“What the fuck are you looking at?” I asked when he stared at me for a minute straight. What the hell was wrong with him? He looked like he’d been crying, which made me feel uneasy. Not that I thought that men who cried were pussies—okay, I’ll rephrase: that depends on the amount of crying, situation, and circumstances—but it felt odd to think that Eli Cole produced actual human tears. Normally, he looked so unflustered by the world. While he could be sentimental, he was always collected. Extremely so, down to the smallest bone in his body. And right now he looked very, very scattered.
Dad shook his head. “Nothing.” He tapped the round, oak dining table, ignoring the healthy amount of F-bombs I showered him with. I tried to keep my language PG-13 whenever I was around my parents, but I wasn’t feeling very respectful toward my dad at that moment.
“I’m always in awe of how alike we are.” He pinched his lips together.
“You have a weed and alcohol problem, too?” I laughed, tipping the ash into an empty vodka bottle and taking a sip from a half-empty beer can.
“I did,” he said.
My jaw almost dropped at this revelation. That was definitely news to me.
“Elaborate.” I took another hit of the blunt, before he snatched it from my hand and put it out.
“Hey.” My eyebrows pulled together. “What the fuck?”
“The fuck is that I’m your father, and you’re going to act in accordance with the social codes we ingrained in you from a young age, at least around us. That means you don’t drink or smoke weed in front of me and cut back on the F-word, Dean. It doesn’t make you tougher. It makes you sound like a goddamn thug, and I spent a lot of money on your education. Enough to assure that you’re not a thug. So, while I am content with indulging you when you and your preppy, trust-fund baby friends talk the big talk behind closed doors, to me you will be polite and straitlaced. Understood?”
Hello, bucket of ice to the face, thanks for sobering my ass up.
Dad stood up, snatched a can of beer from the table, and started walking around the kitchen, pulling a small trash can and throwing all the vodka bottles, rolled cigarette butts, and beers into it as he talked. “Back to our main topic—addiction. Yes, Dean, I was an addict like you. Not weed. Where I grew up in Alabama, weed wasn’t a rich man’s vice. But after I graduated from law school and married your mom, I had a lot on the line. I had my own father to impress, and he was far less thoughtful and supportive than I am. The only way I could take the edge off of all the pressure was to drink. So I did that. Excessively. Every. Single. Day.”
I smacked my lips shut and stared him down, trying to figure out if I was hungover, drunk, or in that sick space in-between. I drank so much that weekend I constantly felt like throwing up. I didn’t remember when my last meal was, but I was pretty sure it didn’t stay in my stomach after all the late-night puke-fests I was throwing for myself.
“I was drunk ninety percent of the time. A high-functioning drunk, mind you, but I don’t recall a day between the ages of twenty-two to twenty-eight when I wasn’t tanked-up. Even at work, when I couldn’t risk smelling of whiskey, I would get into the bathroom and drink Listerine before important meetings. I was far worse than you, Dean. Far worse.”
“Well, you’re good now,” I muttered. Mature as a fucking toddler. Was I a class act or what?
Dad took the trash can—threw it through the motherfucking window like a rock star—then went ahead and took another one from the bathroom, filling it with more bottles and cans of alcohol.
“I’m well, because I had a wake-up call, Dean. You know when?”
“Enlighten me, Master.” I talked back just for the sake of talking back, and it wasn’t funny or adorable on a fucking thirty-year-old. Dad must’ve shared the sentiment, because he shook his head and continued.
“It happened when one time I came home late from work, crawled into my bed drunk and disorientated, and made love to my wife. Because when I woke up the next day, I remembered that Helen was not even supposed to be in Birmingham. She went to visit her mother in Fairhope. So I looked to my right and saw her sister. I looked to the woman sleeping beside me, and I knew I’d fucked up my whole life, as you like to call it.”
That made me sit up straight.
“She tricked you?”
“Well, I think we both know that Nina wasn’t the type of woman to allure me.” Dad looked incredulous. Guess not. Nina was the exact opposite of Helen, my mom. She wore skimpy clothes, chain-smoked, and flirted with everyone and their cat. My mother was country-clubbish and yuppie, her hair always looked like she just walked out of a woman’s magazine, and she was reserved and polite, but never overly friendly to men.
“But, Mom.” I held my head and shook it in disbelief. My mother took bullshit from no one. This was why my sisters and I were well-behaved. She knew how to hammer it home, all right, when she wanted to. “She told me she wanted to divorce you. How the hell did you pull it off?”
Dad bobbed his head, throwing the second trash can full of drinks through the window as well, before turning his head to face me. “Baron is picking up everything I’m throwing out, and so you don’t have access to it, I will be taking your wallet and making sure your fridge is filled with food. You’re detoxing starting today, Dean.”
Vicious is here? What the fuck? I really did hit rock bottom this time.
“About your mother—no, she did not forgive me. Not at first, anyway. When I saw Nina in my bed and she told me what happened, I was mortified. I kicked her out and called Helen. She cut her trip short and got back home. I came clean immediately. She packed me a bag and threw me out.”
Despite my best intentions, a smirk formed on my face. “Good for Mom.”
I was the bastard child who was rooting for the cheated woman.
“She made me pay, that’s for sure. I slept in my office for those nine months. Helen sent me so many half-filled divorce forms my mailbox got clogged. Nina ran away. I tried to find her but couldn’t. She went under the radar, and it was a different time. Easier to disappear. No Internet and things like that.” Dad tucked his hands into his pockets and looked out the window, his brows wrinkling. “Your mother filed for divorce two months before you were born. It wasn’t even about the cheating.” He laughed bitterly. “Because trust me, I had no clue what I was doing when I slept with Nina. Don’t remember one second of it, thank God. She was just tired of my problem, and my lack of motivation to fix it. She deserved better, and she knew it.”