smackenzie

He'd be fine. He knew he'd be fine. He'd take some time off, he'd find a new job, he wasn't a big spender anyway, he'd be ok.

He was firmly convinced by now that either he'd worry later or he wouldn't worry at all. It was kind of a nice feeling. He made a valiant attempt to clean the kitchen and sweep the apartment while he was in this no-panic zone, which was helped a little by the fact that sometimes Haley got so disgusted with the way he and Kirk lived that she took it upon herself to do the dishes and wipe off the stove and sweep the floors and tidy up and sometimes even dust. And since she'd come over just last week, and he himself hadn't had much of a chance to dirty up the kitchen, the cleaning-up didn't take as long and wasn't as unpleasant as he would have thought.

He debated going over to the Y for a swim before dinner, but it was time for all the after school programs now, and he didn't like swimming laps when the pool was otherwise full of swim classes and people goofing off. The Y usually tried to keep a lane open for anyone who wanted to swim laps, but it was very first-come-first-serve, and even if you did get in there, you had no guarantee that whatever class or free swim was going on at the same time wouldn't push people in your path.

There was a reason he went swimming early in the morning.

Val looked up the pool schedule just in case. He used to print them out, but stopped when he realized he'd really only ever go in the mornings, and he didn't need the whole week's schedule just to know there was adult lap swim every morning starting at six. But now that he had all this free time, he could go whenever he wanted. He printed out the schedule, took it into the kitchen, and stuck it to the fridge with a magnet shaped like a bunch of bluebonnets, which Morgan had sent him in the spring.

At six he called Aidan and Stella's house and got the voicemail. "I really quit," he told it, and then hung up and tried Aidan's cell phone.

"That's the most unlike-you thing you've ever done," Aidan said by way of hello. "What did you do with the Val I know and love?"

"I'm still the Val you know and love," Val said. "I'm just unemployed now. I took some control of my life, I think is what it is. I got tired of other people telling me what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and who to do it with. And without me getting any recognition for it, either."

"You took control of your own destiny."

"Pretty much, yeah. I feel free." Val plopped down on the couch and put his feet up on the coffee table. "I'm going to take this week off before I start looking for a new job."

"What are you going to do? Where are we going?"

"Uh... I'm not going anywhere."

"No, I'm in the car. Stella's not taking us home. Where are you taking us?"

"Where is she taking you?"

"She says it's a surprise. Whatever. What are you going to do?"

"I don't know. I guess I'll think about it this week when I'm sleeping late and slacking off and going to movies in the middle of the day."

"That I'd like to see. How late can you sleep, anyway? Didn't you tell me you always wake up at 6:30 even if your alarm's off?"

"Yeah, but now I can roll over and go back to sleep." Not that Val seriously thought he would, but he grinned to himself at the possibility that he could now lie in bed until late.

"Yeah, right." Aidan snorted. "I'll believe it when I see it. Hey, you can meet me for lunch tomorrow. Or Wednesday. Or the rest of the week."

"I thought I was going over to your house tomorrow night."

"You are. You can still meet me for lunch. We can make it a date."

Val could hear him grinning on the other end of the line.

"We could. Does that count as our date-date?"

"Nah, I have an idea for that."

"Do I want to know?" Val was apparently really relaxed from suddenly quitting his job, because the idea of an actual formal date with Aidan wasn't wigging him out. This was a little weird. It was kind of like being stoned, except without the munchies and gigglefits. Everything was good. Everything was chill. He wondered idly how long it would last.

"I told you," Aidan said, and Val realized he was talking to Stella. "Last night! No, yesterday afternoon. Yes I did, you just weren't listening. Ow! She hit me!" he told Val indignantly.

"That's what you get for, uh, whatever you did."

"I didn't do anything. Anyway, I had a couple ideas I can float past you. Were you coming over on Saturday too?"

"Was I? I don't remember. I think just Tuesday."

"Ok. We'll - oh, I know where we are. I think we're getting pizza."

"No corn?"

"Unfortunately, no. What? I like corn! Ok, Val, we'll go out Sunday. Is that good? We'll have, like, a day date. Unless you want a night date. We could go out to eat, see a movie, have a drink.... What do people do on the first date?" There was a pause in which Stella apparently said something, because Aidan added "Well, besides that. We already did that anyway."

"What am I getting myself into?" Val asked.

"I hope you'll be getting into me. I think Stella wants to watch."

And there it was, the faint stirrings of Oh HELL no. Val tried to shove it back down to where he couldn't feel it. He was really starting to like this un-panicked, un-freaked-out, go-with-the-flow feeling he seemed to have adopted, and he wanted to keep it as long as he could.

"Stella says I need to hang up," Aidan went on. "We'll see you tomorrow. Come over at seven. I'll kick your ass at Halo 2. I still think you're kind of crazy for just quitting your job."

"You said it wasn't the stupidest thing I'd ever done."

"It's not. That doesn't mean it was bright. Stella thinks you've lost your mind. Stella is apparently more pragmatic than I am. You weren't happy, were you." It wasn't a question. Either Val was that obvious, or Aidan just knew him that well.

"No, I wasn't," he admitted.

"And that's why it wasn't your stupidest move. Now you can figure out what will make you happy." Aidan sounded triumphant, like he'd just solved all the world's problems. "Ok, ok, I'm getting off. We'll see you tomorrow. Bye." He cut the call and Val hung up.

He decided that when he started to panic, because he was pretty sure that if he was still unemployed in a month he'd panic, he'd look at it that way - he now had time to figure out what would make him happy.

Besides dinner. Dinner sounded really good right about now.

