by Tammy Walsh
“I see,” she said. “Then I’ve come to tell you about a decision I’ve made.”
Her expression turned hard. She was no longer my mother. She took on the guise of her business persona. Cold, hard, and to the point.
“I have to take a leaf out of your father’s book and make a business decision,” she said. “That’s why I’ve decided to cut you out of the company. You won’t become its leader. You won’t take up your father’s position. You will also not receive your inheritance. I won’t let you kill yourself with your current lifestyle while using family money to do it. I won’t let you slip into penury either. You’ll be supplied with enough money to live on but nothing more.”
Oh. My. God.
She’d finally done it. She was threatening to cut me off from family funds.
Was I surprised? No. I was only surprised it hadn’t happened sooner. After coasting the past few years on her goodwill, I guess I assumed it would go on forever.
How wrong I was.
“How can I become a better person if you take everything away from me?” I said.
“Your father began from nothing,” Mom said. “You don’t need a lot of money to be a good man.”
She got up and moved for the door.
My heart was in my throat. I was watching my mom take everything from me. My inheritance, my future. Everything.
“You can’t do this,” I said. “Dad left that money to me!”
“He left it in my care until you came of age. That should have been when you turned twenty-one. Instead, you partied and got kicked out of one university after another. Now you do nothing but party. I’m sorry. But this is necessary. With time, you’ll see it was the right thing to do. At least, I hope you’ll come to see it that way.”
She reached for the door.
“Wait,” I said. “There must be something I can do. Some way I can prove to you I’m not a loser.”
“I never said you were a loser. You have the makings of a great man. Like your father. But you’re so far from becoming him. You’ve taken the wrong path and I can’t let you take the family down with you.”
“I won’t take the family down. I swear, this time I’ll do as you say. I won’t party anymore.”
“I don’t mind if you party, although I would prefer for you to socialize with more… quality people than this. It’s not what you do that’s the problem. It’s what you don’t do.”
Her wedding ring clinked against the metal door handle. She never took it off—even fifteen years after her husband died.
And if she passed through that door, there would be no getting her to change her mind.
“There must be something I can do,” I said. “Some way I can improve and change and become the kind of son you want.”
She hesitated. I seized on the opportunity and took a step forward.
“Give me time,” I said. “I know you’ve given me a lot already but give me one last chance to prove myself. I’ll do whatever you want. I know I’ve been wasting my time. I know I need to change. I can’t go on like this forever. Just tell me what to do.”
She thought for a moment before turning to look at me. The icy business mask slipped. Now she looked at me with the caring eyes of a mother.
“Sort your life out, Dyrel,” she said. “Reduce the parties. No more crazy raves. No more wasting your time. You don’t have to manage the company but you do have to do something useful with your time. Find a cause or a job or something you love doing. But most of all, you need to find a good woman.”
Ah, yes. The “good woman” Mom always talked about. “Men are nothing without the right partner supporting them,” she used to say. Clearly, her opinion hadn’t changed.
“If I can find the right woman to be with, and stop partying so much, will you reconsider your decision?” I said.
She was on the fence. She battled with her response. I needed to give her a little more.
“Give me one month,” I said. “Let me begin as I mean to go on.”
She searched my face. This was hard for her.
“Please,” I said.
There were few things a child could do that their parents wouldn’t forgive. I might be a partier and a layabout but I’d never hurt anyone or done anything that would leave a black mark on the family name. And I never would. I wasn’t made that way.
“Fine,” Mom said. “You have one month beginning from today. Find a good woman and get your life straightened out. I don’t expect you to change everything completely. But I do expect improvements.”
“Thank you,” I said, kissing her on the forehead. “I won’t let you down.”
“It’s not me you have to worry about,” she said. “It’s letting yourself down.”
She left with Qat on her heels.
I’d avoided a bullet.
Narrowly.
My party lifestyle was up.
At least, until I met Mom’s requirements. Then I could use it as leverage to negotiate. I would live the lifestyle she wanted for me and what I wanted for myself.
I stepped from the dining room and ran an eye over the bodies lying sprawled across my apartment.
I had thirty days to make the change.
And I needed to make them now.
“Thanks for coming,” I said, motioning the last partier out the door.
The partier had a straggly beard and unkempt hair. I had no idea who he was.
“Awesome party, dude,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, unable to recall a single event from the previous night. “Thanks. Stop by again some time.”
“Will do,” the partier said, saluting me and heading down the hall.
“But come with an invitation,” I added hastily, in case he got the idea of stopping by at random.
I shut the door and leaned my back against it. I let out a breath and cast an eye over the discarded bottles and other garbage spread across the floor and tabletops.
The hologram TV was still on. Now it was some kind of music show.
Why didn’t I make them clean up after themselves?
Because they’re incapable of doing anything like that. Most looked incapable of dragging a comb through their hair.
Plus, there was the chance they might get the idea of lifting my things while they wandered around the apartment. The Creator knew I’d lost a lot of items that way in the past.
