I gave a humorless laugh. “He got his therapy from Jack Daniels after that.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “To lose your mother and then have your father change so much, that had to be terrifying. Did your dad ever get any help for his drinking?”
“No. He refuses to go to rehab. Hunter and I can afford the best, and we’ve tried to talk him into it, but he won’t budge. So, yeah. He’s still a drunk, only not quite as mean now. Well, maybe he is but he just doesn’t have either of us around anymore to take out his anger on.”
“You never see him?”
“Not often. Hunter and I each check in on him periodically, just to, you know, make sure he’s got groceries, that the utility bills are paid. I hired a service to go in and clean every week. The house got to be a real pig sty when we were still young—until Hunter and I started cleaning it up ourselves. I’ll say this—it gave us both plenty of motivation to get the fuck out of there and become independent as soon as possible. Maybe we should thank him for the years of neglect and blacked-out rages.”
Bonnie’s hand slid across the tabletop and covered mine with its soft warmth.
The gesture was unexpected. And comforting. And it spawned a strange push-pull sensation in my mid-section.
A ferocious longing battled with an aversion so strong I pulled my hand away and pushed back from the table, standing abruptly.
“I should get back to work.”
“You didn’t finish your dinner,” she protested, getting to her feet as well. “Stay and finish. I’ll go.”
“I’m not that hungry after all,” I lied.
“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable, Jack. I just… I feel for you, for what you went through. I did a story a couple years ago about adult children of alcoholics and the residual effects. There are some good support groups—Al-Anon and ACA…”
For some reason her gentle tone and the look of pity on her face rubbed me the wrong way. All my earlier amusement vanished.
I didn’t need her sympathy. We weren’t friends.
She didn’t know me—not really. I didn’t care how many damaged children of alcoholics she’d met, she had no idea what I had gone through—what Hunter had gone through.
And I didn’twanther to know.
It still haunted me that I’d been so immature and so desperate to escape the situation at home I’d selfishly run away to college, leaving my younger brother alone with our rapidly deteriorating father.
I’d only learned a few years ago the extent of what Hunter had dealt with, that he’d had to take over all responsibility for the house, the finances, even the grocery shopping after I’d bailed on him and stayed away with barely a phone call and the minimal number of visits.
Hunter had been in tenth grade. Fifteen years old. I was one selfish sonofabitch.
“Yeah, that’d make a real juicy addition to your story, wouldn’t it?” I snapped at Bonnie. “Famous author Jack Bestia spilling his guts in a support group meeting—all the family skeletons out dancing on the lawn.”
“Jack… I would never…”
The pressure building behind my eyes made me feel like an overfull water balloon at the end of a high-pressure power washer. I had to get out of there.
Whirling away, I left the kitchen and ran up the stairs toward my office, unable to shake the shocked, unhappy look on Bonnie’s face or the ugly residue my unprovoked attack had left in my soul.
Why did I say that?
Why did being around her feel so threatening? The truth was being around her feltgood. Too good.
It made me want to feelmorethings.
I could tell it was different for my staff. They liked Bonnie. They enjoyed her company. I’d begun tocraveit, hunger for it like I’d hungered for my mom’s Sunday dinner lasagna the first couple of years after her death.
Craving the company of a woman was dangerous.
Beyond stupid. Especially when the woman in question had been sent to unearth all my secrets and expose me to the world.
Confiding in her was the worst thing I could do.
