“Is that why I do what?”
“Hack. Break into systems and take people’s data.”
I let out a long breath and cuddle her to my chest. No one’s ever asked me why I hack. Logan and Manny and Mac assumeit’s something I learned in the Navy that’s become my livelihood. Squid and Lindy and the other hackers I know, we talk about the how of hacking, but very, very rarely the why of it.
“I told you about my Uncle Max. The one I wasn’t named after.”
She nods, looking up at me with those depthless eyes.
“He cared about me when no one else did. He made sure I went to school, did my homework, had enough to eat. He’d been in the Navy himself and when I followed in his footsteps, he was so fucking proud. He came to my graduation from basic and watched with tears in his eyes. It meant so much to me. I saw him a few times while I was enlisted, but I was stationed half-way around the world and I didn’t get back often. When I was finally discharged, he was the first person I went to see.” I take a deep breath, steeling myself to tell her the rest. “He was this huge figure to me. Larger than life. Now that I’m an adult, I realize he wasn’t that big a guy. Probably not much bigger than I am now, but when I was a kid, he was huge. He was everything. I came back and found this tiny, broken man. He’d dropped to ninety pounds. Lost all his muscle mass. When I was a kid, he had this booming voice. I could hear him a county away. He could barely speak when I got out. This thin, high, reedy sound. I hated listening to him talk because that voice ... it was the voice of an old man. He wasn’t even sixty. He never got to celebrate his sixtieth birthday.”
“What happened to him?”
“He had a disease no one ever heard of. Sporadic inclusion body myositis. It atrophies the muscles. There’s no cure; no treatment that’s covered by insurance. All the people he’d helped in his life—not just me—he always had someone under his wing. Everyone abandoned him when he couldn’t work anymore. He was in this V.A. hospital, dying by inches. I was the first visitor he’d had in months.”
“I’m so sorry,” Cynnie whispers.
I nod. “It just made me realize how fucked everything was. This man who’d given of himself all his life. Never asked for anything. His big reward wasn’t an easy retirement on some tropical island. It was eating through a tube because his throat muscles stopped working. It was having no control over his bladder or bowels. That was my first hack as a civilian. Breaking into his medical records and finding out what he had and that there was no cure and that the drugs that could slow it down weren’t covered by insurance. It made me so angry. I wanted to take him away and go to Canada or Mexico where I could get the drugs but he told me no. He told me to sell everything he had, take his money, and live my best life with it. He told me he’d lived by the rules and it hadn’t done him any good. He told me to make my own rules. Do the best I could for myself and the people I cared about and not let anyone limit me or tell me what I couldn’t do. I haven’t since then. I’ve lived the way Uncle Max wanted me to.”
Cynnie pushes up my chest and kisses me. “He’d be proud of you. It’s what attracted me to you. Beyond this.” She tugs my beard and runs her hand down my chest. “When I saw you at playgroup with Mary Lisa. She was all over you. And I could tell you weren’t into her, but I thought you’d either be mean to her to drive her away or just let her fawn all over you the way some guys do because they like the attention. You didn’t do either. You made her stop but you were nice about it. You didn’t embarrass her or make a scene. You did it your way. I liked that. That’s why I asked you to dinner. I thought you should be rewarded for being so nice.”
I crane my neck to kiss the tip of her nose. “I got my reward. I’m sorry I didn’t say yes when you asked me, though.”
“It worked out.”
I cradle her and look into those fathomless brown eyes. “I feel like I might have fucked up again.”
“No, you haven’t. Why would you say that?”
“Because it took you being big for a night to tell me all this. And for me to share with you about Uncle Max. If I was doing my job as your daddy, we’d have talked about this stuff already.”
She shakes her head, her hair swishing over her shoulders, tickling my arms where they’re left bare by my T-shirt.
“You haven’t fucked up. Ineedan escape from all my worries. When I’m home, they’re all I think about and I hate it. I hate being home and I hate feeling overwhelmed by everything. When I’m here with you, I feel safe. I feel free. It’s made me so happy.You’vemade me happy, Max. Maybe we should make one night a week when we’re together for me to be big so we can talk about the hard things, but I don’t want it every day.”
“Definitely not every day,” I agree. “Once a week would be good. Maybe on a Sunday night so we clear everything out and start the new week fresh?”
She tips her head to the side. “Every other Sunday night. On weeks when we’ve been to playgroup, I’d like to keep being little.”
“Of course. Sorry, I didn’t think of that. Monday nights on the weeks we have playgroup.”
“You’ll come to the next one, right? Mary Lisa didn’t put you off?”
“I’ll absolutely come to the next one. I can’t wait to take you to the mat at Twister again.”
She pokes me in the chest. “I only lost because you fell on me.”
I chuckle. “All’s fair in love and Twister, baby.”
twenty
Despite my aversionto the guy, I don’t object when De Leon shows up at my door.
Whether he planned it that way or it’s just good timing, Cynnie’s just left. After our first “big” night, we’ve had another two blissful days together. I got the first ten levels of the app working and downloaded it to Cynnie’s phone amidst much squeeing. Two minutes later, she sent me the first of a constant stream of chibis, showing her jumping up and down. Since that’s exactly why I created the app, I quietly patted myself on the back while starting work on the next ten reward levels.
Fifteen minutes after sending Cynnie the app, I got the first request for “an app of their own” from Sammi. I’ve had a steady stream of app requests since then. So many I’m thinking about licensing the damn thing.
The app works so well, keeping us connected, that even as I take her to the train, I’m relaxed. She’s going upstate with her big brother for the day to deliver a presentation to a prospective client. But I’m not worried about her because I’ll know, hour by hour, how she’s doing via the app.
