Alpha Billionaire Series

MARK

Sweat rolled down the middle of my back. It was seven-thirty in the morning, and it was already over eighty degrees outside Today was another hot summer's day where we could expect the temperatures to be well over one hundred.

The short walk from my car into the office had me thinking that today I was going to be catching a lot of babies.

Storm clouds were building on the horizon and the humidity was steadily rising. Between the heat and the barometric pressure, labor and delivery were going to be crowded.

I walked through the glass doors of the building and let my gaze rest on the information desk. Brooke hadn't been there for several days. It had been almost a week since I last saw her.

After a week of her ignoring me, I decided to let it play out and see how long before she decided to behave like an adult anc let me know exactly what was going on. Now that she was gone for about a week, I didn’t know if she had quit or not.

Once inside, the air conditioning cooled me down dramatically. I felt the cold bite of every sweat drop as they were rapidly cooled by the temperature inside the building.

My morning appointments went smoothly. The storm started to roll in just after lunch. And the pregnant woman started rolling in shortly after that. I had three patients on the labor floor at once. They were all due within a week, so it was not unexpected. It was just a lot of waiting, and a lot of work.

I didn’t make it home until well after midnight. I turned my alarm off and fell into bed. Before I even had a chance to roll over, my phone started ringing.

“Bryant,” I attempted to bark into the phone. I had no energy to muster, so it came out more like a mumble.

“Dude, where are you? I thought you're coming over today?" My brother's voice was not soothing, and he interrupted my sleep.

“It's one o'clock in the morning. I'l be over at your house later." I started to hang up on my brother.

“Mark, you moron, it's already half-past eleven."

“What are you talking about?”

Isat up and looked around. He was right, sunlight streamed in through my bedroom window. I had slept through the night, even though I barely felt like I had fallen asleep.

“I must have been more tired than I thought," I confessed. With a stretch and a yawn, I told my brother I'd be over to his house as soon as I got ready.

“Do you need me to pick anything up on my way?”

“Yeah, I need you to get more charcoal’

“Right right. Do we really want to grill out today?” It was going to be another scorcher.

“Shelly wants to grill for dinner. Get your ass over here. I'm out of charcoal, and she thinks it takes all day to grill a slab of meat.”

“That's because you lie to your wife," I groaned.

“No, that's because I have to clean the grill before we can use it each time. I swear one of these days I'm going to get myself a gas grill. I need charcoal and lighter fluid.”

“Fine, fine.” I got up and slogged through my morning routine, in no hurry to sit around on David's porch watching him mess with his grill. I didn't bother to shave, and I overpaid for two bags of charcoal at the convenience store on my way.

Itwas early afternoon by the time I got to David's house. As soon as I got there, I dragged the bags of charcoal around back. We had plenty of time. Dinner wasn't for hours yet.

“Took you long enough,” David pointed out.

Shelly stuck her head out the back door. “Hi, Mark. It's about time you got here. Is that grill ready for me yet?”

“No honey.” David waved. “I'll let you know as soon as it's ready.”

She shook her head at us and closed the door.

“Are you sure we want to do this?” It was already particularly hot out.

“When that woman has plans, we stick to them.” David pointed at me. “Now if you got married you would know these things. I chuckled. “I guess it's a good thing I'm not married then, isn't itz”

“What about that mystery girl you've been seeing? Does that have the potential to get serious?”

Ishrugged it off. I had no idea what happened to Brooke, and I wasn't about to admit to my brother that I missed her.

“She seems to have disappeared on me."

“0h, you broke up?”

“Honestly, I have to assume we have.’

“What is that supposed to mean? Either you broke up or you're both playing games.”

I held up my hand with a trip twist of my wrist. “It means I don't exactly know what happened. We were fine one day. And then the next week we weren't. But she wouldn't tell me what I had done wrong. And now she seems to just be gone.”

“So, she ghosted you."

I nodded. “That seems to be the case.”

David shook his head and started to laugh. “I actually didn't believe you were dating anybody. I thought you were just telling people so they would stop trying to set you up.”

“And now?”

