"But he is such a good kid", said Weston.
"I know that, something's gotten into him", said Jayde.
" Have you met his friends, maybe he is in bad company", said Weston.
"Well he doesn't bring his friends home quite often but I know two of his friends he generally hangs out with. One is Matt, he is a cool kid and a girl, her name is Brooklyn if I remember correctly", said Jayde.
"Is she dex's girlfriend?", Weston asked.
"N..No... I don't think so. All of them are fine, nothing alarming. They are quite alike as all of them are anime fans... comics and stuff", said Jayde.
" Kids these days. I don't understand those Japanese cartoons", Jayde interrupted "it's anime, don't say Japanese cartoon it's a taboo".
"Yeah sorry you're right, or else Voldemort is gonna come if I say Japanese cartoon", said Weston in sarcasm.
" Voldemort is in Harry Potter, you can say.."
"Just stop", said Weston, "you're gonna drive me crazy like you always do". "Yeah okay"."No wonder why dexter hates you", said Weston.
"He doesn't hate me….. It's just that after Sarah things are not the same anymore" said Jayde in a low voice.
"It's been five years since she passed away Jayde. I know it must be painful for you to take care of him alone", said Weston.
"I'm doing just fine okay, it's just puberty I think, he is 12 now", said Jayde.
"Could be, but hey have you given any thought about getting remarried".
"No man why would you say that, I don't need a wife and surely dexter will not welcome a stepmother", said Jayde angrily.
"You need a woman in your house Jayde. Having a woman in the house is important. A woman makes house a home", said Weston in enthusiasm.
"No Weston I'm fine".
"Think about Dexter, he stays in that house all alone. You go home late around 10 pm and then you start working from home", said Weston.
"It's nothing like that, I do spend time with Dexter, we play games and.."
"Nonsense you complete the work that's due for Saturday on Wednesday and upload the files at 2:34 am". That's what you do with every project and no wonder why you are the highest-paid person of our division", said Weston.
A bell rings in the distance. "You wasted my whole lunchtime", said Jayde and he started walking towards his office across the hallway.
"Oh, that's how you treat a good friend, wait for me you rascal".
Jayde thought about what Weston said earlier all day. "Remmarige huh? I don't see the point", he wondered. After work, Jayde called his son
"Hey son, have you eaten your dinner already?" Jayde asked.
" Are you gonna come late? and yeah I had my dinner it's.... 10:30 pm", said Dexter.
" Something came up, I will..."
" Yeah, no problem. I'll leave the lights on" said dexter.
"You should invite your friends for a night over"
"Sure"
"Okay then", said Jayde, "yeah bye".
Jayde disconnected the phone and looked at the screen which stated call time "00:00:23". "Not even half a minute", Jayde chuckled. "Am I this bad of a dad?" Jayde asked the stars. He was standing in front of a bar. He just came out to make a call. Instead of going back into the bar, he went to his car that was parked nearby and started driving.
"Let's see, it should be somewhere around here", said Jayde going through a bunch of places in the list of his favorite places in google maps. "Oh, there it is", he clicked a place and synced his phone to the car's GPS, and started driving towards his destination. It was a 27 miles drive to the north of the city.
"42 minutes estimated time till you reach your destination", said the automated voice in the GPS.
After a little bit of traffic, he reached the destination. It was one of the biggest shopping complexes in the region and over 15 years old. The whole building was beautifully lit. It was 20 minutes past 11 o'clock. He went into the underground parking and took the elevator in the parking area to go to the 1st floor of the shopping complex.
There weren't many people as compared to young evenings since at that time the complex would be generally stuffed with people. He moved along the railing of the first floor from where the whole ground floor could be seen and then took the escalator to go to the ground floor where many small stalls were set up. Some of them were cosmetics and some of them were phone covers. There were also a few massage chairs in one corner where people could either buy them or get a 15 min massage for 10$, not a bad deal. He swayed around for a bit but his feet took him in a definite direction and he found himself standing in front of one of the pillars.
"Would you like to buy some ice cream sir?" said a girl in the stall that was set up just right to the pillar.
"Umm yeah, I'll take a cone", said Jayde
"Which flavor would you like sir", asked the girl, pulling out a cone in one hand and an ice cream scoop in the other hand".
"Just dark chocolate".
" Would you like some choco chips on the scoop?"
" Yeah sure". The girl sprinkled some choco chips on the ice cream cone filled with two scoops of dark chocolate and then wrapped the cone in a fancy tissue.
"Here you go sir, would you like to take some for your family?"
"I would but I live kind of far so it would melt till I reach home", said Jayde apologetically. " No problem sir", said the girl at the ice cream stall with a wide smile.
Jayde walked towards a vacant bench nearby and sat on it enjoying his ice cream. After some time he took his phone out and saw the time on the lock screen "11:53". It's that late already. He thought and clicked on WhatsApp and opened dexter's chatbox. He looked at the last seen which was 11:06. "He must be sleeping now", thought Jayde
Jayde pressed the power button and rested his phone on his lap. He sighed and looked at the small ice cream stall. The girl behind the counter was giving ice cream to a couple. "She must be in her early twenties, working this late", said Jayde to himself. He opened up his phone and started scrolling through his photos and after 10 minutes his thumb stopped. Under that thumb was a photo of a counter with another adjacent counter which had lots of books on it and behind the main counter sat a beautiful woman signing novels.
"There you are", said Jayde to the person in the picture and raised the phone until the background of the photo came into unison with the background of the phone. The stall where today stood a little ice cream booth was once a place where Sarah Jones sat signing her novel
"The Lost One" when a book fair was held a long time ago.