His feet were loud on the solid wood steps as Blaine crashed down them, in a hurry to get out the door.
His mother was sitting in the living room, watching something on television, and she looked up abruptly when he came flying down. "Everything okay?" she asked him, looking at him with concern.
He merely nodded, making a beeline for the door. If he talked about it, admitted aloud what he was going to do, he would never be able to stop the tears. Tears definitely didn't make him look like "the man who wants the job," and he didn't want to give his father any reason to not add him to his employee roster.
"I love you!" his mother called after him as he went out the door, but Blaine didn't answer that either. He knew she did. He had always known how much she loved him. He just couldn't bear to speak. He'd tell her later, bring her home some flowers and bake her one of those apple pies with the little roses on top that she loved so much. He'd do it later after he got over the humiliation of asking his father for a job he'd never wanted.
It was as he was flying out the door, letting it slam shut behind him, that something made him stop in his tracks. He wasn't sure why, what it was about the little red yarn scrap stuck into the door jamb of his parents' house that made him stop and turn. Stop he did, though, everything around him seeming to slow, only the red yarn in focus. He reached out and grabbed ahold of it, giving it a tug, but the yarn didn't budge. It only went taut then loose again as Blaine let it float back to its resting place against the wood.
Where could it have come from? he mused as turned back to his car, coming out of the slow motion vacuum he'd been caught in. What could it be stuck on?
The beeping of his phone, reminding him he had an appointment at the newspaper, sucked him back to reality, and he hurried down the steps and into his car, eager to get this over with.