“I actually believe you were just telling people you were dating someone so they would stop setting you up. I get it. Shelly gets an idea, and she latches on. The only way you can get her to let go is to either give in or prove it's completely futile. The only way to stop her from setting you up is to produce a girlfriend on your own. I figured she was your imaginary girlfriend, and I was just gonna let you do what you were gonna do.’

“Imaginary?”

“Yep. And now, the way you tell me she has left you? Yeah, only you could lose an imaginary girlfriend. So what did you do? Or more realistically, what did you forget to do?"

I shrugged. “I honestly don't know. I sent her flowers; I followed all your advice.”

“Did you stop sending her flowers? Maybe she disappeared from lack of attention.’ David turned his attention back to the grill. “Hand me that paper bag, would you?”

As I handed over the bag he asked for, I thought about that for a moment. Had I stopped wooing Brooke once I got her into bed? I didn't think I had. I had made a point of finding things that she would like to do; I took her out on dates so that she didn't think I was only using her for s*x. Maybe that had been an assumption on my behalf. Maybe she was just using me for s*, and I was showing far too much interest?

David began scooping ash from the last time he had grilled into the bag.

“Go inside and grab me a beer”

“I need to grab some food first," I said.

“Well, grab some food and a beer and get back out here."

The house was cold and dark by comparison to the bright heat of the outdoors, when I stepped into the kitchen.

“Does David have the grill ready yet?” Shelly asked me.

“We're getting close. Do you have something that I can eat?” I asked opening the refrigerator. I reached in and pulled out tw beers. “I skipped breakfast.”

“I can make a peanut butter sandwich real quick. I just made some for the kids."

“That'll work” I had never really thought that peanut butter and jelly went with beer, but it was better than nothing. I didn't need to start drinking on an empty stomach. I handed over the strawberry jam and watched as she quickly and precisely slathered one piece of white bread with a thick smear of peanut butter and repeated the motions with the strawberry jam o the other piece. She wrapped the sandwich like a gift in a paper towel and handed it to me.

“You let David know everything's marinated and ready for him. Can you hook the sprinkler up to the hose pipe for the girls? They've been pestering me all morning”

I nodded with my mouth full of sandwich. I could do that. By the time I stepped outside, the sandwich was half gone. I handed David his beer and parked my a*s in one of the deck chairs.

“Shelly told me to get the hose and sprinkler set up for the girls.”

David looked at me over his shoulder. “Good, so why are you sitting?”

I shoved more of the sandwich into my mouth and headed off the porch. I dragged the sprinkler, already attached to the hose into the grass. A few spins of the spigot, and that spit spit hiss noise of water coming through the sprinkler system sounded. As if eagerly awaiting that signal, my two nieces shrieked with excitement as they ran out the back door across the deck and straight into the water. They giggled and danced in the spray.

The afternoon passed in a drift of conversation with Shelly asking if we were ready from time to time. At some point she came out to tell David to tell the girls to stop wasting water and go back inside.

As the afternoon sun headed toward the horizon, David finally got the grill started. I got up and crossed the deck to the grill to see if the coals were ready. “This looks ready to me."

David shrugged. “Give it about five more minutes and then they'll be perfect.’Exclusive © content by N(ô)ve/l/Drama.Org.

We didn't have five minutes before one of the boys came outside holding a large pan.

“Mom told me you had better be ready for this. She’s tired of waiting. Hey Uncle Mark."

“Hey, Brian." He was wearing half of some kind of uniform. “Did you have a game?”

He nodded. “I'm a benchwarmer.”

“Your coach will put you in eventually,’ I said, trying to offer encouragement.

“Brian's not allowed to play right now. Who won?” David asked.

“The other guys." Brian shook his head as he held the pan while David picked up the large slab of beef and positioned it on the grill. “I twisted my knee so I can't play. We have to have a minimum of twelve players to qualify. We only have fourteen guys. So, I go just to make head count”

“Even if they don't play you?” I asked.

“Brian is the team’s twelfth man, but he counts,” David said. “He should be able to play before the end of the season. Okay, go let your mom know it is started”

David watched his oldest son go back into the house. He took a drink of his beer and looked content, a man and his family.