Page 111 of Tall, Royal Hater
“Of course.” The man headed off behind the counter through an open doorway.
The sound of smart shoes clacking against the wooden floor came towards me before a tall figure dressed in grey appeared in my periphery. Said figure cleared their throat.
My heart reared back and knocked against my lungs.
I didn’t have to look to know who was there. Not because he was the person I’d intended to meet. But because I was suddenly an eighteen-year-old boy again. One with bones that felt too big, limbs that weighed heavy with newly discovered strength, and“baby fat”that he hadn’t yet lost. That boy had smacked his forehead on too many doorframes to count because he still wasn’t used to his height. But he’d remembered to duck before he entered his absent father’s mansion once the butler had let him in.
I hadn’t remembered to duck to impress anyone. It had been a matter of pride.
I’d been nervous and stupidly hopeful about the possibility of reintroducing myself to the man who’d abandoned my mother and me. But my hot-headedness had developed even faster than the rate I’d grown tall, and by eighteen, I was full of all the anger, hurt, vengeance, and protectiveness that came along with “I’m a grown man, I can deal with it” teenage idiocy.
I hadn’t been able to deal with it. Not the humiliation I’d faced nor my anger.
But that had been a decade ago. I was older now. I wasn’t sweaty-handed or nervous or hopeful of anything. I couldn’t say I had complete control over my anger, but I had learnt that there was a place for aggression and a place for indifferent silence. And usually, silence was the more powerful tool.
I turned my head slowly, lazily, like I had no care in the world and all the time at my hands, to face my father, and assessed him until I found his dark brown eyes.
Dressed in a grey three-piece suit, Andrew Platmon looked ridiculously out of place, but he also looked nearly the same as Iremembered him to a decade ago. At the age of forty-nine, going on fifty, my father still looked fit and healthy, though his gut was showing a little where his buttoned waistcoat was convex. Thanks to his family’s genes, he’d retained a full head of short hair that hadn’t thinned and had very few greys.
But there were a couple of differences too. His dark brown eyes didn’t appear as hard as I remembered them to be. And while his posture was still strong and straight, it lacked the closed-off rigidness that had sent me packing without remorse ten years ago.
I didn’t stand up to greet him, nor did I say anything. I sat there staring with cool indifference, sprawled in my chair with unwavering confidence.
Andrew Platmon swallowed slowly and shifted on his feet. By his stiff movement and the glowing flicker in his eyes, it seemed he was nervous.
Oh, how the tables have turned.
He offered me the pursed lip smile of a man who felt uncomfortable with the action from a lack of practice and said, “Hello,” his voice deep but vaguely unsure. He put a hand on the back of the chair on the opposite side of the circular table. “May I take this seat?”
The fact that he didn’t apologise for being late hooked deep into my skin, creating a new wave of hot anger. My jaw twitched, but I kept still and silent.
His jaw set firm as he realised I wasn’t going to make this easy for him, and without another word, he pulled the chair out, undid his coat and suit jacket buttons, then sat down with an old money flare and rod down his spine.
He stared at me like he was taking me in, and I stared back.
The resemblance between us wasn’t obvious until closer inspection. I had his warm golden skin tone, but I had Mother’s features and eye colour. I had his hairy genes with hair thatgrew quickly and almost everywhere, though mine was coloured a chocolate-brown like Mother’s. I had his wide, tall build, but I now had the advantage of an extra two inches of height and at least sixty pounds of muscle that I hadn’t had when I was a teenager.
Some unreadable emotion turned his eyes dull, but he angled his sharp chin up with a silent proclamation that he wasn’t deterred by my coldness. “How—”
I broke eye contact and turned my attention to the clock on the wall. I watched it for ten seconds as the time neared four p.m.. “Had you arrived at the time you agreed to meet me,” I said, setting my gaze back on Andrew Platmon, “I would have given you thirty minutes of my time. But since you made me wait, you now only have five.”
I almost grunted at the blatant surprise that gelled over my father’s features as he darted a glance to the clock then looked at me. He honestly couldn’t believe I’d called him out on his lateness, like he’d assumed I wouldn’t have minded waiting around, or that I’d still have been willing to talk to him even so. To him, his lateness was a normal thing. He probably made a tonne of people wait around on a daily basis as if they didn’t have anything better to do.
But I hated tardiness. It showed a lack of care and respect for the other person and said more about someone’s attitude towards another than anything else. That my father had turned up late without an apology showed me exactly what I needed to know about him.
Son or not, he couldn’t be bothered to respect me as a person.
The momentary alarm on Andrew Platmon’s face disappeared behind a shutter. And just like that, he was back to being the cold, detached man I remembered him as.So much for wanting things to change.
“I can explain why I was late,” he said with all the authority of a businessman whose decisions were never questioned. I stayed silent, forcing him to continue. “I had a board meeting on the opposite side of Pavilion City that ran over. We have acquired a large insurance brokerage and opened a new coffeehouse, so there was a lot to discuss, and I could not simply get up and leave.”
And still no fucking apology.
The stench of old money entitlement and arrogance rolling off him was making the tiny possibility of understanding I might’ve had for his decisions shrivel up to nothingness.
“You had my email address,” I reminded him. “It would’ve taken a second to let me know you were running late.”
My father stared unblinking as if he’d only just realised it was something I would have wanted.
