“Oh, okay.” He sounds disappointed. “I was just calling to check in on you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re my son and I worry about you.”
“Why? You didn’t when I was a kid. Why start now when I’m an adult?”
He pauses and the noise gradually gets quieter. Then I hear a door shut and silence fills the connection. “Luke, I know I haven’t been a very good father to you, but I’m trying to make that up to you now.”
I grit my teeth. “I’m twenty years old. It’s a little late to decide you want to be my father.”
“I’ve always wanted to be your father,” he says, nervousness creeping into his voice. “I just had a lot of stuff going on and I wasn’t in the right place to be a good father.”
“Well, I wasn’t in the right place to be without a father.” I head for the door, ready to bail out on the conversation because it’s getting a little too heart-to-heart for my taste.
“Luke, I’m sorry.” He sounds like he’s about to cry, which makes me feel a little bad for him but then I get pissed off at myself for feeling sorry for him. “If there’s anything I can do to make it up, I will.”
I pause with my hand on the doorknob, biting my tongue, arguing with myself over how much pride I really have. Then I think about going home to Star Grove with my mother, the house covered in plastic, her begging me to help her. It makes me want to puke. “There might be one thing that you could do.”
“Name it and it’s yours.”
I take a long breath. “You could let me stay at the beach house for the summer. I know you and Trevor are going to be there but I was hoping I could take one of the extra rooms or something.” Trevor is my father’s fiancé. I guess part of the reason why he left my mom was because he was struggling with the fact that he was g*y. It took him years of drinking to finally accept that he was and come out to the world. It was about the time he reentered my life, but it was a little too late. Amy was already gone and I’d been around my mom enough that I only felt hatred for him for leaving me with her. I honestly don’t really know how I feel about our relationship now. Confused maybe. I mean, Trevor and him both seem like a nice guys but the fact that he left me to be responsible for shooting up my mother is what I’m most pissed off about.
He pauses long enough that I know he’s going to say no and I want to hammer my fist into the door, enraged with myself because I knew I shouldn’t have asked. “Luke… I’m so sorry, but Trevor and I are putting the beach house up for sale. We’re trying to get a house near work and we need a down payment.”
“Could I stay with you in your apartment then?” I almost sound like I’m begging and I grip on to the doorknob tighter.
Again he pauses way too long. “We only have a studio apartment right now and it’s overcrowded with Trevor’s art, but when we get the new place in a couple of months you can definitely come out and stay with us for as long as you want. We’d love to have you.”
I shake my head as my pulse pounds in my eardrums. I need to get out of here. I need a drink. I need to not have so much damn noise in my head. “Never mind,” I say, then I hang up. I let go of the doorknob, step back, and kick the bottom of the door hard enough that my boot leaves a dent in it. “Shit.” I press my hands to the side of my head, taking ragged gulps of air. Now on top of everything else, I’m going to have to try and explain to Kayden why it looks like a boot went through the damn door, although he has broken a few pieces of furniture himself.
I can’t take this anymore. I knew I shouldn’t have asked my father for anything. I wish I could hate him, then maybe it’d be easier to feel so much anger toward him.
* * *
I party with Seth and Greyson at Red Ink until around nine or ten, downing shot after shot, my dad and my approaching homelessness becoming a dwindling problem. When we’re pretty trashed out of our minds, we get a cab to drive to a house out in this town in no-man’s-land… Fairtown I think… because Seth heard there was going to be a “raging party.” When we get there, there are so many people it’s hard to even move through the house. I end up losing track of Seth and Greyson in the crowd, but instead of looking for them I head straight for the drink area in the kitchen.
After I slam down about five shots of Bacardi, I head for the living room where the couches have been shoved aside and the stereo’s booming some pop song. I’m not a fan of the music but it’s danceable and there’s some slutty-looking girls that are barely dressed, totally bangable and easy, at least from what I can tell—my vision’s a little distorted right now. But I’m only looking for a distraction to get me through the night, so I can fall asleep in peace, something I rarely do.
I make my way out there and a short curvy brunette instantly comes up and starts rubbing up on my leg. I blink my eyes until I can kind of make out her face and then figure she’ll do. I get behind her and she backs her ass up into me as we rock to the slow, sultry beat of the song. As she leans her head back, I sweep her hair to the side and slide my hand up to her rib cage as she tries to seduce me with her best seductive gaze. What she doesn’t get, though, is she doesn’t have to try. I’ll take her back to her place and f**k her, just like she’s hoping. I’ll give her what she wants and in exchange I’ll get a few moments of silence where I can be free from the reality of my life and all the twistedness inside me won’t feel so sickening.
“You smell really good,” she says, batting her eyelashes with her head tipped back against my chest.
“I smell like cigarettes and Bacardi,” I call out because she’s so full of it. The whole room smells like sweat and beer.
“Well, maybe I like that smell.” She bats her eyelashes at me again as she slips her hand behind her and starts to rub my cock.
It’s starting to feel really good when she starts doing this weird thing with her hips, then she spins around and strikes some kind of cat-clawing pose with her hands out in front of her. “I used to be a stripper,” she tells me, shimmying her hips.
“In Fairtown?” I don’t even try to hide my disgust. The town is pretty much a trailer park out in the middle of nowhere and I’m wondering if my drunk vision is making her seem a lot more attractive than she really is.