came the muffled response.Richard sighed and used the doorframe to prop up his exhausted body. A hand went absentmindedly to his glasses, which he rearranged on the bridge of his nose – a habitual sign of his frustration. For a man in his early thirties he looked younger. He was scruffy and unkempt – traits that his fellow university professors deeply disapproved of – and if he’d been younger, those qualities would probably be mistaken for cool. But Richard wasn’t cool. In fact, he was deeply uncool. Richard didn’t care about being cool. That was painfully evident in his rebelliously untamed hair and his unfashionable eyewear. He was thin, too. Almost too thin – apart from a swelling belly that hinted he relied on an evening beer to digest the trials of the day.Richard wasn’t cool.He was, if anybody cared to notice, a despairing man at his wits end.“Dad, please. You can’t stay in there forever.”“I ain’t comin’ out.”Richard’s jaw clenched and he tried not to let the situation rile him as it always did.