I grabbed a bin bag and set to placing everything inside it. I moved quickly and didn’t worry about the stains and spillages on the antique surfaces. By the look of it, they’d been there a long time already.
How long had it been since I last noticed my own home and the effect my exploits were having on it? A year? Two years? Five years?
“Are you dividing the items up?” Ettana said.
She stood in the doorway to the bedroom. She wore one of my shirts. Her makeup was smudged over her face and looked like a clown from one of my nightmares.
“Dividing the garbage up?” I said. “Why would I do that?”
“For recycling.”
“Oh. Of course I am. What do you take me for?”
She shrugged and turned on her heel to head back inside the bedroom. I hastily unloaded the glass and plastics and set to dividing them up.
“You can grab a bag and give me a hand if you like,” I said.
“I’m going to take a shower and get out of your hair,” she said. “I know how you like your space in the mornings.”
Not when I have a ton of work to do with tidying this place up, I thought. Still, it gave me time to consider what I was meant to do with my mom’s ultimatum.
I needed to find a “good woman,” whatever that meant. And I needed to stop partying. With the way I felt with the hangover right then, that wasn’t hard. It could really take it out of you. I needed a nice break.
A knock came at the door. I opened it to find Zyod standing there with his hands extended to either side.
“So?” he said. “What’s the emergency?”
I
yanked him inside and shut the door behind him.
Zyod eyeballed the front room and the bag of garbage in my hands. He folded his arms.
“You had another party last night?” he said. “And you didn’t invite me?”
“It was a last-minute kind of deal. It wasn’t planned.”
“Were there any hotties?”
“Not hot. But easy.”
“Damn it! This is why you should invite me to these things!”
I stepped on something that crunched under my foot. I leaped back and stepped on something else that crunched.
“Don’t look at me,” Zyod said. “If I wasn’t invited to the party, I’m not going to help tidy up.”
I sighed.
“You’ve got a girlfriend,” I said. “A very hot girlfriend, I might add.”
“Sure. But she’s not new. She’s not fresh.”
I stared at him.
“Fresh?” I said. “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”
“It’s what I’m calling it,” he said, taking off his jacket. “So, tell me what the problem is.”
I told him about my mom turning up that morning and the ultimatum she presented me with.
Zyod flinched.
“Ouch,” he said. “That doesn’t sound fun.”
“It’s not. So, I have thirty days to find a girl and prove I’m mature enough to take over the company.”
“In thirty days?” Zyod said with a snort. “Good luck. I mean, you might find a good girl but you’re never going to know if she’ll last for the long haul within that time period.”
“I don’t need her to last for the long haul,” I said. “I just need her to put on a good show to make my mom happy.”
“Ah. I see. So, you’re going to pretend like you’ve found a good girl.”
I frowned. That hadn’t been my idea at all. But did it really matter if the girl was for real or not? So long as she made my mom think our relationship was legit?
“The best way of doing that is to get this mysterious ‘good girl’ to become your fiancée,” Zyod said.
“Get serious,” I said. “I asked you to come here for some real ideas, not throw dumb ideas my way.”
“I am being serious,” Zyod said, leaning forward. “Think about it. Good girls get married. She wants to settle down and have kids and all that jazz. That is what your mom means when she says she wants you to find a good girl. She wants you to put down some roots and have a family. One day.”
“Get married?” I said.
The thought had never crossed my mind. I’d attended weddings. I’d been asked to help a friend with his divorce too. Marriage was something other people did, not me.
“I’m not sure I’m cool with that,” I said.
“Are you cool with losing your inheritance?” Zyod said. “Because I wouldn’t be. Plus, you don’t need to marry her right away. Just announce the engagement party.”
I waved my hands.
“We’re getting way ahead of ourselves,” I said. “I mean, I don’t even have a girl I could ask to marry me yet. Let’s focus on that first.”
“You’ve got plenty of girls to ask. Most of them would say yes.”
A thought struck me and I wondered why it hadn’t hit me before.
“I could ask Ettana,” I said. “She brushes up nicely.”
“And what happens when she opens her mouth?” Zyod said.
He had me there. She might look good but she wasn’t exactly the best conversationalist in the world.
“I could get her to take lessons to speak properly,” I said.
Ettana stepped into view through the open sliding door that led into the bedroom. She was naked from her shower and hadn’t completely dried herself off.
Zyod’s mouth fell open.
“You’ve got a girlfriend,” I reminded him.
“So?” Zyod said. “It doesn’t hurt to look, does it?”
I smacked him on the arm.
“Focus!” I said.
Zyod tried to but his eyes kept drifting over to Ettana.
She turned and noticed him staring at her.
“Oh,” she said.
Instead of feeling embarrassed and covering herself up, she waved.
“Hi Zyod,” she said.
“Hi yourself,” Zyod said with his best smile.
I recognized that smile. He’d flashed it at half the women in the city over the years.
