Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 66289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 331(@200wpm)___ 265(@250wpm)___ 221(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 331(@200wpm)___ 265(@250wpm)___ 221(@300wpm)
Mark reaches over, wrapping a chubby hand around my bicep before poking at my non-existent belly.
I wonder what he’d do if I poked his?
The bastard would probably shit himself. He’s not used to anyone pointing out any of his flaws. In his own mind, he’s rich, successful, and perfect in ways other men can only dream about. He lives in a self-made bubble of inflated confidence.
One of these days I intend to burst it.
But I won’t do it here or now, in front of my mother.
“Come on, you two,” Mom says, sipping her champagne and laughing like we’re just a couple of guys razzing each other, never mind the fact that Mark’s the one making the comments. I’m keeping my mouth shut, like I always do, for her sake. I swear I haven’t seen this much light in her eyes since I got my full ride football scholarship to PVU. It wasn’t like they couldn’t have afforded my tuition or I couldn’t have taken out loans and paid for college myself. It wasn’t about any of that. It was that they wanted the bragging rights. They wanted that validation that the football camps and thousand-dollar-an-hour coaches and rigorous, year-round training schedules were worth it. “We’re here to have a good time now.”
I glance across the table at my teenage stepsisters, Hadley and Kelsey, their noses buried in the glow of their iPhones and virgin martinis resting in front of their untouched entrees.
Mom keeps placing her hand on Mark’s shoulder, leaning over and kissing him like they’re celebrating some monumental anniversary or lottery win. She can’t stop smiling. He can’t take that smug smile off his face to save his life.
“Talon, I hope you know your father would be so, so proud of you right now.” Mom’s voice strains and her eyes water and her hand moves to her throat as she chokes off tears. She normally only gets this way after three glasses of champs, not one. I’m guessing she engaged in a little celebratory pre-drinking before they left the house.
“Yes, he sure would be,” Mark echoes. “God rest his soul.”
The only time, and I mean the only time, Mark acts like he gives a rat’s ass about my dead father is when my mother gets sentimental, and then he has to play the role of the supportive second husband.
But Mark couldn’t care less.
He didn’t know my dad. Not on a personal level. My dad was an architect and Mark was a one-time client, commissioning a commercial office space building from him when I was six. My father was a bit older than my mother, who was strikingly beautiful in a timeless sort of way in her younger years, long before the Botox and implants and the things she felt she had to do to her body to look the part of Mark’s Orange County wife.
Fake lips.
Silicone boobs.
A plastic soul to encapsulate the authentic one she buried along with my father.
The two of them met at a group for grieving spouses, Mark having just lost his wife when she swerved off a cliff to avoid hitting a deer. His girls were just babies then. They needed a mom. And Mark needed money, seeing how he and his wife were too broke to spend a few hundred bucks a year on life insurance policies.
Mark took one look at my mother, at my lonely, grief-stricken, shell of a woman mother, and an opportunity was born. I was young then but I still remember the day he moved in with us. How happy my mother was. How much life was in her eyes again. She told me I was going to be a big brother, that I was going to have a dad again.
Over the first few years, Mark was the very definition of a doting father. He taught me how to throw a football, swing a golf club, and cast a fishing reel. But the fun and games ended as soon as he realized how naturally athletic I was and decided he wanted me to fulfill his dream of playing pro football.
At first, it was nice—the special coaches and clinics, all the accolades and glory and attention—but after a while, it got old.
All my friends were living it up, running around being stupid teenagers and doing stupid teenage shit.
Me? I was in bed by eight every night so I could meet up with my trainer by five the next morning. God forbid I didn’t get an hour in every morning before school with the guy that was going to “help make our dreams come true.”
After a while, I was in too deep.
I was too damn good.
The attention was insane and it became my identity.
High school blurred into football, and soon I was leading the PVU Tigers as their starting quarterback, which came with a whole new level of attention and accolades.