then start organizing a union without going through those steps first. I get that the world should react the minute you want something when you’re a twenty-one-year-old idealist, but the real world doesn’t work that way. Especially a company the size of mine. It just doesn’t.

He hits me with a hard look, the look he used to give me when I tried to get out of doing chores or finishing my homework. “I think you already made up your mind, you just want it validated. I’m not the one for that, son. I don’t have all the details. Not trying to shirk my duties as a father, but that’s a discussion you need to have with John.”

I know he’s right. But still…

“I can’t ignore what’s going on in the warehouse, though. The way she made it sound, there are some serious violations going on.”

“Then roll some heads and fix things. Make it right. I know you aren’t one of those greedy assholes on Wall Street who would risk his employees’ safety to make money. But the way you’re making it sound, this is going to cause far more trouble, riling everyone up before you’ve had a chance to fix anything.”

“I know.”

“Son.” He waits until I meet his gaze. “I know you’ll do what’s right. Like I said, the burden you have… No man should have that. But if anyone can handle it, I know it’s you. I’ve known you since you took your first breath. You were built for this kind of pressure and these kinds of stakes. Whether it’s football or a company.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

I don’t feel nearly as confident in myself as he does.

I don’t want Hazel to hate me.

She’s going to, though. When I do what I need to do.