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“I’m not you,” I reply.
“What?”
I sigh, my ribs throbbing with a dull pain that I know has nothing to do with the beating I took — it was nothing; I’ve had worse — but from this love inside of me.
“I’m not good,” I tell him. “I’m not responsible. I’m not a rule-follower like you.”
“Okay. So?”
“So I’m the second son. I’m the disappointment.”
Another couple of minutes go by before Homer asks, “And?”
I sigh again, this time sharply. “And I’mafraidthat I’ll always be that. I’m afraid that I’ll disappoint her like I do everyone else. And she deserves better than me.”
That’s it, isn’t it?
That has always been the case.
What she deserves and what I am.
I mean, look what happened. Look what I fucking did last night.
Not only did I violate her body, I fucking violated her privacy.
Instead of leaving her alone like a decent human being,protecting herlike a decent human being, I exposed her to the world. All because I couldn’t handle what she’d said to me.
I wanted to purge this angst inside of me.
That her words had caused.
And the only way I knew how was to go see her.
Proveto her that I’m not the guy she thinks I am.
And well, I did, didn’t I?
So yeah, I’m the problem.
“I never wanted to run the company,” Homer says.
“What?”
“I never wanted any part of this.”
“Yeah and that’s why you trained so hard for it all your life.”
He chuckles again. “I never said that IknewI didn’t want it.”
I frown, still looking out the window.
“It wasn’t until he passed away and I truly became the boss… Actually,” he backtracks, “it wasn’t until I left college and went to graduate school that I realized I didn’t want to do this.”
I finally turn to him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
He glances at me for a second. “I realized that I didn’t want to sit in an office all day and run meetings. I didn’t want to read reports and make deals and everything else that goes with it. I thought I wanted it. I wastoldthat I wanted it. And when people tell you something, every single day of your life, you start to believe it. Their beliefs become your beliefs. And then before you know it, you’re trapped. You’re caged and you don’t know what to do. You don’t know how to get free,ifyou can get free even if you tried. So you’re stuck. Sometimes you’re stuck forever. Sometimes you don’t get the opportunity to become unstuck.”
I stare at him, my big proper brother, in his three-piece suit, with no hair out of place.
