“Hungover?”
“No.” I grabbed a cereal box and pulled open the top. “I didn’t drink much last night.”
I heard Zoe crunching on her cereal behind me, and I could feel her gaze as well as I could imagine it: eyes narrowed, lips pursed, vaguely resembling the disdain her father/my step-dad lobbed at me whenever within range. Stupid fucking Gary.
“So what is that?” Zoe continued, deeming it safe. “Like, six bottles?”
“Try two.”
“Vodka?”
“No, beer, idiot.” I splashed some milk on the cereal and returned the jug to the refrigerator before collapsing onto a chair across from her. I often regretted accepting her offer of rooming together, but considering my shitty salary and the quality of the apartment Gary put us up in, I didn’t see the situation changing any time soon. She was often gone, at school or with friends, so I didn’t always have to deal with her judgment. “Not that you would know what that is.”
“I drink, sometimes,” she replied, primly eating her cereal like it was some kind of filet mignon. “Socially.”
“How can you be a social drinker in college?”
“It’s called restraint. I don’t imagine you know what that is.”
“Are you going to lecture me? I sense a lecture coming on, and I want to make sure to take notes. Don’t wanna flunk the test.”
Zoe chewed on her cereal for a moment before saying, “Dad’s supposed to be around in the next hour or so.”
“So I should make myself scarce.”
“Or you could try to be civil.”
I snorted. What a joke. If I never saw Gary again in my life, it’d be a life well lived. “Or I could poke out my eyes with a hot fork. It would be time better spent.”
“When was the last time you actually talked to him?”
“If I had my way, it would have been the day I turned eighteen.”
“He paid for your rehab.”
“Okay, the day I graduated from rehab.”
Zoe shook her head. “Look, I don’t really care, but I’m sick of trying to play mediator between you two. I have no idea why you can’t just, like, not be a shithead to him for the fifteen minutes he’s here.”
“He’s been a shithead to me my whole life. You reap what you sow.”
Zoe sighed and gave up, leaning her head on a fist and staring down at her bowl of Trix. I had always worried about rooming with Zoe, because not only did it mean putting up with my sister but it meant accepting heavily discounted rent from my asshole of a step-father. I didn’t want to owe him anything, because he already spent enough time telling me how grateful I should be that he’d paid for my rehab five years ago.
Nope. Fuck that motherfucker. He was a decent person to Zoe. She’d never understand. Even my mother stuck up for him, and Gary treated her like shit, too. I was going to be the one person in his sad life that didn’t give him the time of day.
I shoved as much cereal in my mouth as I could handle, finishing in record time. Without a word to Zoe, I sprinted to my room, threw on some clothes, jammed all my shit into a bag, and then flew toward the door. Zoe was still eating her cereal by the time I tossed open the front door and headed to my car. Unfortunately, it was blocked in the parking spot by a sleek red BMW convertible.
“Fucking Gary,” I muttered under my breath as the man in question slipped out of the car and used a hand to slick back his thinning hair. He turned to me, his eyes hidden behind aviator sunglasses. I wanted to grab them off his face and throw them across the road. Luckily I’d been quelling such impulses for a long time.
“Would you mind letting me drive out?” I asked, gesturing toward my car. It looked sad and demoralized boxed in by Zoe’s new Volkswagen Beetle and Gary’s mid-life-crisis-mobile. Zoe’s car was technically Gary’s. He’d bought it for her last year as a high school graduation present. I don’t even think he showed up to my pathetic graduation ceremony, which had been held in a gymnasium with twenty other delinquents who talked over the whole thing.
“Where you off to?” he asked.
“Work.”
“At ten on a Sunday?”
“I make my own hours.”
“Who needs a cab at this time?”
“Grannies coming home from church. Why do you care?”
Gary frowned. He was obviously going to start—
“Is the attitude really needed?”
—tone policing like he always did. I didn’t want to fight him because it left me angry for the rest of the day, but I could feel my temper rising. I was always a bit short-fused, but Gary’s presence took me from zero to sixty in seconds.
“Fine. Can you please back up your car so I can get out?”
“When was the last time you talked to your mother?”
He was going to draw this out as long as possible. He loved wasting my time. “I don’t know, last week?”
“You should call her.”
“Okay. Thanks. Will do.”
Gary stared at me another few beats, as if trying to figure out another thing to pester me with before finally ducking back into his car and driving it far enough to release my car from its prison. I jumped into my car and swung out of the driveway, resisting the urge to throw stupid Gary a middle finger as I roared past him.
Because Gary’s ominous advice about calling my mother kept tugging at my mind, I pulled into an In-N-Out parking lot and dialed her number.
“Hello, honey,” she greeted.
“Did you tell Gary to tell me to call you?”
“I don’t think so. Why? Where is he? Is he there with you now?”
“He stopped by the house to hassle me about calling you.”
“Huh. Well, I do worry about you a lot. He may have picked up on it.”
