“What is going on here?” Max asked Wayne. Those familiar fluttering butterflies decided to show up in my stomach.
“I’m rubbing my girlfriend’s feet,” Wayne told him. The butterflies burst from my gut and flew up and out to the open air.
“Who are you?” Wayne put my foot down on the cushion of the chair and stood up. They faced each other with barreled chests and eyes that stared each other down. Wow, I’d never imagined two hot guys fighting over me before.
“I’m her husband.”
My eyes flew open and my heart pounded so hard it was about to come bursting from my chest. I sat up, pulling the seatbelt tight across my neck. I felt the pressure as it rose into the back of my throat, the excitement of a daydream that was too much.
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” Cindy blurted out. I couldn’t answer her at first. My voice was caught in the huge bubble of shock that had wedged itself above my larynx. There was no way I was going to tell her what had just happened in my fantasy. I needed to come up with something else. I wished Joanie was there. I scanned my mind for some lame excuse for my jerking awake.
“I was falling, in my dream. Guess it’s the motion of the car.” Good cover up. Way to think fast. I took a deep breath and thought about what I had just witnessed in my dream.
“You need to drive better!” She stared Nick down. I waited for her to pop him upside the head, but she didn’t.
“No, his driving is fine.” The guilt for even mentioning his driving swelled in my gut.
“Sorry about that.” He looked at me in the rearview mirror and flared his nostrils.
“Don’t worry, it wasn’t your fault,” I answered his apology and looked away.
“Of course it was! Everything is his fault,” Cindy said.
She must hate him. It wasn’t his fault that her father chose to marry his mom. The more I thought about how wicked she was to him, the more I couldn’t take it. I was done holding my tongue. This poor guy was taking the brunt of Cindy’s anger at her father. Someone had to step in.
“You need to give him a break! You’ve been nothing but rude to him since we arrived in Denver.”
“What? Why in the hell are you so interested in him or how I treat him? Please, if I didn’t know any better I would think you’d want to hook up with him,” she spat as she pushed her back into the door and faced me with a scathing look. Her lips drew tight across her teeth as her eyes closed to a squint.
“Come on, you’ve been on his case since you saw him at the airport. He hasn’t done anything to you.” Confidence surged through my body and I felt the need to fight this out until she saw what I was saying.
“Please—I see where you’re going with this and, as honorable as you’re trying to be, you have no idea what this is between him and me.” She pushed her pointed finger back and forth between her chest and the front seat where Nick was sitting.
“Well, you might be surprised at what I know,” the words flew from my mouth before I had a chance to look at Nick in the rearview mirror. His eyes narrowed. His face radiated a flash of red that rolled up from his jowls. I stopped, my lips pressed closed. I’d promised him I wouldn’t rat him out.
“What? What do you know? What did you tell her?” She bounced her scowl between Nick and me.
Backpedal, I need to backpedal because of my big mouth. Think… come up with some brainless excuse for saying what I did. Before I got a chance, Nick covered me.
“Like I would even have a chance to talk to her.” He turned around, glancing away from the road long enough to make eye contact with her. “You are so insecure. I had nothing to do with our parents getting married!” He pulled to the side of the highway and turned to her; he wasn’t done spewing. Cindy must have seen red, because she just went off the hook.
“Shut up you frickin’ gold-digging tool. You had everything to do with them getting married.” She swung her arm up through the cab of the car and tried to hit him.
“Oh, no way, I am through taking your crap. I’ve felt guilty for long enough. I didn’t have anything to do with your father shipping you off to boarding school. I fought for you. I’m done with feeling guilty because my parents got back together.” He kept slapping her fists away from him. I just moved back into the farthest corner of the Sequoia.
“You’re so full of bull crap, you didn’t fight for me. I watched them the night they decided to send me away. They were concerned that I was going to hurt you. So instead of sending you away, they sent me—away. They wanted you more than me.” She looked at me, tears rolling heavy down her cheeks. I’d never seen her cry before, not like this. These were real tears that trailed and marked her cheeks with evidence of her sincere anguish.
