Total pages in book: 144
Estimated words: 134830 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 539(@250wpm)___ 449(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134830 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 539(@250wpm)___ 449(@300wpm)
I sigh heavily, putting my other arm behind my head as I stare at the ceiling.
“Family shit I wasn’t expecting,” I say, making it sound lighter than it actually is.
She laughs, lying back down on my chest. “Are we talking about me or you?”
“Fair point. Both. You go first.”
I’m stalling and we both know it, so she gives me the shortest answer imaginable. “Mom lied. Set me up, and I couldn’t tell her no. Another shitty date with some guy I’ll never see again. Your turn.”
That’s pretty much what she said on the phone too, but hearing it again does soothe some of the hurt I felt when I heard her say she was on a date with someone else.
I wish I could give her that type of short answer, but my family issue is a bit more complicated than that.
“My dad texted, asking me to come over. When I got there, he was being nice… and that’s not how he is, not with me, so I was suspicious from the get-go. He’s got a pool project that he wants my help with, but I turned him down. I don’t need him or a pity contract.”
“Is it a good opportunity for you?”
“Wouldn’t matter if it was,” I say dismissively, and she makes a sound of surprise. “If, after ripping the restaurant away from you, your dad came to you and said ‘I’ll set you up in a restaurant now’, would you do it?” I feel the small shake of her head. “Right, because at this point, you could do it yourself if you wanted to. So his suddenly coming in like that, after proving you can do fine on your own, is just shitty.”
“So you turned him down,” she surmises.
“Yeah. He was pissed, but that’s nothing new. I kinda got a kick out of that, to be honest. But when I was leaving, I overheard my mom talking to someone on the phone. I know it’s wrong, but she was talking about me so I couldn’t help but listen.” I swallow, not wanting to give air to what I’m thinking, what’s been running through my mind all day and night, nearly sending me to the bottom of a bottle of whisky and ultimately, sending me to Dani’s porch in desperation.
“She was telling someone about how when Cole and Kayla were kids, my dad was traveling all the time for work, and she needed help. So they hired someone. A guy named Anders. Shortly after that, surprise… here I come.”
Dani lifts up again, her eyes suspicious when they land on me. “Are you saying you think your dad’s not your dad?”
I swallow. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
Even that much of an acknowledgement opens a hole in my gut that I’m not sure I can recover from. I’ve been considering it, trying to look at it from another angle… any other angle that might make it not true. But it makes so much sense.
Dani sits upright, turning around to face me and crossing her legs. Her right knee rests on my side, and the sheet puddles in her lap where she pulls it around herself. Her eyes are dark, filled with the sympathy I don’t want or need. “I’m so sorry, Kyle.”
“Me too,” I say, laying my hand on her knee. Slowly, I add, “I’ve always felt like I was a mistake baby. My parents had my brothers, boy after boy after boy, and then they finally got their girl with Kayla, so why have another kid? I’m the living proof of diminishing returns.” I laugh bitterly as I tell her, “That’s something Dad would say. Don’t invest more when less will net the same or better result.”
My whole childhood plays out in flashes in my mind as I hollowly tell her, “I guess now I know why he’s never given a shit about me the way he did the older kids. I hear them talk about Dad going to their games and helping with their homework… like he did ‘Dad stuff’ with them when they were little, which is why they’re closer, I guess. Cameron is basically his right-hand man, like a mini-version of Dad, and the rest of my brothers—other than Cole—and Kayla are like Dad in a lot of ways, so they talk business and stuff. I just never got that with him. By the time I was born, he was too busy at work to do any of that stuff with me.” An even darker thought comes rushing forward, at the ready from my teen years of angry rebelliousness and loneliness. “Or at least that’s what I always told myself because the alternatives—that he didn’t love me, that I wasn’t good enough, that I wasn’t worth his time—were worse than his having a packed schedule. Guess work wasn’t the reason after all.”