It’s only on occasion nowadays, and mostly because Christmas obligations are boring holes in his savings, that Nathan still drives for the rideshare companies. As the unpartnered, child-free sibling – of four – and as the one who hasn’t moved back to South Florida since college, it’s on him to buy the airline ticket home each year, and on him to rent the car, if he doesn’t want to be stranded at his parents’ house in the suburbs through the new year. Then there are the gifts. Gifts befitting the idea of the sibling/uncle/son whose name appears regularly in the paper of record and whose book was recently recommended on a morning show.
Primarily, Nathan is a writer. A novelist. Last year, he debuted, to much critical acclaim, and though he can live off the advances for his first and next book (a small miracle), for a couple or three thrifty years anyway, his adopted city, Boston, is stupid expensive to live in.
