The waiter poured me a glass and corked the crystal bottle.
He left us without another word.
“Drink,” my dad insisted.
“I don’t like scotch.”
My father cocked his head. “Since when?”
“Since it became your favorite fucking drink.”
He shook his head. “You and your brother love to rebel like little punks.”
I glared. “I’m nothing like that prick.”
“And how would you know?” he retorted easily. “You’ve never met him.”
“I just fucking know.” I gripped my knee that started to bounce. I wanted to get out of there. I couldn’t stand talking about Loren. I always knew I had a half-brother. It wasn’t fucking hard to deduce that the kid of Jonathan Hale would also be related to me. We shared a fucking father. But my dad and mom never said it outright until I was fifteen. After my mom bitched about that “bastard” kid, I asked my dad to elaborate. He finally gave me three facts that cleared up a picture I’d already started to construct.
One: Jonathan cheated on Sara, my mom, with some other woman when I was a few months old.
Two: The “other” woman got pregnant. Loren was born a year after me, and she left her son with Jonathan. Bolted. No longer in the picture.
Three: I lived with Sara. My half-brother lived with our dad. And the whole fucking world believed Sara’s kid was Loren Hale. Not me. I was Meadows. I shared the last name with my mom’s deadbeat family in New Jersey, all of which wanted nothing to do with her.
My mom was Sara Hale.
My dad was Jonathan Hale.
I was no one’s son.
After the truth became painfully clear, my father always brought up Loren. He always asked the same fucking question, and I didn’t want to hear it today.
He swished his glass. “What’s made you into such a pussy?”
My nose flared. I couldn’t believe I thought he was fucking cool when I was nine years old. He had acted like we were bonding, letting me drink his whiskey. Father and son. Like he loved me enough to let me break some fucking rules. But I wondered if it was all just some ploy to make me as miserable as him.
“I got into a car accident,” I suddenly said.
He choked on his scotch and cleared his throat. “What?” He glowered. “Why am I just now hearing about this?”
I shrugged. “Ask Mom.”
“That bitch—”
“Hey,” I cut him off, fire in my eyes. I was fucking sick of hearing him degrade her. I was fucking tired of listening to my mom denigrate him. I just wanted them both to stop. They’d been divorced since I was a kid, not even a year old. When was the fighting supposed to end?
He rolled his eyes, but he looked serious again, more concerned. If there was a heart in Jonathan Hale’s chest, it was fucking submerged beneath an ocean of booze. “What happened?”
“I drove into the neighbor’s mailbox.” I have no recollection of how I arrived home. I apparently ran four red lights. I fucking knocked over a fence. I basically passed out at the wheel, and I woke up when I crashed.
I wasn’t driving home from a fucking party.
I had been drinking alone on the soccer fields of Loren’s prep school. I fucking hated Dalton Academy. I was forced to go to Maybelwood Preparatory, an hour from where I lived because my mom didn’t want me to see Loren’s face every fucking day. And because no one could know that I was her son.
So Loren had gone to the closer school, where I should have been, while I was banished and cast out.
And I fucking hated him. I fucking loathed him to the core of my fucking body. My mom helped stir this sickening wrath. She constantly said, “Your brother is full of himself, swimming in our money. You want to be surrounded by Jonathan Hale’s brat, then you’ll be headed nowhere good.”
I’d nod and think, Yeah, that fucker.
And then days would pass, and I’d begin to question everything.
Maybe I should meet him.
Maybe I should talk to him.
But he’s a spoiled rich kid.
Like me.
Not like you.
He doesn’t care about anything but himself.
Like me.
Not like you.
He’s a drunk loser.
Like me.
Yesterday, I thought about going to my mom and saying something. I thought about telling her to just get over this moronic feud, to stop ranting about Jonathan Hale’s infidelity and to quit being consumed by the life of his bastard kid.
“Loren Hale got suspended for missing too much class, did you hear that?” she’d ask me with a sick gleam in her eye. His failure was Jonathan’s failure. And to her, that equaled fucking success.