I was kind of a douchebag, I concluded as I started adding up the lies and stories I had told over the years. And that was only when I thought about my professional life and my friends; if I dared to think about how I treated the women I slept with, those memories almost made me sick to my stomach.
One time, a girl came pounding on my front door. She yelled at me for a good five minutes about not having morals and not caring who I hurt. When she was finally done yelling, I apologized for sleeping with her and hurting her feelings in a hope she would leave. But I hadn’t slept with her; the woman had been yelling at me for what I had done to her best friend and for breaking the best friend’s heart. I hadn’t even known if I had slept with the woman who was yelling at me.
My love life was non-existent. Instead of a love life, it was a sex life. There hadn’t been emotions or love involved. There was no moral compass, at all.
I wasn’t sure if I had a clearer moral compass now, but I did know that I wanted to do better in my personal life. Business would always work itself out, but my personal life was where the joy had to come from. If I ever wanted to be an old married man with a wife who loved me, I had to make some changes.
“Where you going?” Cassidy asked as I layered my clothes and readied for the hike.
“I’m hiking. I’ll catch you later.”
“Okay, but I’d like to talk to you about what happened at my house.”
“I had a great time,” I said as I leaned in to her. “But you shouldn’t be talking about that here or you’ll get in trouble.”
“We can talk later,” she said.
She seemed unsure of herself and what she wanted to talk about, but I knew she wanted to talk about me leaving early. It really wasn’t meant to be rude or anything like that. I just didn’t need another day in her house to realize I still had a lot of work to do.
“Where’s everyone at?” I asked as I waited with Melanie to leave for the hike.
“It’s very cold out today. I think people are changing their mind about hiking.”
“I’m still game if you are.”
“I’m going, I’m going,” Stan said as he ran up to us.
He didn’t look like he was in good enough shape to be pounding away on another winter hike. The weather was much worse than when we had gone before. The warm, winter days full of sun had left the mountains and we were in the midst of cold, snowy days again.
“We aren’t going too far. Just out two miles and back,” Melanie said as she opened the back door.
The trail was still plowed, but there were a couple inches of snow covering the path. It wasn’t enough to worry about, and the boots I had worked just fine to keep my feet warm. Melanie took the lead and then me and Stan was right being us. We didn’t talk. There was no therapy going on, just three people moving through the winter trail and contemplating their own existence.
My mind filled with all the potential my future seemed to hold now that I was sober. There was no end to the possibilities. Maybe Spencer and I would invest in this new movie studio and it would be successful. We could be those Hollywood-type guys who went to movie premieres and met famous people on a daily basis.
I thought about what it would be like to buy a home in that area, maybe even down by the beach. San Francisco wasn’t all that warm by the beach, so I had bought my home there up on the hill. But the beach sounded much more like it would be a place to relax.
Then, I let my thoughts go back to my father and brother. My father had disowned me when I left. He had been so hateful and angry. But in recent days, I had started to feel bad for him. His age and his health weren’t getting any better, and I had left him with my younger brother to run things.
My anger had clouded my ability to see that my family was hurting. My father had a broken heart from losing my mother and instead of being there and trying to work things out, I stayed away.
But as I walked through the cold, mountain air, there was one thing that weighed heavier on my mind than anything else: money.
I had never sent my father and brother a single dime of money to help them out. Even after I sold my business and clearly had more money than I knew what to do with, it had never dawned on me to give back to them. I hadn’t offered to pay for the salary of a manager for the funeral home so they could take a break. I had given my own flesh and blood absolutely nothing.
The thought of my own selfishness was almost too much to handle. Never had I thought of myself as a heartless person. I had always played the victim of a father who didn’t love me and disowned me when I went to college. My own version of the story had clouded what my father had been going through at the time. And my own anger had prevented me from going to him and trying to make amends.
I would make amends, though. It was time that I gave back and built my own family up. Cassidy’s family had so much love betwee
n them. They weren’t perfect – they argued, they probably said things they had regretted over the years – but they loved each other and didn’t let anything take that love away.
It was up to me to bring an end to the feud in my family and I knew the perfect way to do that. Of course, money couldn’t buy happiness and I didn’t expect to buy their love with it. But I had an idea for how I could lessen the burden for my brother and father and give them a little peace of mind for the future.
As my mind spun away, I realized that Stan had moved ahead of me and we had already turned around and were heading home.
“Wow, I must have been zoned out,” I said under my breath.
“Or you’re just so out of shape that an elderly man is kicking your ass.” Stan laughed.