Lover (Court University 4)

The decision to tackle my father’s businesses now that I’d arrived back in Maywood Heights seemed like a necessary evil since I didn’t have the excuse of states between myself and my family’s legacy. Currently, most of my father’s businesses had board members running things, but it’d always been the plan for me to take over. After all, he couldn’t live forever.

Though, he’d been arrogant enough to play God in the past.

The disdain I had for my currently incarcerated father reached historical levels and wasn’t something I planned to touch with a ten-foot pole at all, here in Maywood Heights or not. His legacy didn’t have to be mine, his sins his own, and as far as I was concerned, I operated through life with a mother—only. One who actually gave a shit about me more than himself. She always had and did try to protect me from him. She’d been hard-pressed. My father had always been a powerful man, something I knew too well. Even from an early age.

That joint sounding real good about now, I got it out as I strode through the brick halls of Windsor House, the thing against my lips before I realized I didn’t have a light. I actually had to double back and bum a Zippo off someone from the band, and by then, I got a text from, of all people, December.

December: Hey, goober. You didn’t get out of talking to me tonight. This is on when I get back. *wink emoji*

I shook my head.

Me: Aren’t you supposed to be, I don’t know, doing your husband right about now?

Honestly, the actual thought made me want to barf a lung. Prinze fucking anyone. Let alone my best friend.

And the girl who could have been yours.

The joint twisted in my fingers, basically mangled by the time I got to Windsor House’s aquatic area. Back in the day, my friends and I used to get high as hell under the bleachers by the pool, the ambiance a bit different now. Thick with heat, the room painted timid waves from the shallow and deep ends. The lights were off, but the area was bright from the pool’s underwater lighting.

My leather shoes squeaked to a stop as December’s text message bubble popped up.

December: I’ll let you get away with that one because I love you.

I wished she didn’t keep saying that, that she loved me, and though I loved her too, I never said it to her. I was scared of what it meant whenever I even had the thought to say it. That it would come out meaning something else and I’d look like an asshole.

At the end of the day, December and I had a history, a long one. And though it hadn’t all been bad, it was filled with more pain and suffering than anyone in their goddamn lifetime should have had to endure.

And that’d been before she chose someone else over me.

She was my friend, yes. I loved her, yes, but we weren’t together. We weren’t a thing and…

December: I just wanted to let you know you weren’t off the hook for our talk. I still want to know what’s wrong with you. Why you came back? I’m not stupid.

I knew she wasn’t, didn’t think she was. But like I’d already told her, tonight and her wedding hadn’t been the time. In any case, I was a big boy. Could deal with my own shit.

I wet my lips.

Me: Noted. Will talk in the future. Promise.

Anything to get her to move on.

December: Okay, and I also wanted to thank you. You know, for tonight? You’re always there for me.

My hand wavered, and I eyed my phone before taking off my suit jacket. The humidity in the room didn’t help, the air heavy and suffocating.

Me: It’s no problem. You know that.

I’d do anything for her, still would. Hell, if she got to the airport and said, “Hey, Arizona, I changed my mind. I don’t want to leave. I…”

And that out of everything was what scared me the most. That somewhere deep inside I wouldn’t know what to do. If she came back, said things that I wouldn’t know what to do with it all, if I’d make the right choice.

I didn’t know if I’d do the right thing.

The possibility of that sobered the hell out of me, that I could in some deep dark place be just as fucked up as my father. That I could create just as much chaos in someone’s life that he had and not just to mine. My father, Ibrahim Mallick, left so many casualties in his wake.

December herself included.

This was my reality, my pain as much as my passion. I would take over my father’s businesses, but I’d do it in an honest way. I’d run business in this town as a good man, not one who took advantage of others and lead only by his own selfish gain.