Nick was ruthless, “Paa-leese, just stop. You’re so ridiculous. The self-pity has gotta go. It isn’t going to work—I’ve known you too long.” He was like a caged tiger that had been taunted for the last time. Three and a half hours in the car with her must have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, because he didn’t let up.
“You are such a self-centered bitch. Do you honestly think you have that much power over me? Everything I have EVER done for you was because our father asked me to. Not because I liked you or wanted anything from you.” He pushed the driver’s door open and got out onto the snow-plowed road. The chill of six degrees below zero flooded the SUV. The door slammed shut and Cindy pushed the switch of the automatic locks.
“I can’t believe he’s my half-brother,” Cindy grumbled under her breath as she adjusted her iPhone on her lap and pulled her jacket up from by her feet. I had nothing to say. No comeback or snide remark.
Nick kept walking—I was still in shock that they were even blood-related. Cindy unbuckled her seat belt, jumped into the driver’s seat, and started the engine. I could have sworn I saw a slight smile on her face.
“I better pick him up. I don’t want to get blamed for his frostbitten stupidity.”
“If he’s your half-brother why do you talk about him that way? Do you really hate him that much?” I looked in the rearview mirror to catch her expression.
“I don’t hate him. It’s not like I wish him dead. I just don’t like him. Come on, Wilson, he ended up with the perfect family; his mom and my dad hooked up in high school, she took off, and then ten years later she showed up on my dad’s doorstep with Nick. Just goes to show you a one-night stand can work out.” Her eyes filled the rearview mirror.
What’s that supposed to mean? A one-night stand can work out. I felt myself boil inside. She knew I was born because of a one-night stand. I wanted to scream at her, tell her what a spoiled brat she was, but I didn’t; instead, I swallowed and played along.
“I’m an outsider and all I can see is that you hate him enough to let him stand out there in sub-freezing temperatures.” She put the Sequoia into gear and started toward him. He was walking at a pretty fast pace. His face was glossed bright red. The edges of his ears were the unfortunate victim of being hatless.
Cindy lowered the passenger’s window and yelled across, telling him to get into the car before he froze to death. He kept walking.
“Come on, I’m sorry you’re pissed off.” Even when she apologized it was never her fault.
“I’ll freeze before I get back into that car with you.” His breath hung heavy before it crumbled and dissipated into the winter air.
The car rolled slowly, keeping pace with him. “Please. I can’t drive in the snow. You’re gonna make me kill innocent people.” He shook his head back and forth and I knew why.
Cindy never took responsibility for anything. As long as I’d known her, she had always been that way. Nick didn’t see her every day like I did. His skin wasn’t as calloused as mine. If she broke a fingernail, it would be someone else’s fault. That was Cindy.
Three years ago, we were collecting canned food for the Rumbling Tummies Food Bank and she volunteered to be one of the helpers who separated the food into categories. The day we were supposed to go, I got
super sick with the flu and ended up staying at the dorm. They told her to stack the canned meats on the second shelf from the bottom. Easy, right? Wrong. She ended up stacking it on the third shelf with the canned soups.
She stacked fifty cans of Spam in three different pyramids and rearranged the soups in alphabetical order. When they asked her about it, she blamed her lack of following directions on me. Can you believe that? She told them she stacked the Spam with the soup because the cans of tuna fish packed in water reminded her of a very sick friend who had to stay back at the dorms. I still don’t know how tuna packed in water reminded her of me. I assume it had to do with the boycott I started over ‘dolphin safe’ brands like Stark Tuna and the Ocean’s Chicken. But you know what happens when you assume? You make an ASS out of U and ME. That was her in a nut shell…or a tuna fish can. At the end of the day, they thanked her and asked her to refrain from volunteering for their organization in the future suggesting that she might have a better fit with the OCD-anonymous group of Alameda County. Up until that day, I’d never heard of someone being fired from a volunteer position before.