“Shut the door for us, would you, Ettana?” I said. “Zyod needs to concentrate.”
“Sure thing,” Ettana said.
She glanced at us through the gap as she drew it shut.
“Now why did you have to do something like that and ruin my fun?” Zyod said.
“I have a serious problem here,” I said. “I need you to focus and help me out.”
Zyod grumbled and threw up his hands.
“All right, all right,” he said. “I’m here, aren’t I? Now, where were we?”
“Finding a girl to marry me,” I said.
“No, not marry you. Get engaged to you. That’ll show your mom you’re serious about changing and settling down. At the very least, it’ll buy you some time.”
He had a point. I was never going to find a girl to fall in love with me within the next thirty days. Why did I even agree to it?
Oh yeah. Because I didn’t have a choice.
Maybe things were different back in Mom’s day but these days… To be honest, I didn’t really know. After all, it wasn’t like I actively went out of my way to look for girls who wanted to settle down. With the kind of parties I went to, it was safe to say I probably went out of my way to avoid them.
But it wouldn’t be so hard to find a girl like that, would it? I mean, there had to be lots of them. It wouldn’t be like they were doing it for nothing. I would strike a deal. She’d give me a good cover story, something believable my mom would buy, and once I got my inheritance, I could pay her for her time.
I felt confident I could find her in a city as big as Baok.
“And she can’t be a Titan,” Zyod said offhandedly.
This was news to me.
“What?” I said. “Why not?”
“Your mom is a smart lady. She knows what you’re like. And she’s the head of a wealthy family. She’ll use all the contacts at her disposal to research your future partner. She’ll make sure you’re not trying to pull a fast one.”
“You think she would do that?”
Zyod shrugged.
“It’s what I would do,” he said.
Crap.
He was right.
My confidence reversed polarity and now I was staring down the business end of a blaster pistol.
“I’m going to lose everything!” I said. “It’s all going to be taken away from me!”
“It will with that attitude,” Zyod said. “Look on the bright side. You get to start at the bottom the way your old man did. The big wigs always say the most fun part of their careers was the beginning.”
I could have cried.
“You’re not helping,” I said. “If you’re right, then it’s not only Titans I should be cautious about dating. It shouldn’t be any of the species our business has close ties with.”
“That follows. But with how good business is these days, I think you’re going to have to avoid the entire inner quadrant.”
“You’re saying I have to find someone from an undeveloped planet?” I said. “A backward species? I’m not sure Mom would approve of that.”
“It wouldn’t matter so long as she was educated to perform well.”
“You mean, give her lessons on how she’s supposed to act?” I said.
My task had just got a whole lot harder. I could feel my headache returning.
“Here’s an idea,” I said. “It could be someone I’ve dated before. One of the higher-class girls. She’ll know everything she needs and I won’t have to educate her.”
“You haven’t dated any high-class girls. Not in a while,
anyway. Besides, what could you give her that she can’t already get from Daddy? Which is an interesting question, by the way. Why don’t you date girls more in your social class?”
I glared at him. I wasn’t about to go into my personal preferences. Especially not with him.
“Can we focus on the task in hand, please?” I said impatiently.
“I guess I’ll put a pin in it for later,” Zyod said.
The door separating us from the bedroom slid open and Ettana marched out. Despite her lack of sleep, she looked a million credits.
“I’m going now,” she said. “Call me.”
She kissed me on the cheek and winked at Zyod. We both watched as she sashayed out of the apartment.
“You know, losing your inheritance and shacking up with Ettana doesn’t sound so bad to me,” Zyod said. “With how good you two look, you could make a fortune making videos…”
I hissed at him.
“And I bet you would be our very first subscriber,” I said.
“If you insist,” Zyod said. “I’d expect a discount though. I always like to support my friends.”
“You’re sick. And I can’t believe I called you. What was I thinking?”
I fell onto the sofa and ran my hands through my hair.
“Let’s think this through logically,” I said. “I need a quality girl who isn’t from any of the inner quadrant worlds. She has to agree to play along with my plan. I can pay for her help… I’m stumped. I haven’t got a clue how to find a girl like that.”
“Hey!” the hologram TV show presenter said. “Are you looking for a quality girl from the outer quadrants?”
My ears perked up.
“That’s spooky,” Zyod said.
“Sh,” I said.
A middle-aged female Titan, slim and classy, stood on an empty stage.
“My name’s Shrisa,” she said in her sultry voice. “Here at Star Cross’d Lovers, we know how hard it is to find your ideal mate. They could be anyone, anywhere. That’s why we specialize in bringing you and your ideal partner together. We have every species, shape, color, and creed. We’ll match you with your perfect partner or your money back.”
Shrisa walked among a range of male and female aliens, both foreign and domestic. They all wore warm and welcoming smiles.
“If you’ve tried regular methods of finding your perfect match but came up empty, then give us a try!” Shrisa said. “Drop by today to see what we’ve got in stock. Who knows, you might find your perfect Star Cross’d Lover today!”