Dare Me

“Not a bad thing when your father knows what’s best for you.”

I was about to sit on the chair next to the couch but that remark kept me on my feet. I said nothing in reply, only drank.

“Don’t take offense, Callum. I’m here to offer you help.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“I beg to differ.”

“You can feel free to.”

His eyes were ice but he forced a smile. He cleared his throat. “There’s a position at my old company, Callum. I’ve been asking around. It just opened up and I think if we pulled some strings, you could start over. You could do well there.”

My father worked at a hedge fund. He, his friends and all their sons did. “I’m not interested and I’m certain I’m not qualified.”

“You’re harder-working than any of the kids you went to school with, Cal. You can do this if you put your mind to it. I know it. You can get your life back together.”

“I’m doing that.”

“I don’t see it.”

“It’s a good thing I don’t do it for you to see.”

He lost his patience all in one shot. “For Christ’s sake, Callum. Logan and all your friends from Mercer just graduated from their respective universities – business schools, Ivies. They’re getting their MBAs and you’re just sitting on your ass here in your apartment without a single direction. What happened to the son of mine who rose above everyone’s kid without trying? You’ve got the natural ability to do whatever you want. Where did that drive, that determination go?” He sat forward, stared at me with an intensity that faded into smug disbelief. “You really did let that girl ruin you.”

My bones went brittle. I refused to show it. “I’m not going to have this conversation with you. I think it’s time for you to leave.”

“Don’t you dare speak to me like I’m some stranger.” He hissed at me, on his feet again. “Despite what you may think because of how I may have treated your mom, I’m your father, Callum. I love you. I am all the worthy qualities you have. I look out for you from afar because Caroline isn’t going to. I have your best interests in mind while she wastes her energy on the girl.” He sniffed a bitter laugh, clearing the whisky from his glass with a sharp toss down his throat. Every word he spoke after was singed with fire. “Look at you, Callum. You sacrificed everything for a stranger who clearly didn’t think much of you anyway.” He held his arms out as if to ask where is she now? I only stared back, a storm in my chest but a vacant look on my face. “It fucking kills me. To see what you gave up. Now I could let your mother do that – she’s a grown woman and she made her choice to indulge whatever childish trauma got her so obsessed with raising a girl. That was her problem. It should have stayed her problem. It should have never become yours. I will never forgive her for how she took from you to give to that girl. Before you were born, I told her if I agreed to have a child, I was going to have a brilliant one. And you were that, Callum. You were everything I wished for. You were smarter than everyone else, you were stronger than everyone else and you took care of your mother in ways I couldn’t. I admired that. You never made a single mistake until you let that girl into your heart because she was pretty. Yeah, really pretty. But she was nothing more than that and you were.”

“You know nothing about her,” I countered through my clenched jaw. “You were never around and when you were, you just hated that you looked at her too. You were like everyone else when it came to her. You had no power. And you had a day where you finally hung out with her from morning to night and couldn’t get enough of her. I remember. You spent the next week fucking showering her with love and affection and presents and taking her around till some asshole friend made some shitty comment and then you just shut down. Didn’t want to ruin your image.”

“Sue me, Callum for realizing what was important to me,” my father snarled. “I enjoy my life as it is. I like my reputation among my friends. What don’t I like? Embarrassment. Scandal. Humiliation. And you know what, I’m more than happy to shut off certain needs and emotions because those don’t rise above my desire for success and admiration and power.”

“There’s nothing powerful about living for what others think.”

He had nothing to come back with and it sent him over the edge. “For fuck’s sake, Callum,” he growled, stalking off and sliding his empty glass across my kitchen counter. It skidded into the sink and shattered to pieces. “Enjoy cleaning that up. If only the maid’s kid were here to help you.”

“Fuck youself.”

“Christ, son.” He stopped and took a good look at me before walking out the door. His eyes were filled with rage and hurt. “I’ll never give up on you. I want you to know that. You can always come to me when you decide to turn it around. But I’m going to need you to start making the right decisions. I’m going to need you to let go of the girl and come back to who you were born to

be. You are and always have been worth infinitely more than her.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Lake

I was being laid off my job at the liquor store. Seven dollars an hour, off the books and barely enough to get by but I was still devastated.

Aggie said it was because they were closing down soon. The landlord raised the rent for the sole purpose of getting rid of her. She felt bad about it, so on my last shift, we sat in the closed store and had a drink. “They say they’re opening some nice bar here,” she said, pouring me a plastic cup of something watery brown. “So, here’s to hoping they don’t get none of those pretty girls in little shorts or you folks are gonna have a hard time next door.”

I heaved a sigh. I couldn’t even plan to work at the new bar because it wasn’t opening for awhile and when it did, the shifts would conflict with the ones I had at the place I was already working.

“Maybe it’s time to start stripping,” Aggie cackled. I handed her a preemptive napkin. Every time she laughed, she hacked up a lung.

“No. I think I’d rather not.”

For the money, I had started considering going from waitress to stripper. But I never found the nerve to merely ask anyone about it at the club. I didn’t judge the girls that did it. I had fantasies of being one of them the few times I went to strip clubs with Callum and his friends. But here, the idea of stripping lived in the same place in my heart where I was a shitty person. A fraud. It lived in a place that told me I never belonged in New York with Callum and I’d die in Sunstone. None of the people who once loved me would be happy to see me if I went home. I had already morphed into someone none of them would ever recognize. They’d feel dirty and disgusting for having ever associated with me and I’d be their burden to overcome.