Well, damn.
I’ve imagined this moment thousands of times in my mind. I’ve had reactions that range from violent to me begging her just to come home so we can work out whatever the fuck went wrong. I could be an easier kid this time. I’ve made sure we’re all a bit easier to handle. Maybe if we would have been, she wouldn’t have felt the need to leave.
Guess I’ve exhausted all potential outcomes because there are no words. I have a non-reaction. Just rusty silence.
“I know you probably don’t want to hear from me, but—”
“How did you get my number?” I think I know the answer. There’s only one possibility.
“Grant.”
Dad. Yep, what I thought. I mentally add it to the list of stuff I have to have it out with Dad about. I’ve been waiting to calm down before I talk to him. I’m a moon’s distance from calm. That conversation might be a while in the making.
“You need something,” I guess. I know the tone by now. Fuck. Is this my damn lot in life? Doing the bidding of my useless parents? She pauses for too long and I know I’m right. I should hang up on her like I did the rest of my family. And maybe I get it now, at least a little. Life gets so fucking hard sometimes that running away and leaving everything seems like the only option.Or become blissfully oblivious and let everyone pick up the pieces for you like Dad does.
“Look, yeah, I do, okay? I know that’s shit, Merc. I’m trying to do better for … for Lo.”
A terrible sludge stirs my guts. “Lo?”
“Logan. My, uh, my son.”
Holy fucking Christ. I should hang up right now. I can’t afford the therapy for this. I haven’t had therapy for the first pile of shit I’ve gone through. Just like every other train wreck, I can’t look away. I can’t bring myself to stop listening to her voice. I want to tell her off. I want to tell her how much I hate her. She had another child after she gave up the first three? I thought there was nothing worse than having your mother leave you, but I was wrong. This is so much fucking worse.
“He’s your half-brother,” she says as if she can sense I’m a hair away from ending this call. As if she knows the only words that will get me to remain on the line and do her bidding. “And he needs your help.”
There it is.
I’m fucked.
* * *
Jack returns at nine o’clock. I wanted to drown my sorrows in a bottle of whiskey so bad, but somehow, I resisted. Instead, it was pizza and ginger beer. I deserve a fucking medal. Soon as he sets eyes on my pathetic form, he’s racing over to where I’ve molded myself to the couch. Or maybe it has molded itself around me. I don’t know anymore. I am one with this couch.
My eyeballs ache and the tears sting as they blur my sight.
“Jesus, Merc? What the hell happened? Why didn’t you call me? I woulda come home.”
Home.“You don’t live here, Jack.” I sip my ginger beer, wishing it were a real one.
Rightfully, he narrows his eyes. I’m being a dick. Maybe this is why I don’t have boyfriends. “Ouch. I know I don’t livehere, asshole. I do live in this building and that’s what I meant. Good to know where you’re at though, Merc.” He takes a deep breath. “What the hell happened?”
Wiping at my eyes, I contemplate kicking him out. It might be better. Eventually, he’ll leave me too and I won’t be able to handle that. It’ll be less painful if I cut him to the chase. Leave him first. The coward’s way, but the only way I can be sure to leave with some of my fucking dignity intact.
The thought brings its own stabbing pain that lances through my insides somehow worse than all the rest of it. I know what that awful pain is. Love. This is how love bites and enslaves you. Infests you like poison. I won’t be able to leave Jack, not without cutting off a limb. Jack’s a limb now. My lips twist into a glower.
“No big deal. My family decided everything without me; basically, voted me out of the band and off the island, and then Mom called to ask if I’d take in her bratty-ass kid for the summer.”
Jack shakes his head as if he had a bug in his ear and couldn’t have heard me right. “Say that again?”
Outlining the whole conversation for him doesn’t make it an easier pill to swallow. Huh. Thought it would. I thought I’d just overreacted, but maybe I underreacted. Anger whirls from my belly and up my chest like whirlwind.
“My mom called,” I repeat. “Yeah, same one who left us without a word or a trace twenty-six years ago. Turns out she has a son who just got a scholarship to some bougie school in New York based on his fancy shmancy figure-skating skills, but she’s worried he’ll mess it up with his bad attitude. For some reason, she thinks I can help him and asked if I’d let him stay with me for the off-season.”
He bites his lip, trying to keep from smiling. “Did you adopt another child while I was out? I swear to Christ, Merc. I leave for a few hours—”
“I did not adopt another child. He’s almost nineteen. An adult. He’s just my half-brother, crashing at my place for a few months.”
“Wait. Don’t tell me what you said. I’ve got a few bets with Meyers to place because I’d bet a lot of money you’re getting an off-season son.”
