Every morning he entered through the glass front lobby wearing pressed shirts and ambition. Every morning I mopped the same lobby after late meetings and wiped fingerprints off the same executive floor he spent his days trying to climb. He hated that overlap. He hated the possibility that someone at work might connect us.
“If anyone asks,” he told me once while knotting his tie in the hall mirror, “you keep it professional.”
I looked at him. “You mean tell them I’m your son?”
“I mean don’t be familiar.”