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Gavino
Ilock the doors of my house, turn on the stereo as loud as it’ll go, and I get shit-faced drunk.
Doesn’t matter that it’s nine in the morning. Doesn’t matter that as I was leaving, Emilio was coming back from his run and he asked me where I was headed and I told him to mind his own fucking business. The look on his face broke my goddamn heart and I can add that onto the heap of reasons to hate myself.
Being a bastard to my nephew for no reason is just another reason to throw back whiskey after whiskey.
I’m a mess. My mind’s a wreck. I can’t think straight and I’m pacing around my back porch in the heat, shirtless, sweating through a pair of shorts, sucking on alcohol-drenched ice and contemplating walking out into the desert and never coming back. It’d take a few days to die, but the thirst will get me long before the hunger or the sun. I’ll shrivel up and dry out and disappear. Might be for the best.
I attract nothing but misery. I hurt everyone I love.
I’m not worthy of Jeanie or my family or anyone else.
As I finish my sixth or seventh drink around noon, the volume on my music turns down. I crane my neck at the house, ready to shout at whatever stupid bastard thought it was a good idea to touch my shit right now, when Fynn steps out onto the patio. He clasps his hands behind his back and squints up into the sky.
“Hot out here,” he comments.
“Perfect drinking weather.” I hold up my ice bucket and a bottle. “You interested?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t drink before five anymore. Turns out, being a grown-ass man with kids forces you to make somewhat responsible decisions.”
“Your loss.” I throw my glass back and pour another. It’s warm, too warm in my guts. Everything is sour right now, sour and wrong. I keep thinking about Jeanie, about her body against mine and how free I felt with her in my bed.
I wanted to rejoin my family. I wanted to be a better man.
I felt like I had a direction and maybe, just maybe, I could get past the dark that’s always tearing at my skin.
But Jeanie only proved that I’ll never have anything good.
No, whatever I touch will try to rip my heart out instead.
I’m toxic, radioactive, a charnel house filled with broken dreams.
“I heard about what happened.” Fynn sits down at the table and sighs. He wipes his forehead and frowns out at the desert. We’re in the shade of an overhang, but it’s still uncomfortable. “I’m sorry. I had no clue.”
“Nobody did. Malcolm’s own daughter. And she never told me.” I slosh the drink as I make big, angry gestures. “Can you fucking believe it?”
He squints at me. “I actually can.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means, you knew she hated Malcolm and you knew she had secrets. You also knew whatever she was keeping from you must be big.” His eyebrows raise. “You didn’t do that math?”
“Not true,” I grumble at him. “I figured it was personal. And you didn’t figure it out either.”
“What’s more personal than being the bastard daughter of a piece of shit like Malcolm Strafford?”
I grimace and pace along the length of the table. “Still, she kept it from me. We all have our secrets, Fynn, but that’s much too big. She hid it from me on purpose.”
“She did and she shouldn’t have. Especially not after hearing about what happened with Sonia.”
“I don’t want to hear her name right now,” I say and all my dark thoughts claw at my skull, threatening to crack it open. “I wish that girl would stay dead, damn it.”
“But can you blame Jeanie? After she heard you killed your last girlfriend because she betrayed you, how was she going to say anything? If I were her, I would’ve lied to you forever.”
“All she had to do was open her fucking mouth.” I throw back my drink, seething. Did Fynn just come here to make me feel worse? I want to punch him in the goddamn nose, but he’s too far away and he keeps jerking around. I fill up another glass. “She should’ve trusted me enough to be level-headed about it.”
“Gavino, think for one second. She knew you’d overreact, which is what you’re doing right now. Don’t give me that look, you’re the furthest thing from level-headed imaginable. But she’s also been actively helping you in your little scheme to fuck up this deal.”