At last, Cindy was able to get Nick into the SUV. She promised she wouldn’t be rude and would try and give him the benefit of the doubt. I think it was the fact that she crashed the SUV into the side of a snow bank as she tried to cut him off from walking away. The last hour and fifteen minutes of the drive to Aspen was awkward and quiet.
I was glad when we pulled into a neighborhood that resembled Beverly Hills on steroids. It wasn’t like I had ever seen a Beverly Hills house in real life, but having seen them on television, I could imagine how huge these places were. Nick pulled up at a massive entry to a gated community that had a booth as large as a small house. A security guard opened a window and asked a series of questions. I was waiting for the guy to ask for a copy of his birth certificate and a blood sample next. Instead, Nick pulled out his driver’s license and a Starlingwood pass. After he proved he belonged there, he was able to enter the gated community of monstrous estates which only very few of the wealthy elite owned.
My heart was pounding. If Max’s family owned a cabin here, I could only wonder where it was; and, if his family was wealthy enough to have a house up here, what was he doing working at Wesley? Maybe it was fate that he worked at my school. Maybe the universe wanted us to be together. Or kismet, or—destiny.
We drove for another twenty minutes through pimped-out cribs that only a few gazillionaires could afford. Finally, we turned down a long winding driveway and arrived at anything but a cabin; it was a mansion. This monster had a four-car garage. We could’ve driven the SUV right through the front doors. This manor was two stories high with humungous windows facing the snow-filled four acres that we’d passed as we drove in. The front porch was as big as a parking lot, with the largest chandelier I had ever seen. Who had a chandelier out on their front porch? I have to say, I was intimidated.
The only thing that went through my mind was how pretentious these people must be. I started to run tallies through my head as I got out and grabbed my duffel bag from the back. How many hungry refugees from Darfur could that chandelier feed? The Italian marble from the porch could rebuild a neighborhood in Louisiana. The front doors could build at least four schools in Mexico. I had to stop. This weekend would drive me crazy if I did that. I had to remember where I was. But, if just the front porch alone could help rebuild Haiti, I wondered what the inside could do?
“Come on, just leave your bag. We have staff to do that.” Cindy grabbed my arm and pulled me to the steps. I held back and started to remove my shoes before I stepped on the marble.
Her face twisted. “What are you doing?”
My balance wasn’t the greatest. “I’m taking my shoes off.”
“You take your shoes off now your feet will freeze before you get to the front door.” She swung her arm around to get me to follow her.
I turned to Nick who was still getting out of the SUV. I wanted to tell him to come in with us, but didn’t want to stir up any more animosity between him and Cindy. I walked up the marble steps and across the massive front porch. Cindy pulled on the ginormous door and it swung open to soft, classical music welcoming us to the Chateau Browlers. It was a bit much. Cindy wasn’t the least bit phased.
“Hello! We’re finally here! Dad—Miranda—hello?” She passed under the oversized double staircase and around the colossal table holding a flower arrangement that would make any FTD franchise jealous. I was still at the front door trying to take off my scruffy, knock-off UGGs.
“Well, guess they must’ve gone out—will you stop it?” She tossed her hands in the air and spun them in circles, trying to get me to follow her. I shoved my foot back into my boot and followed her under the imperial staircase to the kitchen.
It wasn’t your average kitchen; not even close. It was a restaurant kitchen. The stove looked like a contraption from outer space. The refrigerator and freezer were two separate appliances sprawled next to the bathtub-sized sink.
“Great, my dad and his wife won’t be back until Sunday night!” She picked up a handwritten note from the counter and waved it above her head. Her face went deep red and her eyes glossed over.
“I frickin’ knew it. I bet she took him away because I was coming this weekend. She is such a bitch!” She pulled her phone from her pocket.
