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He still looks conflicted, but I can’t tell if it’s about the three-letter F word or his forced induction into the society of out-and-proud masturbators. “You gonna say bye to mom and pops?”
I smirk. “Of … Of course I am.” I study the look on his face a bit longer. Maybe he’s conflicted about neither of those things at all. “What? You already miss me? I haven’t even left yet.”
“Nah. Just stuff on my mind.” He shrugs and shoves his hands into his pockets.
He won’t say it, but I can see it on his downcast face. “You’ve got my number. Any of those little pricks on your team give you a hard time, you tell them your big brother is Stefan Baker, and he’s going to come kick their asses.”
Rudy smirks. “Really? You’re seriously going to come to my high school and beat up a bunch of teens?”
I reconsider. “Well, I’ll scare the shit out of them at the very least.” I grab his shoulder and pull him into a half hug, which he reluctantly accepts before I let go and head back toward the house to say my goodbyes.
Mom gives me a long, tight hug where I have to mask a wince of pain since her knuckles dig unknowingly into a sore spot at my right shoulder. Dad just stares stonily at the monitor of his giant desktop computer when I say goodbye, offering me no additional words other than the ones he’s already generously given.
Apparently I’m not even deserving of one of his signature, unintelligible grunts. I wasn’t expecting much more than that, to be honest. He is at times, even admittedly, a total prick.
Maybe that’s where I get it from.
Rudy’s in the driveway dribbling his basketball when I pop on my white cap, flip it backwards, then kick my pickup into gear and drive off. He watches me as I go, and I watch him in the rearview until he’s just an ant at my back.
The afternoon sun rides the back of my neck as I head down the highway, windows down, radio off, and wind slapping past my face and my arm hanging out of the window. I have no destination in mind. All I know is that I can’t live another second in that house with that man.
I pull into the parking lot of a big-ass hotel and kill the engine, then stare at the tall building and consider what the hell I’m going to do now.
Room service sounds nice.
A few drinks at the bar downstairs does, too.
After making sure the cap is secured on the bed of my truck, I grab my small bag of clothes off the passenger seat and head for the lobby. The receptionist is sweet as caramel candy to me, and when I get the key to my room, she thanks me and tells me to have a blessed evening. I grunt at her, snatch a mint from a little golden saucer on the counter, then make for my room on the eighth floor.
A floor for every year I let go by without that fucker Ryan in my life.
One floor. Two floors. Three floors. I watch the number grow bigger on the elevator, counting the numbers with the uncaring coldness of time itself.
And my father.
The room is fantastic, clean, and has an enormous bowl of a bathtub I might take advantage of later. None of that means shit to me at the present time, since all I need to do is wipe my brain of all the fuzz and the echoes of my dad’s voice, and the best way to do that is make friends with a few glasses at the bar downstairs. I toss my little bag on the bed, christen my new temporary home by taking an hour-long piss in the bathroom, then heading down.
I sit at the bar all by myself with the exception of a woman at the other end who looks like she’s at the end of her own rope, but is too exhausted to even make proper facial expressions; she just stares at her drink like she’s watching a movie of her life.
Sounds about right.
The bartender, a young blond dude in a vest with a tattoo of Florida on his forearm for some reason, comes by and takes my order. I stare at the big flat screen nearby. A baseball game is on, which just seems to solidify my general feeling of shittiness. I watch better men swing their bats, crack some balls, and tear up the bases with their powerful and perfectly-trained legs. Each of them probably have this nightmare in their minds—the nightmare that it could all end in an instant.
The fact that I’ve now lived that nightmare gives me a strange power. I know something they don’t. I lived it. I am the nightmare.
