Those 365 Letters

by Ford, Mia

  “Go for it!” Kirby yelled to Jacob as he stepped up to the lane and released his first roll of the game. Jacob was fun to watch bowl because he always acted like he was a pro by his stance, his movements upon release, and the way he displayed the confidence in himself that the ball was actually going to knock all the pins down for a strike.

  And about thirty percent of the time he rolled a gutter ball. In all the years I’d bowled with him I had yet to see him score over one hundred ten.

  “That guy over there is checking you out,” Miley said giving my arm a nudge.

  I ignored it. “I don’t care.” This was getting annoying.

  Miley waited a minute until my curiosity got the better of me and I couldn’t stop myself from stealing a glance to the side.

  “What do you think?” Miley asked.

  “He’s not bad,” I said. And he wasn’t. The guy staring at me was tall and broad shouldered with a decent swagger and some intense looking eyes.

  “Not bad? Are you blind?” Miley asked. She leaned in closer. “Seriously, why won’t you even consider going on a few dates with someone. It can be fun, even without all the headaches and drama that come with a real relationship.”

  “Why is it so important for you?” I asked.

  “Because of Jimmy,” Miley replied.

  “Jimmy?”

  “Yeah, with him being away at school, I really don’t have much romance, and of course I’m never going to cheat on Jimmy, so I need someone to romance vicariously through.”

  I threw back my head in laughter. “Wow, that is rich. You and Jimmy have been doing the long distance thing for a year now; if it’s so tough then why not just break it off. I mean, are you betrothed or totally in love?”

  “I think so,” Miley said.

  “Really? You think Jimmy is the guy? Like the one for the long haul?”

  Miley shrugged. “I don’t know; it’s too early for that. But he could be.”

  “Could be? I’m not sure you should be waiting around for a ‘could be’ at your age. You remember that you are eighteen?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “You are telling me that I should go out and have some fun. Well, so should you. I don’t think that a long distance relationship is the ideal thing for someone in your position.”

  Miley leaned back and looked over at the guy again. Then she looked back at me.

  “I’ve thought about that,” she said. “But what if I’m wrong? Jimmy says he loves me. He occasionally talks about marriage and family.”

  “I am curious as to why you didn’t get into Akron.”

  Miley turned up her nose and acted puzzled. “Yeah, me too. I mean, I got into Columbus State, Toledo, Miami of Ohio, and even Kent. But not there. It’s odd, but I’m not sure how colleges really do their recruiting. Besides, they don’t have the best veterinarian department.”

  I watched as Kirby got up and bowled a nasty looking split.

  He slumped back to the ball return to wait for his ball so he could do his second roll. “Bummer.”

  I didn’t want to suggest what I’d been thinking, but I was afraid it might have been irresponsible of me as a friend to bring it up. I was fairly certain that Jimmy was glad that Miley didn’t get into the same school he was. There had been rumors when Jimmy was a student at our high school that he was actually a bit of a player. So, when he was a senior and Miley was a Junior, I was a little alarmed that the two of them started dating.

  I’d never really trusted the guy. I’m not sure how he would have pulled it off to make sure that Miley was rejected from Akron, but I wouldn’t have put it past him to do something to make it happen.

  I wanted to tell Miley, but I was afraid she might hate me and it would ruin our friendship, so I bit my tongue for the time being about it.

  “You’re up,” Jacob said to me.

  I grabbed my ball and made my way up to the lane. I took a deep breath and gave it my best roll. The ball hit a little left of center, but managed to take out four pins. Not a bad start, at least not for me.

  “Way to go!” Miley cheered.

  I smiled as I stood near the ball return. I waited for my ball, I happened to glance up and see the guy from earlier staring at me. He was smiling now, his eyes locking nicely with mine. I didn’t want to reciprocate, but I found myself smiling back at him. He was devilishly handsome.

  But it really wasn’t the right time for me to be dating anyone, no matter how casual it might have been.

  I grabbed my ball and made my second attempt, hitting only two pins.

  “You should go for it,” Miley said when I returned to my seat.

  “I’m not in the mood,” I said.

  “Well, that guy is,” Miley replied. She gestured over my shoulder.

  I turned my head to see the handsome stranger making his way towards me.

  I took a long breath and let it out. This was going to be a little awkward.

  Chapter 2

  Landon

  I shut off the engine of my Charger and stepped out. It felt good to have my feet on solid ground again as I stood up straight and stretched my legs out, feeling the tightness in the hamstrings and the back of my knees as I started to stretch out.

  I’d been driving for three hours and I was a bit fried. I loved getting out on the open road and letting the car loose, blending into the curves and the pavement beneath me, the hum of the engine pulsating under me, and the sweet sounds of heavy rock music propelling me forward like any great soundtrack should.

  It felt good to be home. Well, it felt good to be home on a much more permanent basis. I’d been away at college finishing up my MBA at Youngstown, and now I was ready to move to the next chapter of my life. I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted that to be yet, but I was fairly certain that my father was going to continue pushing for the plan he’d had for me since I was in diapers.