I didn’t know what to do, she was completely devastated. What kind of parent wasn’t around when their kid came home from boarding school for the weekend? If there was one good thing that came out of my absent parents, it was my grandparents; they were always there for me. Anytime I came home from school, my grandma would have a package of my favorite cookies in the car when she picked me up. My bed was always turned down and Nemo, my teddy bear, would be waiting for me. Yeah, up until she died she always put Nemo on my bed when I came home.
I watched as Cindy paced across the kitchen to the dining room, her voice hurried and cracking. It was messed up that she came all that way from California to see her dad and he didn’t have the decency to wait for her to show up. She looked like a lost little girl in a busy shopping center, utterly confused and desperate to be found. She hung up her phone, wiped her eyes with her arm.
“Forget him. He is such a frickin’ A-hole! He said he had to fly out to New Mexico, problem with one of the stores. It’s such bullshit—another excuse for being a screwed up parent.”
I still didn’t know what to say, so I told her what I thought might make her feel ok, maybe validate her frustration. I wanted to come up with something that would help her feel better. She wasn’t the nicest person, but in the spirit of common courtesy the situation would warrant a couple of nice words. You would’ve thought.
“Sorry your dad’s an A-hole.”
Ok so it wasn’t the best choice of words, but under the circumstances.
“Don’t be sorry for something you have no control over. This is how my relationship has been with my dad my whole life. I’m the perfect example of a privileged, throw-away kid.”
“Don’t say that.” It was so pathetic, I almost couldn’t take it.
“It’s the truth. Every major holiday, he’s either gone or busy. Even when he’s here, he’s not really here. He’s either on the phone or working on the computer in his office. He could never just hang out with me. On parent visiting days at school, everyone else had actual parents who came and saw them. You know what I got? A certified letter with some lame excuse about why he couldn’t come and see me.” She crumpled the letter and tossed it into the sink. “At least you can understand how I feel. Your family life is about as messed up as mine.” She walked over and patted me across my back.
That, right there, was the difference between Cindy and me. I never considered my life any more messed up than the next person’s. I was grateful that my grandparents made the choices they did when I was little. I wouldn’t ask for any part of my life to be changed, because that would affect my life today; and I have to say, my life wasn’t
all that bad. Cause and effect—things I did created and fed what the outcome was going to be. For instance, if my mom and dad weren’t so F’ed up, I wouldn’t have ended up at Bethany School for Girls. I wouldn’t have met Joanie and we wouldn’t have been best friends. If I didn’t go to Wesley, I wouldn’t have had Max Goldstein for Government my senior year, and that just wasn’t acceptable. I could’ve ended up in some jacked-up school, dating some tweaker who believed we were all put on this Earth to be farmed for food by aliens that worshiped the Hale-Bop comet, and that would’ve been worse than rotting in hell.
“This weekend is about fun right? I’m not going to let him screw it up.” Cindy disappeared into a room off the kitchen. “What’s your choice of drink?” her voice echoed from the other room.
“Um, how about a Diet Coke?” It didn’t register with me, until she poked her head out and gave me the ‘are you really that stupid?’ look.
“WTF, Wilson, I’m not talking about that type of drink. Get with it now.” She rolled her eyes and disappeared again. I heard bottles clang together and shuffle against the shelving.
“Will you come in here and help me? I’ve only got two hands.”
“Sorry.” I rushed into the room. I expected it to be a pantry. Boy was I wrong. It was a mini liquor store. The only thing it was missing was the cash register. It was the size of a bedroom. The wall had shelves filled with all different types of alcohol. The back of the room had two huge glass-door refrigerators filled with different types of beers and wines. Between them, rack after rack of dark wine; and to my left, the hard liquor mixtures and potion bottles. Anything we wanted under the sun lived in that room. I wondered how many down-and-outers or alcoholics would have thought they had died and gone to heaven. I noticed Cindy already had tequila and vodka cradled in her arms. She wasn’t just thinking of snagging a couple of beers and catching a slight buzz, she was determined to party hard tonight and worry about the leftovers later.
The Wilson Mooney Box Set Page 5