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“Do you know me?”
“I thought I did, but then I got to drinking and talking with Oscar…”
Oh, shit.
“Oscar kisses and tells, huh?” I ask, wincing.
“Kiss and tell? Not so much, but sleep with a girl? Yeah, he’ll tell about that.”
I wince and try to figure out how to respond, but what can I say? I slept with one of his closest friends.
“It was just the one time,” I mumble. “What about the time you fooled around with Erika?”
“Fooling around is different from sleeping with!”
“Yes, but… Once and done.”
“Katie, are you being careful at least?” he asks.
His concern warms me. “I’m not stupid.”
“I never meant to suggest that, but I also… Look. I would love to be an uncle one day, and you’ll probably be a better mom than our mom…”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I demand.
“Katie, you can’t deny that our mom isn’t going to win Mom of the Year awards. She married an asshole.”
I clear my throat. “Just because our father is an asshole doesn’t mean that Mom—”
“She would pick him over us every chance she got. Most parents would be upset if their son called to say they needed a ride because they got smashed, but they would come out anyhow to get them because that’s what parents should do. Better than drinking and driving, right? But that’s not what happened.”
He pauses, so I eventually have to ask, “What did happen?”
“I called up Mom, and she said she would be there in twenty. Forty minutes passed, so I called her, and Dad answered and said that they wouldn’t be coming, that Ihad to fend for myself, that I wasn’t welcome under their roof with alcohol on my breath.”
“What the hell?”
“This was senior year of high school,” he says. “I was pissed, and I have a tendency to speak my mind when I’m drunk, so I made some kind in asinine comment about how mouthwash has alcohol in it, and he fucking flipped out on me, ranting and raving about how I was such a colossal disappointment and how I wouldn’t amount to anything, that I was just going to go to college to get trashed every week and waste his money… Never mind the fact that between sports and merit scholarships, I don’t have to pay much at all per year. Oh, and he isn’t footing the bill for my education anyhow.”
“That’s not the only reason why he’s an asshole,” I mumble.
“So you know about…”
I lift my eyebrows. “The Thunder Crows being the mafia? Dad being in charge what with Mr. Slade being dead and all?”
Kyle says nothing. A pin could drop, and it would sound like a bomb had gone off.
“I was going to mention his affair.”
“Father cheated on Mom?” I want to say I can’t believe that, but, well, I can. He’s too much of an asshole for me to not believe him capable of something like this.
“Yep, with one of those floozy women who would hang out at the bar all the time.”
“I hate the term floozy,” I mutter.
“That’s what you’re going to fixate on?” he demands.
“I didn’t know about the affair,” I mumble.