“He’s not observant to the feelings of others, so I doubt that.”
“Justin…”
“Anyway, what’s up with you?”
My mother didn’t miss the dodge, but she must have decided to let it go, because she started to tell me about all the minor events in her life, including the several classes she was taking on medical administration. Her hope was to get a job working in a doctor’s office, filing insurance and all that shit that sounded painfully boring to me. I was happy for her; she hadn’t had a full-time job since I was a baby, so it was important that she gain some independence from her poisonous husband. They were at marriage counseling now (something I had to learn through Zoe, unfortunately), and I secretly hoped they’d get a divorce. Gary was a huge tool, and he had never treated my mother well, especially when she stuck up for me. She was used to bad treatment. Her mother was a bitch, and her dad was emotionally deprived, uninterested in his children. She’d grown up with money, and I think not having it frightened her. She’d lived several years on the edge of poverty trying to escape my hell spawn grandmother, which was how she met my biological father in Montana. She never said I was an accident, but I knew I definitely was an accident, and I tried not to blame her for reacting the way she did. She didn’t want to be an impoverished single mother. She wanted to give me a life better than that. Which meant marrying fucking Gary, who made us all more miserable than we probably would have been poor.
“You know, I’ve been looking into programs at the community college,” Mom said around a mouthful of something crunchy. “They’re really quite affordable, if you ever want to look into it.”
“Mom.”
“I know how you are about school, but you’re so smart, and I think you’ve got more potential than you realize.”
“What in the world convinced you I was smart?”
“Justin, now, really.”
“Barely getting a high school diploma does not equal smart.”
“It doesn’t equal stupid either. You know why you barely graduated.”
“Even without rehab, I got Ds and Cs in everything.”
“Because you were doing cocaine at the time.”
“Mom, kids do cocaine at frickin’ Harvard to get through exams. It’s a stimulant. It’s supposed to make you better at things, not worse.”
“You know what I’m talking about, Justin, and don’t play dumb with me. You were out partying and doing drugs and drinking, none of which is conducive to study. You’re not doing any of that anymore, so I think you’d do much better.”
I wasn’t doing drugs, and I guess going to gay clubs every other weekend to suck dick and get wasted wasn’t really considered partying, but I wasn’t going to fill her in about that. “Mom, it’s time you give up on the dream of me becoming a doctor or whatever.”
“You don’t need to be a doctor. I’d be fine with you doing a variety of things, but driving for Uber … honey, I just think you could stand to do something that pays better and has more opportunity.”
“Yeah, Gary says cab driving isn’t something white people do.”
“Gary has never said that, Justin.”
He hadn’t, but he probably thought it. Casual racism was sort of his thing. I remember several times he teased me for my “Jew hair”. Never mind I was not Jewish, nor was anyone in my immediate family. But Gary’s “teasing” had led to several years of me straightening my hair in your typical sad emo boy cut, back when that sort of thing was trendy. Nowadays I’d come to terms with the tight dark curls that brought me as close to a fro as a white boy could get. I even liked them at times.
“I could be a porn star,” I told her. “I’m pretty good at that sort of thing.”
“I wish you’d be serious about this.”
“Mom, please put all your effort into Zoe. She’ll eventually be a lawyer, and you can brag about her all you like on Facebook.”
“I don’t have to worry about Zoe. Zoe will be fine. You’ve always been the one that concerns me.”
“I’m not on drugs, my job is fine, and I’m not going back to school. My life is chill.”
“Are you still hanging out with Josh?”
She asked me this every time I talked to her. She seemed to think Josh was the only person keeping me from tumbling over the precipice, which had basis in some fact. I’d met Josh during some hard times, and he’d been the supportive friend I’d needed. He didn’t drink too much or do drugs, and despite my offers, he never went to any clubs to hook up with people. Because of him, I’d avoided falling back into old habits, but I had also alienated all of my old friends, so I could also give myself some credit.
“Yes, Mom.”
“You need to bring him back over here sometime. I haven’t spoken to him in forever. I want to know what’s going up with him and his family. Are they all doing well?”
“Last time I checked.” Unlike me, Josh had a wonderful functional family who joked around the dinner table and liked being around one another. I should have enjoyed them, but it felt too weird and alien, like invading someone else’s party. “Josh should give you his mom’s number. You two might want to hang out.”
“If she wouldn’t mind, I wouldn’t.”
I promised her I’d get Josh’s mother’s number, hoping that Josh’s mother could talk some sense into her. Divorce your fuckwad husband, Maureen. Punch your awful mother in the face. Tell your son he’s your favorite child. Yes. These were all things that needed to be said.
After ending my conversation with my mother on a high note, I jammed the car into drive and pulled into the drive-up. Why not load up on unhealthy junk food after a night of drinking and a morning of sleep? Even if I did end up putting on a pound or two, it would be a good thing.
I was scrawny as fuck.
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