  I walked up the steps to the front door, admiring the large pillars before me. I’d grown up in this house—technically, it was a mansion—and I’d never gotten over how miraculously huge and imposing the place was. It still filled me with shock and awe when I saw it, especially if I hadn’t been home in a while.

  It had been about three months since I’d been home. The last time I had been, my father and I got into a silly argument. I barely remembered what it was about, but it was most likely something to do with him dictating and ruining my life.

  Since I was a kid I’d always been interested in starting my own business, being my own man. I’d inherited my father’s entrepreneurial spirit and his guts, but I wasn’t sure if I’d received any of his good business sense. That remained to be seen. I was young and untested, but full of piss and vinegar as my father liked to say.

  I had to agree. I’ve always been filled with the type of self-confidence that I can do anything. And I’ve always rebelled against rules and authority. How dare someone else tell me how to conduct myself or my life?

  “Landon,” My father said when I arrived at his office. The butler Yancey let me in and escorted me to where my father was working (as always) in his home office. Yancey had been with my father for about two years, but for some reason he still felt like a stranger to me. I supposed that one day I would get used to him and he’d actually say more than two words to me.

  “It’s good to see you, my boy,” My father said.

  I shook his hand and he pulled me into a big hug. Had he forgotten we’d had nasty words the last time I was in his presence? Or did he think it was just old news?

  “Have a seat,” he said. “Would you like a drink?”

  “No, I’m good,” I said as I sat down in one of the fine, Italian leather chairs seated in front of his desk. It felt good to be back home.

  The name “Steven Glatt” shone on the placard my father kept on his desk. The Glatt name was synonymous with success in our area. Even though my father did most of his work in Cincinnati (and globally) he had decided to base his office right between Portsmouth and Cincinnati. He
said he hated the congestion of the city and that he felt more work would get done in a less pressurized environment.

  Looking at how much stress and pressure he typically put on his employees, I believed that this only applied to himself.

  “How’s mom?” I asked. I’d expected to see her there, but the house was pretty quiet.

  “She’s out playing golf with some of her friends. You know, like usual.”

  “Well, I’m glad she feels well enough to be back at it. That pneumonia gave us a bit of a scare, right?”

  “Yeah, your mother is still in great shape and good health. She works too hard with all her charities and her company—you know the one she started a few years back.”

  “Yeah, she loves doing that. I warned her that she was working too hard.”

  “What are you gonna do? Your mom is almost as stubborn as you are.”

  “And you?” I retorted.

  My father chuckled. He nodded in agreement.

  “How’s your golf game these days? I haven’t had a chance to hit the links in like two weeks.”

  “Well, it hasn’t been great,” I said. “But I’d like to get back into it. Truthfully, I’ve been a lot more into throwing baseball.”

  “Baseball? Where? For school? Aren’t you too old for their team?”

  “Yeah, but you know how I pitched in high school. A friend of mine is on the team and I started working out with him to get my arm back in shape this spring, and I just kind of fell in love with it again.”

  “Don’t go aggravating that injury,” dad said. “That’s the thing. Once something is injured, it never heals up as good as it was and it will always be vulnerable to being reinjured.”

  “I know. I’ve been careful, but it feels good to throw. Sometimes I’ll just get the radar gun out and throw pitches into the backstop. I miss it. A lot.”

  “I know,” he said. “You could have been great kid. You were great. I know you could have blown them away in college. And hell, who knows? You might have had a shot at the pros. But those are the breaks.”

  I still had nightmares some nights about the game that my tendon ripped. It was one of the last pitches I was supposed to throw that game and then the coach would put in the relief pitcher to spare my arm. Three more pitches. That was all I needed.

  I went into a windup, threw a fastball, and immediately felt pain exploding in my arm along with a loud popping sound. I felt something break apart in my shoulder.

  The tendon had ripped almost completely.

  And I could never throw the way I once did again. It was a sad, but not an uncommon tale.

  “So, you are all finished with school?” My father asked, changing the painful subject.

  I nodded leaning back in the chair. They were so comfortable that you had to fight going to sleep when you sat in them.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “And you aren’t going for the PhD?”

  “Nah. In business it’s pretty useless, unless you want to lecture college kids for a living, which sounds like fun, but I think I’ll pass.”

  “Right you are,” my father said. “There are bigger things on the horizon for you, my boy.”

  I always got worried when dad started calling me “my boy”. It usually meant that he had something important planned out for my life that he didn’t think I should have any say in.

  “Really?” I asked. “To tell you the truth, I haven’t quite decided what my next move is.”

  “Well, that’s silly. Your next move is right here at Glatt Global. Where else would it be?”

  “Dad, you know I’ve always been determined to go my own way, my own path.”

  “And I admire that,” he said. “But it’s brutally bad—not to mention, crazy—to go your own way from the ground up. I didn’t do that. I started off in my dad’s real estate business and then started out on my own after a few years of learning the ropes. And then I expanded. That’s the way it’s done.”