There was some chicken in the freezer, which Val tried to defrost in the microwave and ended up just sticking in the fridge to defrost on its own. He'd cook it tomorrow afternoon and have it for lunch or something. He made spaghetti instead - he didn't quite have improvisational cooking down yet - and sat on the couch and had a beer and watched reruns of "CSI" while he ate.

He called his mom, lied through his teeth about his job, told her about Morgan and Billy's flying visit, reassured her that he was trying to meet nice girls to date (well, he had met a nice girl to date, that part wasn't a lie), asked her about her quilting and the neighbor who was teaching her, and listened to her bitch about some of the people in the office where she worked.

Val's mom had been a secretary of some stripe her entire working life. She'd been completely unprepared to enter the job market when he got divorced, but she could type and file and she had a pleasant phone voice, and even though office work got her home after her kids had gotten out of school, it also meant she could see them off to school. She'd kept doing the same thing even after Val and Morgan had both left home. Val loved his mom but she wasn't the most adventurous person, career-wise.

Although he'd decided his sophomore year of high school that he wanted to be a lawyer, and ten years later he couldn't immediately think of anything else to do with his, so maybe he shouldn't talk. But at least he'd (however unintentionally) given himself the opportunity to pick something new.

"My friend Rochelle has a niece who's moving out there next month," Val's mom said, after she wound down from complaining about her coworkers. "She just graduated from veterinary school. I gave Rochelle your number to give to her, in case she wants some help setting in. I thought you could tell her some nice places to go and some places to avoid. I hope you don't mind."

Do I mind that you're obviously trying to set me up with a stranger? Val thought, with no little sarcasm. Of course not.

"No, it's ok," was what he actually said. "Did she get a job already?"

"She'll be working in a vet's office, I would think. I don't know. Rochelle didn't say."

"She's single, huh?"

"Am I that obvious?"

"Yeah, you kind of are." But he said it with affection. Val loved his mom, as annoyingly pushy as she could be. Her marriage hadn't worked out for her, and she hadn't really tried to date, but she was still convinced that people were meant to live in pairs, and you could never be truly happy unless you had a partner.

If Val ever wanted to shut his mom up about her matchmaking, and if he ever wanted to shake her two-by-two worldview, all he had to do was tell her he was involved with two people who were also involved with each other, and all three of them were all ridiculously, deliriously happy together.

(He didn't need to tell her about the sex, though. There were some things you just did not need to share with your mother, no matter how badly you wanted to get her off the topic at hand.)

"If she calls, she calls. If she doesn't, I tried."

"It's ok, Mom. I know you do it because you love me."

"I want you to be happy."

"I'm getting there. I'm ok."

"That's good to hear. I'm happy too."

"Good. I'm going to get off. It's been kind of a weird day. It was definitely a Monday."

"Ok. Be good, ok? I love you."

"I love you too. Bye."

The conversation went much better than he would have expected, but he knew eventually he'd have to tell her the truth. Just not yet. Maybe when he had a better answer than "I don't know" for "Now what".

He stayed up absurdly late - absurdly late for him, anyway - watching movies on cable and reading the last two issues of Newsweek and idly wondering where his resume was. He was pretty sure it was on his computer somewhere, he just wasn't sure where. An old folder, probably. He'd find it in the morning.

Kirk never came home, which Val interpreted to mean he'd stayed the night at Haley's. That was ok too. Val thought he was dealing with his sudden joblessness and career cluelessness pretty well.

He went to bed late and still woke up at 6:30, because his body was just that attuned to being awake at that particular time. He rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, but only made it about half an hour before he got out of bed. He poured himself some juice, toasted and buttered a bagel, watched the morning news, got his stuff together, and went to the Y for a nice leisurely swim. There was an early aqua aerobics class for little old ladies at one end of the pool, weirdly enough, but there were still a couple of free lanes for laps, so Val didn't mind. He did laps for half an hour. It felt good.

When he got home, he took a longer shower - he'd only given himself a quickie rinse at the Y, just enough to get most of the chlorine out of his hair and off his body - and surfed the web for a while looking at job listings. He didn't know what he was looking for, but he kind of hoped something would jump out at him. Nothing did. He was ok with that. It was only the first day, and there was bound to be something eventually.

Aidan called around noon and said Val sounded very relaxed. Val said he was very relaxed. Apparently he'd found his zen.

"Zen looks good on you," Aidan said.

"Right now it looks like jeans with a hole in the knee," Val answered. He picked at the frayed edges of the hole.

"Yeah? What else are you wearing?"

"A t-shirt. It's kind of hot in the apartment."

"A tight t-shirt?"

"Are you sitting at your desk asking me what I'm wearing?" Val demanded in amused disbelief. "What do you think I'm going to tell you, that I'm wearing, um, silk boxer shorts or something? A g-string?"

"A thong." Aidan drew the word out and even managed some vibrato on the "ng", as if he was imitating a gong being struck. "Oh, hey... what?" he said to someone on his end. "Yes. No. Wait, what? Who? Shit. Val, I gotta go. I can't believe the idiots who work here."

"I can."

"Yeah, I figured." From his tone, Aidan was probably grinning into his phone. "Later, dude."

"Ok. Bye."

Val put on some shoes and a jacket and left the apartment, because it was a nice day out and it would be silly to waste it. He walked until he hit the mini-mart with the really pretty cashier who brought her baby to work with her, or at least she always seemed to have the kid with her when Val went in, and he bought some soda and toilet paper and a copy of GQ, because the guy on the cover was cute and some of the fashion inside was interesting. The pretty cashier wasn't working. He wondered if she came in during the day.

He had, all things considered, a very relaxing, very nice day off, and when it got to be late he drove to Aidan and Stella's instead of taking the bus, because he could.

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