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My doorbell chimes. It sounds off three more times before I’m face to face with Cousin Douche.
He looks like he’s ready for battle in black Timbs, dark jeans, a white tee, and a black leather motorcycle jacket. He pushes past me. Or he tries to. I block that prick, bouncing him off my chest like a soccer ball.
“Don’t even try to steamroll me,Tom-Tom. Not this early, and not in my house.“ Sometimes, just to piss him off, I use the name I gave him when we were kids and played together like we were brothers. I could never say his full name without stuttering—a byproduct of the daily slaps and kicks I received from my father.
After I came to live with him, Gramps put me into speech therapy right away. It took three years of hard work to arm me with the tools to change my speech.
“I’m sorry, okay?” Thomas holds up his hands in an act of conciliation. “Now, will you let me in?”
I move aside and let my cousin come into my home. As he passes, I note his reddish-brown hair is wet, from what I assume was a shower.
Good.
Fucker better not come over to my house stinking.
I beckon Thomas to follow as I proceed him into the kitchen. “If you want to yell at me for some shit, I’m going to make some coffee first.”
I prefer to do things myself, so I don’t have a housekeeper to wait on me. An agency I contracted with cleans the penthouse from toes to tits every two days, as I can’t stand clutter and mess.
My father, among being an abuser and a raging alcoholic, was a hoarder. The house I lived in until I was thirteen, as nice as it was on the outside, was a wasteland on the inside. We had roaches in the kitchen, and rats living among the tons of old yellowed newspapers and faded magazines.
Disgusting the way some kids live.
Thomas settles his ass on a barstool at the granite island. He wisely stays quiet, content to play on his phone while I go about making the coffee.
After stirring in his requested cream and two sugars, I hand him the cup. He takes a sip then gets down to business. “I hear congratulations are in order.” He eyes me over the rim of his mug, waiting for my reaction.
He’ll have to wait a long time.
My face is like a graveyard, giving up nothing. Besides, I’m not sure if he’s congratulating me for the CEO position or my engagement.
Truth be told, I don’t give two fucks. It’s not like he means what he says. Prick has hated me ever since I moved in with Gramps.
Perturbed by my silence, Cousin Douche plunks the mug on the countertop and crosses his arms over his chest. “At the party I attended last night, I met yourfakefiancée.”
Unruffled, I continue to sip my coffee, looking the prick dead in the eyes while I do.
Thomas, always a hothead (must run in the family) flushes from the neck up.
Inwardly, I laugh at his growing frustration.
I’m such a dick sometimes.
“So,” he sputters, his ire growing under my indifference. “You won’t deny you are getting married?”
“No. Why should I?”
Something flits across his expression. Something I swear resembles wistfulness, but that couldn’t be right. Thomas doesn’t envy meanythingexcept the CEO position.
“Why are you doing it? Are you trying to hide who you really are?”
Prick.
I know what he’s getting at. He’s never known me to be in a long term relationship and I bet he’s formed all sorts of conjectures in his mind.
I couldn’t give a hang what label someone slaps on me. Still, I clarify things for Tif’s sake. “If you think my fiancée is my beard, you’d be dead wrong.”
He narrows his eyes. “If you’re not trying to hide your sexual orientation, then why get married to a person you don’t know?”