  “I get that,” I said. “And I appreciate it, but I think I want to start out from scratch—a blank slate.”

  My father laughed. “Wow, you remind me so much of myself.”

  “You’ve told me that before,” I said with a forced smile. My father was so good at insulting you and ripping you down to bones without even trying.

  “I want you to be successful,” he said. “I want you to get everything that you want out of life, and I want to help you get there. That’s why you should give me a year.”

  “A year?” I asked.

  “Yes. A year of working with me, learning the business. Then you have my blessing to go off and chase your own dreams. I’d never want to get in the way of that.”

  I was tempted to listen to what he had to say. It was true that I had no idea where my first step was and working with him might have been a good idea while I was figuring out where I would end up heading.

  “Ok, what were you thinking?” I asked.

  “Tomorrow, I have a fairly large presentation to give. It is about a new commercial property I’ve just acquired in Portsmouth. I’m thinking about turning it into a family fun center, the likes that will have people coming from Cincinnati and from all over the area. It will be a huge cash cow.”

  “Ok,” I said. “It sounds interesting.”

  “Well, that’s the idea but the presentation I feel is going to be dull and boring. And that’s where you come in. I want you to give it some pizazz, some style, some of that boyish charm of yours. You will be presenting it in front of mostly women, so you should take advantage of that.”

  I laughed. “Wow. What? You are asking me to do this because the clients are women?”

  My dad smiled and leaned forward. “Yeah. I think it will work.”

  I was amazed, but not really surprised. “That isn’t the only reason you want me to do it, is it?”

  “No, of course not. Son, look. I’m getting old. As much as I want to keep working like I have been, my body won’t really handle it any more. I need someone to take over the business. You know I’ve had dreams about us being in business together since you were a kid, but I’m not going to try to force it on you.”

  I snorted. “Really? Because this kind of sounds like exactly that…”

  My father leaned forward. He looked at me a moment, then got up to pour himself a drink from the mini bar in the corner. He sat back down in front of me. His face was very serious.

  “Look, son. I admire that you want to be your own man and forge your own path. I’m proud that you feel that way. But you have an opportunity here to continue to build a thriving brand, the family business. You can parlay that into a myriad of other things and save yourself a lot of legwork and time. There isn’t any shame in stepping through a door that someone has opened for you. Opportunities come in many forms; it is an unwise man who let’s pride triumph opportunity.”

  I nodded in agreement. My father was making some excellent points. But I’ve always been very ego driven, very prideful (also traits from my father) and I’ve always been weary of being looked at with disdain for the nepotism that would be displayed if I did walk through those doors my father was referring to.

  On the other hand, he was right; using the brand that he’d already built for the family, I could take that influence and power into any field I wanted. It was already laid out for me.

  As a twenty-four-year-old man with the entire future ahead of me, I had given a lot of thought to just how frightening the real world can be. My father’s offer was looking more and more tempting but still I had my reservations. I could easily see how this might eventually become a more important instrument of control in his eyes.

  But after mulling it over for a few minutes I finally agreed. I could leave it at any time.

  “Alright, dad,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

  “Splendid,” He replied.

  My father promptly pulled a large folder out of his desk. He handed it to me.

  “These are the notes for the presentation,” he said
. “You have everything there that you will need to prepare a riveting speech.”

  “What? You mean the speech isn’t prepared? I figured I’d just be reading off the bullet points or the strongest talking points. You expect me to create the whole presentation? Overnight?”

  My father was laughing at me. “Welcome to the real world, kid. This isn’t going to be easy. You thought you were done taking tests, didn’t you? Well, you will be tested every single day in this world. You’d better get used to it.”

  I left my father’s office a few minutes later and made my way to my old bedroom where I began to prepare the presentation that I was expected to give in fifteen hours. I should have known that my father would pull something like this. I was tempted to just say no, get in my car, and leave it all behind to start anew, but that would have been the epitome of career suicide.

  Not only did my father have a lot of power and influence that could help me grow to where I wanted to be, but he also could use that same power and influence to make life so much harder for me. My father’s ego did not handle rejection well; if I told him no too many times, or the wrong way then I would have to deal with his wrath. I’d seen it unleashed on other people and I wouldn’t have wished it on my worst enemy.

  I sat down and got to work.

  * * *

  “You aced it, kid!” My father said slapping his large, meaty hand across my back in a congratulatory gesture of dominance.

  I’d just stepped out of the boardroom after giving the presentation. My eyes were tired, my body felt ready to drop at any moment, and I felt a seething hatred for my father tingling through my system at that moment.

  Still, the only thing I could respond with was, “Yeah.”

  I’d stayed up the entire night preparing everything just right. I knew my father meant it when he referred to this as a test. If I didn’t pass it and the presentation went sour, then I was going to be out on my ear. It was odd caring so much about the outcome of a job that I didn’t want to begin with. It was one of my father’s powers. He had you following him even when you couldn’t stand him.